"My style tends to be pretty transparent and candid," said Kate El-Hillow, president and chief investment officer of Russell Investments.
In 2021, El-Hillow left Goldman Sachs to lead the Seattle-based private company's entire investment division. Amid a pandemic followed by historic climbs in inflation, then interest rates, she pushed for a broader set of clients, including more insurance companies and government financial institutions.
Behind only CEO Zach Buchwald on Russell's organizational chart, El-Hillow also diversified what clients invest in and she reassessed the company's approach to risk budgeting. She communicated Russell's shift with the asset managers who directly speak to clients, along with the software engineers who design the company's investment platforms.
El-Hillow, who works from New York, discussed company transformations through virtual town halls with her team of over 200 employees, as well as cross-country trips to sit down with her investment managers and clients. One strategy was promoting and "spotlighting the leaders in our organization who were helping make the changes happen."
In turn, managers rethought how their career paths fit into the $298-billion asset company's organizational structure. "People build trust in me because they want to be considered for different opportunities," she said.
At the start of her career, El-Hillow "focused so much on what I didn't have," like not attending an Ivy League school — she graduated from Boston College — and the lack of a strong enough network. She gained confidence by joining JPMorgan Chase, then taking the risk to join the bank's Tokyo arm, which was regrouping in the wake of the 1997 East Asian financial crisis. El-Hillow later joined Goldman, where she worked as deputy chief investment officer of multi-asset solutions and helped direct that firm's platform solutions.
To reach out to diverse talent who may have felt intimidated by banking, El-Hillow began new recruitment efforts at Russell. She collaborates to find hires with the Posse Foundation, a nonprofit that has placed groups of underrepresented minorities on college campuses. And the banker scrutinizes details like job postings' wording that can cause applicants to "self-select out."
El-Hillow said that the retention and promotion of nontraditional voices is equally, if not more, important than hiring them. To this end, she partnered with the Russell Investments' women's resource group to launch a program called "Coach to Grow," which pairs high-performing employees on the investment and products team with a coach for 18 months, plus the employee's manager.
The effort is "much more targeted" than many mentorship programs, El-Hillow said, because the coach and supervisor must understand the specific career advancements that make the most sense, given their intimate knowledge of the mentee.
El-Hillow said it is easier for women to join banking today than 25 years ago because there are more role models. Still, there are
"We have to get people over that next hump," El-Hillow said.
