In today's rapidly changing world, building a successful career hinges on embracing curiosity and a commitment to continuous learning. By staying curious and open to taking on assignments outside our comfort zones, we not only drive personal growth but also contribute to innovation within our industries. In this evolving landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) plays a pivotal role in shaping the future, and being curious about how AI can augment our skills will be essential to staying ahead.
Success in today's workplace also depends on the relationships we build. Expanding your network within your community and across diverse age groups and backgrounds exposes you to new perspectives and ideas, enhances your decision-making and opens doors to new opportunities to help you stay resilient amid change.
Ultimately, curiosity, courage, inclusivity, and technology like AI are essential to thriving in today's dynamic work environment. By taking risks, embracing change, and fostering diverse relationships, you'll not only advance personally but also help create more inclusive and innovative workplaces, with AI acting as a catalyst for smarter decision-making.
Transcription:
Chana Schoenberger (00:09):
So I want to introduce our first panel for the morning. I'll be moderating this one. We have some honorees, Anu Aiyengar, who is the Global Head of Advisory and M&A at JP Morgan. We have Maria Hackley, who is a Managing Director and the Global Head of Industrials for corporate banking at Citi. And we also have Carolyn Duby, The Field CTO, and Cybersecurity Go-To-Market Lead at Cloudera. So please come up, ladies.
Carolyn Duby (00:54):
Good morning. Hey, how's everybody doing? Wow, that was really loud.
Chana Schoenberger (01:01):
Hello. Yeah, so this panel is going to be about curiosity, and curiosity obviously is one of the most important traits for someone to have if they want a job in financial services because if you can't keep asking why and how, then you should probably go be a librarian. Okay. So just to kick this off, let's start with how do you stay curious? What do you read, watch, study, listen to what is your personal curriculum for finding out what's going on in the world?
Carolyn Duby (01:34):
Should I go first?
Chana Schoenberger (01:36):
Sure. Great. Or just go down the line.
Carolyn Duby (01:38):
So I am pleased to be with you here this morning. I'm Carolyn Duby, Field CTO at Cloudera. Cloudera is a data management company. So I spend a lot of time reading about tech, about AI, about general industry use cases, but I also try to stay in touch with what's going on in the world. I read a whole array of different types of media including newspapers, blogs, podcasts, audible books,
Chana Schoenberger (02:14):
American Banker, obviously that's
Carolyn Duby (02:15):
American Banker,
Chana Schoenberger (02:16):
Required reading.
Carolyn Duby (02:17):
Yes, absolutely. I get probably 50 American Banker emails every day and there's always great articles there as far as trying to learn, there's kind of different things. There's keeping up with the industry, learning new skills, which is reading a book, how do I do this? But then also really just keeping up with the pace of the industry and things come out very quickly in ai. I'm constantly, every day there's new advances in the models and things are moving very quickly. So I do definitely have to keep up with a lot of things.
Maria Hackley (03:04):
In my case with global industrials, that's nine sub sectors and there is a lot to know about each of those different sectors. So for me it's really reading about industry content related to those. So industrials is like auto shipping, aviation, the big conglomerate service, find industrial and others. So I would say that's one element in terms of really making sure that I'm staying up on current knowledge and trends. I would also say that obviously the Wall Street Journals is the paper that I read and I find that to be very useful. I do like SM who it provides. I think this is on television on Saturday mornings who provide just very direct, just clean news and then research. At Citi, we have a significant amount of research and really pushing myself intellectually curious. You talk about the topic of AI, which is impacting all of our businesses, but just trying to come up on the curve on it and really making sure that not only with AI, but in my case I travel a lot globally. So global research and our chief economist puts out a great piece. It's a long piece, but I just like to do the Cliff notes, the first 15 pages. And so there are ways where we don't have a lot of time and we need to compartmentalize that time, but being prepared in getting that information in a compact manner for me is most useful. So those are some areas.
Carolyn Duby (04:36):
We need an AI to summarize our learnings about AI.
Maria Hackley (04:41):
And by the way, the other thing that I do read of course is the American bankers.
Carolyn Duby (04:44):
Naturally cover to cover every month.
Chana Schoenberger (04:48):
Well, it's a website so there is no cover, but I know, I'm
Carolyn Duby (04:51):
Just kidding. There was an actual physical copy though.
Chana Schoenberger (04:54):
Yes, of course. We do have a print magazine
Anu Aiyengar (04:56):
Too. Yeah, it looks great.
(04:59):
So I'll explain my answer. My mom gave me the answer to the question. My mother lives in India and so does my mother-in-law, my morning routine is as I walk to work, I call one of them every alternate day equally. And so she asked me, where are you going? And I told her where I'm going and she said, what is the topic? So I told her that. So she said, oh, tell them that you gave me a headache when you were a child because you asked why for everything. And it is a true statement. She sent me to school early because she couldn't stand the questions that I asked. So I think that today, I can't annoy other people the same way, but that inherent thing of not just accepting something that you're told but always ask why. So I think it started, at least my mom says it started as a child.
(05:52):
I have no recollection of it. And today I find it a little bit the opposite. There is so much information, so to process it and have the quiet time, I find this harder than to actually have access to information. I joke saying the answer to every question in the world is in my email if I actually have the time to read it. So it's a bit the other way. I feel inundated with information. You can learn anything if you have the time to, because there are open course materials and stuff like that. It's a bit more prioritization, thinking time and quiet time that allows curiosity to actually result in something meaningful.
Chana Schoenberger (06:39):
You would actually have to schedule that, right? You'd have to put an hour on your blocked calendar. That said, quiet time, leave me alone.
Anu Aiyengar (06:46):
Yeah, I do actually. I blocked the time.
Carolyn Duby (06:50):
So smart. I wish I did that.
Anu Aiyengar (06:51):
Yeah, otherwise you just can't get anything done. Plane time. I try not to switch on Wi-Fi when I'm on the plane. So United Airlines is very helpful for that because half the time it doesn't work.
Chana Schoenberger (07:09):
Very convenient. So I know a lot of companies, virtually every financial company has some sort of a training program where they will upskill and re-skill the people who already work there. So usually there's a training library or you can sign up for courses if you want to learn something new. And this is wonderful. Do you recommend that people do that? Should they take courses in whatever their bank is trying to teach them about? I don't mean just the compliance things we have to do every year
Anu Aiyengar (07:42):
If you are really interested in something. Yeah, I would do that. So my job changed about six months ago, and one of the things that got added was ESG and carbon transition, which I don't really have any history in. And so I did spend some time not taking a course, but meeting everybody who does that to ask them, what do you do? And it's a different type of, there may be people in this room from that area, but many of them are from different backgrounds. So they didn't grow up as bankers. They were either engineers or working in some of the fossil fuel industries, implementing some of the sustainability solutions, a lot of PhDs. And so it was a little bit intimidating, but I was like, I don't need to understand exactly what you do. I just need the basics of what you do so that I don't sound foolish because if I'm supposed to be responsible for an area, you should have rudimentary understanding of it.
(08:45):
And then the other thing I think was somebody else gave me this advice is you don't have to be an expert in it. Somebody else is let them do their job. Your job is to actually see how it is that you can amplify their expertise and impact. And so understand your role as a manager, which is not to know more than what that person does about that topic, but instead to make them more impactful. So I found that to be a big relief because otherwise, if you have to learn all of it and become as good as the person who spent 15 years doing it, it's near impossible.
Chana Schoenberger (09:24):
Well, also if you have thousands of people in your organization working for you, you can't possibly do all their jobs, they have to do their jobs, you just tell them what to do.
Anu Aiyengar (09:34):
Or sometimes you ask them, what is it that I can do in order to make you more impactful? Because I don't understand some of these areas well enough for me to even give direction, but I know that they have something special. And so it's okay, what is helpful to you? How can I be helpful to you to amplify your impact? What resources do you need? Which conferences do you want to go to? Do you want to publish papers for this part of the business, which is a little bit different from what I'm familiar with, I grew up being a p and l generating client facing banker. And so the ESG sustainability and carbon transition part is a bit more esoteric for me, but obviously need to understand it.
Maria Hackley (10:21):
I mean, I would add to that as an example, at Citi, there is a formalized training in ESG for a selected group of bankers. I should that class and we'll invite you and we are rolling it out. It's been rolled out actually globally, and it's an area of great focus. And we actually have the full-time in banking sustainability teams as well in transitions that work with the banking team. So that for sure, as Anna said, is an area. I would also say, depending upon what business you are, if you're in a global business or could be a geographic area like China or other parts of Latin America that are really in growth mode or in turmoil, that it sort of behooves you to get a little bit smart, pick the area. But there is, I'm sure at all of our firms, a lot of information and content and a lot of senior consultants.
(11:18):
As an example, we have Larry Summers. So he has a view. So the question is how are you spending your time to get smart? Are you leading in, are you participating? Are you taking that opportunity? And there is a view on, yes, we have our partners and our experts, but there's also a view that as a banker, your preparedness and your expertise does get you a seat at the table. And there's an element where for some reason your partner was not there, could you hold up a conversation? So it's tricky. So it's really about prioritizing what you need to know and getting an understanding what's available at your firms and then taking advantage of that.
Chana Schoenberger (11:57):
But I like this idea that Anu was seeing also about asking the right people. It is sort of like networking to learn, take someone to lunch, ask them about what do you do? Why do you do it? What are your challenges? What do I need to know about what you do? What three books should I read? That sort of thing.
Anu Aiyengar (12:16):
I think different people also absorb information differently. I understand things a little bit better by hearing and talking less by reading. So I find that easier is go to the whoever is the expert. One of my previous bosses very early on in my career used to say, so I grew up as an m and a banker that the mark of an m and a banker is, you start from spell the company for me to in 48 hours. You're the world's expert on that company. So that kind of, but then you do that not because you actually go to the company and this and that, you have to get information from a whole bunch of people and learn. So that was a bit of the training as well was there are other people who are experts, learn from them, and that's the fastest way to learn.
Chana Schoenberger (13:05):
Yeah, journalism is the same way. We all become nano experts in the one thing we're writing a story about today, and then tomorrow we write about something.
Anu Aiyengar (13:13):
And then next day, its something else.
Carolyn Duby (13:16):
So at Cloudera we spend a huge amount of time on enablement, on helping, because our stuff is constantly changing. It's like every quarter, it's a lot of new features. We have a very diverse product set. So we spend a lot of time, and the challenge for us is really that we can't always just go look up what we need to look up because we're the ones that are creating the open source, creating the new tools. So a lot of times I do rely on my peers when I don't know the answer to something. I mean, one of the reasons I came to Cloudera was really the people and the team of experts that we have knowing that I can just pick up the phone or send a slack message and I can get an expert in pretty much whatever we have in our platform. So that's really powerful of being able to reach out to your network, your network both within your organization and also outside of your, your organization.
(14:25):
It's a great coming to conferences like this one, you can learn, you can meet other people, you can make those connections so that if you can't find whoever you're looking for or the information that you're looking for within your organization, being able to reach out to somebody that is an expert in that. So I think the power of doing the work, finding the experts, making the network, and then knowing somebody that you can reach out to who does know the answer is really powerful, especially when you're going with these newer technologies and the complexity of the types of digital transformation that's going on today. So.
Chana Schoenberger (15:04):
Great. Okay. So can you all tell me about a time when your curiosity led you in a different career direction or maybe helped you move forward at work?
Carolyn Duby (15:17):
Okay, sure. So I think the biggest change in curiosity, so in high school I always ask a lot of questions and I had a math teacher, her name was Sister Terry and I went to a Catholic school growing up in high school,
Chana Schoenberger (15:36):
Catholic school, girls in the room, anyone?
Carolyn Duby (15:38):
We had a bunch of them. Okay, yeah. So Sister Terry told my parents, she said, Carolyn is so smart, she loves math, I loved math. Everything about it took calculus. I took the most math classes I could possibly take. And sister Terry said to my parents, Carolyn, she's a great math student, but man, she asked a lot of questions and I would get comments back from other students in the class. Wow, I'm really glad you asked that question. I was afraid to ask it. So yeah, so that was kind of how I got started. I was fortunate enough to go to a high school where they had computer programming, and this was, I've been in the industry, it was like in the 1980s. Nobody even knew what a computer was in the 1980s, but I had a really forward thinking math teacher who set me up, set up a class, and he ran a class on computer programming.
(16:44):
Well, I took the class and I didn't think too much about it. Then I went to college and I said, you know what? These computers, they could be kind of useful. I think I'll just take a class in that I was all set up to go. I was in pre-med, right? I was going to go be a doctor, and I was like, wow, this is a powerful technology that could help pretty much anything. I think I'm going to go take a class in it. Well, I took that one class in it and I was really pretty hooked on the computer programming stuff. I still finished the pre-med requirements, but that was it. After that, I was convinced. So I think just the fact that I took that class, that I took the opportunity to do something that was a little bit beyond my comfort zone. I'll have to tell you, it was a difficult class, but it really set me up for my entire career. So you never know what's out there, take a chance, try something new. You never know where it's going to lead.
Chana Schoenberger (17:44):
Go ahead.
Maria Hackley (17:49):
Sure. I would say that in my case, one of the examples where I had some intellectual curiosities that historically I worked in the financial institutions group, and that's the group that covers banks, insurance companies, asset managers, finance companies. And I was at a point in my career where I was interested to do more and I had an opportunity to cover a large industrial company that has a big finance arm. And I really had no absolutely knowledge of industrial companies, which are very different than financial institutions, which are regulated. And I remember when then they gave me an opportunity to cover this very large client, and I asked one of the analysts, just get me all the research that I could on this company. And I would say that in many regards, pushing myself to want to do something different was, and this was probably the most important stretch assignment of my career, shifting over to cover this large industrial company and then having the opportunity to co-run industrials from 2016 was really, really saying, I've enjoyed the success that I've had in my career, but I want to do more and really learn more.
(19:04):
And I'll tell you something, my world is incredibly different in moving into industrials. As an example, when I go to JFK or LaGuardia, I know that the company that makes where you go through the security when you're running to your gate and those electric carpets, Kona, they're in French or Schneider, Leidos is in Washington Aerospace and defense. I mean, I look at EV cars and I know about Tesla and SpaceX. I read differently. I'll read an article about Boeing or Airbus or Caterpillar just so I, to me, being intellectually curious and the switch that I had professionally completely opened up my world in a way that I just didn't know to know. And so what my message to you would be is continue to intellectual curiosity and take some risks because it's amazing what you can do and what you can learn if you just cross that bridge.
Anu Aiyengar (20:02):
In my case, it was probably the desire to travel and work in other countries, but not being able to fully move to another place because I had already moved once from India to the US and to manage two careers and move around is pretty difficult. So I solved that by doing a lot of cross-border deals. So I did a disproportionate amount of deals where one side of the deal is in the us, the company, the other side is in another country. And so in the early parts of my career, that was a little bit of a disadvantage because you have to work across industries. You're not a specialist in anything. But I did travel a lot and I did deals in all the continents and very many, very many countries and across cultures. But then later when it came to having the opportunity to become a manager and run the team, the very thing which was a disadvantage growing up became an advantage because I was one of the few people who had actually worked in Latin America and Asia and Africa and Western Europe and Eastern Europe and US, and obviously US, Canada, Mexico, all of that.
(21:21):
So that was an advantage and had worked across multiple industries and that became an advantage. So last 10 years of my career, helpful, first 15 years of my career, not so helpful.
Chana Schoenberger (21:33):
Well, you never know, right? You never know what experience is going to prove useful later. So we brought up AI a little bit before, but let's talk about that real quick. This was a big topic of conversation yesterday, and I suspect that every time more than two bankers get together, the word AI comes up. How do you see AI having an impact on the area that you cover right now and what's coming in the near future for your coverage area? Anu, want to start.
Anu Aiyengar (22:02):
You had Theresa here yesterday, right? So you probably heard a lot about everything that JP Morgan is doing. This is a big initiative and has been, I think Theresa went into her job maybe two years or three years ago, and she's been very focused on it firm wide. And in the investment banking area, which is where I sit in that area as well, we are now running about 200 different LLM suites and everybody is trying out all sorts of things in it. So the goals of it, if I can remember, and maybe Theresa did it yesterday, so don't judge me because she does this full time, I don't. I think one for us is differentiated insights that you can deliver to a client faster. So whether that is going through a large amount of information we just talked about that and the ability to summarize it to what is it that I really need to know and now take that and apply it.
(23:05):
So better client service, differentiated ideas faster, whatever it is. So that's kind of one group of what we are doing. A second one is just being more efficient in everything. You do a lot of repetitive tasks, so how do you do that better? And when you combine that with the health and wellness focus that we have on our junior population, then it is improving the quality of what it is that they're doing as well. And the last piece of it is also related to risk because there's any generative AI. I think the foundation needs to be a responsible ai. So I'm sure you've all seen all the trainings on deep fakes and this and that. Some of that is really scary. And so how is it that you use AI to find some of these things, but as well as how do you train people to recognize that AI may be getting used against you? How do you find it spotted? And so that's another area. So I'd say those are probably the big categories of how we are using it.
Maria Hackley (24:19):
Great. Yeah, I mean, I would say similarly all the areas that Anna spoke about, and particularly too on the risk management side too, your ability to take historical data, interpolate it, and then go forward and use economic data to then accelerate then the analysis that not necessarily a hundred percent predictive, but I would say that that is a key area. I would also say that in research, the same tools would apply, and in sales and trading, which is another, it's in markets, which is part of the overall institutional banking division. That's also, we look at algorithms and how you think about your trading positions, how you think about future risks. It's all quite embedded. And there's other areas also in terms of how you think about cybersecurity, which is a theme, very, very important to senior executives at companies and how you use AI and how we think about that. We have as an example, a cybersecurity site at our headquarters. And obviously being such a large global institution, that's something that's important to us, but something that we also advise our clients around as well. And AI is really critical as it relates to that as well.
Carolyn Duby (25:41):
So at Cloudera, we are approaching AI in two different ways. The first way is building AI into our products. So we have a number of different areas. One of the areas that we're really finding some success with AI is to help find information about, find the answer to a question that you have, a technical question, and going through our documentation and helping to synthesize all the information that's there. The second way that we've built in AI is in generation of SQL queries. So SQL is a language that folks use to get data out at databases, and sometimes it's not everybody is well-versed in how to do all of the different things that you can do with it. So we have an assistant that helps with that. And then we're also helping our customers to build AI responsibly into their products. First through the data foundation, which is the foundation of everything in AI is the data that you have.
(26:51):
And then being able to build safe AI products that are going to be delivering value to the enterprise. And that's really the fine line that everyone's walking today is trying to figure out what are the use cases that I can implement that are going to really help me to move the needle to help relieve some of the everyday things that we have to do that are just kind of tedious and not very interesting. I'm a cybersecurity expert. We have a lot of use cases where AI can help, for example, summarizing events in an incident or summarizing documents, for example, for threat intelligence. So there's a lot of real potential. The question is how do we do it safely and in a trusted way and how do we solve the people, the process and the technology? So AI as a technology, but you really, a lot of times when you're starting to automate or use AI, you have to look at the whole of the process, the people, how the people in the AI are going to work together and how we're going to do it in a trusted way.
Anu Aiyengar (28:09):
Is there anyone in this room from Accenture?
Carolyn Duby (28:12):
No. Yes.
Chana Schoenberger (28:13):
We got a whole table over here.
Anu Aiyengar (28:15):
Oh, there you go. So yesterday I saw a demo of a product from Accenture, which literally goes through email and classifies it saying, what is the intent of this email? And based on that then says, you can say, forward it to so-and-so or respond with this as the answer. And that's something I think that there is looking into for our custody business because if somebody is just saying, what is my account balance, you can actually go look up the account balance and send the answer. If it is, I have a question, it sends a response back saying, we received your question, your ticket number is this, we are processing it and then sends it to the relevant person who should answer the question. So I only saw the demo and I was like, how do we get this?
Chana Schoenberger (29:10):
That's awesome.
Anu Aiyengar (29:11):
It sounds like it can make email life so much easier.
Chana Schoenberger (29:16):
That sounds great. And that sort of brings up my next question, which is it's so important to encourage innovation both within a company and partners that have solutions that you bring in. One of the problems is, of course, every company has its own silos and there are vested interests. How do you overcome the silos to encourage innovation? So new ideas can impact different parts of the business, but they also threaten vested interests in the way that people think of their own career paths. And that's not how we've always done it, and this is not what we do here. Anybody want to take this one?
Anu Aiyengar (30:00):
I guess in different ways, right? One is you have to get your incentive structure expecting people to say, do something, it's going to hurt you, but do it for the larger goods, I think is naive. So I think we just have to get the incentive structure. And so we spend a lot of time thinking, especially this is the time of year when we spend enormous amount of time looking at how do you evaluate people, how do you compensate people? What drives that? And how are you incentivizing people to take actions today where the benefits of it will take two, three years to come? So incentive. Second is I think especially with the native digital generation, of which we hire a lot of people every year. So the size of our organization is 300,000 people, and I think there's about 25, 30,000 new people who come in every year.
(31:01):
So you are spending enormous time finding new people and bringing them to the organization. And then after that, if you say, alright, this is the way things are done here, let's teach you and you now do everything the way we do it here, what's the point? So especially with people who are coming in either with brand new, no experience or people who are coming in from another organization experienced or a lot of hires we are doing from FinTech, the whole purpose of that is to help them see things that we may not be seeing, ask questions and drive change, which means you have to empower them, enable them to do that and run interference that if there is somebody who is doing something and they are running against roadblocks, if you're the hiring manager, you've got to step in and help 'em. So usually for any new hires, which again, many years ago we were not very good at doing this, but we have learned that if you are spending time hiring people and the hiring manager needs to be evaluated on the success of the person you hired.
(32:12):
So if you hired somebody, it's not like they succeeded or failed, you're responsible for making sure that they succeed. And if they don't, you either hired badly or you didn't help 'em. And so that also I think aligns incentives the right way to make sure that if you're bringing someone in and there is various checkpoints, three months, six months, one year, two year, three years from the time you hire someone, especially with a senior hire to see if you made that successful. And with the younger population, I think it requires a bit of work because just sitting in a room and saying, Hey, we want all your ideas, kind of doesn't work. They don't give you ideas. So I think you have to find hackathons and competitions and things like that, gifts or whatever it is to incentivize people to do that and figure out exactly what it is that they'll get excited about.
Chana Schoenberger (33:07):
Starbucks stars, that's what they get excited about.
Anu Aiyengar (33:10):
Things like that because what gift cards, what motivates someone from my generation is very different from what motivates somebody who's 22 or 23. And some of them have great ideas. And the trick is I think to get it out of them and create an environment where they're not just comfortable in coming up with it, but celebrate it even if the idea is not something we implement.
Chana Schoenberger (33:37):
Great. What of you guys have an eye?
Maria Hackley (33:42):
Many of the points that you referenced are very akin also at Citi? I would say that city's a very entrepreneurial place. So just by the DNA, we want at all levels for individuals to take risks and come up with ideas. And as Ana said, some may work and some may not work, but there is a big focus on collaboration. We call banking a team sport, not an I sport. And we work a lot with coverage bankers, with product partners. The goal there is to really come up with the best ideas. It may be that the product comes up with it more than coverage, but there is an incentive structure in place if you will, to get renumerated to doing that. But I think just culturally, our CEO is very much about driving the importance of and measuring that collaboration amongst teams to really come out with the best outcomes.
Chana Schoenberger (34:52):
Great.
Carolyn Duby (34:54):
So Cloudera is much smaller than either of these two organizations, but we still do have to work hard to collaborate with one another to break down those silos. So I work a lot with my peers across the different groups. For example, engineering. I help to bring customer feedback into the engineering process to make sure that we're doing the right features and fixes. I collaborate a lot with marketing for helping to understand the market direction and how should we reach our customers. But really I think it's about the culture of your organization and building a culture of innovation. If you have a culture where you're encouraging everyone to bring up ideas and then those ideas are somehow vetted or acted on, that's going to help to build a culture of organization and a culture of diversity. Really diversity, I'm not just talking about gender, but diversity of age, diversity of thought, diversity of the types, the backgrounds that people have that really helps you to get the most interesting ideas because if you're surrounding yourself with people who think and act and do exactly the same thing that you do, then you're going to keep getting the same results over and over again.
(36:25):
So I think it's really important to seek out the people that have different opinions. Maybe you don't always agree with them, but to seek out the people with different opinions and try to understand, use empathy to try and understand their position even if you don't necessarily agree with it. So I think it really kind of boils down to the culture. Do you build that into your organization and are you really empathetic and listening to other people and not just coming out as tone deaf? Well, we want to implement this AI system that's going to replace the humans. And then you want the humans to train the AI how to do it, not empathetic, not looking at the incentives like you were saying, the incentives for the workforce, which is really your most important asset is your workforce. And if you're turning people off and not engaging them, then that's not going to serve you well.
Chana Schoenberger (37:20):
Great. Okay. We're going to take some questions for these fabulous ladies. If you have a question, there's a mic going around and raise your hand and we will bring it to you.
(37:35):
We got a question right up here in front.
Carolyn Duby (37:43):
You didn't know you were going to get a workout,
Audience Member 1 (37:49):
So I can't remember who mentioned this, but you said that you spend a lot of time figuring out how to measure an instant collaboration. So how do you do that? Or just maybe an example of how you're doing that in relation to incentives?
Maria Hackley (38:08):
It's done really through a year end product partner feedback. So we go out in banking as an example to many, many product partners. It could be our equity capital markets group, it could be debt capital markets, it could be treasury services, risk management, foreign exchange, our markets business. And it goes out to about, I would say about 12, 12 individuals where you're getting feedback. And there is through that will come through the collaborative aspect. And that's an important component of year measurement. I mean obviously bringing in originating revenues is of the utmost importance, but there is an aspect of how your peers are seeing you and through that will combat collaboration if something unique has occurred throughout the year. And that is woven into the overall assessment because then that ultimately translate into culture. So how do you motivate individuals that maybe stylistically are a little bit more challenging to work with and how do you also incentivize them to be more curious and out of the box? It's a broad effort, but there is, there's a very formalized year, a feedback process that through that it comes through, it comes through.
Chana Schoenberger (39:37):
So this is the famous Citi 360 degree reviews.
Maria Hackley (39:41):
So there's 360 and then there's product partner feedback. There's both. Yeah, but it is 360. Yeah, if that's another way of saying it.
Anu Aiyengar (39:52):
We have the same, we have 360 reviews and anybody can write. So you request feedback from a set of people and then there is unsolicited feedback also, which is the juicy ones always.
Maria Hackley (40:09):
That's right. That's right. And you are able to just provide feedback to anybody globally. I like Anu, I spent a lot of time out of the country traveling around the world and it's terrific in that getting that feedback is valuable and also shows you who bankers are going to and who not.
Chana Schoenberger (40:33):
And by the way, I was just going to say this is a great way because one of the themes of this conference is women lifting other women up 360 degree feedback, especially unsolicited is a great way to help juniors. If you've seen someone do something amazing or even just really good, you can always in a spontaneous way, place some feedback in her file and that will help her. And you may have been the only person who noticed that she did that. So really it's on you to bring other people up below you.
Anu Aiyengar (41:06):
That's a great idea.
Chana Schoenberger (41:07):
Yes.
Anu Aiyengar (41:09):
Everybody in the room should resolve that. You're going to do that at least for one person, right? Because this is the time of year to do it.
Carolyn Duby (41:15):
Yeah, I think it's a great idea too. And I think as women, we don't always say what we've done and we're kind of like, okay, I did that thing. I'm onto the next thing and now somebody's going to realize that I did all this great work. Well, guess what? You got to figure out how to toot your own horn, but not in an annoying, obnoxious way.
Chana Schoenberger (41:46):
Yeah, there's a startup called Pep talk her, I dunno if anyone has ever heard of this, it's very cool. The woman behind it is Maggie Palmer, and I heard her speak once and her whole deal is you need to have, you should download her app, but you need to have a file on your Apple Notes where you just keep a list of all the things you've done at work that have made a difference. And this is everything from formal results to less formal things, collaboration with other teams, helping with HR, anything you've done at all for your company or that has helped your business because you won't remember those things nine months from now when it comes time to have that conversation with your boss about why you should get promoted.
Carolyn Duby (42:26):
But this is an app.
Chana Schoenberger (42:28):
It's an app, but you can literally just use Apple Notes, Google Drive, whatever you use.
Carolyn Duby (42:33):
I'm going to go find that thing.
Maria Hackley (42:34):
Or you can tell your assistant just to tally it up as you go and you keep that list and then you upload it at your year end review. And just one quick thing on the women about pulling them up, you should do that all year, all year long. It should not be at year end. So if you worked on a transaction with somebody or a project and they did a great job and they don't have the visibility, but you do, you are empowered to do that. So the question is make the time to do that. I feel very strongly about that, about coaching and mentoring too. A lot of people go to the gym. I would say that it's so important to help both men and women for that matter and making the time to do that. Because ultimately as you do that, you'd be surprised that people that are noticing what you're doing and you're developing a brand, and again, making that time to do that as well as building out your network as well is really critical.
Chana Schoenberger (43:33):
Definitely. Okay. Do we have another question from the floor?
Audience Member 2 (43:38):
Where's our microphone? Hi, I'm right back here. I don't know if you can see me. So hi everyone. I actually had ChatGPT, write this question in the spirit of AI. So thank you. Given the growing emphasis on sustainability initiatives, I know Anu spoke about that. How do we reconcile the increasing energy consumption associated with AI and the deployment of AI technology? Are there ways to ensure the advancement in AI can be aligned with the sustainability goals when companies like Amazon and Microsoft are quietly abandoning their carbon neutrality pledges? I feel like these ideas are pretty oppositional and I haven't heard a lot of dialogue about that, so I would love to hear your thoughts.
Anu Aiyengar (44:21):
So as a part of the learning journey that I went on earlier, this is one of the topics that we spent enormous amount of time on is energy transition and data centers. And so we have a whole conference that was just on this topic where we pull together a cross section of 30 different CEOs across different businesses to say, how is it that all of these companies are going to make the transition to AI in a sustainable way? So I can't accurately speak about the technology that goes behind it, but most of these data centers are relying on the new energy or energy transition way of running the data centers as opposed to using fossil fuels.
Carolyn Duby (45:11):
I do think that there will be, the current technology for AI does use, especially for generative AI, does use a lot of power and consume a lot of energy, but also other things like chips and rare earth metals. And when you talk about things like EVs batteries. So I think that there is definitely an area in ESG that we need to really focus on the sustainability of it and not wrecking our planet, which I think is hugely important. But I do think that the technology itself is rapidly improving and that there are smaller models coming out that are more efficient and more specific to a specific task rather than a very big model, which is hard, which is much more expensive to train and more expensive to do the, so I think it's definitely a concern and something that we should be optimizing and making sure that we're not using too much energy. But I do think that the improvements are coming pretty rapidly.
Chana Schoenberger (46:23):
Okay. We have time for one last question. Yes. Right down here in front.
Maria Hackley (46:35):
Yeah,
Audience Member 3 (46:40):
Thank you for doing this. It's really inspiring to see you guys have achieved. Thank you. One quick question from me is we often hear about leaders and mentorship and your network. Who are folks that you would highlight and give advice to us in terms of have been helpful through your career? From a mentor network perspective,
Anu Aiyengar (47:02):
I could be here all day listing them. So many, many, many people from every walk of life. I'd say early on in my career, a lot of my work is in front of boards. So most of the boards I went in front of started with zero women on the board, and then I would see one. And when there was there one women or two women on the board, if I was talking, they were nodding, smiling, encouraging, sometimes asking me a soft wall question to help you out. And I'm so grateful for all those people because when you're doing this early on in your career, you're not confident, you're not sure. You prep a lot. And so it's just helpful to have somebody who is encouraging in the early part of your career. I try to return the favor now when I'm in front of boards and sometimes it's a new board member and they are hesitant to ask a question because like you were saying earlier, everybody, somebody needs to ask the question, even though many of them have the question in their head.
(48:12):
So I try to look at them and say, oh, you look like you have a question or something like that. And try to draw them into the conversation. Several clients, several clients, men and women, because when you are in, and I haven't worked at another place, I've been at the same place for 25 years. So you actually don't know how you are doing, especially in investment banking where you don't have that much of a culture of feedback. So how do you actually know how well you're doing or how badly you're doing? So I got that mostly from clients. So hearing from them how you are different, what is different about you, what is it that they like, what is it that doesn't work? And be willing to listen to that. I'd say. And then tons of men and women mentors, not just at my own firm, but across Wall Street especially I think among the women on Wall Street, I like to think, and at least I feel so right.
(49:17):
There's a real comradery. It kind of doesn't matter which firm you're at, when you see each other, you're excited because many people have been one or two in the group. And that's why I think what you're doing here is really lovely because you're bringing people from different firms together, giving us a forum to see each other, connect with each other. And that's why I think all of you prioritized this and showed up here because there is value in this connection, there is value in this network. So feedback and networking doesn't really have to be hierarchical. You can get that from a friend at another firm who's at your level. So I look for it in every place and treat it as a gift when you get it.
Maria Hackley (50:08):
I mean, in my case, I had developed relationships with some of my bosses that proved to be great mentors and then big sponsors of mine throughout my career, I can think of four or five of them. Three of them are not at Citi any longer. And I stay in touch with them and as sounding boards. And what I would say is think about an individual man or a woman who has taken an interest in you or on a deal is giving you feedback and also that you connect with. I think that's really critical too, in terms of the chemistry. And those individuals can prove to be important mentors over time. But you need to drive that to an extent. And it's hard because we have day jobs, but again, I do this analogy about going to the gym. It's like you need to invest time to develop relationships with individuals that can become mentors and potentially sponsors as well.
(51:04):
And you got to be deliberate about it. You got to encapsulize the time when you're asking to follow up. And I also would say too, showing up to things, right? This is great, all of you that are here when you get an opportunity to meet other people and your network matters, and that ability to feel connected, to feel community. But over time, I have found been very useful, some of my bosses. And also getting involved in firm-wide activities has enabled me to get visibility and access to other individuals in senior management that aren't just in banking. They could be in other facets of the organization. And helping out with key initiatives of the firm that are critically important, not just in originating transactions, really does position you to have a relationship with someone who can then help you also when you're thinking about doing something else, seizes your ability to invest in the firm to ultimately get to another spot. So there's multiple ways of doing that.
Chana Schoenberger (52:08):
Great. Wonderful. Okay, I think we are just over time, so I'm going to thank these wonderful ladies for an inspiring talk this morning.
Curiosity, Courage, and AI: Embracing Change and Building Connections in the Modern Workplace
November 25, 2024 6:16 PM
52:23