The Most Powerful Women in Banking 2022: Opening keynote: Unmeasured strength

Lauren Manning shares her remarkable story of overcoming extreme adversity in life and in business. The most catastrophically wounded survivor of the 9/11 terror attacks, Manning speaks to the revolution of self. Every day you have a choice. Make it count.

Transcription:

Announcer (00:12):

Good morning and thank you Gemma. It's my honor to introduce our keynote speaker, Lauren Manning. If you think you know what resilience and grit mean, wait until you hear her story. Lauren is one of us, a finance executive. She was managing director and partner at Cantor Fitzgerald and is a survivor of the 9/11 attacks. She wrote about this in her New York Times bestseller, Unmeasured Strength, a memoir of hope, survival and transformation. She continues to be recognized for her work, including the 2002 Glamor Magazine Woman of the Year. And in 2013, President Obama named her a personification of American resilience. Today Lauren is co-founder and CEO at YouBoard and a managing director at Golden Seeds. And if that's not enough, she's also actively volunteers with several nonprofit organizations. Please welcome Lauren Manning.

Lauren Manning (01:17):

Good morning. I've heard you had a wonderful evening last night and as we cool off in here, I hope I don't overheat the room too much and thank you very much for that introduction. I appreciate it and it's nice to be back being sponsored by USB. So for the next 30 minutes or so while we are together, I'm not going to tell you anything that I don't believe already exists within yourself. Women are often told to lean in, you've got to lean in while men are told you've been there before you've got this. I'll tell you what I think from the executive chairs that you are each sitting in right now, lean back and assume the power that's already yours. The story I have to tell you this morning is about the improbable and the impossible, and it is this story that is ultimately a calling to each of you that when life presents a test where you are compelled to draw upon your own unmeasured strength that you will find it there in answer to your call no matter how grave. The challenge.

(02:45)

In 2001, I was with Cantor Fitzgerald and as was just mentioned, I was a managing director and partner running the global market data division. And on the morning of 9/11, I literally ran to a cab, got down to the trade center and hopped out to pay, run inside. I had a nine o'clock meeting. As I entered the North Tower lobby at 8:45. I smiled at two women on my right and I turned left toward the elevator banks that would lead me up to 105. When suddenly the entire building shuttered, it seemed to imperceptibly somehow jump and I had no idea that moment that the first jet had just been crashed into the 91st floor and had cut through the central core of the building. The atmosphere was surreal. It was filled with a screaming piercing whistling sound that within a second had grown incredibly loud.

(04:01)

It was the mass of onrushing of compressed air being forced down the elevator banks with the jet fuel explosion pummeling behind it. Now explosions travel at two miles per second. So by the time I had turned that corner, it was within only two or three seconds that an instant what felt like an instant. Later, a fire and thousand degree heat at the center exploded out of the elevator bank, enveloping everything and every one around it. The superheated air spun me around and where the two women had been standing only moments before their bodies lay on the ground on fire and like them, I was covered in flames. The blast emptied most of the air from the thousand feet of elevator shafts and a gale force backdrop pulled me back onto itself further and further into the fire and I battled really what were hurricane winds.

(05:08)

I could not breathe, I could not yell, I could do nothing. I felt powerless. The backdrop pulling me in onto itself and just as suddenly as it had all happened, it released blowing out the 40 tall tower windows in the lobby and pushing me back out as I staggered through the revolving doors and then through the push doors. And there I was 60 feet in duration in time, 60 seconds in duration, 60 feet back out on that poor crochet covered in flames looking to drop and roll. There was nothing but cement and macadam. And I realized my only chance was six lanes away where they had just laid a strip of grass in front of the World Financial Center. I scream, this can't be real, this can't be happening. The pain was unimaginable, the burn grip was crushing, holding me continuing to burrow. And everywhere deeper and deeper into my body was the surround sound and views of smoke and destruction.

(06:20)

And across that highway, the only place that I knew I had a chance. So I started running and as I did, I screamed out to my young son, Tyler, who was 10 months old at the time, who we had fought so hard to have. And I screamed, I can't leave you now. I won't leave you now. I haven't had you long enough. So I reached the narrow strip of grass and I start dropping and rolling. And two men who I later find out are Lehman employees, Lehman Brothers, where I started my own career on Wall Street leapt across the lawn to help those few that had made it out of the building. And one of them damped out the last of the flames on my lower legs. So lying there on that grass with the flames extinguished, a burn continues to perpetrate your skin deeper and deeper.

(07:16)

And the pain and the agony were unbelievable. And as I looked back toward the World Trade Center, the steel pieces in the lower end of the building were begin to beginning to move. And it was wailing bending, twisting objects started coming crashing to the ground. Bodies started crashing to the ground and the tower's upper stories were in complete flames with a thick trail of black smoke trailing alongside it. And as I am there in these seconds, in these minutes, these interminable minutes, I'm hyper aware of everything, the bright green perfect grass, my hands ghostly white next to that, the torn bleeding and blackened skin, my... most of my clothing gone exposed flesh everywhere, the smell and stench of burnt flesh and the all-consuming pain again, drilling deeper and deeper and somehow improbably, I watched the second plane hit the tower. Now I had been there in 93 when the terrorists first hit.

(08:36)

And on that day I wasn't working at, uh, Cantor Fitzgerald. I had a meeting in the building with another client and I helped a woman down the stairwell and they were blackened and I was full of soot when I emerged, we didn't even share names. And my father had said to me, if you ever go to work in that building, they're going to try to hit it again. And here, seeing the second plane hit the second jet rather, it was very apparent that they had come back for us. Now the few others that had made it to the grass lay motionless, they were completely unresponsive. And I was yelling at my Lehman brother, we've got to get the hell out of here. We've got to get the hell out of here. I gave him my husband's phone number, my husband didn't answer. It had turned out he'd left his phone at the office. Let's get out of here now. And for an unspeakable moment, when he was paralyzed in really what to do, I prayed for death. Though I did not even believe that death would relieve me of the intensity of the pain that I was going through. And I realized at that moment that this was it. It was my moment, my choice. I could either keep fighting or surrender and I would die there on the side of that highway. And I decided, I decided to fight and I decided to live.

(10:11)

An ambulance pulled up. Moments later, it was on the other side of the highway, obviously in front of the buildings, the people were running in the opposite direction and I knew that was my only chance to get out of there. So I gathered what I could in terms of my mental acuity because we either become hyperaware and engaged in that endorphin rush happens or people slip into unconscious un unconsciousness and they simply pass away. So I maintained my presence and I managed to get back across that a hundred feet of highway hobbling with my Lehman brother holding my left arm. And they put me on the ambulance. And before they pulled away the benches as they became filled with others torn pants, filled with glasses, my own upper back was, and bleeding legs didn't look at me. I'm sure it was an egregious sight. And it was very apparent at that point that they had pegged me as a goner.

(11:20)

And I screamed, get me something. Cover me, please cover me please. A blanket. A blanket. And finally a woman said, we've got to help her. We've got to help her. And someone threw a jacket over me. At that point, when we made it to my first stop that day, I entered what was an incredibly lonely space and all the cappon of sound was all around me. As the nurses tried to address a catastrophic massive wound but were ill-equipped as were the doctors, they were all calling wild Cornell Burn Center for the burn protocol. I yelled at them over and over, get me the hell out of here. Just get me out of here and get me to wild Cornell. They taped a morphine drip on my hand, his self-administer to fingers that would later be amputated and fusd. So it was impossible to do anything in terms of pain management for myself.

(12:22)

My rage was overwhelming. And during that period of time, a social worker came to the floor, saw what was going on, and she went down to the chapel in St. Vincent's and she prayed. And when she exited the chapel, she walked toward the door and there stood in the hopes that there would be so many survivors. People experienced medical personnel who had come off the street and were clothed and scrubbed up ready to serve. And she called out, are there any burn doctors here? Are there any burn nurses here? And miraculously two women on holiday from Minnesota, step forward, two burn nurses. And at 2:00 PM my actual proper burn care began to take place and I was finally intubated and put into what they call a twilight state. Now at 4:00 PM another doctor came on and this was a doctor that had helped my husband only a few months ago, repositioned a dislocated finger.

(13:31)

He called for the release. Everything was on lockdown, they didn't want to let me leave and I was destined to die. There within a few hours he finally got the release. Since the survivors weren't coming in mass and in the lonely streets of a darkened city amidst the lockdown, that ambulance brought me to wild Cornell. Upon admittance, I was determined to have suffered an 82 and a half percent total body area surface burn. Now your skin is the largest organ on your body and it is the one most prone to infection. And it is ironically one of the easiest ways in which you can die from things that seemingly don't seem terribly infectious or that bad. 75% of my burn was third degree and parts of it were fourth degree, meaning you were inevitably losing that body part. My survivals were in the single digits.

(14:33)

They put me into a deeper induced coma and they proceeded over the next few months to do literally daily operations of grafting and harvesting and donor skin in an effort to save my life. And through all of this were extraordinary crises of near lethal infections, various amputations, collapsed lungs, and a host of other near deadly issues. I had the privilege one day, years, years ago to meet a woman whose husband had died. This is just a brief note about donors and her husband had donated his skin and on my right hand, it lay for nearly a month trying to preserve a few fingertips. And ultimately it didn't work out, but it gave my own skin, which was repeatedly harvested a chance to regenerate. So the kindness of others is never as far away or as distant as you imagine, and it's generally more strange than you could possibly dream of even within a nightmare.

(15:48)

So these wounds left me outside of the proverbial bell curve of medical jargon, which would be will she live or won't she? And by any objective analysis, I should have died. And yet I survived when others had no hope for me because I refused to surrender and I rejected the odds against me when I was at last brought to consciousness nearly two months later, I was unable to move. I could not speak, I could not breathe on my own. I was more helpless than an infant. My world had collapsed into the immediacy of now simply even with the assisted breathing, trying to breathe one moment to the next. And it would be nearly two months later when in November I would finally learn asking my husband, how is Joe? How is Michelle, how is Gary? That not only were all my colleagues and many close friends, both at Canner and others in the building that day at Water's Financial Services, which was holding a conference on 1 0 6 and seven gone, but that the building was gone and that the Pentagon had been hit and that all of these people were murdered.

(17:20)

And I vowed to avenge all of those who had died by not letting the terrorists get one more. And to this day, I feel like the spirits a part of the spirits and each and every one of them inhabits me. And through my darkest hours, I truly feel that they lifted and carried me when I had nothing more than my hope. And obviously a good team of doctors around me, but there is truly nothing going on unless you yourself believe it. And I could see in the people's eyes even back then that through their fear and their repulsion that the love was there, but the confidence that I would make it was not so early. Milestones included the simplest of activities, basic functions we all take for granted, learning to breathe on my own, learning to speak again, learning to move at all, to sit up to walk.

(18:25)

And in late November, I was ready to stand up and try walking to this glorious green vinyl chair in the corner of the hospital room. Perhaps you've all seen them on hopefully what are very infrequent visits yourself to the hospital. And the entire task was four feet. And I wasn't doing this on my own. I had PTs on both my arms and that day that they helped lift me up and I took legs that had been encased in very, very painful casts were removed. I managed to walk sweating with riveting pain that four feet and I called it the day of the walking mommy. I was so intoxicated, I was finally up. I had made it and I knew I had a chance to truly move forward. And I think if I were a mountain climber or I was on the moon, I certainly would've planted a proverbial flag there.

(19:26)

And that simple journey felt harder than anything I had ever done. But it truly was the moment I became ambulatory again and the feeling was intoxicating. The marathon that had begun as I called it left my team and I charged for action. So I had been running a business unit. Now suddenly I had a different unit to run and it was all about me unfortunately. So I gathered the people that were around me and most patients that come in in my condition are very depressed. They're suicidal and they're looking in many ways to check out in all ways sadly. But I was not like that and I did not present like that. And I knew the best way for me to get the most out of them was to show them my leadership, my courage. And I remained undaunted and they became my new team.

(20:24)

So it was a week later that my next big trek was to the nurse's station where from my room, all the action was going on. And again, always with help, I managed to walk or scuffle more accurately, 40 feet to the nurse's station. And when I arrived there, the nurses and doctors and others that had been called off the floor had all gathered and they were laughing and cheering and tears, tears were falling from their eyes. And I realized at that moment that we truly were a band of brothers and sisters. And that my battles were our battles and my victories were only ever our joint victories and joint celebrations. And like any highly successful team and trained, we knew what we had to do. And there was zero tolerance for failure because I was not out of the woods, the proverbial woods. Yet my biggest win would come in very late November.

(21:34)

It had been more than two months since I'd seen my son and left goodbye for work that morning. I was desperate to see him, but I was also desperately afraid that he would reject me, that he too would be repulsed by me and frightened. And what they do with burn patients and many others, terribly injured, is they'll put a little bit of perfume on an outer bandage. It triggers the sense of smell, the notion of memory. And as they will me out through the hallway to the visiting room, I looked to the left and there down the hall was this little boy pushing a handle Bard toy with a red balloon. He had just about been walking while when I left. And here he was walking and he came up to me, he turned away. He was obviously very frightened. And then he turned back slowly and the smallest of smiles crossed his face. And I knew in that moment that we had not been lost to each other. And everything that I had fought for on that highway that day and struggling to stay conscious was delivered to me.

(22:58)

That fueled my will. And there were many breakthroughs during that period in many setbacks. For months I would live in a rehabilitation hospital and it would be more than half a year before I would return home. And while this was going on, my little one, and I experienced many of the same milestones, learning, learning to walk obviously to talk and the simplest of things, but which as parents, let alone as yourself relearning them, are incredibly joy provoking. So once I made it back after that interminably long day after leaving for work, the real intense work began because when you have been catastrophically burned, you only have 24 months within which to regain most of your function. I had to wear pressure garments that are nothing like someone may wear to make their figure look better. They were extraordinarily tight packed with silicone. I averaged operations every six weeks and it was a bleak yet heartening landscape.

(24:14)

And I would go to physical and occupational therapy six days a week. And on the seventh I was fortunate, although there were millions of dollars of deficits in my medical bill payments to be able to have my PTs come and volunteer to work with me at home. And what I learned through all of that is that defeat is temporary. Defeat is temporary because I had a stronger belief in my power to prevail, then I would fail. And I had the help of many. But there is nothing going on unless you yourself believe. And I knew on the morning of September 11th that I would not let myself die by the side of that highway. That if I could fight through the fire, extinguish the flames, get out of that war zone, take the next breath, that I could learn to walk again, to talk again, to use my hands again, that I could live in a body that was radically different.

(25:19)

But the life I wanted was still there for the taking. As long as I continued to believe now I could not take a single day off, nor would I have wanted to. And exhaustion didn't matter. I continued to battle many illnesses, but I had a much larger goal in mind. And knowing those hard burn deadlines were ahead of me. And so I continued onward. Rehabilitation was my full-time job and I was back again in an entry level job, <laugh>, but happy to be starting at all, even if it was on the bottom. And I drove myself hard seven days a week and the tasks became more familiar as I was determined to get there. And there was something that I had certainly learned in my career at Wall Street on Wall Street that I'd put together in my first conscious days at the burn center. My father, a former Marine before he entered the business world raised me to believe that generally it's through perseverance.

(26:32)

You get ahead. Sure there are shortcuts, but they're not as many as you think. And generally most of them don't work out. Now, not uniquely. My ethic as the teenager was the opposite. And I couldn't believe my father was being so callous. And now through the years I had begun to see he was right. And that set says was always driven by what you put into it, that truly, truly, if you are to succeed at the highest levels, there is very little entitlement because the person who wanted it the most was generally the person who won. They are the people with the most conviction, the people with the most passion. And they aren't always the most accredited on paper, but they are the most willing and they are the most capable at adjusting plans when conditions call for it because the key to survival anywhere in your life truly is about being adaptable.

(27:37)

I had earlier in my Wall Street career been involved in great transformations and whether the stock market crash of 87, the do com bubble in the mid nineties, the LDC debacle, a failed startup that I ran, financial consultancy and a host of other daily corporate challenges. But many of you know what that's like on Wall Street, right? You make a mistake as an individual, it can cost millions. You make a strategic mistake as a firm and the entire firm fails. And I saw firms that refuse to adapt melt away. We all know the names, household names that are now long gone because complacency bred their extinction ultimately. But the firms with the courage to try new things or to understand when it made sense to merge or to close shop, found other ways to survive. So I very early on learned that success in business in essence was a matter of life and death.

(28:46)

And then one on day on the way to work, I learned that the opposite was equally true and that life and death is also a matter of business. In the fall of 2001, I had been running the global market data division. And in that single mourn everything and my hopes for my future and my life as I knew it came crashing down. And although I figured out early on it would be different, it was a frightening and imposing prospect, particularly as a woman when so much, even though we all say it doesn't exist or hope it doesn't, when you are judged by your outer appearance. But I would not let that fear of failure and how I looked paralyzed me. I would embrace the life I still had and I could not have traveled a farther distance from where I'd begun. But many of those same skills that brought me success in both endeavors, building a business and rebuilding my life were the same.

(29:54)

And I wanted to share a few of them with you, my father, that former Marine that said, things are going to happen and you are not the first person they've happened to. And when they do, there is only one direction to go and that is forward. Have your pity party, you can go right, left and turn around backwards. But ultimately forward movement is what sustains all of us. Now, I had been catastrophically injured in what was an act of war. And my battlefield though was my body pain was my enemy. And I anticipated it as it tried to ambush me on nearly a daily basis and take me down. And every night in my darkened room, I would create a battle plan with the question of how am I going to succeed tomorrow? And it was only then after I had that tactical plan in my mind that I would allow myself to fall asleep because in spite of any painkillers or sleep aids, sleep, sleep was very, very intermittent through those many years because ultimately the wind is in the effort, the wind is in the effort.

(31:10)

I had arrived at that rehabilitation hospital 91 days after that attack. And in the burn center by design, there are no mirrors for obvious reasons. And it had been months since I'd seen my face. And one day during a quote rest period, I gained to look through over the little dresser at the mirror. And when I finally gathered that courage, the tears came rolling down my face and I pleaded half aloud. I wish the tears could wash away my scars. I was truly repulsed. I nearly fainted. But I managed to look in that mirror and see beyond the obvious truth. And I didn't try to avoid those negative emotions. I let them coexist and find their way. And I willed myself to look past my circumstances. And I decided that I would project something that was so present, so forthright, so convincingly uninjured that this in the charade, no one would see that I had any scars and they would not see me as a terribly hurt person. And at some point over the last 22 years, although certainly the mirror will always tell the truth that charade became my reality. Because even in the most unpredictable of situations when chaos is all around you and especially then the ability of you to focus on your goals and work to achieve, then we'll carry you through.

(33:01)

I was far from fully healed and I would need to bring it every day if I wanted any measure of control over my life. And as I said, there were many breakthroughs, but there were far more, many far greater <laugh>, number of setbacks. But I began to enjoy that continual push and I embraced those temporary defeats. And I would use that power to my advantage because you've got to love what you do, right? The path to success is the same as the path to failure. And I knew on a bloody march day of bloody my hands, bloody holding my son's stroller, but pushing my son one windy march day that I had accomplished so much of what I'd hoped for because I was just like any other mom pushing my son's stroller. And I couldn't have been more grateful and more proud in that small moment between myself and my son.

(34:07)

And I found that path forward because I truly engaged in it. I researched and I understood like any project, what I needed to do to achieve a maximal outcome. I invested myself, I invested my team, and I did not look away from what I had to do and I did whatever it was. And no matter how long it took for years, I lay in bandages with bleeding parts and fusions and pins. But I knew ultimately it would get better because despite all the tactical and strategic planning, things may turn one way before they turn the other right? The unexpected competitor that seemingly comes out of nowhere. The meeting where you don't have all the answers that you should have had, the people that may own or run your company that are taking in a direction that you may not be so comfortable with, the merge, the emergency that overtakes you on your way to work, but you can't regret what you have not done.

(35:22)

You must look to what you can do and engage and love the people that you are with as those brilliant song lyrics that I'm paraphrasing say. But it is always remember your response as the leader that really matters, even if it is only after innumerable breaking points. Because the key to success is knowing when you are presented with a true choice and when you're not, you may think you have an option when you really don't. And if can't execute the plan, you've got the wrong plan, you must adapt or you will fail. And this is one of the critical failings of many mid-tier and senior leaders. If you can adapt and the obstacle is such, you've got to close, close down that pathway and re-engineer a more fruitful one. And that's how we succeed in any endeavor in life. Be persistent. We don't know how strong we are until strong is our only option because all of us have experienced moments of adversity where we feel we're at our weakest and we tell ourselves, oh, if I only knew then what I know now.

(36:46)

But if you really think about and you look back, you had the power to choose. You had the power to act. And I realized that I had had a strength that had never been measured. And we tell ourselves, well, I know that now. But if that exercise teaches us anything, it's that we may not have felt such doubt and we accomplish amazing things, things that we're not looking to accomplish because the path is taken us in a different interaction. And that's okay because the lesson is not about how strong you were back then. It is about how strong you are right now. My hands were so badly burned at one point they were going to amputate my left arm at the shoulder and no specialist or doctor that I would regain much function in the tips. I had two myths at the end of my arms.

(37:44)

And when I left the ICU for the rehab hospital, my joints were freshed from surgery with fusions and pins and I could not move or flex my fingers. And although many, many, many of the surgeries were really concentrated on my torso and my fingers, it would be years before I was able to do this. And for those of you who have ever had an injured hand, I went from this to this to this, and I could finally hold something again. I could wrap my hand around my son's small hand. And this is our unmeasured strength. This is the power we all have inside of to persevere and to prevail. Amazing things truly do happen. In oh four, they started the first round, the world Olympic torch carry. And they said, well, we'd love you to do it. And I said, I'm not that keen of the flame now the flames, but there I am going up Central Park West.

(38:59)

The walks crowded with people. And I had a moment where I was simply a New Yorker. We can't ever forget the power of our financial community, the strength of New Yorkers and of our country in the face of this unprovoked largest peacetime attack in our nation's history. But here I was in a peaceful manner carrying a torch, and it was everything to me. It wasn't someone talking about burns or how are you or you're lucky to survive, or, oh, that's too bad. That happened. I once again was just like anyone else and it felt terrific. My experience in injury and recover confirmed that in any crisis, attitude is everything, right? Attitude shapes the tone of an organization. It has enormous influence on the decisions obviously of ourselves, but very importantly, others on your team, our associates, our competitors, and certainly our enemies. Now I wanted 100% recovery.

(40:12)

And of course it was impossible, but it didn't matter. That's what I decided on and that was the goal I set. And the people that I worked with knew exactly what I expected from myself and what they could do each in their areas of expertise. And they joined with me in chasing this somewhat improbable goal. And because I showed my commitment, I was able to recruit others to my cause. And this is how great transformations are made. This is how you as leaders become better leaders in how people that on your teams themselves become great leaders. Because remember, how we act in times of adversity defines us. We all know that familiar maxim, right? Crisis and opportunity, the really just the same, a poorly managed crisis and mishandled opportunity can create chaos. But when they are managed correctly, the crisis presents opportunity. Now, my father, that former Marine <laugh> had crystallized his advice when he said in a simple, retrospectively eloquent way, get over it.

(41:39)

Which really meant get on with it. Because in the toughest of times, and I dunno, I played lacrosse in college. I don't know what you all may have done, but in the latest of innings, the latest of sets and the greatest of challenges, how we respond when you dig in is going to reveal your true nature both to yourself and certainly to everyone around you. Because every day we begin again with a choice that is really just the latest in a series of thousands of deliberate choices we make every day. All of them asking the same question, am I willing to get into it? Am I willing to play the game? And I am I prepared to do what it takes to win. Here I am down at the trade center in the early days of rebuilding. There are moments where we need to rebuild to start all over, and I face those defeats.

(42:37)

But I would not believe that I was defeated and I was inspired as well by the finest of what I'd seen in those around me because all of us have been or will be wounded in some way. But though there is no opportunity to pretend that you won't or haven't been touched by adversity, you can refuse to be held by it because every day is its own milestone. Every day brings a new challenge. Every morning you have the privilege to open your eyes, realize that this is it. Will you choose that twilight of complacency or you, or you one of those who will dare and continue to dare to do mighty things because your power to prevail can exceed any fear that you will fail. This was one of my main goals and I achieved that. So gather your courage. Take those steps, the steps of commitment, the steps of leadership in your community, in your company, the steps that within your own family will be remembered for generations. Use your unmeasured strength to be decisive. Be fearless even when it is against the greatest odds possible. It is there inside of you. And remember, every day you have a choice. Make it count.

(44:24)

Thank you.