Centennial Speaker Series: Hidden in Plain Sight: How to Save Active Investment Management, Part I: The Situation

Diversification is a core principle of investing. Yet money managers have not applied it to their own ranks. Only around 10 percent of portfolio managers—the people most directly responsible for investing your money—are female, and the numbers are even worse at the ownership level. What are the causes of this underrepresentation, and what are its consequences—including for firms’ and clients’ bottom lines?

In Undiversified: The Big Gender Short in Investment Management, experienced practitioners Ellen Carr and Katrina Dudley examine the lack of women in investment management and propose solutions to improve the imbalance. They explore the barriers that subtly but effectively discourage women from entering and staying in the industry at each point in the pipeline. At the entry-level, the lack of visible role models discourages students from considering the field, and those who do embark on an investment management career face many obstacles to retention and promotion. Carr and Dudley highlight the importance of informal knowledge about how to navigate career tracks, without which women are left at a disadvantage in an industry that lionizes confidence. They showcase a diverse constellation of successful female portfolio managers to demystify the profession.

Drawing on wide-ranging research; interviews with prospective, current, and former industry practitioners; and the authors’ own experiences, Undiversified makes a compelling case that increasing the number of women could help transform active investment management at a time when it is under threat from passive strategies and technological innovation.

Agenda

5:30 p.m.: Welcome Remarks and Speaker Introductions: Donna Rapaccioli, dean of the Gabelli School of Business

5:35 p.m.: Fireside Chat: Ellen Carr, Katrina Dudley, and Dan Hanson; moderated by Laura Rittenhouse

6:15 p.m.: Audience Q&A

6:30 p.m.: Closing Remarks: Dean Rapaccioli

About the Speakers
Ellen Carr has more than two decades of experience as a high-yield bond portfolio manager, most recently at Weaver C. Barksdale (WCB), a majority-women-owned, institutional-fixed-income, investment-management firm based in Nashville. She specializes in the construction and management of high-yield and core-plus bond portfolios. Prior to joining WCB, she served as senior vice president and a high-yield portfolio manager for institutional separate accounts and mutual funds for The Capital Group Companies/American Funds in Los Angeles. Along with her high-yield responsibilities, Carr also managed investment-grade corporate and long-duration credit portfolios. She began her career as an investment analyst for the fixed income group at Capital in 1999.

Carr has been an adjunct professor of finance at Columbia Business School, where she teaches courses on the credit markets and cash flow modeling, since 2012. She has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and received her B.A. from Harvard, where she graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in 1994.

Katrina Dudley is a senior vice president, investment strategist, and portfolio manager at Franklin Mutual Series, a deep-value investment manager founded in 1949, part of New York Stock Exchange-listed Franklin Resources Inc. Prior to joining Mutual Series, Dudley worked at Federated Investors Inc. and Ernst & Young LLP. Dudley has a passion for advocating for women in investment management. She is the author of the introduction to the Vault Career Guide to Mutual Funds, and her upcoming book, co-authored with Carr, Undiversified: The Big Gender Short in Investment Management, will be published in spring 2021.

Dudley earned an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business, a law degree (with first-class honors) and a commerce degree from Bond University in Australia, and an Associate of Science degree from the University of the People. Within her community, she is vice-chair of the board of The Children’s Village, a $100 million-revenue social services organization, and a volunteer for Rock the Street, Wall Street. She is a member of the AEI Leadership Network, a guest lecturer at the Columbia Business School, and a frequent market commentator on Bloomberg and CNBC.

Laura “LJ” Rittenhouse is a former Wall Street corporate finance banker, an investor relations and financial advisor, executive and life coach, a best-selling author, and a riveting keynote speaker. She is the inventor of Candor Analytics a groundbreaking behavioral finance technology that measures the integrity of corporate culture and leadership as a reliable indicator of superior market performance. Because of its alpha-creating results, Candor Analytics was chosen by CFA Institute as one of its leading Future of Finance initiatives.

Her book, Investing Between the Lines, was endorsed by Warren Buffett in the 2013 Berkshire Hathaway shareholder letter. It is essential reading for investors who want to learn how to evaluate the integrity of corporate culture. LJ was an organizer of the largest all-female investor conference, key-noted by Buffett at the 2019 Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting. She has spoken frequently to the trailblazing members of Fordham’s Smart Women in Securities chapter. She has an M.B.A. in finance and an M.S. in community organizing from Columbia University.

Dan Hanson is the chief investment officer (CIO) at Waddell & Reed Financial Inc. and Ivy Investment Management Company. Hanson has served as an investment executive at BlackRock, Jarislowsky Fraser, and JANA Partners. He also was an investment banker at Bear Stearns earlier in his career.

Hanson brings significant experience in global and environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) investing through his work at BlackRock, where he spent 10 years as a portfolio manager and as managing director in the office of the CIO. Hanson managed the BlackRock Socially Responsible Equity strategy, as well as co-led the Large Cap Series funds with $23 billion in assets under management, and maintained a leadership role in establishing the firm’s ESG initiatives. Subsequently, he was partner and head of U.S. equities and co-chair of the Investment Strategy Committee overseeing $30 billion in assets under management with Jarislowsky Fraser Global Investment Management, where he established the New York office for the Montreal-headquartered firm. Most recently, Hanson served as head of impact investing for JANA Partners.

Hanson earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and French from Vermont’s Middlebury College in 1992 and an M.B.A. from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business in 1998.