Business Women Trailblazers
Hi, The Investor’s Podcast Network Community!
❤️ Happy Mother’s Day, everyone.
Throughout history, women have made significant contributions to the world of finance and investing, despite numerous barriers and discrimination.
My mother, for one, rose through the ranks in corporate sales at companies like American Express, then taught me the power of compound interest as a young child.
Today, we highlight a few women investors, inventors, and entrepreneurs you may or may not have heard of. As women continue to advance in finance and investing, we feel it’s important to reflect on the icons.
What role do women play in your life?
All this, and more, in just 5 minutes to read.
–Matthew
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Being a feminist means believing that every woman should be able to use her voice and pursue her potential, and that women and men should all work together to take down the barriers and end the biases that still hold women back.”
— Melinda Gates
KNOWLEDGE TEST
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FEMALE ICONS IN FINANCE
Introduction
Women make up about half of the U.S. workforce today, but many jobs remain largely segregated along gender lines. Finance and investing is notoriously male-dominated.
But women are making strides. In many places, women are no longer forced into secretary roles, regardless of their skill, experience, and value. They’re earning degrees, moving up the corporate ladder, and making change.
Women have overtaken men and now account for more than half (50.7%) of the college-educated labor force in the U.S., per the Pew Research Center.
In honor of women this Mother’s Day, here are a few names to know.
Geraldine Weiss
The “Grand Dame of Dividends,” Weiss was a woman pioneer in finance. She learned about investing by reading books, listening to her parents’ conversations, and studying business and finance in college. In 1945, she graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, but no investment firm wanted to hire her outside the secretarial pool.
After years of rejection, she launched an investment newsletter, “Investment Quality Trends” in 1966 at age 40. To avoid gender discrimination, she signed off her newsletter as “G. Weiss.”
Weiss’ value-based, dividend-oriented strategy outperformed other strategies, and she posted above-average returns even in poor markets. She continued to publish her newsletter, Investment Quality Trends, for 36 years until retiring in 2002. She died last year at 96.
Like Buffett, she believed investing was difficult, but not complicated.
“Successful investing in the stock market is not brain surgery. Anyone can be a successful investor. The secret is no secret. It is simply that you confine your selections to blue chip stocks, you buy them when they are undervalued and you sell them when they become overvalued. This is the well-lit path of the enlightened investor.”
Abby Cohen
Abby Cohen became well-known for positive and accurate market forecasts during the roaring 1990s bull market.
She also served as a Federal Reserve Board economist, then as an economist and quantitative strategist at major financial firms, including T. Rowe Price. She joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 and then became a partner in 1998. Cohen retired from Goldman Sachs as Senior Investment Strategist in 2021 to join the Columbia University faculty.
She’s also worked with Cornell University, the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) Institute, Major League Baseball, and the Council on Foreign Relations.
Muriel Siebert
Siebert, the first woman to own a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, was known as “the first woman of finance.” She didn’t have a degree, yet in 1967 she founded a brokerage firm.
She received numerous rejections from men who refused to sponsor her application to the New York Stock Exchange. Yet she ended up landing a job there before she successfully campaigned to get a ladies’ bathroom on the seventh floor of the New York Stock Exchange; there was no bathroom for women during most of her time there.
Siebert later became the first woman to serve as superintendent at the New York State Banking Department, helping prevent bank failures in a tumultuous market.
After her death, the New York Stock Exchange named a room after her. Siebert Hall was the first time a room at the stock exchange has been named after a person.
Mellody Hobson
Mellody Hobson is co-CEO and president of Chicago-based Ariel Investments. She is a proponent of financial literacy and regularly appears on national television. Time magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in the world in 2015.
Hobson is also chair of the board at Starbucks and a director of JPMorgan Chase. “What can I say?” Howard Schultz, the chairman and C.E.O. of Starbucks once told Vanity Fair. “When I think of her, I think of grace. She’s the most unique individual. I love Mellody Hobson.”
She’s also served as chairperson of DreamWorks Animation until its sale to Comcast. At Ariel Investments, she was recruited by founder and co-CEO John W. Rogers Jr. while she was a student at Princeton University. Hobson started her 30-year career as a summer intern.
She signed the giving pledge, created by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, and named one of her conference rooms after Buffett.
Said Hobson: “Invite people into your life who don’t look or act like you. You might find they challenge your assumptions and make you grow.”
Dawn Fitzpatrick
As CIO of Soros Fund Management, Fitzpatrick manages the fortune of billionaire philanthropist and legendary hedge fund manager George Soros, his family, and foundations.
Fitzpatrick began her career in the 1990s at O’Connor & Associates as a clerk on the American Stock Exchange, then became head of the firm. Before joining Soros in 2017, she had a 25-year tenure at UBS, becoming one of only a handful of women to manage a major hedge fund.
Fitzpatrick has told Barron’s Magazine that she’s still the first in the office each day and the last one to leave, with no lunch.
“It’s not a chore, but what I love to do.” Part of what drives her is her curiosity. “I constantly need to know why, and that’s how I’ve built depths of knowledge few people can rival.”
Dive deeper
For more on women leadership, check out She Thinks Like A Boss, a bestseller, and In the Company of Women.
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