Aoifinn Devitt: Find out why our next guest learned to never read the comments. And what is a scarcity mentality? And how is it the single greatest threat to creating a truly diverse industry? Find out more next. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Meredith Jones, who is a published author, speaker, and consultant with decades of experience in the investment industry. She’s a partner and global head of ESG at a large consulting firm, where she chairs the ESG think tank with oversight of global solution development, and strategy related to climate change and ESG. She runs her own research firm, MJ Alternative Investment Research, and is on the board of directors of Rock the Street Wall Street. She’s the author of Women on the Street: Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns and How You Can Too. She also released a TED Talk on her life experiences that is linked to in the show notes called Creating Luck for Yourself. Welcome, Meredith. Thanks for joining me today.
Meredith Jones: Thanks so much for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we’ve known each other, it seems, for a long time on the circuit, but I’d love you just to summarize your background and how you ended up pursuing a role in the investment world.
Meredith Jones: That’s a great question, and I know I tackle that quite a bit in my TED Talk, so I’m going to try not to be too redundant here, but I will say that I’m probably the accidental investor. I am someone who certainly did not have a traditional trajectory into investing. I grew up in the semi-rural South. You can probably hear that a little bit in my voice and was raised by a single mother who worked 3 jobs, including a job at a coffee factory. So I grew up with the aroma of coffee surrounding almost everything I did every day and really didn’t have a whole lot of exposure to money and to investing for those reasons. I did have one teacher in school who taught a bunch of, again, semi-rural Alabama kids how to research and trade stocks, but nothing like the background that you tend to see for a lot of Wall Street’s most prominent investors. So I actually got into investing. I left graduate school in 19— never mind. And I started to work at Vanderbilt and then went to work for a business magazine. And the whole time I was researching investments and stock transfers and wealth and business and things like that. And so when a job popped up in the local paper, for an entry-level hedge fund analyst, I thought to myself, well, this looks fun. So I applied for it and lo and behold, got the job. The owner of that company was impressed with my research credentials and thought that I would pick up the hedge fund components pretty quickly. He was particularly impressed by the fact that I had bought a house as a single woman at 27, especially considering the money that I was making at that time. And so he thought that displayed some significant financial acumen. And so that’s where I started. I worked my way up from that position to end up being a senior vice president of that company and have a seat on the investment committee. And over the course of the past 20-some years, I have worked at a lot of different firms, primarily doing research and consulting on alternative investments, but really anything that has to do with financials.
Aoifinn Devitt: Would you say there were any surprising twists and turns in that trajectory and maybe thinking about how you ended up now pivoting to more ESG and sustainable research?
Meredith Jones: Definitely. Number one, I think one of the most surprising things is that the owner of that hedge fund of funds/family office focused on hedge funds, he fundamentally believed that women made better investment analysts than men did. And so I entered a department of 100% women, and he had never actually given any thought to hiring a man. Now, at the time, I was in Nashville, and so since this was my first real investment industry job, I thought that was totally normal. And it wasn’t until I went to my first investment industry conference 3+ years later that I discovered that I was actually a minority, and a very visible minority at that. I still remember going to speak on my first panel And first of all, I showed up in a red suit. I did not know that people did not wear bright red suits to investment conferences. Again, I’m from Alabama. I lived in Nashville. So I walk into a sea of navy and gray and black suits and almost exclusively dudes. And I walk up to the podium to take my place on my panel. And one of the gentlemen on the panel holds his water glass up and I’m a friendly person, I think he’s saying cheers, but instead he honestly thought that I worked at the conference organization and I was there to refill his water glass. So that was a little surprising. Having been raised by a very Southern grandmother who believed in politeness and manners above all things, I did fill his water glass before I sat down and started the panel. But that was really my first indication that maybe my experience was something out of the norm. And as a result of that, I did not meet another woman who had a job similar to mine until about 10 years after I started in the industry. So I really feel like I was in a position that I think a lot of women, particularly 10 years ago or more, felt that I just didn’t have any mentors or people who looked like me that I could look up to. So that was incredibly surprising. And it’s ultimately what led me to start researching women and minority-run funds, because when I did finally start to meet some of those investment managers who look like me or who maybe didn’t fit the traditional, I’m at a conference mold that I had been introduced to, what I found was that their performance was actually really incredible. And so I wanted to know why, if the performance was so great, why I didn’t see more of them. And that’s ultimately what led me into the S of ESG. And then that was my gateway drug into the rest of ESG.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we’re certainly going to dig into some of those topics a little bit later, but just want to first pick up on the theme of social mobility, because that is expressed very well in your TED Talk that we’ll refer people to. But also, how do you think about how the finance industry has improved in that respect? There’s a lot of attention around diversity and better ethnic representation, but are we doing enough to actually get more spread of different socioeconomic backgrounds?
Meredith Jones: I would say it’s improved, obviously, in, again, the 20-some years that I’ve been involved in the industry. I would also say we still have quite a long way to go. A reporter called me not too long ago and wanted to know my reaction to the fact that there were 12 new female-run hedge funds launching, I think, in 2021, and how did I feel about that. And boy, what a long way we’ve come. And I told this reporter, I was like, you know, I am delighted to see 12 significant female-run hedge funds launching in a single year. But let’s face it, more than 1,000 hedge funds launched last year. And so while I can celebrate 12, I’ll really celebrate when it’s 120 or when it’s 250. So I definitely think that we still have a long way to go. I think for better or for worse, the events of 2020 certainly shone a spotlight on the need to have a bigger tent, so to speak. And I think a lot of investors and asset managers started to make inroads and noise around diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think the first steps of that have started to happen. And I do think that there is a concerted effort to focus at least on the diversity component. The inclusion part is going to take a little bit longer, quite honestly. And unfortunately, diversity without inclusion is— you just don’t get all the juicy goodness out of it. And so, I think we all have to do a better job of having diverse hiring panels, of searching for talent in areas that maybe we haven’t looked at before. We have to really make an effort to have the voices heard in meetings and in decision-making that maybe aren’t always heard. And we need to do this in a way that communicates to everyone that incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion makes the pie bigger. And I think that’s a really important thing. It’s not that these groups come in and take your pie. It’s that— and I express this a lot to folks— When we have more diversity, equity, and inclusion, everyone is richer from Wall Street to Main Street. And if we can keep that in mind and make sure that we are focusing on that message and acting in ways that make that true, then I think everyone will be more on board with diversity and we’ll really start to make more meaningful progress.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I think you’re absolutely right that the inclusion piece has to be very intentional. It doesn’t just fall out of the diversity piece. And if it’s not there, then what’s the point of all the action around diversity if we don’t actually get people to stay in our industry? So I would love to go back to the book and talk about the reaction to it, because obviously you had seen the evidence and that’s where the book is comprised. How was that book about female fund managers received when you published it?
Meredith Jones: I would say over, generally speaking, pretty well. I had done a report on the outperformance of female-run hedge funds before I actually started working on the book. And that was a little tough. That’s where I learned one of the best lessons that I have learned in my life about being even a semi-public creature. And that is, don’t read the comments ever. The comments on some of the first research pieces that were picked up by mainstream media around the outperformance of female-run hedge funds questioned my intelligence, my politics, my sexual orientation. You name it. And so, like I said, the first thing I learned was don’t read that stuff. A friend of mine actually told me something really important because having read all of that, I was actually pretty terrified to have my book come out. And I called a friend of mine who is a behavioral finance specialist. He’s both a psychologist and a finance professional. And I told him how worried I was about the reception of the book. And he said to me, he goes, you know, Meredith, there’s really two kinds of people in the world. There are people who do great things and think great ideas and put good things out into the world. And then there are a bunch of Dorito-eating assholes who sit behind their computers and they take shots at them. You need to decide right now, are you going to be a badass bitch? Are you going to be a Dorito-eating asshole? So with that in mind, my book came out and I did not get nearly the blowback that I had from some of those earlier pieces. Maybe those had primed The Pump. And I would hesitate to say that I think for a lot of people, it opened their eyes to the fact that not only did women have a lot to bring to the investing table, but in a way, because of the way the book was written with a lot of storytelling and interviews, it provided virtual mentors for people who may have been like me and just didn’t have people to look up to or didn’t have folks that looked like them or thought like them or were trying to raise kids or anything like that. So ultimately, it was a good thing. It was a terrifying thing, but I am very happy that I went ahead with it and avoided the Doritos.
Aoifinn Devitt: And that really resonates with me as well, the idea of virtual mentors, because in my experience, we all cannot possibly have exposure to enough role models, enough kind of scripts as to how certain situations get dealt with. And we end up with a small collection of anecdotes as to how this person handled maternity leave or this person came back. And we don’t have data. We just have a small selection of anecdotes. So building, whether it be a library of role models through this podcast or through your book, I think that’s one way to at least increase the volume that we have to look to.
Meredith Jones: Absolutely.
Aoifinn Devitt: So now just doing a quick snapshot of where we are today. So after you published the book, it certainly got debate going and it was validating for many who’d seen this a long time ago, like your original boss. How do you assess the current level of women managing money in the investment industry today and why it’s still not what it needs to be?
Meredith Jones: Again, I think we’ve made progress. I don’t think we’ve made anywhere near as much progress as we need to, and that is a source of continued frustration for me and for a lot of folks that are active in this area. I was actually just having a conversation with a great executive coach that I know who sometimes lets me on his sofa To Decompress, and we were just talking about diversity and ESG burnout because a lot of us have been talking about these issues for years and years and years. I mean, I’ve been involved in the diversity space since 2007. I’ve been in ESG for more than a decade, and suddenly it’s hot. But there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and frustration that went before these topics really started to become well-known. And I think too, we have the ability to see what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, and not everybody’s been privy to that. And so, you know, sometimes you look out onto what’s being done and you’re like, you know, that is not ultimately probably the best way to get where we’re going. And so I think what I’ve really had to focus on are the small victories. My grandmother always said, take one step and keep walking. That’s how you make a long journey. And so that’s what I continue to do. And that’s what I continue to encourage other folks to do. But we’ve got to get beyond checking boxes and having policies that don’t really have a whole lot of bite. I mean, this really has to be a mind shift change. It really has to be a change in working period. And we’re not quite there yet. I still see, for example, these programs that are focused on work-life balance and they’re only geared to women as if women are the only people who want to have a work-life balance. And what that does is it really pigeonholes women into a separate group, for example, and it doesn’t normalize behaviors that are incredibly normal. So, for example, I think everybody probably wants to participate in their children’s activities, male or female. But by making that more of a female situation, then it continues that stereotype that really I think can be limiting. I always tell the men that I talk to, look, if you’re going to go leave work early and go see little Johnny play first lobster in the Christmas play, tell people you’re doing it because that makes it okay for everybody else to do it too. So like I said, I think we started to make the first steps. The policies are good. From a policy standpoint, we need to move to measurement because policies without anything that you can actually measure and tangibly put your hands on is not going to drive the change you want to see. But then we just have to make it something that’s endemic, something that’s just normal, that women’s issues are just human issues.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And I think, you know, just to borrow some investment terminology, we talk a lot about active and passive investing. I think this has to be an active mission that we have to make this difference. I don’t think it’s going to happen by passive action, just like you mentioned around intentionally mentioning leaving work to go to an activity that’s family related. Another guest on the podcast, Mitesh Sheth, has talked about how important it is for portfolio managers to mentor young, promising female analysts to become fund managers. You can’t almost expect it to happen passively. That there has to be a concerted effort to do that. That’s not the same as quotas, but it’s the same as actually going out of your way to ensure that there are more women in these leadership portfolio management roles.
Meredith Jones: Well, and I think to take your metaphor a little bit further, I mean, if you think about the fee differences between active and passive, this is not a 3 basis point problem. You can’t just put in the bare minimum and expect change. This is a 55 basis point problem. This is a 100 basis point problem. And so everybody needs to put in the time and the effort and the energy to actually get change rolling and keep change going. This is not something that a policy is going to change. It’s not something that a measurement is going to change. It has to take effort. You’re absolutely right.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then just to move to the broader ESG question, I know that it’s probably extremely broad what you’re covering there in your role at Aon. But besides some of this diversity and some of the S and the G part, what is also top of mind in your ESG role there now in chairing the think tank?
Meredith Jones: Well, I mean, I think that ESG is so deep and so broad that it’s really hard to pinpoint any one thing. I think a lot of what I spend a fair amount of time on is trying to get folks to look at ESG through a lens of risk management and opportunity mapping, and also understanding how intertwined some of these issues can be. So you take something like cybersecurity, for example, And people will say, “Oh, that’s a governance issue. Oh, that’s a social issue. That’s not an environmental issue. It’s not even ESG.” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s absolutely ESG.” If you think about it, it actually has potential to hit the E, the S, and the G. The way that you protect and govern the data use within your firm is completely a governance issue. The implications of a significant data breach— let’s look at Capital One, for example, when they had the data breach in, what was it, 2018? That absolutely had social implications as people’s critical sensitive data was released and led to the potential for identity theft and certainly impacted whether people wanted to or trusted Capital One as a business partner anymore. And if you look at other types of organizations, so take the pipeline hack that happened, that had environmental implications and it certainly could have had worse environmental implications should there have been some sort of a spill or something resulting from that. It’s interesting because I did come into ESG from the social component, primarily from diversity, equity, and inclusion and social justice and things like that. And there are people definitely who have approached ESG primarily from the E, the environmental side, but ultimately all of these have to work together because climate change is going to have a disproportionate impact on historically disadvantaged groups. So you can’t really specialize in any one area because it takes all of those different pillars working holistically together in order to get outcomes that are going to minimize risk, maximize resiliency, maximize sustainability, and really create opportunity going forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: No, absolutely. And I think that interconnectivity is something that I think we’re all realizing and hopefully will lead to a lot more overall acceptance of the need for ESG and sustainability issues to be top of mind. One of the organizations you’re very involved with, Rock the Street. What is the goal of that? And what has that achieved so far?
Meredith Jones: Yeah, so I love Rock the Street. I was just on a board meeting call yesterday, actually. And I love the mission of Rock the Street. Rock the Street is designed to provide exposure to finance, financial literacy, investment literacy to high school girls. And that is critically important Because I think that people don’t realize how early girls start opting out of subjects that would lead them to a career in finance or investing. I think people tend to think that that self-selection process happens in college or in graduate school when in fact it actually starts to happen according to most studies around age 11 and it really accelerates starting around age 15. And so that early early intervention is incredibly important to build a pipeline of women who, A, could come into the financial or investment industries, and B, and perhaps even more importantly, will be confident managing their own money and their own budgets and their own financial health going forward. And that’s something that you really can’t underestimate. Women historically have taken quite a backseat when it comes to their finances. In fact, I just saw a study not too long ago that showed that millennial women were more disconnected from their finances than prior generations, and I was floored by that. I would have expected it to have been completely the opposite. So it’s programs like this, I think, that start to establish comfort with money and financial terminology Again, I go back to my own history. If I hadn’t had that one teacher in the 7th, 8th grade who decided that everyone in my class needed to learn how to research and invest at least on paper in stocks, I don’t know if I would be sitting here today. I’d like to think that among the girls that we’re working with nationally and now we have a chapter in Canada as well, that among that cohort, there are people who at some point will be managing my money down the line.
Aoifinn Devitt: And you also have a number of other board roles. One of the aids I try to bring into these podcasts and some of the training is to ask experts like yourself what they bring to the board roles, because I think that’s another area where there’s actually precious little in the way of a playbook or an instruction manual. So on some of your other boards, what do you seek to bring and what makes an effective board member or chair in your view?
Meredith Jones: So, I think that’s a great question. I think it’s particularly important given the fact that we still have a shortage of women on boards. All of my board work thus far has been on the nonprofit side, and I think that is a great training ground, but I think ultimately we still need to see more women on corporate boards and bringing that diversity of thought, that diversity of behavior, those differing backgrounds to bear because we all know from the enormous amount of research that exists on this, that diverse teams make better decisions. The process of getting to those decisions may be more uncomfortable. I think there’s a fair body of research that shows that too, but ultimately, it’s completely worth it. So, you know, as I think about board service and what women and what someone like me brings to a board, again, I think it’s that diverse perspective. I think it’s the diverse background. I did not have the traditional economics background. In school or graduate school. I didn’t come up through an investment bank. I’ve worked in a lot of different parts of financial services. And so as a result, I would like to think that rather than having a very narrow path where I am an inch wide but a mile deep, I have had a more meandering path, which may not look as good on paper, but ultimately means that I’m a mile wide and a foot deep. And that can be very beneficial for pattern recognition and connecting dots that maybe other people can’t see because they’ve just been singularly focused on an area. So as, as people go out to create boards, what I would say is looking for people who don’t have similar backgrounds to you, who have maybe taken a rather roundabout way, or who have a background that doesn’t check all your boxes. Those folks may be exactly the kind of people that you need in order to engage in creative problem solving and to really, again, boost the overall resilience of an organization.
Aoifinn Devitt: I absolutely love that, the reference to pattern recognition. Having originally trained as a lawyer, we learned a lot about reasoning by analogy, and I think that certainly opens the door to a lot of creative thinking. So thanks for that. And let’s return to some personal reflections now. So we talked about your career journey, you talked about some surprises. Were there any particular setbacks or challenges that you learned from that you can share?
Meredith Jones: Yes, I think anybody who’s worked in and around Wall Street has had them. I think any woman who’s worked in and around Wall Street has probably had quite a few. I don’t necessarily like to dwell on those, but I will say that over time, I have had the— depending on how you look on it— fortune or misfortune of running into individuals with a scarcity mentality. And what I mean by that is when there are so few senior roles available for women, there are two ways to look at that. The first way is there’s not many roles, I have one, and I need to protect it because A, there’s not that many, and B, I’m more more special because there are not that many. The second way to look at it is something that I referenced a little bit earlier, that it’s not a finite number. It shouldn’t be a finite number. Investing is all about a meritocracy, and so if you earn it and if people earn it, then the entire enterprise grows and there should be more and more senior roles. I think the number one thing I learned from the setbacks I’ve had, which I would say have generally fallen into that scarcity mentality bucket, is that that’s not how I want to operate. Not only do I want to climb the ladder and end up in a place where I’m happy and contributing and adding value and really just feeling good about my work, I want to reach my hand down and help other people up too, because it doesn’t make me less special. The rareness of having senior women shouldn’t be an attribute that you want to try to protect. So, I think it’s really had a tremendous effect on how I try to interact with really everyone in the industry, but specifically folks that maybe have been historically in an underrepresented group.
Aoifinn Devitt: It reminds me of the analogy of growing a pie, but also it not being a zero-sum game. The growth of finance?
Meredith Jones: Absolutely. So game theory would tell you that you should never play a game where somebody has to lose in order for you to win. I absolutely believe in that. There are win-win situations, and I always try to work for those. That’s actually one of the things I love about ESG is that taken at its most basic level, ESG integration isn’t about making the world a better place. But the collateral benefit of doing ESG is that not only do you protect against risks, not only do you create corporate value, but you also make the world a better place. And so, it’s that kind of virtuous cycle that really appeals to me just on a day-to-day basis. And it’s really what keeps me getting up and hitting the— well, I guess I should say the Zoom call. I was going to say the pavement, but hitting the Zoom calls at 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning.
Aoifinn Devitt: And we’ve spoken a little bit about key mentors and leaders that you’ve learned from. Were there any key people who influenced you or who you’ve been really impressed by that you can mention here? And I probably have far too many, I know, but maybe just one or two, just as an example.
Meredith Jones: There are way too many, and I have learned from watching way too many Academy Award speeches that whoever you mention, you’re going to take some grief for not mentioning a bunch of other people. Certainly, the women in my book, although by no means the totality of fantastic women in the industry, I am in awe of them, not just because they’re really great at what they do, but because they were willing to share their stories and get personal. And like I said, become those virtual mentors that we all need so much. I cannot thank them enough. And quite honestly, I feel like the group of them changed my life.
Aoifinn Devitt: Maybe instead of mentioning names, we can go to some wisdom because I know that there have been many words of wisdom shared, but equally that you probably have your own. Creed or motto that you live by? Can you share anything there?
Meredith Jones: Yeah, I think one of the things that I learned probably later in life than I should have was don’t internalize criticism from people that you wouldn’t go to for advice, which was a big one, quite frankly, because I am one of those people who takes everything on board. And that can be paralyzing. And so I really had to work to sift through and determine what was actual constructive feedback and what was just noise. And that, I’m sad to say, like I said, took me a lot longer than it probably should have. And the other thing, and I’ve already mentioned this, is that looking back to what my grandmother would say, take one step and keep walking. The investment industry generally, but certainly the areas that I work in, are a marathon, not a sprint. And so there are going to be days when you are exhausted and frustrated. And I have had one or two Naomi Campbell moments where I have, in the privacy of my own home office, maybe hurled my cell phone across the room, but they’re good days too. And so making sure that you focus on your micro victories and what’s going well will get you through the rest of the marathon.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Meredith. It seems very appropriate that we’re speaking right after we’ve learned of the sad death of Madeleine Albright, another giant among women, and one who, like many of the women in your book, have paved a path before us and I think shown us how to cope with inevitable adversity and some of those tricky situations and on focusing on perhaps the humor and on some of those victories. And speaking with you here and just hearing your energy and the intellectual energy Curiosity and passion that you bring to all of your work is just so inspiring. So thank you so much for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Meredith Jones: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you letting me and my Southern drawl take over your podcast for a little while.
Aoifinn Devitt: It has been nothing short of a delight. I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find all of our content on the 50 Faces Hub, where you’ll find a library of role models, resources, and other solutions to enhance your career. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
Aoifinn Devitt: Find out why our next guest learned to never read the comments. And what is a scarcity mentality? And how is it the single greatest threat to creating a truly diverse industry? Find out more next. I’m Aoifinn Devitt, and welcome to the 50 Faces podcast, a podcast committed to revealing the richness and diversity of the world of investment by focusing on its people and their stories. I’m joined today by Meredith Jones, who is a published author, speaker, and consultant with decades of experience in the investment industry. She’s a partner and global head of ESG at a large consulting firm, where she chairs the ESG think tank with oversight of global solution development, and strategy related to climate change and ESG. She runs her own research firm, MJ Alternative Investment Research, and is on the board of directors of Rock the Street Wall Street. She’s the author of Women on the Street: Why Female Money Managers Generate Higher Returns and How You Can Too. She also released a TED Talk on her life experiences that is linked to in the show notes called Creating Luck for Yourself. Welcome, Meredith. Thanks for joining me today.
Meredith Jones: Thanks so much for having me.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we’ve known each other, it seems, for a long time on the circuit, but I’d love you just to summarize your background and how you ended up pursuing a role in the investment world.
Meredith Jones: That’s a great question, and I know I tackle that quite a bit in my TED Talk, so I’m going to try not to be too redundant here, but I will say that I’m probably the accidental investor. I am someone who certainly did not have a traditional trajectory into investing. I grew up in the semi-rural South. You can probably hear that a little bit in my voice and was raised by a single mother who worked 3 jobs, including a job at a coffee factory. So I grew up with the aroma of coffee surrounding almost everything I did every day and really didn’t have a whole lot of exposure to money and to investing for those reasons. I did have one teacher in school who taught a bunch of, again, semi-rural Alabama kids how to research and trade stocks, but nothing like the background that you tend to see for a lot of Wall Street’s most prominent investors. So I actually got into investing. I left graduate school in 19— never mind. And I started to work at Vanderbilt and then went to work for a business magazine. And the whole time I was researching investments and stock transfers and wealth and business and things like that. And so when a job popped up in the local paper, for an entry-level hedge fund analyst, I thought to myself, well, this looks fun. So I applied for it and lo and behold, got the job. The owner of that company was impressed with my research credentials and thought that I would pick up the hedge fund components pretty quickly. He was particularly impressed by the fact that I had bought a house as a single woman at 27, especially considering the money that I was making at that time. And so he thought that displayed some significant financial acumen. And so that’s where I started. I worked my way up from that position to end up being a senior vice president of that company and have a seat on the investment committee. And over the course of the past 20-some years, I have worked at a lot of different firms, primarily doing research and consulting on alternative investments, but really anything that has to do with financials.
Aoifinn Devitt: Would you say there were any surprising twists and turns in that trajectory and maybe thinking about how you ended up now pivoting to more ESG and sustainable research?
Meredith Jones: Definitely. Number one, I think one of the most surprising things is that the owner of that hedge fund of funds/family office focused on hedge funds, he fundamentally believed that women made better investment analysts than men did. And so I entered a department of 100% women, and he had never actually given any thought to hiring a man. Now, at the time, I was in Nashville, and so since this was my first real investment industry job, I thought that was totally normal. And it wasn’t until I went to my first investment industry conference 3+ years later that I discovered that I was actually a minority, and a very visible minority at that. I still remember going to speak on my first panel And first of all, I showed up in a red suit. I did not know that people did not wear bright red suits to investment conferences. Again, I’m from Alabama. I lived in Nashville. So I walk into a sea of navy and gray and black suits and almost exclusively dudes. And I walk up to the podium to take my place on my panel. And one of the gentlemen on the panel holds his water glass up and I’m a friendly person, I think he’s saying cheers, but instead he honestly thought that I worked at the conference organization and I was there to refill his water glass. So that was a little surprising. Having been raised by a very Southern grandmother who believed in politeness and manners above all things, I did fill his water glass before I sat down and started the panel. But that was really my first indication that maybe my experience was something out of the norm. And as a result of that, I did not meet another woman who had a job similar to mine until about 10 years after I started in the industry. So I really feel like I was in a position that I think a lot of women, particularly 10 years ago or more, felt that I just didn’t have any mentors or people who looked like me that I could look up to. So that was incredibly surprising. And it’s ultimately what led me to start researching women and minority-run funds, because when I did finally start to meet some of those investment managers who look like me or who maybe didn’t fit the traditional, I’m at a conference mold that I had been introduced to, what I found was that their performance was actually really incredible. And so I wanted to know why, if the performance was so great, why I didn’t see more of them. And that’s ultimately what led me into the S of ESG. And then that was my gateway drug into the rest of ESG.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, we’re certainly going to dig into some of those topics a little bit later, but just want to first pick up on the theme of social mobility, because that is expressed very well in your TED Talk that we’ll refer people to. But also, how do you think about how the finance industry has improved in that respect? There’s a lot of attention around diversity and better ethnic representation, but are we doing enough to actually get more spread of different socioeconomic backgrounds?
Meredith Jones: I would say it’s improved, obviously, in, again, the 20-some years that I’ve been involved in the industry. I would also say we still have quite a long way to go. A reporter called me not too long ago and wanted to know my reaction to the fact that there were 12 new female-run hedge funds launching, I think, in 2021, and how did I feel about that. And boy, what a long way we’ve come. And I told this reporter, I was like, you know, I am delighted to see 12 significant female-run hedge funds launching in a single year. But let’s face it, more than 1,000 hedge funds launched last year. And so while I can celebrate 12, I’ll really celebrate when it’s 120 or when it’s 250. So I definitely think that we still have a long way to go. I think for better or for worse, the events of 2020 certainly shone a spotlight on the need to have a bigger tent, so to speak. And I think a lot of investors and asset managers started to make inroads and noise around diversity, equity, and inclusion. I think the first steps of that have started to happen. And I do think that there is a concerted effort to focus at least on the diversity component. The inclusion part is going to take a little bit longer, quite honestly. And unfortunately, diversity without inclusion is— you just don’t get all the juicy goodness out of it. And so, I think we all have to do a better job of having diverse hiring panels, of searching for talent in areas that maybe we haven’t looked at before. We have to really make an effort to have the voices heard in meetings and in decision-making that maybe aren’t always heard. And we need to do this in a way that communicates to everyone that incorporating diversity, equity, and inclusion makes the pie bigger. And I think that’s a really important thing. It’s not that these groups come in and take your pie. It’s that— and I express this a lot to folks— When we have more diversity, equity, and inclusion, everyone is richer from Wall Street to Main Street. And if we can keep that in mind and make sure that we are focusing on that message and acting in ways that make that true, then I think everyone will be more on board with diversity and we’ll really start to make more meaningful progress.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I think you’re absolutely right that the inclusion piece has to be very intentional. It doesn’t just fall out of the diversity piece. And if it’s not there, then what’s the point of all the action around diversity if we don’t actually get people to stay in our industry? So I would love to go back to the book and talk about the reaction to it, because obviously you had seen the evidence and that’s where the book is comprised. How was that book about female fund managers received when you published it?
Meredith Jones: I would say over, generally speaking, pretty well. I had done a report on the outperformance of female-run hedge funds before I actually started working on the book. And that was a little tough. That’s where I learned one of the best lessons that I have learned in my life about being even a semi-public creature. And that is, don’t read the comments ever. The comments on some of the first research pieces that were picked up by mainstream media around the outperformance of female-run hedge funds questioned my intelligence, my politics, my sexual orientation. You name it. And so, like I said, the first thing I learned was don’t read that stuff. A friend of mine actually told me something really important because having read all of that, I was actually pretty terrified to have my book come out. And I called a friend of mine who is a behavioral finance specialist. He’s both a psychologist and a finance professional. And I told him how worried I was about the reception of the book. And he said to me, he goes, you know, Meredith, there’s really two kinds of people in the world. There are people who do great things and think great ideas and put good things out into the world. And then there are a bunch of Dorito-eating assholes who sit behind their computers and they take shots at them. You need to decide right now, are you going to be a badass bitch? Are you going to be a Dorito-eating asshole? So with that in mind, my book came out and I did not get nearly the blowback that I had from some of those earlier pieces. Maybe those had primed The Pump. And I would hesitate to say that I think for a lot of people, it opened their eyes to the fact that not only did women have a lot to bring to the investing table, but in a way, because of the way the book was written with a lot of storytelling and interviews, it provided virtual mentors for people who may have been like me and just didn’t have people to look up to or didn’t have folks that looked like them or thought like them or were trying to raise kids or anything like that. So ultimately, it was a good thing. It was a terrifying thing, but I am very happy that I went ahead with it and avoided the Doritos.
Aoifinn Devitt: And that really resonates with me as well, the idea of virtual mentors, because in my experience, we all cannot possibly have exposure to enough role models, enough kind of scripts as to how certain situations get dealt with. And we end up with a small collection of anecdotes as to how this person handled maternity leave or this person came back. And we don’t have data. We just have a small selection of anecdotes. So building, whether it be a library of role models through this podcast or through your book, I think that’s one way to at least increase the volume that we have to look to.
Meredith Jones: Absolutely.
Aoifinn Devitt: So now just doing a quick snapshot of where we are today. So after you published the book, it certainly got debate going and it was validating for many who’d seen this a long time ago, like your original boss. How do you assess the current level of women managing money in the investment industry today and why it’s still not what it needs to be?
Meredith Jones: Again, I think we’ve made progress. I don’t think we’ve made anywhere near as much progress as we need to, and that is a source of continued frustration for me and for a lot of folks that are active in this area. I was actually just having a conversation with a great executive coach that I know who sometimes lets me on his sofa To Decompress, and we were just talking about diversity and ESG burnout because a lot of us have been talking about these issues for years and years and years. I mean, I’ve been involved in the diversity space since 2007. I’ve been in ESG for more than a decade, and suddenly it’s hot. But there was a lot of blood, sweat, and tears and frustration that went before these topics really started to become well-known. And I think too, we have the ability to see what’s worked and what hasn’t worked, and not everybody’s been privy to that. And so, you know, sometimes you look out onto what’s being done and you’re like, you know, that is not ultimately probably the best way to get where we’re going. And so I think what I’ve really had to focus on are the small victories. My grandmother always said, take one step and keep walking. That’s how you make a long journey. And so that’s what I continue to do. And that’s what I continue to encourage other folks to do. But we’ve got to get beyond checking boxes and having policies that don’t really have a whole lot of bite. I mean, this really has to be a mind shift change. It really has to be a change in working period. And we’re not quite there yet. I still see, for example, these programs that are focused on work-life balance and they’re only geared to women as if women are the only people who want to have a work-life balance. And what that does is it really pigeonholes women into a separate group, for example, and it doesn’t normalize behaviors that are incredibly normal. So, for example, I think everybody probably wants to participate in their children’s activities, male or female. But by making that more of a female situation, then it continues that stereotype that really I think can be limiting. I always tell the men that I talk to, look, if you’re going to go leave work early and go see little Johnny play first lobster in the Christmas play, tell people you’re doing it because that makes it okay for everybody else to do it too. So like I said, I think we started to make the first steps. The policies are good. From a policy standpoint, we need to move to measurement because policies without anything that you can actually measure and tangibly put your hands on is not going to drive the change you want to see. But then we just have to make it something that’s endemic, something that’s just normal, that women’s issues are just human issues.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely. And I think, you know, just to borrow some investment terminology, we talk a lot about active and passive investing. I think this has to be an active mission that we have to make this difference. I don’t think it’s going to happen by passive action, just like you mentioned around intentionally mentioning leaving work to go to an activity that’s family related. Another guest on the podcast, Mitesh Sheth, has talked about how important it is for portfolio managers to mentor young, promising female analysts to become fund managers. You can’t almost expect it to happen passively. That there has to be a concerted effort to do that. That’s not the same as quotas, but it’s the same as actually going out of your way to ensure that there are more women in these leadership portfolio management roles.
Meredith Jones: Well, and I think to take your metaphor a little bit further, I mean, if you think about the fee differences between active and passive, this is not a 3 basis point problem. You can’t just put in the bare minimum and expect change. This is a 55 basis point problem. This is a 100 basis point problem. And so everybody needs to put in the time and the effort and the energy to actually get change rolling and keep change going. This is not something that a policy is going to change. It’s not something that a measurement is going to change. It has to take effort. You’re absolutely right.
Aoifinn Devitt: And then just to move to the broader ESG question, I know that it’s probably extremely broad what you’re covering there in your role at Aon. But besides some of this diversity and some of the S and the G part, what is also top of mind in your ESG role there now in chairing the think tank?
Meredith Jones: Well, I mean, I think that ESG is so deep and so broad that it’s really hard to pinpoint any one thing. I think a lot of what I spend a fair amount of time on is trying to get folks to look at ESG through a lens of risk management and opportunity mapping, and also understanding how intertwined some of these issues can be. So you take something like cybersecurity, for example, And people will say, “Oh, that’s a governance issue. Oh, that’s a social issue. That’s not an environmental issue. It’s not even ESG.” And I’m like, “Oh, it’s absolutely ESG.” If you think about it, it actually has potential to hit the E, the S, and the G. The way that you protect and govern the data use within your firm is completely a governance issue. The implications of a significant data breach— let’s look at Capital One, for example, when they had the data breach in, what was it, 2018? That absolutely had social implications as people’s critical sensitive data was released and led to the potential for identity theft and certainly impacted whether people wanted to or trusted Capital One as a business partner anymore. And if you look at other types of organizations, so take the pipeline hack that happened, that had environmental implications and it certainly could have had worse environmental implications should there have been some sort of a spill or something resulting from that. It’s interesting because I did come into ESG from the social component, primarily from diversity, equity, and inclusion and social justice and things like that. And there are people definitely who have approached ESG primarily from the E, the environmental side, but ultimately all of these have to work together because climate change is going to have a disproportionate impact on historically disadvantaged groups. So you can’t really specialize in any one area because it takes all of those different pillars working holistically together in order to get outcomes that are going to minimize risk, maximize resiliency, maximize sustainability, and really create opportunity going forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: No, absolutely. And I think that interconnectivity is something that I think we’re all realizing and hopefully will lead to a lot more overall acceptance of the need for ESG and sustainability issues to be top of mind. One of the organizations you’re very involved with, Rock the Street. What is the goal of that? And what has that achieved so far?
Meredith Jones: Yeah, so I love Rock the Street. I was just on a board meeting call yesterday, actually. And I love the mission of Rock the Street. Rock the Street is designed to provide exposure to finance, financial literacy, investment literacy to high school girls. And that is critically important Because I think that people don’t realize how early girls start opting out of subjects that would lead them to a career in finance or investing. I think people tend to think that that self-selection process happens in college or in graduate school when in fact it actually starts to happen according to most studies around age 11 and it really accelerates starting around age 15. And so that early early intervention is incredibly important to build a pipeline of women who, A, could come into the financial or investment industries, and B, and perhaps even more importantly, will be confident managing their own money and their own budgets and their own financial health going forward. And that’s something that you really can’t underestimate. Women historically have taken quite a backseat when it comes to their finances. In fact, I just saw a study not too long ago that showed that millennial women were more disconnected from their finances than prior generations, and I was floored by that. I would have expected it to have been completely the opposite. So it’s programs like this, I think, that start to establish comfort with money and financial terminology Again, I go back to my own history. If I hadn’t had that one teacher in the 7th, 8th grade who decided that everyone in my class needed to learn how to research and invest at least on paper in stocks, I don’t know if I would be sitting here today. I’d like to think that among the girls that we’re working with nationally and now we have a chapter in Canada as well, that among that cohort, there are people who at some point will be managing my money down the line.
Aoifinn Devitt: And you also have a number of other board roles. One of the aids I try to bring into these podcasts and some of the training is to ask experts like yourself what they bring to the board roles, because I think that’s another area where there’s actually precious little in the way of a playbook or an instruction manual. So on some of your other boards, what do you seek to bring and what makes an effective board member or chair in your view?
Meredith Jones: So, I think that’s a great question. I think it’s particularly important given the fact that we still have a shortage of women on boards. All of my board work thus far has been on the nonprofit side, and I think that is a great training ground, but I think ultimately we still need to see more women on corporate boards and bringing that diversity of thought, that diversity of behavior, those differing backgrounds to bear because we all know from the enormous amount of research that exists on this, that diverse teams make better decisions. The process of getting to those decisions may be more uncomfortable. I think there’s a fair body of research that shows that too, but ultimately, it’s completely worth it. So, you know, as I think about board service and what women and what someone like me brings to a board, again, I think it’s that diverse perspective. I think it’s the diverse background. I did not have the traditional economics background. In school or graduate school. I didn’t come up through an investment bank. I’ve worked in a lot of different parts of financial services. And so as a result, I would like to think that rather than having a very narrow path where I am an inch wide but a mile deep, I have had a more meandering path, which may not look as good on paper, but ultimately means that I’m a mile wide and a foot deep. And that can be very beneficial for pattern recognition and connecting dots that maybe other people can’t see because they’ve just been singularly focused on an area. So as, as people go out to create boards, what I would say is looking for people who don’t have similar backgrounds to you, who have maybe taken a rather roundabout way, or who have a background that doesn’t check all your boxes. Those folks may be exactly the kind of people that you need in order to engage in creative problem solving and to really, again, boost the overall resilience of an organization.
Aoifinn Devitt: I absolutely love that, the reference to pattern recognition. Having originally trained as a lawyer, we learned a lot about reasoning by analogy, and I think that certainly opens the door to a lot of creative thinking. So thanks for that. And let’s return to some personal reflections now. So we talked about your career journey, you talked about some surprises. Were there any particular setbacks or challenges that you learned from that you can share?
Meredith Jones: Yes, I think anybody who’s worked in and around Wall Street has had them. I think any woman who’s worked in and around Wall Street has probably had quite a few. I don’t necessarily like to dwell on those, but I will say that over time, I have had the— depending on how you look on it— fortune or misfortune of running into individuals with a scarcity mentality. And what I mean by that is when there are so few senior roles available for women, there are two ways to look at that. The first way is there’s not many roles, I have one, and I need to protect it because A, there’s not that many, and B, I’m more more special because there are not that many. The second way to look at it is something that I referenced a little bit earlier, that it’s not a finite number. It shouldn’t be a finite number. Investing is all about a meritocracy, and so if you earn it and if people earn it, then the entire enterprise grows and there should be more and more senior roles. I think the number one thing I learned from the setbacks I’ve had, which I would say have generally fallen into that scarcity mentality bucket, is that that’s not how I want to operate. Not only do I want to climb the ladder and end up in a place where I’m happy and contributing and adding value and really just feeling good about my work, I want to reach my hand down and help other people up too, because it doesn’t make me less special. The rareness of having senior women shouldn’t be an attribute that you want to try to protect. So, I think it’s really had a tremendous effect on how I try to interact with really everyone in the industry, but specifically folks that maybe have been historically in an underrepresented group.
Aoifinn Devitt: It reminds me of the analogy of growing a pie, but also it not being a zero-sum game. The growth of finance?
Meredith Jones: Absolutely. So game theory would tell you that you should never play a game where somebody has to lose in order for you to win. I absolutely believe in that. There are win-win situations, and I always try to work for those. That’s actually one of the things I love about ESG is that taken at its most basic level, ESG integration isn’t about making the world a better place. But the collateral benefit of doing ESG is that not only do you protect against risks, not only do you create corporate value, but you also make the world a better place. And so, it’s that kind of virtuous cycle that really appeals to me just on a day-to-day basis. And it’s really what keeps me getting up and hitting the— well, I guess I should say the Zoom call. I was going to say the pavement, but hitting the Zoom calls at 6 and 7 o’clock in the morning.
Aoifinn Devitt: And we’ve spoken a little bit about key mentors and leaders that you’ve learned from. Were there any key people who influenced you or who you’ve been really impressed by that you can mention here? And I probably have far too many, I know, but maybe just one or two, just as an example.
Meredith Jones: There are way too many, and I have learned from watching way too many Academy Award speeches that whoever you mention, you’re going to take some grief for not mentioning a bunch of other people. Certainly, the women in my book, although by no means the totality of fantastic women in the industry, I am in awe of them, not just because they’re really great at what they do, but because they were willing to share their stories and get personal. And like I said, become those virtual mentors that we all need so much. I cannot thank them enough. And quite honestly, I feel like the group of them changed my life.
Aoifinn Devitt: Maybe instead of mentioning names, we can go to some wisdom because I know that there have been many words of wisdom shared, but equally that you probably have your own. Creed or motto that you live by? Can you share anything there?
Meredith Jones: Yeah, I think one of the things that I learned probably later in life than I should have was don’t internalize criticism from people that you wouldn’t go to for advice, which was a big one, quite frankly, because I am one of those people who takes everything on board. And that can be paralyzing. And so I really had to work to sift through and determine what was actual constructive feedback and what was just noise. And that, I’m sad to say, like I said, took me a lot longer than it probably should have. And the other thing, and I’ve already mentioned this, is that looking back to what my grandmother would say, take one step and keep walking. The investment industry generally, but certainly the areas that I work in, are a marathon, not a sprint. And so there are going to be days when you are exhausted and frustrated. And I have had one or two Naomi Campbell moments where I have, in the privacy of my own home office, maybe hurled my cell phone across the room, but they’re good days too. And so making sure that you focus on your micro victories and what’s going well will get you through the rest of the marathon.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Meredith. It seems very appropriate that we’re speaking right after we’ve learned of the sad death of Madeleine Albright, another giant among women, and one who, like many of the women in your book, have paved a path before us and I think shown us how to cope with inevitable adversity and some of those tricky situations and on focusing on perhaps the humor and on some of those victories. And speaking with you here and just hearing your energy and the intellectual energy Curiosity and passion that you bring to all of your work is just so inspiring. So thank you so much for coming here and sharing your insights with us.
Meredith Jones: Well, thank you so much for having me. I appreciate you letting me and my Southern drawl take over your podcast for a little while.
Aoifinn Devitt: It has been nothing short of a delight. I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Thank you for listening to the 50 Faces Podcast. If you liked what you heard and would like to tune in to hear more inspiring investors and their personal journeys, Please subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. You can find all of our content on the 50 Faces Hub, where you’ll find a library of role models, resources, and other solutions to enhance your career. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as investment advice, and all views are personal and should not be attributed to the organizations and affiliations of the host or any guest.
