Aoifinn Devitt: When she was planning the launch of her investment firm in 2006, our next guest heard the following: ‘But you are women, are you doing this full-time?’ Let’s hear how the motto ‘the cock may crow, but it is the hen who lays the egg’ motivated her to take on the challenge and not only build her own firm, but pave the way for other women to do the same. 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 Connie Teska, who is principal and co-founder of Plutius Management, a fund-of-hedge-funds manager based in the Chicago area. The firm, founded in 2006, has two female founders. She has a long history in investment management, particularly in the area of alternative investments. Welcome, Connie. Thank you for joining me today.
Connie Teska: Thank you. It’s such an honor to be here, and it’s a pleasure to do this with you.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much. Um, can you first tell us a little bit about your current role, and then we’ll go back to talking about your journey into this role?
Connie Teska: Sure. Um, I am co-founder and principal of an SEC-registered investment advisor that was founded in August of 2006. We serve a mix of clients from public pensions and endowments to family offices. Cluseos is a woman-owned enterprise that provides diversified dynamic portfolio management with a focus on engaging with emerging women and diversity-led investment managers.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’d love to dig into that a little more, and we will certainly talk about the work you do with female emerging managers. But first, how did you end up in this role? Where did your journey into investing start?
Connie Teska: So like anything, it’s kind of not a straight line. It just sort of sometimes happens by happenstance, but really it’s about finding your passion. We got a chance to leave our corporate comfort zone in 2006 when where I worked, which was JPMorgan, integrated the Chicago proprietary investing with their New York investment arms. We took that opportunity, if you will, to take the bureaucratic training wheels off, using what we had learned over the years and adding what we felt was missing. My role was fairly entrepreneurial at the bank, and it used to having freedom reporting decisions about investment opportunities and moving capital around. So it wasn’t, uh, as we became more bureaucratic, as we had merged with JPMorgan in 2004, it became apparent to us that if we wanted to continue to do the investing part we would need to probably lift our team out, and that’s exactly what we did in 2006. Being an entrepreneur is in my veins. It started really when I was a little girl. My dad was a chemical engineer at a printing supply company by day and an entrepreneur by night. He had everything from running an accounting service to manufacturing soap and rust removers. He thought he would put his kids to work on those manufacturing lines and teach us about reporting, responsibility, etc. My grandparents immigrated here from Greece. One had a grocery store, the other had a cleaners and shoe repair shop, and my mom was a teacher. So after being at the bank for about 25 years, it became apparent to me that it was time to lift out and try something else.
Aoifinn Devitt: What a great story, growing up essentially on the shop floor. Were there any kind of lessons that you took from that time in terms of the importance perhaps of being in the weeds, understanding what goes on in the weeds, anything that working with your history of entrepreneurs in your family taught you?
Connie Teska: Yes, for sure. One was resilience. No matter what, if the product had to get off the line, you had to be there and you had to wait until it was finished. Your speed of response to adversity was key. You had to make changes on the spot if one of the filling machines didn’t work or what have you. And it was always about never giving up, and keeping an eye on the prize, as my dad used to say. So it was the experience of developing that good work ethic that I think had been brought down by generations that really came into the corporate life that I had taken on at J.P. Morgan.
Aoifinn Devitt: And obviously, setting up an investment firm has its I own, suppose, considerations given some of the regulatory barriers to entry. Maybe they’re even growing right now, the barriers to entry. So when it came to establishing your own investment firm, what was the appeal in carving your own path and what were some of the trade-offs you had to think about?
Connie Teska: So it was sort of an easy decision for me because in 2004, JPMorgan bought Bank One and by 2005 was starting to integrate the businesses across the line. And we were offered, uh, and I was offered a position in New York at the time, uh, but it was a position to be really not on the investing side, on the operations side of the investing business. And I thought to myself, I had just built this from scratch on the, uh, Bank One platform. Why would I want to do that? And it was explained to me that really what I needed to and wanted to have was a career at JPMorgan and that my skills, my leadership skills, my talents, etc., would be used to anywhere in the bank that they saw fit and not an investing career path. So that was a decision point for me to say that I really wanted to stay with investing, and the best way to do that was to lift our team out. The timing was right for me. My children were were older, didn’t need me as much after I had had years and years of nannies, being a working mom for all of those years. And it just seemed like the right way, right time to be able to lift out and start it. Now, being a woman and starting an investment firm in 2006 came with its own set of challenges. Starting the business was not a problem because we had done that now 3 times, uh, in an entrepreneurial setting in the bank, but it was more about finding commercial real estate and looking for the appropriate place on how to house this, uh, that became significant. And then as we were sitting with some people in our conference room, they asked who was setting up the firm, and we said we are, and they said, but you’re women, are you doing this full-time? And we said, of course we’re doing this full-time. And it became clear and evident to us that this was an unusual stance for a woman to set up her own investment firm in the environment. And they indicated that there were mandates for people like us. And of course, we had never really considered that as we were starting, but started to look into that and really decided to get certified as a women-owned investment firm, and that was quite a process in and of itself.
Aoifinn Devitt: And in your experience, how is that process improving, or maybe the experience improving currently since 2006, or is it at all? Is it getting more challenging as the barriers to entry, I would suggest for all asset managers, are rising?
Connie Teska: Barriers to entry are rising. But really, I think for women and diverse, it’s never been easy and continues to be a struggle. The hedge fund industry in particular, and money management in general, is a man’s world even today. Even with all the massive diversity pushes that are— have been given, only about 5% of women actually are in the financial world, from trading desks to asset managers. Now, certainly there are a wealth of participants in the marketing areas, investment relations, operations, compliance, just not in the driver’s seat. And I think one of the reasons is that it’s really difficult to find mentors and role models. So why is it important? It’s important because women invest differently, and there’s been quite a lot written about this, and I’m certainly not an expert on the science about it, although I’ve been a recipient, but their approach is different. Their approach to risk is different. Their approach to profitability is different. And all of that plays a significant role in the diversification of a portfolio, and certainly in times of stress as to the risk management of a portfolio. So I think we saw in 2008, again in 2011, and now in 2020 with the pandemic, that women actually look at risk differently and therefore make decisions differently in the portfolios that they’re investing in. Margaret Thatcher had a quote that said, “The cock may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg.” And that’s sort of something along with one of the sayings that I had in my office at the time, just to remind us that we really do have to look at the way we do things and why.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a really great quote, and I love it about the concept of delivering the goods. And when it comes to your experience of raising money, has there been anything that you can share, and maybe in terms of either the, some of the setbacks or challenges that you faced, maybe just through the whole process of running a firm and having to pivot through some of these market challenges that you mentioned. Any lessons that you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Connie Teska: You have to be resilient and you have to be tenacious and you can never stop. Those are kind of the things that have guided us as we’ve gone through. As soon as you think you’re getting close or something happens. Something’s bound to happen either in the markets or in your investor base that’s going to create a reason for you to have to reevaluate what you’re doing. It’s really interesting the way this has evolved. It’s a lot of work, and from that perspective, you really need to be passionate about what you’re doing. What I like most about the investment world is I really found something that I thought challenged me and forced me to keep learning about new things. So whether it’s the impact of a pandemic on your investment portfolio or a political event that happens because you don’t get a seat at the table due to some political backslapping or things like that, it becomes apparent that if you love what you’re doing, you’re going to find a way to get it done. And so, the ability to keep learning, there’s always new strategies, there’s always new adventures, new things to sort of figure out why they’re affecting an investment the way they are. And that’s sort of what keeps us going and keeps me interested in what I’m doing.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I’d love to dig in a little bit to the secrets to your resilience, because you mentioned that has been something you saw even as a child in other smaller businesses. And there was a great quote from recently deceased Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she said, “I think it helps in life to be a little deaf.” That she was a trailblazer. She probably found herself often as the only woman in a room or in a setting. And she turned a deaf ear to maybe some, either some comments that were inappropriate or to maybe some what we now term microaggressions, which would have been perhaps designed to keep her in her place, and she turned a deaf ear to that and became quite the icon that she was. So were there any experiences that you had as you were developing the business that, whether it you be, know, some perhaps biases that you encountered or, um, or just challenges in making a connection that you were able to overcome?
Connie Teska: Um, interesting. Of course, um, I don’t put myself on the same level as Ruth Bader Ginsburg by any means. As a matter of fact, she was certainly someone that I did a lot of reading about and looked up to over the years because I felt she was a trailblazer in her own right. And, um, that quote of having a deaf ear is really key because there are always, when you go into a finals presentation, there were always underlying quotes or just comments that were made as you walked by or anything. And if you let any of those get the best of you, it really created, it messed with your mind basically. So for us, it was about keeping clear what our mission was. Having a path to move forward and identifying what it was we were looking to do. And if we were worthy enough to get a seat at the table, we knew that our performance, our process, our strategy would speak for itself as long as we could articulately communicate it. And communication was another thing, uh, that was key. We haven’t talked about my educational background, yet, but I have a journalism degree from Northwestern University and really think that that was one of the things that significantly helped me in my career. I think training in journalism is really what trained me to be able to connect the dots, to really look at what people were thinking, to be able to ask the questions. To assess what the result was going to be and how to communicate that in an articulate way.
Aoifinn Devitt: I would also think it’s probably quite useful when it comes to doing some due diligence and investigative work on the underlying managers that you put into your portfolio. I would think having a knowledge of what the right questions to ask are and a good instinct perhaps for when you’re getting a straight answer or not is probably quite useful.
Connie Teska: Yes, you know, it’s really interesting that you would think so. One of my first jobs was teaching journalism in high school. I then went on to actually run a small technical journal when I realized I couldn’t make enough money doing that. And it wasn’t until I got to the bank where I was given the opportunity to not only handle media relations for a Big Ten bank at the time that had a lot of news coming out, and there were newspapers twice a day at that point, and you knew how well you did on the news report that you read on the way home, was that as we went through that, it was important to realize that asking questions like a scientist or like a detective, a journalist really works at getting to the bottom of what was happening and how.. And so, for me, that connecting the dots, being able to ask the questions, and assessing in a way that is not antagonistic really helps in doing that due diligence to a manager. After I had all these stints, I went back for my MBA and ultimately was offered this position in corporate investments. And what became apparent was in doing the due diligence for underlying managers or talking with people that were going to invest, You had to find a way as to what their integrity was, what their values were, how they affected that with the people they worked with. And it did things like forced us to sort of go down and look in garages and see what the cars were at the time. Look at what people were doing with their outside activities. So, different ways to come to the same conclusion, but by asking questions.. So I find that having that journalism degree affords me a really different look than others at that particular group of people and asking questions.
Aoifinn Devitt: And just before coming back to your personal story, look, the area you invest in, hedge funds, have seen quite an evolution, I’m sure, in the reception towards them since you launched your firm. In that time since ’06, there have been at least two market crisis, but yet you’ve stuck to your knitting in focusing on hedge funds. How do you perceive they are viewed today by the institutional investor base?
Connie Teska: Well, it certainly has had its peaks and valleys. When we first came out, hedge funds were clearly identified as an appropriate asset class to help reduce risk and increase return. And during those crises, especially 2008, 2009, it was a really welcome addition to a portfolio. Later, it became a little bit more difficult in a straight-up equity market. It was very difficult for hedge funds to prove their value, and we decided long ago that we weren’t going to add beta to the portfolio by going along with the pack, and we were gonna continue to look for hedged portfolios where we could protect on the downside because this upward trend wouldn’t go on forever. And I think if you fast forward to now, we always knew there would be something that would change the direction of the market, Little did we think that it would be a pandemic and of this size. But I think hedge funds again are becoming an investment that institutional investors, endowments realize have a place in the portfolio if they’re sized correctly and can really help to reduce risk and protect the principle of the capital that these institutions have. So it’s about sticking to your knitting and understanding what the markets are telling you and creating a portfolio that can be resilient for the right reasons.
Aoifinn Devitt: Having done quite a bit of work in the hedge fund area myself, it is never a dull area to be analyzing. I think it’s full of some of the most fascinating investors that are out there, and there’s always certainly new strategies and just innovative ways of seeing the world to look at. So I can certainly see why there would be a case for sticking to one’s knitting there. And just going back to your own career and key people or key pieces of advice that you received, are there any that you can share?
Connie Teska: Sure. You know, key pieces of advice, that’s an interesting one. I think that when I moved to the corporate investments area after I got my MBA, I worked for a man who actually became my mentor afterwards. And one of the things that he talked about was constantly learning. It didn’t matter what level or how mundane it was. You needed to be able to roll up your sleeves and go to the board and learn. And that’s what is so exciting about the investment world and the finance world is that there’s always a nuance, there’s always something different, and that’s what keeps you passionate about it. But you have to be open to constantly learning and moving forward as opposed to only relying on your historical perspectives. So I would say that for sure. Another one of my bosses, which was the first boss I had at the bank, who was an old editor of one of the major newspapers in Chicago, and he was a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy, very gruff, etc. And he, in his own right, really provided advice of being able to ask the right questions, get the answer, and communicate it in a succinct manner. And if you can communicate it and always be ahead of the problem, you’re going to gain many more positive people and positive scenarios to talk with you than you are if you wait for whatever was negative happened and you didn’t communicate it. So those two lessons, sort of being in in a constant learning mode and being willing to communicate whether it’s good news or bad have sort of driven my career and sort of the values that we put forth in Plucios today. From a personal perspective, really it was my family and my values there that said you can do and be anything you want to be. And be able to move forward and do that as well. Kind of reach for the stars.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely, and those are great pieces of advice, and I love in particular the idea of owning a mistake early, because I think that’s something that I’ve certainly heard before. We all know when something’s going wrong, and I think that maybe any reticence about getting in front of clients is usually the wrong approach, because I think that usually clients and counterparts will very much appreciate early honesty with a problem, as opposed to them having to find out and confront you with it. So I think that that’s certainly very sound advice. Being from a Greek family, I’m sure there are some creed or motto that you grew up with. And even Plutus itself, I know, has a special meaning. Is there anything, any of the creed or motto side that you can share?
Connie Teska: So, Plousios means wealth, abundance, and riches, and it is obviously a Greek word. But interestingly, when we were trying to come up for a name for our firm, you can see we— you start at the A’s and we got all the way down to the P’s because so many of them were taken. But we really wanted to find a word that had meaning, and not everybody really understands it. And my business partner at the time thought it was a good name, liked it, but wasn’t sure. And so it wasn’t until we met a Greek businessman who heard what our name was and said, oh my goodness, that’s such a good word. And I think that that is sort of a credo to make sure that everything you’re doing really has meaning for what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to present. I think we talked about learning and communicating as that, but really it’s also about helping others. And ultimately, I believe that it’s a challenge for women in the finance and investing world, and it’s up to us that are in it today to try to create the path and lift them as we go forward and take them along. And if they do that, the pool of women that are in this business will increase, and it will give us an opportunity to share the resilience of this industry with others.
Aoifinn Devitt: And indeed to pass it on. I love that idea of passing it on. And my final question is around any advice you would you have for your younger self, maybe for that journalism student? Is there any wisdom that you have accreted over the years that you maybe wish you had known back then?
Connie Teska: Well, there’s a lot of advice looking back at it. One of the first things is I should have done this a lot sooner than I did. It would have been a lot easier and I you started, know, in the late ’90s or early 2000s. But then again, wouldn’t— that I wouldn’t have had the knowledge that I had and the experiences to be able to do that. But you can do anything you set your mind to. Of course, everybody sort of says that, but listen before you speak. And I think the most important thing is to be flexible. You’re not sure what direction it’s going to take, but be willing to try, and then all of those experiences in your life end up coming together as you progress through your career, but that only happens if you’re flexible, and the other thing I would say is people matter, not only your mentors, but everybody you come in contact with really has— makes an impression on you in some way or another, and there’s something to take away if you listen and think about it and apply it in a way of having grace, dignity, and strength in what you’re doing and how you move forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that is a lovely note to end on, and I think even harking back to your comment earlier about this shop room floor and the need to cope with adversity by making changes on the spot. I think that’s the kind of flexibility that perhaps you’re referring to here. It’s certainly needed more than ever in times like this. So, thank you, Connie. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for what I believe is the wealth, abundance, and riches that you bring to our profession through your mentorship and your example and being such a role model for other women in the profession, including me. So, um, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your insights with us.
Connie Teska: Well, thank you so much. I enjoyed it, and, uh, thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.
Aoifinn Devitt: 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. 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: When she was planning the launch of her investment firm in 2006, our next guest heard the following: ‘But you are women, are you doing this full-time?’ Let’s hear how the motto ‘the cock may crow, but it is the hen who lays the egg’ motivated her to take on the challenge and not only build her own firm, but pave the way for other women to do the same. 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 Connie Teska, who is principal and co-founder of Plutius Management, a fund-of-hedge-funds manager based in the Chicago area. The firm, founded in 2006, has two female founders. She has a long history in investment management, particularly in the area of alternative investments. Welcome, Connie. Thank you for joining me today.
Connie Teska: Thank you. It’s such an honor to be here, and it’s a pleasure to do this with you.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much. Um, can you first tell us a little bit about your current role, and then we’ll go back to talking about your journey into this role?
Connie Teska: Sure. Um, I am co-founder and principal of an SEC-registered investment advisor that was founded in August of 2006. We serve a mix of clients from public pensions and endowments to family offices. Cluseos is a woman-owned enterprise that provides diversified dynamic portfolio management with a focus on engaging with emerging women and diversity-led investment managers.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’d love to dig into that a little more, and we will certainly talk about the work you do with female emerging managers. But first, how did you end up in this role? Where did your journey into investing start?
Connie Teska: So like anything, it’s kind of not a straight line. It just sort of sometimes happens by happenstance, but really it’s about finding your passion. We got a chance to leave our corporate comfort zone in 2006 when where I worked, which was JPMorgan, integrated the Chicago proprietary investing with their New York investment arms. We took that opportunity, if you will, to take the bureaucratic training wheels off, using what we had learned over the years and adding what we felt was missing. My role was fairly entrepreneurial at the bank, and it used to having freedom reporting decisions about investment opportunities and moving capital around. So it wasn’t, uh, as we became more bureaucratic, as we had merged with JPMorgan in 2004, it became apparent to us that if we wanted to continue to do the investing part we would need to probably lift our team out, and that’s exactly what we did in 2006. Being an entrepreneur is in my veins. It started really when I was a little girl. My dad was a chemical engineer at a printing supply company by day and an entrepreneur by night. He had everything from running an accounting service to manufacturing soap and rust removers. He thought he would put his kids to work on those manufacturing lines and teach us about reporting, responsibility, etc. My grandparents immigrated here from Greece. One had a grocery store, the other had a cleaners and shoe repair shop, and my mom was a teacher. So after being at the bank for about 25 years, it became apparent to me that it was time to lift out and try something else.
Aoifinn Devitt: What a great story, growing up essentially on the shop floor. Were there any kind of lessons that you took from that time in terms of the importance perhaps of being in the weeds, understanding what goes on in the weeds, anything that working with your history of entrepreneurs in your family taught you?
Connie Teska: Yes, for sure. One was resilience. No matter what, if the product had to get off the line, you had to be there and you had to wait until it was finished. Your speed of response to adversity was key. You had to make changes on the spot if one of the filling machines didn’t work or what have you. And it was always about never giving up, and keeping an eye on the prize, as my dad used to say. So it was the experience of developing that good work ethic that I think had been brought down by generations that really came into the corporate life that I had taken on at J.P. Morgan.
Aoifinn Devitt: And obviously, setting up an investment firm has its I own, suppose, considerations given some of the regulatory barriers to entry. Maybe they’re even growing right now, the barriers to entry. So when it came to establishing your own investment firm, what was the appeal in carving your own path and what were some of the trade-offs you had to think about?
Connie Teska: So it was sort of an easy decision for me because in 2004, JPMorgan bought Bank One and by 2005 was starting to integrate the businesses across the line. And we were offered, uh, and I was offered a position in New York at the time, uh, but it was a position to be really not on the investing side, on the operations side of the investing business. And I thought to myself, I had just built this from scratch on the, uh, Bank One platform. Why would I want to do that? And it was explained to me that really what I needed to and wanted to have was a career at JPMorgan and that my skills, my leadership skills, my talents, etc., would be used to anywhere in the bank that they saw fit and not an investing career path. So that was a decision point for me to say that I really wanted to stay with investing, and the best way to do that was to lift our team out. The timing was right for me. My children were were older, didn’t need me as much after I had had years and years of nannies, being a working mom for all of those years. And it just seemed like the right way, right time to be able to lift out and start it. Now, being a woman and starting an investment firm in 2006 came with its own set of challenges. Starting the business was not a problem because we had done that now 3 times, uh, in an entrepreneurial setting in the bank, but it was more about finding commercial real estate and looking for the appropriate place on how to house this, uh, that became significant. And then as we were sitting with some people in our conference room, they asked who was setting up the firm, and we said we are, and they said, but you’re women, are you doing this full-time? And we said, of course we’re doing this full-time. And it became clear and evident to us that this was an unusual stance for a woman to set up her own investment firm in the environment. And they indicated that there were mandates for people like us. And of course, we had never really considered that as we were starting, but started to look into that and really decided to get certified as a women-owned investment firm, and that was quite a process in and of itself.
Aoifinn Devitt: And in your experience, how is that process improving, or maybe the experience improving currently since 2006, or is it at all? Is it getting more challenging as the barriers to entry, I would suggest for all asset managers, are rising?
Connie Teska: Barriers to entry are rising. But really, I think for women and diverse, it’s never been easy and continues to be a struggle. The hedge fund industry in particular, and money management in general, is a man’s world even today. Even with all the massive diversity pushes that are— have been given, only about 5% of women actually are in the financial world, from trading desks to asset managers. Now, certainly there are a wealth of participants in the marketing areas, investment relations, operations, compliance, just not in the driver’s seat. And I think one of the reasons is that it’s really difficult to find mentors and role models. So why is it important? It’s important because women invest differently, and there’s been quite a lot written about this, and I’m certainly not an expert on the science about it, although I’ve been a recipient, but their approach is different. Their approach to risk is different. Their approach to profitability is different. And all of that plays a significant role in the diversification of a portfolio, and certainly in times of stress as to the risk management of a portfolio. So I think we saw in 2008, again in 2011, and now in 2020 with the pandemic, that women actually look at risk differently and therefore make decisions differently in the portfolios that they’re investing in. Margaret Thatcher had a quote that said, “The cock may crow, but it’s the hen that lays the egg.” And that’s sort of something along with one of the sayings that I had in my office at the time, just to remind us that we really do have to look at the way we do things and why.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a really great quote, and I love it about the concept of delivering the goods. And when it comes to your experience of raising money, has there been anything that you can share, and maybe in terms of either the, some of the setbacks or challenges that you faced, maybe just through the whole process of running a firm and having to pivot through some of these market challenges that you mentioned. Any lessons that you’ve learned that you can share with us?
Connie Teska: You have to be resilient and you have to be tenacious and you can never stop. Those are kind of the things that have guided us as we’ve gone through. As soon as you think you’re getting close or something happens. Something’s bound to happen either in the markets or in your investor base that’s going to create a reason for you to have to reevaluate what you’re doing. It’s really interesting the way this has evolved. It’s a lot of work, and from that perspective, you really need to be passionate about what you’re doing. What I like most about the investment world is I really found something that I thought challenged me and forced me to keep learning about new things. So whether it’s the impact of a pandemic on your investment portfolio or a political event that happens because you don’t get a seat at the table due to some political backslapping or things like that, it becomes apparent that if you love what you’re doing, you’re going to find a way to get it done. And so, the ability to keep learning, there’s always new strategies, there’s always new adventures, new things to sort of figure out why they’re affecting an investment the way they are. And that’s sort of what keeps us going and keeps me interested in what I’m doing.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I’d love to dig in a little bit to the secrets to your resilience, because you mentioned that has been something you saw even as a child in other smaller businesses. And there was a great quote from recently deceased Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg when she said, “I think it helps in life to be a little deaf.” That she was a trailblazer. She probably found herself often as the only woman in a room or in a setting. And she turned a deaf ear to maybe some, either some comments that were inappropriate or to maybe some what we now term microaggressions, which would have been perhaps designed to keep her in her place, and she turned a deaf ear to that and became quite the icon that she was. So were there any experiences that you had as you were developing the business that, whether it you be, know, some perhaps biases that you encountered or, um, or just challenges in making a connection that you were able to overcome?
Connie Teska: Um, interesting. Of course, um, I don’t put myself on the same level as Ruth Bader Ginsburg by any means. As a matter of fact, she was certainly someone that I did a lot of reading about and looked up to over the years because I felt she was a trailblazer in her own right. And, um, that quote of having a deaf ear is really key because there are always, when you go into a finals presentation, there were always underlying quotes or just comments that were made as you walked by or anything. And if you let any of those get the best of you, it really created, it messed with your mind basically. So for us, it was about keeping clear what our mission was. Having a path to move forward and identifying what it was we were looking to do. And if we were worthy enough to get a seat at the table, we knew that our performance, our process, our strategy would speak for itself as long as we could articulately communicate it. And communication was another thing, uh, that was key. We haven’t talked about my educational background, yet, but I have a journalism degree from Northwestern University and really think that that was one of the things that significantly helped me in my career. I think training in journalism is really what trained me to be able to connect the dots, to really look at what people were thinking, to be able to ask the questions. To assess what the result was going to be and how to communicate that in an articulate way.
Aoifinn Devitt: I would also think it’s probably quite useful when it comes to doing some due diligence and investigative work on the underlying managers that you put into your portfolio. I would think having a knowledge of what the right questions to ask are and a good instinct perhaps for when you’re getting a straight answer or not is probably quite useful.
Connie Teska: Yes, you know, it’s really interesting that you would think so. One of my first jobs was teaching journalism in high school. I then went on to actually run a small technical journal when I realized I couldn’t make enough money doing that. And it wasn’t until I got to the bank where I was given the opportunity to not only handle media relations for a Big Ten bank at the time that had a lot of news coming out, and there were newspapers twice a day at that point, and you knew how well you did on the news report that you read on the way home, was that as we went through that, it was important to realize that asking questions like a scientist or like a detective, a journalist really works at getting to the bottom of what was happening and how.. And so, for me, that connecting the dots, being able to ask the questions, and assessing in a way that is not antagonistic really helps in doing that due diligence to a manager. After I had all these stints, I went back for my MBA and ultimately was offered this position in corporate investments. And what became apparent was in doing the due diligence for underlying managers or talking with people that were going to invest, You had to find a way as to what their integrity was, what their values were, how they affected that with the people they worked with. And it did things like forced us to sort of go down and look in garages and see what the cars were at the time. Look at what people were doing with their outside activities. So, different ways to come to the same conclusion, but by asking questions.. So I find that having that journalism degree affords me a really different look than others at that particular group of people and asking questions.
Aoifinn Devitt: And just before coming back to your personal story, look, the area you invest in, hedge funds, have seen quite an evolution, I’m sure, in the reception towards them since you launched your firm. In that time since ’06, there have been at least two market crisis, but yet you’ve stuck to your knitting in focusing on hedge funds. How do you perceive they are viewed today by the institutional investor base?
Connie Teska: Well, it certainly has had its peaks and valleys. When we first came out, hedge funds were clearly identified as an appropriate asset class to help reduce risk and increase return. And during those crises, especially 2008, 2009, it was a really welcome addition to a portfolio. Later, it became a little bit more difficult in a straight-up equity market. It was very difficult for hedge funds to prove their value, and we decided long ago that we weren’t going to add beta to the portfolio by going along with the pack, and we were gonna continue to look for hedged portfolios where we could protect on the downside because this upward trend wouldn’t go on forever. And I think if you fast forward to now, we always knew there would be something that would change the direction of the market, Little did we think that it would be a pandemic and of this size. But I think hedge funds again are becoming an investment that institutional investors, endowments realize have a place in the portfolio if they’re sized correctly and can really help to reduce risk and protect the principle of the capital that these institutions have. So it’s about sticking to your knitting and understanding what the markets are telling you and creating a portfolio that can be resilient for the right reasons.
Aoifinn Devitt: Having done quite a bit of work in the hedge fund area myself, it is never a dull area to be analyzing. I think it’s full of some of the most fascinating investors that are out there, and there’s always certainly new strategies and just innovative ways of seeing the world to look at. So I can certainly see why there would be a case for sticking to one’s knitting there. And just going back to your own career and key people or key pieces of advice that you received, are there any that you can share?
Connie Teska: Sure. You know, key pieces of advice, that’s an interesting one. I think that when I moved to the corporate investments area after I got my MBA, I worked for a man who actually became my mentor afterwards. And one of the things that he talked about was constantly learning. It didn’t matter what level or how mundane it was. You needed to be able to roll up your sleeves and go to the board and learn. And that’s what is so exciting about the investment world and the finance world is that there’s always a nuance, there’s always something different, and that’s what keeps you passionate about it. But you have to be open to constantly learning and moving forward as opposed to only relying on your historical perspectives. So I would say that for sure. Another one of my bosses, which was the first boss I had at the bank, who was an old editor of one of the major newspapers in Chicago, and he was a tell-it-like-it-is kind of guy, very gruff, etc. And he, in his own right, really provided advice of being able to ask the right questions, get the answer, and communicate it in a succinct manner. And if you can communicate it and always be ahead of the problem, you’re going to gain many more positive people and positive scenarios to talk with you than you are if you wait for whatever was negative happened and you didn’t communicate it. So those two lessons, sort of being in in a constant learning mode and being willing to communicate whether it’s good news or bad have sort of driven my career and sort of the values that we put forth in Plucios today. From a personal perspective, really it was my family and my values there that said you can do and be anything you want to be. And be able to move forward and do that as well. Kind of reach for the stars.
Aoifinn Devitt: Absolutely, and those are great pieces of advice, and I love in particular the idea of owning a mistake early, because I think that’s something that I’ve certainly heard before. We all know when something’s going wrong, and I think that maybe any reticence about getting in front of clients is usually the wrong approach, because I think that usually clients and counterparts will very much appreciate early honesty with a problem, as opposed to them having to find out and confront you with it. So I think that that’s certainly very sound advice. Being from a Greek family, I’m sure there are some creed or motto that you grew up with. And even Plutus itself, I know, has a special meaning. Is there anything, any of the creed or motto side that you can share?
Connie Teska: So, Plousios means wealth, abundance, and riches, and it is obviously a Greek word. But interestingly, when we were trying to come up for a name for our firm, you can see we— you start at the A’s and we got all the way down to the P’s because so many of them were taken. But we really wanted to find a word that had meaning, and not everybody really understands it. And my business partner at the time thought it was a good name, liked it, but wasn’t sure. And so it wasn’t until we met a Greek businessman who heard what our name was and said, oh my goodness, that’s such a good word. And I think that that is sort of a credo to make sure that everything you’re doing really has meaning for what you’re trying to do and what you’re trying to present. I think we talked about learning and communicating as that, but really it’s also about helping others. And ultimately, I believe that it’s a challenge for women in the finance and investing world, and it’s up to us that are in it today to try to create the path and lift them as we go forward and take them along. And if they do that, the pool of women that are in this business will increase, and it will give us an opportunity to share the resilience of this industry with others.
Aoifinn Devitt: And indeed to pass it on. I love that idea of passing it on. And my final question is around any advice you would you have for your younger self, maybe for that journalism student? Is there any wisdom that you have accreted over the years that you maybe wish you had known back then?
Connie Teska: Well, there’s a lot of advice looking back at it. One of the first things is I should have done this a lot sooner than I did. It would have been a lot easier and I you started, know, in the late ’90s or early 2000s. But then again, wouldn’t— that I wouldn’t have had the knowledge that I had and the experiences to be able to do that. But you can do anything you set your mind to. Of course, everybody sort of says that, but listen before you speak. And I think the most important thing is to be flexible. You’re not sure what direction it’s going to take, but be willing to try, and then all of those experiences in your life end up coming together as you progress through your career, but that only happens if you’re flexible, and the other thing I would say is people matter, not only your mentors, but everybody you come in contact with really has— makes an impression on you in some way or another, and there’s something to take away if you listen and think about it and apply it in a way of having grace, dignity, and strength in what you’re doing and how you move forward.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, that is a lovely note to end on, and I think even harking back to your comment earlier about this shop room floor and the need to cope with adversity by making changes on the spot. I think that’s the kind of flexibility that perhaps you’re referring to here. It’s certainly needed more than ever in times like this. So, thank you, Connie. It’s been a pleasure speaking with you, and thank you for what I believe is the wealth, abundance, and riches that you bring to our profession through your mentorship and your example and being such a role model for other women in the profession, including me. So, um, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing your insights with us.
Connie Teska: Well, thank you so much. I enjoyed it, and, uh, thank you for having me. Really appreciate it.
Aoifinn Devitt: 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. 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.
