Michael Davis: I used to say when I started out in asset management, I would ask people on the team, what do we sell? And they would say, we sell assets, we sell portfolios. I was like, no, we sell trust. At the end of the day, you sell trust. If you have a trusting relationship with your clients, they will buy from you. If you lose that trust, they will buy nothing from you. So at the end of the day, what is most sacred is a relationship you build with that client, their belief that you’re telling them straight, that you’re giving them information that is straight from the heart, that’s authentic, that you’re not shading it, and that you’re looking out for their best interest.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Hello 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 Michael Davis, who is Head of Retirement Services at T. Rowe Price, where he leads a team that works to deepen the firm’s engagement with retirement clients by leveraging capabilities across business units globally. He’s had a long career in finance interspersed with spells of public service, including in particular a role as Assistant Secretary in the US Department of Labor from 2009 to 2012. He’s a master’s in public policy from Harvard and remains committed to the study of global leadership as well as the promotion of opportunity. Welcome, Michael. Thanks for joining me today.
Michael Davis: It’s great to be with you, Aoife.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, you have a fascinating background, and that is exactly why I picked up on it on LinkedIn and reached out to you. Can you tell us a little bit about that, your role and how you ended up in finance, some of the public service that was interspersed alongside it?
Michael Davis: Well, first, it’s a privilege to be with you today and with your audience. Thanks again for having me. My road into finance was probably not traditional. I grew up inner city in Dallas, and I was always fascinated by why you had certain goods in my neighborhood, but I would go across town and you had those same goods, but they were much higher quality. And I always thought that, look, the money is the same, so why should the lettuce that we buy in my inner city neighborhood be any different from the lettuce that was available across town? So that started to get me thinking about just finance and marketing and just how goods are distributed. But then when I got to college, this was a time of sort of the South Africa movement and all the conversations around apartheid. And there were sort of a movement to divest from companies that were invested in South Africa. And I had never thought of finance as a political tool, as a way to sort of achieve a social objective. So it sort of turned me on to that possibility. And so that sparked a, a thought in my mind. I thought I would go into retail finance. Finance, because honestly, that’s all I knew. But when I got to Harvard, I met some students who said, you know, have you ever thought about investment banking? And because I grew up in a neighborhood where you didn’t have any investment bankers, I was like, what is that? So they explained it to me and it sounded like something I would want to do. So I went into investment banking. I worked for JP Morgan, literally on Wall Street. We were located at 60 Wall Street and what we were financing was most public infrastructure. So it would be airports, toll roads, a lot of the public power, both transmission and distribution facilities. It was just a wonderful sort of juxtaposition of government and finance. And if I look at sort of my life in finance, I’ve always had sort of that Venn diagram between government, public policy, finance, investment.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, certainly it’s a rare, I’d say, Venn diagram, but a very welcome to see that just the overlap of those different features. And before we talk about some of your time in the White House, global leadership as well is of interest to you. And you said You have it on your LinkedIn profile that you advocate for diversity efforts, including, um, University of Texas. When did you first get interested in that and, and what are you doing in that domain today?
Michael Davis: Yeah, and I’ll take it in two parts. First, the global leadership, and second, the diversity. First, from a leadership perspective, I guess I didn’t grow up thinking that I was a leader. I was someone that was kind of unique and odd in some ways because I grew up in the inner city, but the school I went to, the high school I went to, was crosstown, and it was a very went to a wealthy school and I was sort of a nerd in my neighborhood where I was reading these books that I didn’t want people to know I was reading because it didn’t make me part of the cool crowd. And then when I went across town, I was a little bit more earthy than they probably were prepared for. And I was not used to an environment where you had so much wealth. So I felt like an ambassador in some respects and sort of translating my experience for across town audience and then vice versa. But what I found over time is that the skill set that I I learned from that translation was helpful. And it allowed me to engage with a variety of audiences. I don’t care if you’re cleaning the boardroom or if you’re the CEO of it. I felt like I could engage with that person the same way. And I also learned that everybody is fundamentally the same, right? And if you have a sort of sense of basic human dignity and you treat everybody with respect, I find that good things tend to happen. So as I grew into that, I found that to be sort of a leadership quality. And as I’ve been fortunate enough to manage teams, both large and small, I’ve carried that with me. I’ll also say from a leadership perspective, I’m a student of history and I’m also a student of good leaders. And the leaders I’ve tried to pattern myself after aren’t just leaders who have had business success, but they also have done it in an ethical way. I think we all know people who may have taken shortcuts. They got to the top, they crawled over a lot of people to do it. I never felt like that was who I wanted to be. And I wanted to pattern myself after people who had that balance, who operated with integrity, who treated people with dignity. And so I gravitated to those people, and even if they didn’t sign up as a mentor of mine, I surreptitiously got them to become mentors by reading the books that they read, attending the talks that they attended, and just getting to know them and drawing as much as I could from them. The other thing I read a lot was presidential biographies. I always said, “Yeah, I wanna sort of learn from people who are having to deal with big, significant problems and how they navigate those problems, how they make decisions in those situations under a lot of duress. I’ve taken great instruction from Lincoln, from Roosevelt, both Teddy and Franklin, and more recent presidents, and obviously I got to serve Barack Obama. I’ve taken a lot of lessons from that. And then from a diversity standpoint, I’ve always thought that diversity is really about human respect. It’s about getting to know people and meeting them where they are. And again, having gone from inner city neighborhood to a very wealthy neighborhood in the way I grew up, again, I found that the fundamental similarities that everybody had. And so for me, diversity is about being willing to sort of engage with people where they sit and taking the time to get to know who they are, making sure that when they come together as a group, they know they have a seat at the table, they know that they’re going to be heard, and making sure that we create the kind of pathways for different people to come together. And then when you get them together, you create the kind of environment and chemistry around them that allows them to bring their best. And I find when you create diverse teams that have that kind of energy, that have that kind of chemistry, you’re going to outperform. I’m under no illusion around how diverse teams perform relative to non-diverse teams. I’ve seen it over my 60 years of life and certainly my 30 years of life in business. They do well because you create the kind of chemistry where the idea that nobody wants to talk about has life and you allow that to sort of take root in an environment where people can do something with it. But because you have respect for everybody around the room, they’re all contributing equally. In those contributions, you’re going to find a nugget of gold that you can build upon and develop something really special.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, a lot of ideas and really capturing my imagination there. And first of all, just touching on your leadership point, I think I might have found a fellow nerd who might enjoy presidential libraries as much as I do. Because I do find them to be the practical combination of all that wisdom. And I remember when I did see President Obama speak once at the Economic Club of Chicago, and one of the things he said was about the decision-making in that presidential role and getting comfortable with uncertainty. And that really stayed with me, that it’s in terms of you mentioned these, this bigger, these complex problems. And also what resonated with me, Jim, what you just said is this going back into history to find ethical leaders. Because I think in this maelstrom we’re working in today with AI and news cycles shorter, and we’re all dealing with, I suppose, unprecedented times and challenges. But having that touchstone of just someone who made the right decision at the right— at their complexity, the time that was complex for them, because we don’t often have that in our day-to-day lives. But having it—
Michael Davis: Well, I’m so glad you talked about the presidential libraries because I have found a kinship now because I do the same thing. And I was in Missouri some months ago. And got to drive through Independence, which is where President Truman’s library is. And I’ve taken a lot of instruction from his experience because he was a haberdasher. He was an accidental president. He was Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president. He wasn’t invited to a lot of the meetings with Roosevelt at the time. And when Roosevelt unfortunately passed, he sort of, you know, came into the role and he stepped into it and he had to learn. He had to do a lot of things differently from what he had done before, but he never really lost his Midwest charm. And there’s one statement that he made that I think about a lot, which is when you’re faced with a tough decision— you were talking about decision-making— and he talked about when faced with a tough decision, amass as much information as you can against the problem, make the decision, but then never look back, because a moment of absolute certainty never arrives. So I talk to people, I say, look, you get as much information as you can, you make the decision, but you can’t regret it, right? You may get information after that point, that says, well, maybe I should have done something different. But you can’t hold yourself hostage to that because you didn’t have that information available to you at the time. And for me, you know, in a lot of leadership roles, you have to make big decisions. And that gives me a lot of comfort that I feel like I did my best in that moment to make the right decision. I don’t go back to it. I don’t sort of spend a lot of anxiety around what I should have done if I didn’t have the information I had available to me at the time. So that has been very helpful to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: I think Charlie Munger has said something similar about, look at moving forward. And of course, that’s how leaders have to be. And just in terms of a segue to the discussion of the retirement business, and what you’re saying really is, I think, very much an example of what we have to handle in the retirement business. We are multiple, dealing with multiple stakeholders. I think it’s important never to lose sight of the beneficiary at the end of all of this, who could be somebody earning a very low salary, someone like those inner city, residents that you mentioned earlier with the, the lower quality produce, that may be the beneficiary we’re doing all this for. And equally, you’re dealing with corporate executives who are at a different part and point of the socioeconomic spectrum. You also need to, to work with them in terms of the solutions. So I think that was, that was my segue to, to your work at T. Rowe Price and your current focus. Can you tell us a little bit about the practice that you’re running, what you focus on there?
Michael Davis: Yes, I’m head of global retirement strategy here at T. Rowe Price, and T. Rowe Price is an interesting and wonderful institution in that of the $1.8 trillion that we manage, about about two-thirds of it is retirement related. We’re the largest manager of active target date assets in the industry. We have a record-keeping subsidiary that record keeps for about 2.5 million participants, and then we work with another 1.1 million individuals in our individual investor business. When you think about all those different elements, they individually are unique and distinctive, but when you add them together, that’s really differentiated. And as I think about the platform, I’m really excited that from a global retirement strategy perspective, we can put all that together and tell a narrative that is comprehensive, that is beyond the different individual business segments that we have, bring the best of them together, and be able to deliver a product and a view of the firm that is holistic. And we can generate research that is truly differentiated based on that entire platform. And so one of the things, for instance, we do is like a defined contribution consultant survey. And in that survey, we survey a lot of the top consultants and advisors around things that they’re expecting for the next year. But we can also supplement that by saying, well, what do participants say? What is their view? What do plan sponsors say? Right. And when those Venn diagrams come together, you have a real strong signal that allows you to separate from the noise. And it’s really exciting. And so I’m able to tell that story. I’m able to tell it not only in the US but other parts of the world. And given my— you talked about my experience in government— we all— we are very aware of the interplay between government and business when it comes to retirement, right? Government has a lot to do with designing the retirement system that is resident within our country and the countries overseas. And so we are very engaged in conversations, not only with the actors in the market, but also the regulators that surround it. So when I’m in other countries and I’m talking about retirement, I make a point of also visiting with the regulators to get to understand how they think about architecting their own retirement system.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I often ask about core beliefs, and it seems certainly a core tenet of what you’re working on here is listening to stakeholders and digesting that and delivering according to their, their desires and their wishlists. Do you have any other core beliefs when it comes to the kind of retirement solutions you offer in terms of their breadth, value for money? Obviously there’s some regulatory standards there, and then even on the kind of impact sustainability spectrum, where some stakeholders may wish things to move?
Michael Davis: Oh, that’s a great question. I think the first core belief is acting with integrity. And this goes back to just how I have tried to grow up in the business and those that I try to pattern myself after. I think there’s a lot of nobility in what we do. I think there’s a lot of honor in what we do, right? People are putting a lot of trust in us to manage their assets in ways that they would manage them if they had the opportunity to do so. And the financial outcomes that you create can make a tremendous difference in that person’s quality of life in retirement. In some cases, they may have to work longer if they don’t have the assets that they had hoped to have. And so I think we should all take this responsibility very seriously and understand the implications and the magnitude of what it is that we do. And so I approach the job with a lot of humility, and I encourage other people to do the same because it’s a big responsibility. And then in terms of like what you deliver, I do think in terms of core beliefs, I think having transparency around what you do is important. I think being able to describe what you do in simple terms so people understand it and can appreciate what you’re doing and don’t make it overly complicated. I think the participant communication is a really important part of that, and that helps inform the way we talk about what we do because we have a record keeper that’s actively talking to individuals each and every day. I also think, you know, there can be a mix of active and passive active assets that help to deliver outcomes for people. And certain cases, active makes more sense. In some cases, passive can be additive. And I think the collective around what asset managers do and not expressing a religion around only one approach, right? Being very holistic in the way we think about retirement delivery, I think is really key. And then the final thing I would say is diversification is really important. This is a conversation we have not only in the US, but other parts of the world. Uh, take the example of Japan, where a lot of the Japanese investors have been heavily invested in banks and short-term deposits. That was okay when inflation wasn’t a problem, but with inflation hovering around 2%, 2.5%, you have to be a lot more diversified. And so how do you move a whole country of individuals from short-term investments into a more diversified portfolio that’s got some equity allocation? I think these are really interesting public policy conversations, and certainly we want to be a part of them and we’ll continue to do that.
Aoifinn Devitt: And it does seem that there is a huge focus on this by the current administration. There’s a lot of looking overseas to say the superannuation model. There’s a lot of recognition, I think, that there will be a need to work longer, perhaps push out retirement. And I suppose that the age-old question that we get asked in private wealth, you know, will I have enough? Is with inflation not, not going away. Will there be enough? And if you were to look at 5 years, at the crystal ball part of the segment, where do you think the retirement business— what will be the issues that are exercising you in 5 years?
Michael Davis: Yeah, this is a timely question because just yesterday I was talking to our financial advisor and, you know, one of the questions they ask is, how long do you think you’re going to live? That’s the magical question that nobody knows yet. It’s the most important input into that equation of how much you’re going to need, right? Right? And so, because people don’t know that, it creates a lot of anxiety. And there are behavioral issues that come into all of this. I think that as a system, we have done a tremendous amount of good in terms of accumulating assets, in terms of defaulting people into diversified portfolios and having those portfolios do a lot of the work of rebalancing and shifting their allocation over time to get progressively more conservative as people get closer to retirement. What we haven’t done as good a job of as a system is teaching people what to do with it when they get ready to retire, right? I mean, just think about it. I mean, just all the education we’ve gotten has all been about savings. It’s been about the time value of money and setting aside and making sacrifices, but none of it talked about, okay, now here’s how you spend down assets, here’s how you decumulate, right? So I think that there is a great need to teach societies, not only ours but around the world, around how to do that effectively. Around how to consume assets, from which pot should they consume those assets first, what is the role of Social Security in all of this, how do you decumulate assets in a way that gives them longevity. These are very complicated conversations. And I would argue that because they’re so complicated and so idiosyncratic, people need help. It sort of takes you to a place of advice and providing advice at scale. I have seen the advice conversation go 100 different ways. You know, should it be a person? Should it be something automated or sort of robotic? I think most people in most surveys I’ve seen would suggest that people want to talk to someone at some point. But then how do you scale that in a way that everybody gets it? When I think about my inner city colleagues that I grew up with, how do they get that advice? How do they get the help that they need? So I think that these are really complicated public policy situations. And as I’ve been traveling around the world to the largest retirement markets, it’s a very common question. I would tell you nobody’s really solved it, but I think it will be the most important question for our generation.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a fascinating insight, that decumulation. And I’m thinking of kind of a liquidity waterfall almost that you might see for an institution being applied at an individual level. And I think you bring up a very important point around the global perspective, because one thing I know is that no one region has cracked it. But that there are aspects from every region that are really worth, you know, learning best practice from. Australia, one example seems to be where because of the, the superannuation system, there is a lot of engagement with the concept of a pension at quite an early age. And it seems to be that engagement is quite lacking in certain other countries until they get to a certain age. So nobody is actually proactively saving, interested in where it’s saved. People may default out of a default option. So that’s interesting. I think a lot of it gets to also financial literacy.
Michael Davis: Yes, it does. It is interesting. You know, when I was in government, there was always a debate around defaults versus financial literacy. And this is a conversation that Japan is having right now is can you educate a society into making the right decisions at scale, or are defaults a more effective way to get more people in the right solution more quickly? I have come to the conclusion personally that I think defaults defaults are really important to move people quickly to a better outcome than where they would have been otherwise. I think financial literacy can help at the margin, but a lot of people don’t even know where to start. And so, if you’re relying on that as a national system to move people to the right outcome, I think you’re going to lose a lot of people in translation. So I do think defaults matter. You mentioned Australia. When I was there, it was really interesting because they certainly are looking at this question of advice at scale. And how to provide and how to get more people in the pipeline to be able to provide that advice. One thing though, because they have people that are sort of, you know, have a mandatory system, people are automatically defaulted, that delivery is not through the employer, of course, it’s through the superannuation systems. One of the challenges that they have is they call them members, as you know, they’re not as directly engaged with their savings. And so now as you get to decumulation, you get to this point where, okay, you have to be very engaged with your savings. And so they have a gap that they’re trying to close with respect to that awareness and understanding. The other thing that they have there is a concern around housing prices. And we recently did a Global Retirement Saver Study, and that came out as the number one concern that Australian savers had is around housing costs and will their retirement savings give them enough to continue with that lifestyle and support their kids and their housing endeavors. So we all have challenges that we’re navigating and they’re all different. They’re all distinct and there’s no perfect system. So I think we’re all trying to navigate this question of retirement and advice and trying to figure out how to design and architect the best system for everybody.
Aoifinn Devitt: One thing I’ll throw out there in terms of the advice piece is I think a critical piece of when it comes to taking financial advice is trust. I think you have to trust the provider of that advice because you have to trust that they’re that they are plugged in and, and essentially not tone deaf, that they understand you. And I would suggest that getting back to your leadership mentors and, uh, some of the role models, that some of the characteristic of them is they, whether they’re in politics or business, they had the trust of a body of the population. And I think that may be a little lacking today. We have the K-shaped economy naturally destroys trust.
Michael Davis: That’s right. Operate from a belief that there’s enough for everybody. There’s enough to go around for everybody, and you can’t take it with you. And I don’t think that societies function well when you have a small group of people that is consuming a large proportion of the national assets. I think the society works better when there’s a more equitable allocation of those assets, where people feel like their work can translate into a lifestyle that they want for themselves, their families, their kids. People should have that, that right, in my view. Globally, we’ve gotten a little bit away from that. And I think that causes anxiety, it causes strife, and it’s unnecessary because there are systems that you can put in place that give a bit more equity in the way that people experience life. I also think to your point about trust, I tell people, I used to say when I started out in asset management, I would ask people on the team, what do we sell? And they would say, we sell assets, we sell portfolios. Like, no, I was like, no, we sell trust. At the end of the day, you sell trust. If you have a trusting relationship, relationship with your clients, they will buy from you. If you lose that trust, they will buy nothing from you. So, at the end of the day, what is most sacred is a relationship you build with that client. Their belief that you’re telling them straight, that you’re giving them information that is straight from the heart, that’s authentic, that you’re not shading it, and that you’re looking out for their best interest. I would tell you, back when I started in my career at my previous firm, Sometimes I would sit on the client side of the table and we would have portfolio meetings. I just wanted to be as, as integrated as I could in what they were trying to deliver. And because we tried to do it that way, we built really deep relationships with clients and they lasted through challenging times. And I think particularly again for asset management where there is an information asymmetry, that asymmetry is we have access to information that the individuals that are benefiting from it don’t. And so they’re trusting that we’re using that information in the best interest that they have. So I think about that a lot to make sure that trust is paramount to what we do and what we deliver.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s like that, uh, device whereby at an internal meeting you put an empty chair there and you imagine that that’s the, the chair that the client is sitting in. That’s, I think that there, there are many sort of tropes like that. Well, I’d love to, since we’ve gone from the practical, the professional into the philosophical here, I’d love to now move to some personal reflections. So you’ve had an extraordinary career. That’s what I noticed. That’s why I wanted to, to have this interview. Have there been highs and lows in that? And in the case of the lows, any lessons learned?
Michael Davis: There certainly have been challenges in terms of economic cycles. And I remember, you know, when I was on Wall Street, the boom and the bust cycles were more intense. And, you know, you would hire a lot of people in boom markets and get rid of a lot of people in bust markets. And that created a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress. You know, I remember some of the times that were rough and how people were able to process that. One of the things I took from the lows is just not to internalize it. Sometimes it’s not personal. We talked about sort of presidential libraries. I’ve always been a big reader. And one of the books that I read a long time ago that I found really helpful was The Millionaire Next Door. And what The Millionaire Next Door was, it was sort of a wealth manager’s analysis of people who were wealthy. And what he found is that the people who were truly wealthy weren’t the people that you would think were wealthy. Because a lot of people that had a high income also had high expenses. And so, you know, the way you would talk about it is, you know, your worth is your assets less your liabilities. The problem was a lot of these people had a lot of high liabilities. The people that were truly wealthy were people who had progressed from their earnings potential, but they hadn’t changed their lifestyle. And they tended to be small business owners. So maybe they owned a bowling alley or they owned a refrigeration supply company. That company got better and better, but they lived in the same house that they always lived in. They drove the same station wagon that they always drove. So they didn’t have liabilities and the liabilities didn’t grow with the assets. So what I learned in terms of the lows is don’t spend ahead of what you think you’re gonna get. Some people would, you know, the bonuses are a big part of what you got on Wall Street. Some people would spend ahead of that I never did that, right? I always said, let me— until I see what it is, I’m not gonna even think about having it. And just never get yourself in a situation where you’re always having to be on that treadmill, where you have to have a certain bonus to make up for what you’ve already spent. So in terms of the lows, that’s what I learned is just be very frugal and very careful. In terms of the highs, I think you just don’t take too much from them. Think that that’s going to be forever. So in some respects, it’s like you’re sort of a long a cap and a floor, where you’re sort of operating in the middle. And you’re cutting off that amplitude, both highs and lows. And so you’re banking the highs emotionally to say, look, this is what it feels like to be on top. I’m sort of banking on that and trading on that when you have those low moments and use that as fuel to get you through those times.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that sense of balance that you’re describing there. How about any key people? Were there— this does not have to be an exhaustive list. I’m sure you’ve had many great inspirations throughout your career. Any one or two that you can call on that maybe had a particularly formative role?
Michael Davis: Well, you know, I started with my father for sure. You said he recently passed. He pastored a church for over 40 years, and I got to see how he dealt with a lot of different people in different stations in life at different moments in their lives, and he was even with all of them. The other thing is that he was the same person in the pulpit that he was at home. And, you know, I said this at his funeral, is that I never saw him smoke, drink, curse, come home late, say any unkind word to certainly my mom or anybody in the family or anybody else for that matter. He was a man that lived a life of gratitude. And so I just don’t do those things because he didn’t do those things. So I would say in terms of just the person I’ve become. I’d say that’s a lot of it. And then in business, I’ve been lucky to have some really great mentors who have taught me about the balance of family and, and work. And there’s one— I was just talking about this last night— who was vice chair— he was vice chairman of JPMorgan at the time, and we got to know each other. He was a big reader. But one of the things, for instance, he would say to me is that anytime someone in his family called, his kids or whatever, if he was leading a meeting, if he was in a big meeting, he didn’t care. He’d take the call. Now, he might say, “Look, I’ll have to call you back.” It communicated something. It communicated to his kids that I can always reach you, right? There’s never a time when something’s more important than what you’re gonna say to me. So I’ve taken that. And then I would say, just finally, Reginald Lewis, who is from Baltimore, who became a very successful businessperson. He went to Harvard Law, I think. And he grew up in Baltimore, but bought Beatrice. It was a billion-dollar acquisition. And this was some decades ago, but there weren’t a lot of examples of businessmen that were contemporary that had had that kind of success. And I remember because he had gone to Harvard, and I joined the Harvard Club in New York City, and there were no portraits of African Americans on the wall until Reginald Lewis. And I remember they put his portrait at the bottom of the banister of a big staircase And I remember when I walked in and saw that portrait for the first time, it said to me, you belong here, right? You may look different, but you can do just what he did. And it’s just ironic. I’m sitting here, you know, in Baltimore, and he was such an iconic business leader. But his example was something that certainly gave me hope and confidence that I belonged in the boardroom just like he did.
Aoifinn Devitt: And my final question is, any creed or motto that you live by? And we’ve already touched on quite a lot of the philosophical, as I mentioned, Or any words of wisdom, kernel of wisdom that you have to leave us with?
Michael Davis: Yeah, I guess there would be two. I guess one is my wife is Jamaican and her grandmother used to say, you should want for other people’s kids the same things you want for your own. And I think about that a lot is, you know, do we really think about that? Do you really think about your colleagues and thinking about their families and their kids in the same way as you think about your own? I do think about I always think about the people that I work with and the people that have worked for me over the years. When I’m talking to them, when I’m in a one-on-one meeting with them or giving them a review, if their parents were sitting on both sides of them, what would I say to that person? I think parents don’t send their kids to work for shenanigans or for people not to bring their best. It always causes me to bring my best every day and treat them as if their parents were in the room with me at the time. So that’s one. And the other thing is just, again, treat people with respect and making sure you spend the time to really get to know who they are, their wants, their needs, and you speak to that. And I found that if you do that consistently, good things tend to come from it.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Michael. And in the retirement business, I think what do we want for our clients? It is a rich life. And you have brought such a rich collection of memories, learnings, and insights here to this conversation, far exceeded my already very high expectations. So thank you very much for coming and sharing your insights with us.
Michael Davis: It was an honor to be with you. Thank you so much.
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 on 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.
Michael Davis: I used to say when I started out in asset management, I would ask people on the team, what do we sell? And they would say, we sell assets, we sell portfolios. I was like, no, we sell trust. At the end of the day, you sell trust. If you have a trusting relationship with your clients, they will buy from you. If you lose that trust, they will buy nothing from you. So at the end of the day, what is most sacred is a relationship you build with that client, their belief that you’re telling them straight, that you’re giving them information that is straight from the heart, that’s authentic, that you’re not shading it, and that you’re looking out for their best interest.
Aoifinn Devitt: I’m Aoifinn Devitt. Hello 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 Michael Davis, who is Head of Retirement Services at T. Rowe Price, where he leads a team that works to deepen the firm’s engagement with retirement clients by leveraging capabilities across business units globally. He’s had a long career in finance interspersed with spells of public service, including in particular a role as Assistant Secretary in the US Department of Labor from 2009 to 2012. He’s a master’s in public policy from Harvard and remains committed to the study of global leadership as well as the promotion of opportunity. Welcome, Michael. Thanks for joining me today.
Michael Davis: It’s great to be with you, Aoife.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, you have a fascinating background, and that is exactly why I picked up on it on LinkedIn and reached out to you. Can you tell us a little bit about that, your role and how you ended up in finance, some of the public service that was interspersed alongside it?
Michael Davis: Well, first, it’s a privilege to be with you today and with your audience. Thanks again for having me. My road into finance was probably not traditional. I grew up inner city in Dallas, and I was always fascinated by why you had certain goods in my neighborhood, but I would go across town and you had those same goods, but they were much higher quality. And I always thought that, look, the money is the same, so why should the lettuce that we buy in my inner city neighborhood be any different from the lettuce that was available across town? So that started to get me thinking about just finance and marketing and just how goods are distributed. But then when I got to college, this was a time of sort of the South Africa movement and all the conversations around apartheid. And there were sort of a movement to divest from companies that were invested in South Africa. And I had never thought of finance as a political tool, as a way to sort of achieve a social objective. So it sort of turned me on to that possibility. And so that sparked a, a thought in my mind. I thought I would go into retail finance. Finance, because honestly, that’s all I knew. But when I got to Harvard, I met some students who said, you know, have you ever thought about investment banking? And because I grew up in a neighborhood where you didn’t have any investment bankers, I was like, what is that? So they explained it to me and it sounded like something I would want to do. So I went into investment banking. I worked for JP Morgan, literally on Wall Street. We were located at 60 Wall Street and what we were financing was most public infrastructure. So it would be airports, toll roads, a lot of the public power, both transmission and distribution facilities. It was just a wonderful sort of juxtaposition of government and finance. And if I look at sort of my life in finance, I’ve always had sort of that Venn diagram between government, public policy, finance, investment.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, certainly it’s a rare, I’d say, Venn diagram, but a very welcome to see that just the overlap of those different features. And before we talk about some of your time in the White House, global leadership as well is of interest to you. And you said You have it on your LinkedIn profile that you advocate for diversity efforts, including, um, University of Texas. When did you first get interested in that and, and what are you doing in that domain today?
Michael Davis: Yeah, and I’ll take it in two parts. First, the global leadership, and second, the diversity. First, from a leadership perspective, I guess I didn’t grow up thinking that I was a leader. I was someone that was kind of unique and odd in some ways because I grew up in the inner city, but the school I went to, the high school I went to, was crosstown, and it was a very went to a wealthy school and I was sort of a nerd in my neighborhood where I was reading these books that I didn’t want people to know I was reading because it didn’t make me part of the cool crowd. And then when I went across town, I was a little bit more earthy than they probably were prepared for. And I was not used to an environment where you had so much wealth. So I felt like an ambassador in some respects and sort of translating my experience for across town audience and then vice versa. But what I found over time is that the skill set that I I learned from that translation was helpful. And it allowed me to engage with a variety of audiences. I don’t care if you’re cleaning the boardroom or if you’re the CEO of it. I felt like I could engage with that person the same way. And I also learned that everybody is fundamentally the same, right? And if you have a sort of sense of basic human dignity and you treat everybody with respect, I find that good things tend to happen. So as I grew into that, I found that to be sort of a leadership quality. And as I’ve been fortunate enough to manage teams, both large and small, I’ve carried that with me. I’ll also say from a leadership perspective, I’m a student of history and I’m also a student of good leaders. And the leaders I’ve tried to pattern myself after aren’t just leaders who have had business success, but they also have done it in an ethical way. I think we all know people who may have taken shortcuts. They got to the top, they crawled over a lot of people to do it. I never felt like that was who I wanted to be. And I wanted to pattern myself after people who had that balance, who operated with integrity, who treated people with dignity. And so I gravitated to those people, and even if they didn’t sign up as a mentor of mine, I surreptitiously got them to become mentors by reading the books that they read, attending the talks that they attended, and just getting to know them and drawing as much as I could from them. The other thing I read a lot was presidential biographies. I always said, “Yeah, I wanna sort of learn from people who are having to deal with big, significant problems and how they navigate those problems, how they make decisions in those situations under a lot of duress. I’ve taken great instruction from Lincoln, from Roosevelt, both Teddy and Franklin, and more recent presidents, and obviously I got to serve Barack Obama. I’ve taken a lot of lessons from that. And then from a diversity standpoint, I’ve always thought that diversity is really about human respect. It’s about getting to know people and meeting them where they are. And again, having gone from inner city neighborhood to a very wealthy neighborhood in the way I grew up, again, I found that the fundamental similarities that everybody had. And so for me, diversity is about being willing to sort of engage with people where they sit and taking the time to get to know who they are, making sure that when they come together as a group, they know they have a seat at the table, they know that they’re going to be heard, and making sure that we create the kind of pathways for different people to come together. And then when you get them together, you create the kind of environment and chemistry around them that allows them to bring their best. And I find when you create diverse teams that have that kind of energy, that have that kind of chemistry, you’re going to outperform. I’m under no illusion around how diverse teams perform relative to non-diverse teams. I’ve seen it over my 60 years of life and certainly my 30 years of life in business. They do well because you create the kind of chemistry where the idea that nobody wants to talk about has life and you allow that to sort of take root in an environment where people can do something with it. But because you have respect for everybody around the room, they’re all contributing equally. In those contributions, you’re going to find a nugget of gold that you can build upon and develop something really special.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, a lot of ideas and really capturing my imagination there. And first of all, just touching on your leadership point, I think I might have found a fellow nerd who might enjoy presidential libraries as much as I do. Because I do find them to be the practical combination of all that wisdom. And I remember when I did see President Obama speak once at the Economic Club of Chicago, and one of the things he said was about the decision-making in that presidential role and getting comfortable with uncertainty. And that really stayed with me, that it’s in terms of you mentioned these, this bigger, these complex problems. And also what resonated with me, Jim, what you just said is this going back into history to find ethical leaders. Because I think in this maelstrom we’re working in today with AI and news cycles shorter, and we’re all dealing with, I suppose, unprecedented times and challenges. But having that touchstone of just someone who made the right decision at the right— at their complexity, the time that was complex for them, because we don’t often have that in our day-to-day lives. But having it—
Michael Davis: Well, I’m so glad you talked about the presidential libraries because I have found a kinship now because I do the same thing. And I was in Missouri some months ago. And got to drive through Independence, which is where President Truman’s library is. And I’ve taken a lot of instruction from his experience because he was a haberdasher. He was an accidental president. He was Franklin Roosevelt’s vice president. He wasn’t invited to a lot of the meetings with Roosevelt at the time. And when Roosevelt unfortunately passed, he sort of, you know, came into the role and he stepped into it and he had to learn. He had to do a lot of things differently from what he had done before, but he never really lost his Midwest charm. And there’s one statement that he made that I think about a lot, which is when you’re faced with a tough decision— you were talking about decision-making— and he talked about when faced with a tough decision, amass as much information as you can against the problem, make the decision, but then never look back, because a moment of absolute certainty never arrives. So I talk to people, I say, look, you get as much information as you can, you make the decision, but you can’t regret it, right? You may get information after that point, that says, well, maybe I should have done something different. But you can’t hold yourself hostage to that because you didn’t have that information available to you at the time. And for me, you know, in a lot of leadership roles, you have to make big decisions. And that gives me a lot of comfort that I feel like I did my best in that moment to make the right decision. I don’t go back to it. I don’t sort of spend a lot of anxiety around what I should have done if I didn’t have the information I had available to me at the time. So that has been very helpful to me.
Aoifinn Devitt: I think Charlie Munger has said something similar about, look at moving forward. And of course, that’s how leaders have to be. And just in terms of a segue to the discussion of the retirement business, and what you’re saying really is, I think, very much an example of what we have to handle in the retirement business. We are multiple, dealing with multiple stakeholders. I think it’s important never to lose sight of the beneficiary at the end of all of this, who could be somebody earning a very low salary, someone like those inner city, residents that you mentioned earlier with the, the lower quality produce, that may be the beneficiary we’re doing all this for. And equally, you’re dealing with corporate executives who are at a different part and point of the socioeconomic spectrum. You also need to, to work with them in terms of the solutions. So I think that was, that was my segue to, to your work at T. Rowe Price and your current focus. Can you tell us a little bit about the practice that you’re running, what you focus on there?
Michael Davis: Yes, I’m head of global retirement strategy here at T. Rowe Price, and T. Rowe Price is an interesting and wonderful institution in that of the $1.8 trillion that we manage, about about two-thirds of it is retirement related. We’re the largest manager of active target date assets in the industry. We have a record-keeping subsidiary that record keeps for about 2.5 million participants, and then we work with another 1.1 million individuals in our individual investor business. When you think about all those different elements, they individually are unique and distinctive, but when you add them together, that’s really differentiated. And as I think about the platform, I’m really excited that from a global retirement strategy perspective, we can put all that together and tell a narrative that is comprehensive, that is beyond the different individual business segments that we have, bring the best of them together, and be able to deliver a product and a view of the firm that is holistic. And we can generate research that is truly differentiated based on that entire platform. And so one of the things, for instance, we do is like a defined contribution consultant survey. And in that survey, we survey a lot of the top consultants and advisors around things that they’re expecting for the next year. But we can also supplement that by saying, well, what do participants say? What is their view? What do plan sponsors say? Right. And when those Venn diagrams come together, you have a real strong signal that allows you to separate from the noise. And it’s really exciting. And so I’m able to tell that story. I’m able to tell it not only in the US but other parts of the world. And given my— you talked about my experience in government— we all— we are very aware of the interplay between government and business when it comes to retirement, right? Government has a lot to do with designing the retirement system that is resident within our country and the countries overseas. And so we are very engaged in conversations, not only with the actors in the market, but also the regulators that surround it. So when I’m in other countries and I’m talking about retirement, I make a point of also visiting with the regulators to get to understand how they think about architecting their own retirement system.
Aoifinn Devitt: And I often ask about core beliefs, and it seems certainly a core tenet of what you’re working on here is listening to stakeholders and digesting that and delivering according to their, their desires and their wishlists. Do you have any other core beliefs when it comes to the kind of retirement solutions you offer in terms of their breadth, value for money? Obviously there’s some regulatory standards there, and then even on the kind of impact sustainability spectrum, where some stakeholders may wish things to move?
Michael Davis: Oh, that’s a great question. I think the first core belief is acting with integrity. And this goes back to just how I have tried to grow up in the business and those that I try to pattern myself after. I think there’s a lot of nobility in what we do. I think there’s a lot of honor in what we do, right? People are putting a lot of trust in us to manage their assets in ways that they would manage them if they had the opportunity to do so. And the financial outcomes that you create can make a tremendous difference in that person’s quality of life in retirement. In some cases, they may have to work longer if they don’t have the assets that they had hoped to have. And so I think we should all take this responsibility very seriously and understand the implications and the magnitude of what it is that we do. And so I approach the job with a lot of humility, and I encourage other people to do the same because it’s a big responsibility. And then in terms of like what you deliver, I do think in terms of core beliefs, I think having transparency around what you do is important. I think being able to describe what you do in simple terms so people understand it and can appreciate what you’re doing and don’t make it overly complicated. I think the participant communication is a really important part of that, and that helps inform the way we talk about what we do because we have a record keeper that’s actively talking to individuals each and every day. I also think, you know, there can be a mix of active and passive active assets that help to deliver outcomes for people. And certain cases, active makes more sense. In some cases, passive can be additive. And I think the collective around what asset managers do and not expressing a religion around only one approach, right? Being very holistic in the way we think about retirement delivery, I think is really key. And then the final thing I would say is diversification is really important. This is a conversation we have not only in the US, but other parts of the world. Uh, take the example of Japan, where a lot of the Japanese investors have been heavily invested in banks and short-term deposits. That was okay when inflation wasn’t a problem, but with inflation hovering around 2%, 2.5%, you have to be a lot more diversified. And so how do you move a whole country of individuals from short-term investments into a more diversified portfolio that’s got some equity allocation? I think these are really interesting public policy conversations, and certainly we want to be a part of them and we’ll continue to do that.
Aoifinn Devitt: And it does seem that there is a huge focus on this by the current administration. There’s a lot of looking overseas to say the superannuation model. There’s a lot of recognition, I think, that there will be a need to work longer, perhaps push out retirement. And I suppose that the age-old question that we get asked in private wealth, you know, will I have enough? Is with inflation not, not going away. Will there be enough? And if you were to look at 5 years, at the crystal ball part of the segment, where do you think the retirement business— what will be the issues that are exercising you in 5 years?
Michael Davis: Yeah, this is a timely question because just yesterday I was talking to our financial advisor and, you know, one of the questions they ask is, how long do you think you’re going to live? That’s the magical question that nobody knows yet. It’s the most important input into that equation of how much you’re going to need, right? Right? And so, because people don’t know that, it creates a lot of anxiety. And there are behavioral issues that come into all of this. I think that as a system, we have done a tremendous amount of good in terms of accumulating assets, in terms of defaulting people into diversified portfolios and having those portfolios do a lot of the work of rebalancing and shifting their allocation over time to get progressively more conservative as people get closer to retirement. What we haven’t done as good a job of as a system is teaching people what to do with it when they get ready to retire, right? I mean, just think about it. I mean, just all the education we’ve gotten has all been about savings. It’s been about the time value of money and setting aside and making sacrifices, but none of it talked about, okay, now here’s how you spend down assets, here’s how you decumulate, right? So I think that there is a great need to teach societies, not only ours but around the world, around how to do that effectively. Around how to consume assets, from which pot should they consume those assets first, what is the role of Social Security in all of this, how do you decumulate assets in a way that gives them longevity. These are very complicated conversations. And I would argue that because they’re so complicated and so idiosyncratic, people need help. It sort of takes you to a place of advice and providing advice at scale. I have seen the advice conversation go 100 different ways. You know, should it be a person? Should it be something automated or sort of robotic? I think most people in most surveys I’ve seen would suggest that people want to talk to someone at some point. But then how do you scale that in a way that everybody gets it? When I think about my inner city colleagues that I grew up with, how do they get that advice? How do they get the help that they need? So I think that these are really complicated public policy situations. And as I’ve been traveling around the world to the largest retirement markets, it’s a very common question. I would tell you nobody’s really solved it, but I think it will be the most important question for our generation.
Aoifinn Devitt: That’s a fascinating insight, that decumulation. And I’m thinking of kind of a liquidity waterfall almost that you might see for an institution being applied at an individual level. And I think you bring up a very important point around the global perspective, because one thing I know is that no one region has cracked it. But that there are aspects from every region that are really worth, you know, learning best practice from. Australia, one example seems to be where because of the, the superannuation system, there is a lot of engagement with the concept of a pension at quite an early age. And it seems to be that engagement is quite lacking in certain other countries until they get to a certain age. So nobody is actually proactively saving, interested in where it’s saved. People may default out of a default option. So that’s interesting. I think a lot of it gets to also financial literacy.
Michael Davis: Yes, it does. It is interesting. You know, when I was in government, there was always a debate around defaults versus financial literacy. And this is a conversation that Japan is having right now is can you educate a society into making the right decisions at scale, or are defaults a more effective way to get more people in the right solution more quickly? I have come to the conclusion personally that I think defaults defaults are really important to move people quickly to a better outcome than where they would have been otherwise. I think financial literacy can help at the margin, but a lot of people don’t even know where to start. And so, if you’re relying on that as a national system to move people to the right outcome, I think you’re going to lose a lot of people in translation. So I do think defaults matter. You mentioned Australia. When I was there, it was really interesting because they certainly are looking at this question of advice at scale. And how to provide and how to get more people in the pipeline to be able to provide that advice. One thing though, because they have people that are sort of, you know, have a mandatory system, people are automatically defaulted, that delivery is not through the employer, of course, it’s through the superannuation systems. One of the challenges that they have is they call them members, as you know, they’re not as directly engaged with their savings. And so now as you get to decumulation, you get to this point where, okay, you have to be very engaged with your savings. And so they have a gap that they’re trying to close with respect to that awareness and understanding. The other thing that they have there is a concern around housing prices. And we recently did a Global Retirement Saver Study, and that came out as the number one concern that Australian savers had is around housing costs and will their retirement savings give them enough to continue with that lifestyle and support their kids and their housing endeavors. So we all have challenges that we’re navigating and they’re all different. They’re all distinct and there’s no perfect system. So I think we’re all trying to navigate this question of retirement and advice and trying to figure out how to design and architect the best system for everybody.
Aoifinn Devitt: One thing I’ll throw out there in terms of the advice piece is I think a critical piece of when it comes to taking financial advice is trust. I think you have to trust the provider of that advice because you have to trust that they’re that they are plugged in and, and essentially not tone deaf, that they understand you. And I would suggest that getting back to your leadership mentors and, uh, some of the role models, that some of the characteristic of them is they, whether they’re in politics or business, they had the trust of a body of the population. And I think that may be a little lacking today. We have the K-shaped economy naturally destroys trust.
Michael Davis: That’s right. Operate from a belief that there’s enough for everybody. There’s enough to go around for everybody, and you can’t take it with you. And I don’t think that societies function well when you have a small group of people that is consuming a large proportion of the national assets. I think the society works better when there’s a more equitable allocation of those assets, where people feel like their work can translate into a lifestyle that they want for themselves, their families, their kids. People should have that, that right, in my view. Globally, we’ve gotten a little bit away from that. And I think that causes anxiety, it causes strife, and it’s unnecessary because there are systems that you can put in place that give a bit more equity in the way that people experience life. I also think to your point about trust, I tell people, I used to say when I started out in asset management, I would ask people on the team, what do we sell? And they would say, we sell assets, we sell portfolios. Like, no, I was like, no, we sell trust. At the end of the day, you sell trust. If you have a trusting relationship, relationship with your clients, they will buy from you. If you lose that trust, they will buy nothing from you. So, at the end of the day, what is most sacred is a relationship you build with that client. Their belief that you’re telling them straight, that you’re giving them information that is straight from the heart, that’s authentic, that you’re not shading it, and that you’re looking out for their best interest. I would tell you, back when I started in my career at my previous firm, Sometimes I would sit on the client side of the table and we would have portfolio meetings. I just wanted to be as, as integrated as I could in what they were trying to deliver. And because we tried to do it that way, we built really deep relationships with clients and they lasted through challenging times. And I think particularly again for asset management where there is an information asymmetry, that asymmetry is we have access to information that the individuals that are benefiting from it don’t. And so they’re trusting that we’re using that information in the best interest that they have. So I think about that a lot to make sure that trust is paramount to what we do and what we deliver.
Aoifinn Devitt: It’s like that, uh, device whereby at an internal meeting you put an empty chair there and you imagine that that’s the, the chair that the client is sitting in. That’s, I think that there, there are many sort of tropes like that. Well, I’d love to, since we’ve gone from the practical, the professional into the philosophical here, I’d love to now move to some personal reflections. So you’ve had an extraordinary career. That’s what I noticed. That’s why I wanted to, to have this interview. Have there been highs and lows in that? And in the case of the lows, any lessons learned?
Michael Davis: There certainly have been challenges in terms of economic cycles. And I remember, you know, when I was on Wall Street, the boom and the bust cycles were more intense. And, you know, you would hire a lot of people in boom markets and get rid of a lot of people in bust markets. And that created a lot of anxiety and a lot of stress. You know, I remember some of the times that were rough and how people were able to process that. One of the things I took from the lows is just not to internalize it. Sometimes it’s not personal. We talked about sort of presidential libraries. I’ve always been a big reader. And one of the books that I read a long time ago that I found really helpful was The Millionaire Next Door. And what The Millionaire Next Door was, it was sort of a wealth manager’s analysis of people who were wealthy. And what he found is that the people who were truly wealthy weren’t the people that you would think were wealthy. Because a lot of people that had a high income also had high expenses. And so, you know, the way you would talk about it is, you know, your worth is your assets less your liabilities. The problem was a lot of these people had a lot of high liabilities. The people that were truly wealthy were people who had progressed from their earnings potential, but they hadn’t changed their lifestyle. And they tended to be small business owners. So maybe they owned a bowling alley or they owned a refrigeration supply company. That company got better and better, but they lived in the same house that they always lived in. They drove the same station wagon that they always drove. So they didn’t have liabilities and the liabilities didn’t grow with the assets. So what I learned in terms of the lows is don’t spend ahead of what you think you’re gonna get. Some people would, you know, the bonuses are a big part of what you got on Wall Street. Some people would spend ahead of that I never did that, right? I always said, let me— until I see what it is, I’m not gonna even think about having it. And just never get yourself in a situation where you’re always having to be on that treadmill, where you have to have a certain bonus to make up for what you’ve already spent. So in terms of the lows, that’s what I learned is just be very frugal and very careful. In terms of the highs, I think you just don’t take too much from them. Think that that’s going to be forever. So in some respects, it’s like you’re sort of a long a cap and a floor, where you’re sort of operating in the middle. And you’re cutting off that amplitude, both highs and lows. And so you’re banking the highs emotionally to say, look, this is what it feels like to be on top. I’m sort of banking on that and trading on that when you have those low moments and use that as fuel to get you through those times.
Aoifinn Devitt: I love that sense of balance that you’re describing there. How about any key people? Were there— this does not have to be an exhaustive list. I’m sure you’ve had many great inspirations throughout your career. Any one or two that you can call on that maybe had a particularly formative role?
Michael Davis: Well, you know, I started with my father for sure. You said he recently passed. He pastored a church for over 40 years, and I got to see how he dealt with a lot of different people in different stations in life at different moments in their lives, and he was even with all of them. The other thing is that he was the same person in the pulpit that he was at home. And, you know, I said this at his funeral, is that I never saw him smoke, drink, curse, come home late, say any unkind word to certainly my mom or anybody in the family or anybody else for that matter. He was a man that lived a life of gratitude. And so I just don’t do those things because he didn’t do those things. So I would say in terms of just the person I’ve become. I’d say that’s a lot of it. And then in business, I’ve been lucky to have some really great mentors who have taught me about the balance of family and, and work. And there’s one— I was just talking about this last night— who was vice chair— he was vice chairman of JPMorgan at the time, and we got to know each other. He was a big reader. But one of the things, for instance, he would say to me is that anytime someone in his family called, his kids or whatever, if he was leading a meeting, if he was in a big meeting, he didn’t care. He’d take the call. Now, he might say, “Look, I’ll have to call you back.” It communicated something. It communicated to his kids that I can always reach you, right? There’s never a time when something’s more important than what you’re gonna say to me. So I’ve taken that. And then I would say, just finally, Reginald Lewis, who is from Baltimore, who became a very successful businessperson. He went to Harvard Law, I think. And he grew up in Baltimore, but bought Beatrice. It was a billion-dollar acquisition. And this was some decades ago, but there weren’t a lot of examples of businessmen that were contemporary that had had that kind of success. And I remember because he had gone to Harvard, and I joined the Harvard Club in New York City, and there were no portraits of African Americans on the wall until Reginald Lewis. And I remember they put his portrait at the bottom of the banister of a big staircase And I remember when I walked in and saw that portrait for the first time, it said to me, you belong here, right? You may look different, but you can do just what he did. And it’s just ironic. I’m sitting here, you know, in Baltimore, and he was such an iconic business leader. But his example was something that certainly gave me hope and confidence that I belonged in the boardroom just like he did.
Aoifinn Devitt: And my final question is, any creed or motto that you live by? And we’ve already touched on quite a lot of the philosophical, as I mentioned, Or any words of wisdom, kernel of wisdom that you have to leave us with?
Michael Davis: Yeah, I guess there would be two. I guess one is my wife is Jamaican and her grandmother used to say, you should want for other people’s kids the same things you want for your own. And I think about that a lot is, you know, do we really think about that? Do you really think about your colleagues and thinking about their families and their kids in the same way as you think about your own? I do think about I always think about the people that I work with and the people that have worked for me over the years. When I’m talking to them, when I’m in a one-on-one meeting with them or giving them a review, if their parents were sitting on both sides of them, what would I say to that person? I think parents don’t send their kids to work for shenanigans or for people not to bring their best. It always causes me to bring my best every day and treat them as if their parents were in the room with me at the time. So that’s one. And the other thing is just, again, treat people with respect and making sure you spend the time to really get to know who they are, their wants, their needs, and you speak to that. And I found that if you do that consistently, good things tend to come from it.
Aoifinn Devitt: Well, thank you so much, Michael. And in the retirement business, I think what do we want for our clients? It is a rich life. And you have brought such a rich collection of memories, learnings, and insights here to this conversation, far exceeded my already very high expectations. So thank you very much for coming and sharing your insights with us.
Michael Davis: It was an honor to be with you. Thank you so much.
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 on 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.
