Women Online on Wall Street
Wall Street has long been denominated by men, but in at least one area women are leading: leveraging social media to garner visibility.
Take four examples of women with the title of global investment officer or chief strategist:
—Wei Li at Blackrock has 277,000 LinkedIn followers
—Solita Marcelli at UBS has 130,000
—Liz Ann Sonders at Schwab has 83,000
—Saira Malik at Nuveen has 72,000
Those are big numbers considering they are not CEOs or otherwise famous.
The reason they have such large follower counts is because they post high-quality, informational content on a consistent basis.
One of the underappreciated aspects of social media in the business world is that it can help level the playing field for women in male-dominated industries like finance.
One prominent female CIO once told me that she felt posting online helped make her more prominent which she said gave her more career alternatives and helped insulate her from being fired.
The other aspect she mentioned was that she could largely control what she posted and when and how much. She didn’t have to rely on the firm’s marketing budget in the same way as she would have for other promotional opportunities, such as speaking at events.
There have always been Wall Street strategists and heads of research who have become well known because of the research they published. Barton Biggs, Byron Wien and Mary Meeker are some of the names that come to mind. All of them depended however on their firm’s backing to publish.
That is less true for social media, where the volume of engagement – from likes to followers – is more dependent on how the audience responds to the content.
The four women I follow all also pursue the traditional routes of going on CNBC or Bloomberg TV. But posting both videos and text on LinkedIn, X and other platforms opens additional avenues.
Wall Street is a place where everything has a price.
Being influencial on social media is a rare exception to that rule, however.
That’s because you can’t really buy followers. At least not followers who will engage with your posts by sharing, commenting and liking them.
You have to earn a following. And you do that by publishing valuable and insightful content.
I suspect that is one of the things the women who have succeeded in this area relish.
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BRIEF OBSERVATIONS
THINGS I’M NOT DOING ANYMORE: Greg Isenberg has the right idea here: we should all keep a list of “things i’m not doing anymore.” I have a bunch of these Google Doc lists: Places I Want to Go; Books I Want to Read; Movies I Want to See; People I Want to Meet. The most poignant is: People Who Have Died. That one is to remind me to make it count.
COLDPLAY’S DRUMMER: No one evidently knows the name of Coldplay’s dummer. And that’s probably a good thing. All the benefits; few of the problems.
SPENDING YOUR LAST DAYS: Daniel Kahneman wrote about the psychology of judgement. He shocked many with his decision to end his own life by assisted suicide just before his 90th bithday. Fascinating account of how he spent his final days.
DIGITAL NATIVES: Many young people are struggling to find work. From Dan Koe comes a timely reminder that the olds will pay you to help them navigate the modern world.
ROMAN NAILS: Fascinating story about how the Romans, retreating from Scotland, buried a massive number of iron nails to ensure they wouldn’t be discovered by their enemies. They did such a good job they weren’t found until recently.
Please reach out if you have any thoughts about today’s newsletter. I enjoy hearing from readers. Send me a message if you want to talk or meet up if you are in NYC.
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