Transcript:
[00:00:00] Kiran: Hi, my name is Kiran Bishop. I'm 17 years old, and I became interested in finance freshman year of high school. As I became part of financial clubs, I realized that a great deal of the time, I was one of, if not the only, girl in the room. This feeling of being disconnected to everyone around me while simultaneously being in a room full of people is what inspired me to create this podcast, Woman Who Earn.
[00:00:31] Kiran: I created this podcast to help young girls like me gain knowledge and wisdom from industry professionals on topics ranging from how to break into finance to how to deal with unique challenges posed from being a woman in the industry. It is important for me, and I hope that it is also important for you, that feeling alienated by a situation out of your control does not inhibit your motivation to pursue whatever you want.
[00:00:54] Kiran: This is Women Who Earn.
[00:00:57] Kiran: Caroline Lovelace, founder and managing partner [00:01:00] of Rose Hill Park, has nearly 20 years experience in financial services and 15 years experience in alternative investments, including direct venture capital, private equity, and hedge funds. Previously to Rose Hill Park, Ms. Lovelace was a founding partner of Pine Street Alternative Asset Management and co portfolio manager for its seed fund for emerging hedge funds with a focus on women and minority owned managers. Ms. Lovelace was also a key element in the successful fundraise of a 200 million dollar allocation for a large state pension plan.
[00:01:31] Kiran: Before Pine Street, Ms. Lovelace was a Managing Director of Provident Group Asset Management, where she was responsible for hedge fund research, new manager selection, and oversight of the due diligence process. In addition, Ms. Lovelace worked with the hedge Fund Research Inc to conduct the first comprehensive survey of the woman and minority owned hedge fund universe.
[00:01:53] Kiran: Previously, Ms. Lovelace spent several years with JPMorgan Chase and Co in New York. First in the [00:02:00] investment banking, then moving to JPMorgan Capital, the firm's direct private equity division to invest in and manage a portfolio of healthcare and financial services investments, she served on the board of directors for several private companies.
[00:02:15] Kiran: Ms. Lovelace holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in Economics and an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School.
[00:02:24] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. I think we can just get started. So my first question for you is, how did you get to where you are today?
[00:02:36] Caroline: How do I get to where I work today? It's been a journey, to be sure. And I think that part of a career in finance is about one of the things that makes it a challenge, but also one of the things that makes it really exciting is that it's so big and varied in terms of the different roles that you can pursue and the different kind of industries within finance.
[00:02:57] Caroline: You can pivot. As [00:03:00] your skills develop as the market changes and as your interests evolve. So I started out doing economics in college. And I knew I wanted to do something kind of markets related, but I didn't really understand it. And I didn't really know what to do, but a lot of my friends were doing investment banking and investment banking is 1 of the fields where you just, you were as a junior person, you're allowed to Access to a lot of different things, a lot of different parts of the business. But you work really hard, but you learn a lot in a very short period of time. So I went, so I was able to get a job working as a best-making analyst at UBS in London. And that was a really fantastic experience. One because I was in London, had been to London, to Europe, and to London many times.
[00:03:45] Caroline: But it was really interesting because it was right at the time where, when the European exchange rate mechanism was coming into for, so that was the precursor to the euro, the precursor to the European Union. And that was [00:04:00] so that was an interesting time in the markets. But I also worked at a very small team where I was able to get access to a lot of senior people and see a lot of things that I might not have otherwise.
[00:04:11] Caroline: I think, how did I get myself where I was today is really taking advantage of a lot of those opportunities just to do a lot of different things. And then. After business school and starting back again at an investment banking and JP Morgan, I just randomly got an opportunity to move to the buy side, which basically is asset management as opposed to investment banking and an opportunity to start making investments for.
[00:04:37] Caroline: For both the bank and for outside investors. And so a lot of the skills that I had developed in investment banking were similar, but then I got to invest to make others create more different skills by working on the buy side. I think that's really it is that you need to the way you get some to where you are is by developing skills [00:05:00] that you can leverage across finance. And then when the opportunity to make a pivot, if you want to, you can do that.
[00:05:09] Kiran: Thank you. I think it's very interesting that you say that finance is such a varied career and that it's pretty. I think easy to pivot and to learn and to develop these skills that can be useful across disciplines.
[00:05:24] Kiran: And you mentioned that in college when you were an economics major, you kind of knew that you wanted to work in markets. Did you at any point before that kind of know that you wanted to work or do something in finance?
[00:05:40] Caroline: Yes, yes, only because when I was younger, middle school, high school, I actually wanted to work.
[00:05:47] Caroline: I thought I really wanted to be a marine biologist. I was fascinated by sharks in particular. I love sharks. And so I really thought that I wanted that's what I wanted to do as a career, and it just so happened that. We had a [00:06:00] family friend who was a broker, and he was just talking about casually what he did.
[00:06:04] Caroline: And he said, Oh, you should just look in the paper and find a couple of stocks that you find interesting and just, and follow them. And I remember one of them was Amarada Hess, which is like an oil services company. And and so you could, and so I just would watch it and. Yeah. Then I'd research it and find out and then through, through that, I learned about, a bit more about the markets and I found that it was a really dynamic and interesting career.
[00:06:29] Caroline: I was a math geek, so I liked that aspect of it. So a lot of, so it just grew organically that I thought this would be an interesting way to pursue a career.
[00:06:38] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, that's very interesting. I'm also very into math. It's my favorite subject in school.
[00:06:43] Kiran: And that's part of the reason why I'm interested in finance right now. What moment are you most proud of in your journey?
[00:06:52] Kiran: I think it's interesting question. I think that what I'm most proud of for me personally, is having been able [00:07:00] to to learn a lot of interesting things. That's really what I. What I've always wanted, and what keeps me interested in finance, and in my career, I think on the buy side, 1 of the things that's interest me.
[00:07:13] Kiran: The most is just being able to perform well for investors. In the end, we are what's called a fiduciary and that means we have to take our make our. Take our clients interests at heart. That's got to be the the key and most important element of everything we do. And I would say I'm very proud of we've been able to over the course of my career produce returns for investors and those underlying investors are, their pension plans, foundations, endowments.
[00:07:45] Kiran: And that means that, because of, wait, Because we're able to produce returns for them. That means that they can achieve their mission, whether or not that's a pension plan, being able to pay the retiree benefits that they've earned or a foundation is [00:08:00] able to fund the program and services that it organizes and develop.
[00:08:06] Kiran: So those are the things that I'm most proud of professionally.
[00:08:10] Kiran: Thank you. And reading your bio, I saw that you did some work with women and minority-owned kind of funds and stuff like that. Could you speak a little bit more on that?
[00:08:24] Caroline: Sure. It's an interesting area.
[00:08:25] Caroline: As a woman and as a person of color it's something that I, it's certainly interesting to me. I've been certainly when I started my career it was not at all unusual for me to be the only person of color in the room and certainly one of very few women. And so it's not something that really struck me as so much, as much as it was just an interesting fact. It wasn't something that I felt as if it held me back, but it was interesting. But it was only later in my career where I really realized is that as you get more senior, there are fewer and fewer women, there are fewer people of color.
[00:08:58] Caroline: And particularly when I came back from the States from London, it was certainly more clear. One of the things that when I started I came back when I started in hedge funds, I was working in a firm called Provident Group and one of my colleagues a friend of mine who I'd worked with previously at J.P. Morgan had an idea to start researching women and minority-owned hedge funds. And I was I don't think there's going to be many of them. And I didn't really, I didn't know. I didn't know what that was going to look like, but we could, we'll try it. And we work with a firm called HFR Hedge Fund Research, which is probably one of the largest hedge fund research company providing data and databases around different kinds of hedge funds hedge fund different kinds of hedge funds, different strategies and so forth.
[00:09:49] Caroline: You can see it at hfr. com. A lot of these embassies. And so we work with them to to just do this which we think was the first comprehensive study of the women and minority [00:10:00] hedge fund universe. And it was fascinating because we realized that yes, it's a very small sector of the hedge fund universe.
[00:10:07] Caroline: Maybe there are only a few hundred at any given time when it's at some points, there's maybe there are thousands of, seven to 10, 000. Hedge funds in the world, but they are they, these hedge, these bonds tend to outperform the greater hedge fund universe. They tend to have longer track record although they also tend to be a lot smaller.
[00:10:29] Caroline: So it's a really interesting. So we found that it's really interesting. And then in that respect why aren't. More people taking looking at these managers if they perform better. And also it's something it's very interesting for certain types of investors. So say pension plans who have.
[00:10:45] Caroline: Any types of sort of municipal workers who often are say, teachers, for example, teachers tend to are more likely to be women. And a lot of public school teachers are more likely to be people of color. [00:11:00] So from their perspective, if you are a pension plan that whose underlying members are a relative more.
[00:11:08] Caroline: Female and people of color representation. The pension plan is thinking we would like to have a situation where are the investment side of our organization that provides for these pensions is more looks more like. The pensioneers that are the beneficiaries. So it's an interest.
[00:11:28] Caroline: From a business perspective it's, it was, it's really interesting way for us to provide a service that a lot of these plants want. They're also fiduciary, so they have to look for the best returns, but since these funds and these managers. Tend to outperform it's a way to have a win win.
[00:11:46] Caroline: So you're doing something that the pensioneers might like as well as provide for their pensions in the best way possible. So I think that is, that's really what it's about. And then you also have some foundation say [00:12:00] endowments that are that have that work for the. For colleges and universities some of whom are have more women.
[00:12:08] Caroline: So women's colleges or have more people of color who are their students. And then foundations who also work with who have programs, which benefit women or women and or people of color. So all those entities. Our constituents for this type of this type of investing. And I think it's also important to make sure that you're always looking at the broadest opportunity set.
[00:12:30] Caroline: So if you're only looking at the usual suspects, which often are white male then you're not looking, you're not looking at every opportunity to be able to To provide a return for your investors.
[00:12:46] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah, I think that's I think it's very interesting that women in minority owned funds sent in for perform better than average. Do you have any theories as to maybe why?
[00:13:00] Caroline: I think that there there are certainly some, if you as a woman or people of our person of color you could say that because there are fewer of you, it's a bit, it's harder. You don't have the same mentors. You don't have the same connections that that other people might.
[00:13:18] Caroline: So you have to work harder. If you work harder and you also, and you're still succeeding, then you're probably doing better than better than average. I think that's a, that is certainly a part of it and certainly most most of. A big part of getting ahead or progressing in finances has to do with your resume.
[00:13:38] Caroline: If you if you had to work harder to get into some of the best colleges, you had to work harder to get into the best business schools, you had to work harder to get into the best financial institutions then most likely. You are you're probably going to be a person who outperforms in general.
[00:13:56] Caroline: So that means that you outperform in your hedge fund. I think [00:14:00] that also seen is that because opportunities for women, people of color, sometimes not as much not as extensive as others. Something that often happens is that expectation that if you decide I'm going to leave by my successful career at a big bank and then go off on my own, that you don't necessarily have, you're not necessarily going to have the option to come back to that bank.
[00:14:27] Caroline: So if you. So if you leave, you know that you have that this firm that you create on your own has to be successful. So you're more focused on risk. You don't take you take more measured risk. You don't take. You don't take the ability to be able to just move on after a lack of, a mistake or something like that for granted.
[00:14:50] Caroline: So that's a big part of it.
[00:14:52] Kiran: Right. Thank you. And you mentioned like mentors in the field and did you have any? [00:15:00]
[00:15:01] Caroline: Mentors. Yeah, actually, I did. I had some people who were very helpful in my career. And and that was that was really key. My first job as I mentioned, was it out of college was at UBS in London, and there's no way that I would have gotten that without the help of an alumni.
[00:15:17] Caroline: It was fairly unusual at the time for an American citizen to be able to get a job right out of college and invest in banking in London. And a guy named Mike Lehman, who was an alumni gave me that shot. And it wasn't a program. It was a job that he created for me so that was really key and he was really helpful earlier in my career, helping me to navigate different roles at UBS.
[00:15:42] Caroline: And he also wrote one of my business school recommendations. So he was definitely someone who was incredibly helpful. Colin West was my second boss at UBS. And he actually took me with me to. Me with him when he created a new group at UBS. So he was really [00:16:00] key.
[00:16:00] Caroline: Merrill Hartspan was the one who gave me the opportunity to move from investment banking to asset management. So without her and her guidance and really helping me to understand at the very beginning what all asset management entailed that would have been a really hard transition.
[00:16:17] Caroline: And, and then Howard Powers, who was my was the second head of Brian Watson was the guy who actually, created that role, which Merrill helped me, allowed me to fill who was the first global head to go, so first global head of JP Morgan Capital at, JP Morgan Capital.
[00:16:35] Caroline: When I started then Howard powers when he, when Brian decided to go back to Australia, Howard powers was one. So it was my first boss after him. And that was, so that was really and he really took me under his wing and I was at a port in my career where I really needed to be able to develop some new skills and to take the next step.
[00:16:54] Caroline: And he actively. Helps me get those skills. It's, I've been really lucky to have [00:17:00] people along the way who've taken a real interest in me, but also saw my success as also reflected well on them and to found that to be a really, so making sure that they're the people who work for them had really.
[00:17:19] Caroline: Interesting and fruitful and and develop skills that were a real benefit to the broader team and the broader group. That was really important to me and important to my success. Thank you.
[00:17:33] Kiran: Yeah. And you spoke a little bit about the role your mentors played in kind of the trajectory of your career and your overall successes.
[00:17:41] Kiran: And I was just wondering, how do you get the recognition that you deserve in a field that often overlooks women, especially like minority women?
[00:17:52] Caroline: Part of it is, you have to ask for it. And that's something I learned later in my career rather than early on. I think as a, when you 1st start out, you [00:18:00] just want to sit and do the work and learn and, get your, get the job and done.
[00:18:04] Caroline: And you're not really thinking about being more actively engage with networking and going to, Industry events and things like that. I think that as a junior person, you're it's a good idea to always be thinking in ways that you can make sure that the broader as many people understand what you're doing and how you're doing it.
[00:18:28] Caroline: That you're doing a good job. Certainly I was lucky in in early stage of my career that I didn't necessarily need to do that because I had great bosses and great mentors who who recognize what I was doing and were willing to be and really to really help me. But I would say that's not always the case.
[00:18:46] Caroline: So you really do need to ask for recognition. You have to make it clear, not necessarily being a. Clearly you don't want to be obnoxious about it, but making sure that people at your firm in the broader industry, you know who you [00:19:00] are, know what you're doing LinkedIn is good for that.
[00:19:04] Caroline: Industry events, industry organizations being active with them. Certainly now there are a lot of work more for a lot more organizations for women and people of color focused on those groups. In the industry, so things like 100 women in finance or IDF there's also Blacks Hedge Fund Professionals Network or Black women in asset management.
[00:19:30] Caroline: So there are a lot of groups where you can really make sure that you're engaged and and access to the broader community. So they know who you are and what you're doing and how well you're doing it.
[00:19:41] Kiran: Thank you. Yeah. And obviously you took a lot of risks getting to the point that you are now in your career and kind of what were those risks and how did you go about picking which ones to
[00:19:57] Caroline: take?[00:20:00]
[00:20:00] Caroline: Yeah, I suppose I have taken a lot of risk in my career. I think it's risk that's calculated. However it may not seem that way from the outside, but I'd like to think that I've always, and this is the way I think I'm investing as well, is that you always understand what the risks are, what the potential rewards are and try to mitigate as much of the risk that you can and not just recognize, but also mitigate.
[00:20:25] Caroline: Thanks. And then understanding that there are certain risks are, risk is important in terms of rewards. There's no reward without risk unless you're buying a lottery ticket. So I think that's how I've decided and over time, how I've chosen the risks that I thought made the most sense to take.
[00:20:44] Caroline: When I left decided to leave JP Morgan and move to Spain to to To focus on my Spanish skills to get fluent there. And then I was able to also pivot further into into hedge funds from private equity. That was part [00:21:00] of allowed me to just to meet a lot more people and make that transition over time.
[00:21:04] Caroline: So that was part of it, I think. So that was that was a risk certainly, but I feel as if it was a calculated risk. So those are the kind of, and those that's what I've tried to do throughout my career. Thank
[00:21:15] Kiran: you. Yeah, I think it's very interesting that you mention your Spanish skills. How do you think?
[00:21:23] Kiran: Becoming fluent in Spanish has helped you along your career.
[00:21:30] Caroline: It's interesting. I don't actually use my Spanish nearly as much as I would have liked in my in my career, my actual professional career it's helpful though in terms of rounding out my. Me as a person, as you get old, as you get further along in your career I will talk a lot about the skills that you develop.
[00:21:54] Caroline: Those are the financial skills, the analytical skills, those sort of those hard skills. But also there are soft [00:22:00] skills. And as you get. Further on your career, what people want to also know is that that you that you're interesting as a person. They want to know who you are as a person.
[00:22:11] Caroline: They know that you're going, they're going to be working with you more directly on an ongoing basis. So who are you as a person? Are, and do, is this the type of person, are you the type of person that you, that people want to work with? And so I think my international experience, both having lived in London, having lived in Madrid speaking Spanish and a willingness to have made that move speaks to the kind of person that I am and that is certainly.
[00:22:39] Caroline: Helped me in my career. My most recent move is I became the CIO of Reservoir Partners, which is a multi strategy hedge fund based in Memphis. And and that was people recognize that was a little bit of a career risk. And but when people look at my background having done the things I did before it was entirely[00:23:00] consistent.
[00:23:01] Caroline: With the person that I was and investors could know that this wasn't, I understood what I was doing. I understood the risk I was taking. And they also understood that I would be the type of person who would be willing to to really work as hard as possible to be successful on the new role.
[00:23:20] Caroline: So that's something. That's that creates a level of consistency that you want. So you understand so everyone knows who they're working with, who they're dealing with. And that provides a lot of comfort and confidence going forward. Thank you.
[00:23:35] Kiran: And just looking back on your career as a whole.
[00:23:40] Kiran: If you could do it all over, would there, would you do anything differently?
[00:23:47] Caroline: Oh one of the things I mentioned is that I probably would have understood that I needed to be more out front in my career, more vocal in my career as a really junior person. As I said I early on, I really [00:24:00] just focused on doing the work and letting other people I don't sing my praises for me or help me along in my career. I could have been more proactive, certainly. And I would have done that more looking back. And so that would be the biggest one, I think. And what else would I think that I would have also, broaden, even maybe even more broad going even more broadly about skill set and opportunities that sooner.
[00:24:31] Caroline: I was actually speaking with a woman who is very senior at black walk. And one of the things she said was I should have taken more risk sooner. I've certainly taken a lot of risk in the latter part of my career, say, from mid to later career. I think that as a junior person, you can't afford to take more risk.
[00:24:48] Caroline: Because people don't worry the people particularly now employers don't think it's odd. If you try a few different things, or a few different firms, when you're more junior, whereas [00:25:00] I think in the past the 3 year. In two to three year investment banking analyst program, if you had, if, for that was and then you wanted to get to be an associate and so therefore you're on this five year track in some ways business school after three years, that's a that's a specific track as opposed to taking a bit more risk in terms of creating your own path.
[00:25:23] Caroline: I think that. Yeah. You can do that more now. Again, always a calculated risk. But understanding, creating your own plan as opposed to having it imposed upon you externally. I think that's something that I might have considered earlier on.
[00:25:38] Kiran: My final question is what's the best advice you've ever received? How has it impacted you? And do you have any advice for other people?
[00:25:49] Caroline: Best advice I've ever received? I think that you have to, the best relax I've ever seen, really.
[00:25:55] Caroline: I'll bundle it up in terms of the the theme was trust yourself. If [00:26:00] you have, I've taken the time and consider all the factors and made, and researched as, as much as you can, an opportunity in some ways you have to go with your gut a little bit.
[00:26:15] Caroline: So trust yourself. I'm not, I wouldn't call myself a particularly spontaneous person. I wouldn't, I don't and I don't take risks lightly. But as I said, I think it's more calculated risk. So that's the best advice I've given and the people have given me is just being open to the possibilities.
[00:26:34] Caroline: Be open to opportunities that you never would have thought of certainly moving to the buy side from investment banking was not something that I, even though it was out there, it's not something that I was considering, but I'm. Extremely glad that I took advantage of the opportunity when it came to me.
[00:26:52] Caroline: That's generally the best advice I've gotten. And that would be the advice that I give is that, it's okay [00:27:00] to have a plan, but it's also don't yeah, don't not plan B and plan because plan B. It could be the plan A what should have been plan A. So plan B should have been plan A if you had known it existed or you knew it was up, it was open to you or you knew all of the benefits of it.
[00:27:19] Caroline: So I think that's the best advice I could give. Thank
[00:27:24] Kiran: you. I think that was very insightful, especially really be flexible and open to all the possibilities and not just, you know, be set in your ways and have something in mind that you want to do And see it as if you if things don't work out exactly how you had envisioned them It's not a failure so much as a change in your trajectory.
[00:27:48] Caroline: That's exactly right
[00:27:50] Kiran: Thank you so much for joining me today. I really appreciate this conversation.
[00:27:55] Caroline: No, it's a pleasure thank you very much for having me.
[00:27:59] Kiran: [00:28:00] Thank you so much for joining me on today's episode of Women Who Earn. I hope to see you next time.
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