Masterclass > Work the Web - A rare breed
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Work the Web - A rare breed
Michelle Dickson works in one of the few remaining male-dominated industries: the finance industry. In a career that has taken her to BNP Paribas and Russell Investments in London and back to New Zealand as senior research analyst at global investment management firm, NZAM, Michelle has seen first-hand the good and the bad of an often misunderstood industry.
“It was an interesting time to be in London,” she says of the lead-up to and denouement of the Global Financial Crisis. “I saw the days of excess , the big bonuses – and then the complete turnaround, with people losing their jobs around you.” Michelle is at pains to stress that she has never personally been discriminated against at work on the basis of gender – but during the GFC I saw a lot of my female peers lose their jobs very early on. “There was already a shortage of women around and it was really quite noticeable that disproportionally more women were being made redundant,” she remembers. “A lot of them were mothers and time spent on the job is an issue for mums managing careers in any sector, let alone finance. “I think after the redundancies, there wasn’t a single female portfolio manager left – there might have been some assistants but yeah …” As for lessons learned, she says that the financial meltdown illustrates the dangers of group think. “Part of a fund manager’s job is being able to analyse what the market is doing, seeing the trends before others and not being distracted by the noisy stampede of herd behaviour,” she believes. “It was crisis after crisis there in October 2008 and everybody was freaking out about what was happening. It wasn’t great.” At NZAM, an Auckland-based fund of funds that employs an Absolute Returns philosophy prioritising preservation of client capital above all else, they have partnerships with two female fund managers, both involved in NZAM’s Asia fund. There is plenty of research that show that male traders are more risk-taking than their female equivalents but Michelle points to her male colleagues at NZAM, whose investment priority is to preserve capital, and risk is something to be carefully managed. Not all male funds managers are Wall St Wolves is her point. But how come the industry is still so male-dominated? Certainly the unfriendly hours are an issue for mothers but Michelle points out so are many industries and that this is not a barrier to entry to the sector: “I’ve had this discussion with friends and we never thought [when young] about that when choosing our career.” For her, there is something about studying finance with its high-level maths and economics which is off-putting to women, although she notes she was raised with three brothers so “a male dominated industry never struck me as anything out of the ordinary”. Michelle is a senior member of NZAM’s research team, conducting due diligence on fund managers, monitoring their performance, currency management (“We invest entirely outside of New Zealand) and constructing some of the automated systems the firm uses to conduct its work. “The last project I was working on before I went on maternity leave was redesigning the performance calculations for the quarterly client reports – so there was a bit of math in there,” she comments dryly. This month she returns to work after nearly nine month’s maternity leave: “Two days a week and easing into it is fantastic. I’m extremely lucky to have such a supportive employer , husband and mother [who does childcare duties]. Several friends of mine wanted to go back part-time and one was offered four days a week or nothing .” Working part-time does require significant change to her usual working habits, she says. “You need to be a lot more efficient,” Michelle notes. “I haven’t got the helicopter view of five days a week; I have to focus on what my role is.” She understands the difficulty women face in reaching the top echelons of business – “Many women do want to take time out from their career” – but she would like to see greater representation, particularly at board level. “You do want a board that represents the customer base; it makes sense that diversity helps,” she says. “I’d like to see numbers increase because New Zealand has, in the past, been a world leader – 10-15 years ago, many of the top roles were filled by women: chief justice, prime minister, governor-general, chief executive of New Zealand’s largest listed company – and I’m really surprised we’re really low for the OECD, in terms of board representation.” Asked what she would do if she didn’t work in finance, Michelle seems genuinely surprised: “It would have to involve numbers. I like the problem-solving of it; I like maths – I guess I’m just a bit of a geek.” Michelle’s top tips for women investing in the market:
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