How Women Can Build Wealth by Taking Smarter Risks

Well, I'm so excited to moderate this panel about women and wealth. And I have three baller women here that can touch every part of this topic. As my opening lightning round, I am going to ask you to give self introductions and a little bit about why this topic is so important. I'll set it up just to say, and I open the conference with a statistic around how few women are CEOs of top companies, including the Fortune 500. I think it's like 10%. And then when you look at the wealth gap, there is a gap. Women earn $0.84 on the man's dollar. So why is that? And according to McKinsey, it's going to take 50 years to change that. That just doesn't sound good in this room. Let's start with you, Malik. Thank you. First of all, it's such a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. And what an honor to talk about a subject that means so much to me personally. My name is Malik Santini. I'm a managing director and banker at JP Morgan's private bank. Equally as important, I'm a mom to twin girls that are 17 years old on their way to their journey. And it's a pleasure to be here amongst you ladies. Thank you as well for having me. I'm so delighted. I'm Sue Kenderson-Cassidy. I'm the CEO of Xero, if you don't know it. It's about a $30 billion global business. It's a cloud accounting platform. It helps small businesses do all their finances. And we operate in 180 countries around the world. And I am passionate about this topic, as you well know. I'm a multi-time entrepreneur. But I also believe that if we ever really want to create a level playing field, women need to have access to wealth creation opportunities. Because that's how you're going to see, I would say, a more equitable world when it comes to women getting access to capital, women getting access to equal opportunity to everyone else. And so I believe we need to become much, much smarter risk takers and portfolio managers of our own wealth. And I'm Jennifer Openshaw. I have lived the experience. My mom was a two full-time waitress while I was putting myself through school and a maid at the age of 14 and decided that I wanted to live a very different life. I worked in the financial industry, was in Silicon Valley, where I started a company called Women's Financial Network and sold that. And today, I'm the chairman of Girls with Impact, which is the leading business preparation program for young women, making sure they're ready for day one in the workplace. Well, you each come from a different perspective. And I was very impressed by your bios. I think, Sukhinder, you talk a lot about risk and how women are less risk takers versus men. Malik, you talk about how important financial planning is. And Jennifer, maybe I can start with you. One of the things that I read in your background was that men get promoted on a promise and women get promoted on performance. You talk a lot about hard work and advancement. So share a little bit about that with our audience. Isn't that amazing that men get promoted more on performance and promise and women on performance? And one of the things that we see is that as we go up the corporate ladder, the wage disparity widens. So women who are increasingly at the top might have the same qualifications, but they're not earning the same. And why is that? There's a couple of reasons. One is that women tend to be in more soft jobs, not as close to the business. They also tend to not be in those leadership roles in industries that are the higher paying ones, like technology, law, and finance. And so the question is, what can we do to make sure more women are getting to the top of these companies, which really betters everybody? And a couple of key things I want to suggest there is, first off, research and know what your worth is. And there's been so much talk right now about women in the workplace. This is the time to not shrink from your worth, but to lean into it. Raising your hand and letting your voice be heard in the boardroom, in the corporate room, in meetings is incredibly important. I have a friend who I knew of, a new hire who had the same qualifications as she did, and he was making more, and she spoke up, and that changed her compensation structure. And then finally, I think having a sponsor in the workplace is really important so that somebody is looking out for you, even when you're not in the room with them. Great. I'd love to start by saying that I feel really proud to be a JPMorgan. And when we think about JPMorgan globally, and you think about women being represented, 49% of our global workforce is women. 41% of the firm's operating committee is women. About 32% is senior level women. And the numbers go on and on and on. So the firm is a very large and fierce advocate of women in leadership positions and women in the positions available for growth. As we think about financial planning, this is, again, a topic that I obsess about every single day. And I think that at the base and what's most important is education. It's early education. It's understanding finance from the building blocks in the most simplistic form, and planning for the future, thinking about what debt means and how that feels to you emotionally, understanding what debt is, thinking about retirement, thinking about investing, thinking about where your passions are and where those lie. I think there's a lot of women that are in control of their own finances and take an active role in understanding it preemptively. And that's great. And there's other women that are dependent, potentially. Our view is that all women should have a very solid base so that they can plan for the future. Because we all know the future creeps up on us quite quickly. And so the fact that you can get ahead of that and really, really think about what you want your legacy to look like, what you want your wealth to do for you, and how you want to support your lifestyle goals and your goals to be in line with your financial well-being. So raise your hand. Ask for it. Work at a great company like yours. I do. And work with great financial people that can help you. Sue Kinder, you've done a lot of this work your whole career. How have you advanced women? Well, I'm going to stick to the topic of wealth because I think it's such an important one. And we don't talk about it enough. I think that the thing I'm really passionate about is helping women be smart risk-takers. I wrote a book on this topic about just risk-taking in your career. And unfortunately, all the objective research suggests that women in almost every facet of life are more risk-averse than men. And I don't think risk is about you going out and betting it all on black. I think it's about building a smart portfolio so you have the opportunity, as I said, to create wealth. Because if you create wealth, it is one access to creating more opportunity for yourself and for others. So I believe in it deeply. But there's a very simple kind of story I'm going to give you that maybe elucidates this. So my daughter is a hard worker. She has saved every penny, I'm sure, like many of your daughters. And she is a saver. She refuses to tell me what's in her bank account, but she keeps saving. And she sends me a bill all the time for what I owe her. I get a list, itemized. Mom, $18 for this door dash, blah, blah, blah, blah. OK. My son, my son, my son is not a saver. But here's the difference. He's on a Greenlight account. And I was like, Karen, I forced him to save. And I'm like, you should invest. And so my son was like, OK. I was like, pick three stocks. And so he picks three stocks. And he's on Greenlight, and he's up 50%. OK? My daughter still has it all in her bank account. I'm like, Kenya, you're a saver. You need to become an investor. She's like, maybe. I'm like, no, no. Give me $1,000. I'll set you up on Greenlight. Pick three stocks, right? Pick what you know. My son picked NVIDIA, Apple, and he picked a Bitcoin fund. Knows nothing about Bitcoin. By the way, the kid is up. OK? But he is becoming an investor. And she's a saver. There's a problem with that. He's accumulating wealth and opportunity, right? Now, I struggle to think what he's going to do with his money when I'm not around. I want him to be a smart investor. But I want her to be an investor. So I just say early on, the thing I'm passionate about is helping women be smart risk takers. That's about building a portfolio, starting early. I'll say you don't have to guess about what you don't know. Make money in what you know. My very first job was an investment banker at Merrill Lynch, and I was in the financial institutions group, working on the least sexy business of all, savings and loans, thrifts, and big banks. But guess what? I learned a lot about thrifts. The first two stocks I ever bought were thrift stocks. I made money. In Silicon Valley, I moved into e-commerce. I joined the board of J.Crew. I became an e-commerce investor. All my private investments were in e-commerce. I spent eight years running a business. I could understand and see the patterns in businesses that had winning characteristics. And so I invested in those as an angel. And that turned out very well. So I think if there's one thing to leave you with, it's great you're a saver. Become an investor, too. Pick a portfolio of choices. From very safe, like an ETF, to investing in what you know. If you want to try a stock, try it in something you know. But I think this idea of wealth creation, starting early, is about we all have this women's saver mentalities. Think about building an investor mentality. On that topic, financial literacy is critical. Women of a certain age, and now maybe of every age, they say death or divorce causes you to gain financial literacy. How do you work with your clients on that topic? And you're talking so much about the younger generation. There's a lot of incredibly young women here. What advice would you give them? And can you share? I mean, you have two daughters, twins. They may be here in the audience. That's a great point. I think you have to, back to what I think we're all saying, is you have to start young. And it's never too late. That's also a message. And also, this concept of investing and getting into the markets or feeling comfortable is really important. And it's also crucial to feel like you have the right team around you to support you. So at JP Morgan, I have the great pleasure of working with incredible subject matter experts. And we work with clients around their entire balance sheet. So we don't only look at assets. We look at assets. We look at liabilities. We look at estate planning. We look at retirement. We look at how all of the pieces of the puzzle fit together and what that means if you pull different levers. Because pulling levers just on their own sometimes can be dangerous if you don't have that team around you. So feeling really equipped that we're not alone in this. Investing can seem a little scary if you haven't done it before. I think you've raised a beautiful point that there's some passions that people may have or sectors that they gravitate to. So they'll feel kind of drawn to invest in one area over another because they feel confident in that area. But it's about diversification. It's a key word in finance and in all of our worlds, I would believe. So thinking about how do you diversify your financial assets? And how do you get really, really good, smart advice and a team around you? I think we all know, as women, we have kind of a team spirit kind of mindset. And we all do better when we're together and we lean on some subject matter experts. So that's how we support our clients. Jen, over to you. We work so hard earning money, that paycheck. And so you want to make it go as far as you can. And just to give you a great example of the power of starting earlier, if you want to get to a million dollars by the time of 65, a 30-year-old would have to put away $35,000 one time over compounding interest that would grow to that. A 50-year-old would have to tuck away $239,000, right? So there is such a benefit in starting early and being regular about it. One of the things I did with an old friend of mine is I created something called the Money Buddy System. And it could be with your partner or with a friend. But looking at your finances on a regular basis, going back to what Sekinder was saying about risk, I was in Silicon Valley. I sold a company. I made a little bit of money. And I put my money in real estate. And while there is some risk there, for sure, I tripled my wealth in about five years, right? So we as women, we have to take risks. But we have to do it smartly. And there's so much innovation in financial services today with products or working with a financial advisor. But you have to take charge of it. Let's get a little bit personal, but career personal. Did you ever think you would have a title of CEO and be in these positions that you're in, high profile, working with incredible clients, authors, investors, selling companies, and being on boards of companies? Share a little bit about you. I'm happy to start. I've had great mentors in my career. And over the 16 years that I've been at J.P. Morgan, every position that I've moved to has been a position that I never imagined I could actually do when someone told me to do it. And it was scary to take the leap. But somebody else believed in me, and that's why it's called a promotion. And I did it. And I think that that gives you self-confidence to fall into a role that you were not comfortable in. Because if you have intellectual curiosity, you're gonna do really great at that because the person that knows what that role is actually probably isn't the best suited for that seat. So mentorship, I think, also is extremely, extremely important. We as women have that ability to kind of take the younger generation under our wing, help them to grow, and help them to find what their career trajectory should look like and what the path to success is, and also just not be afraid. We all innately have. I heard our previous panel that was phenomenal talk about imposter syndrome. I think we all have it in social settings, in work settings. But if you really embrace that somebody may see something in you or actually take that leap and have courage and believe in yourself, magical things can happen. So I grew up in Canada, and my parents immigrated from East Africa when I was two, and they restarted their careers as doctors. And so they ran a joint medical practice, but my dad loved what he did. He loved serving people, but he also loved being a small business owner. He loved it. So that meant that he took all three of his daughters and he made us do his taxes every year. He did not have an accountant. You can think how ironic this is. I now run a financial accounting cloud software platform for small businesses. But somewhere around seven or eight, we would madly start literally logging things in his ledger around March 1st for I think April 15th filing deadline in Canada. And so by the time it was 11 or 12, I knew how to fill in my dad's books. But he not only loved running a business, to me it was very normalized because it was just like ledger of expenses and revenues. And he also loved investing. My dad, he was an older father, so he was almost 50 when I was born. But I would see him get on the phone and call his broker, and he would use a magnifying glass and look in the newspaper and pick stocks. And I literally remember him in like 1980 something being like, hey, Tom, let's buy some AOL. And he loved it, and he loved it. So I think I am the daughter of two small business owners and entrepreneurs and a father who loved business, and he loved serving people, and he thought they were the same thing. And that is my origin story. Well, I watched my mother, as I said, work two full-time jobs as a waitress growing up, and that had a huge impact on me. And as I was putting myself through college, I don't know if many young women were doing this, but I would be doing my budget numbers because I found so much satisfaction in understanding my money and where it was going and where I wanted it to go and really being in charge of it. And after I advanced in my career, you know, one of the things I noticed is that when we come out of college or high school, we are woefully unprepared to step into the business world. Nobody tells you how to operate the first day. How do you communicate with your boss? How do you organize your day? How do you problem solve? All of those things. And so we started Girls With Impact really to level the playing field so that young women are more ready for day one and have that confidence that we tend to experience a huge gap in when we're young. I know I experienced confidence gaps for incredibly long, and it had such a huge impact on me, right? And I didn't know how to operate. For example, I sold a company and had some pretty significant heady meetings after that, but I didn't know how to go into those meetings, right? I didn't know how to be in my power. And so that's what we're trying to do with women, because if you are in your power, I mean, there's so much more that you can do, right? And one of the things that we do with Girls With Impact is, as we partner with companies, is allow women and men to mentor these young people so that they can hone their leadership skills. But also, we're taking our academy into companies so that women like yourself can innovate on the job. And by innovating, you might come up with a new idea in your company that could open doors for you, right? In so many ways. So there's a lot of ways that you can really advance to leadership. I wanna see women get to the very top so that we have power in the boardroom across America. I love that, power. I always think about money equals power, and then power connects to making an impact. So I love that. Last and final question, because we are almost out of time. What advice would you give your younger self today, knowing what you know now? It would be to be in your power. I remember, and my husband and I talked about this, but I remember a time where I was working for a company, and I would get nervous walking in to meet the, it was a married couple that ran this company. They made lots of money, and I would get nervous. And then what I would do is talk to myself to be in your power, and it just changes your whole dynamic. I'm also a huge believer in visualizing what you want. I did that when I was 12, 13. Visualize yourself going into a meeting or whatever, or what you're gonna become makes a huge difference. Let's see, I'd say calm down. It's all gonna work out. Trust me, it will all work out. I was pretty intense. I still am, but imagine me, I would say imagine me unmarried without three children to give you perspective. It's a bad scene. Besides calm down, I would probably say come back to where I started. Don't just think saving. Think, I would say, think investing. And for me, I, once upon a time, did take all my money from a startup called Amazon, and I put it in a stock for a broker who I knew from Adam. Ask me how that worked out for me. So I'd say early on, invest in what you know or get great advice. And again, build that basket of risks. I was like, oh, I'm gonna take it all from here and put it in here. One stock to one stock, idiotic move. So I'm really a believer that you wanna start building that in smart risk portfolio early. I would agree. Confidence, take risks, take chances. And I also think, to my younger self, I think become a subject matter expert in one area. Become that person that is irreplaceable, because once you do that, the chances that you'll go from A to Z in subject matter experts increases for the statistics tell us this. So just go deep, really deep, in the area that interests you so it's authentic. Believe in yourself and take risks. Well, that went really fast. You are amazing. We can't wait to see what you do next. We'll keep watching, and thank you so much. Great conversation. Thank you. Women and wealth.