The Lifetime Achievement Award is given to women with more than two decades of senior management experience on Wall Street, who have achieved the pinnacles of success and acted as role models to younger generations of women and men.
The 16 awards will be presented on Nov. 10 at the New York Academy of Sciences.
Other winners will be announced later today and tomorrow.
To See A Slideshow of All Winners: http://bit.ly/tFKh0G
Annette Nazareth
Firm: Davis Polk & Wardwell
Years in Industry: 30
Previous Firms: Davis Polk & Wardwell, Mabon Securities, Lehman Brothers, Salomon Smith Barney, Securities and Exchange Commission
Status: Partner
Annette Nazareth has come full circle in her 30-year career.
It all began when she started her career at the law firm of Davis Polk & Wardwell in 1981. Straight out of law school, she covered corporate securities law and mergers and acquisitions regulations for the firm. After five years in law, she was offered a job as general counsel for regional broker-dealer Mabon Nugent. After years of interpreting law, now she was about learn how the business of Wall Street was done.
"It was a special opportunity to be offered the general counsel position at the age of 30," said Nazareth. "I was able to learn the business from the inside."
In 1994, she moved to Lehman Brothers, continuing her upward trajectory as senior lawyer for the firm’s fixed income division. Three years later, she left to join Salomon Smith Barney as head of its capital markets legal group.
"Being the head of the capital markets legal group was fascinating. I oversaw the legal issues for the securities, derivatives and commodities businesses," she said.
But an even greater opportunity came in 1998, when Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt invited her to join the agency. He asked if she was interested in working for him as senior counsel.
"I had never had any aspirations to go work for the government," she recalled. But after accepting the offer, the rest was history. "My career took a very different turn, as I was able to use what I learned on Wall Street and apply it to the regulatory side. I found that I really enjoyed policy-making."
She served as the SEC’s director of the Division of Market Regulation from March 1999 to August 2005, and was then appointed by President George W. Bush to be an SEC Commissioner.
"This was a real honor," she said. "This was a rare occurrence; it had been about 30 years since an SEC staff person was appointed to the Commission."
Right after the 2007 financial crisis began, she retuned to her legal-eagle roots at Davis Polk. Her days now, as back at the start, are consumed with interpreting the myriad financial regulations coming out of Congress.
"It’s going to take years to fully implement all the reforms Congress and the agencies have mandated," she said. "I expect this work will keep all of us busy for the next several years."
Kathy Cheevers
Firm: Cheevers & Co.
Years in Industry: 31
Previous Firms: Wertheim Schroder, Schochet Trading
Status: Chief Executive Officer
Longevity on Wall Street usually can be equated with working long hours and having a thick skin and a little luck. And according to Kathy Cheevers, it also means going that extra step or two that separate one person or firm from the pack. Such additional effort has paid off for her.
"I saw a need for a more service-oriented firm that could execute the equity legs of complex options trades," Cheevers said, talking about the birth of her firm. "As I began to develop accounts at the time, more and more came to me because I went the extra step to give them better service."
That was in 1982, when Cheevers & Co. first opened its doors. Kathy Cheevers did it with just one employee, Manuel Inclan, who is still a broker for the firm today. The Chicago-based firm has grown to 39 people and expanded from the equity leg of options trades to trading both domestic and international equities. Not content to stand pat, Cheevers has opened another desk that focuses on domestic and international executions for asset managers.
It’s a long way from her start in the business in 1980, when she began her career as a runner and phone clerk on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange at Wertheim Schroder. But going the extra mile earned her respect and a call from Schochet Trading, who asked her to broker for them on the Midwest Stock Exchange, which would later become the Chicago Stock Exchange.
"There were four women on the floor who were members of the exchange, but that was it," she said. "I can say when I went to the Chicago Stock Exchange it was great-it’s a specialist system and there was only one man at a time to compete with, versus the CBOE where there were numerous men in every pit."
