Here are the two Trailblazer Award recipients for Traders Magazine’s inaugural "Wall Street Women: A Celebration of Excellence." An independent advisory committee of women chose the winners from nominations by the industry. The 16 awards will be presented on Nov. 10 at the New York Academy of Sciences.
See Chart: Winners
The Trailblazer Award is presented to high-performing Wall Street Women who broke the gender barrier when it came to trading and advancing up the career ladder on the buy and sell sides of the business. These trailblazers forged the opportunity for other women to become traders, managers and successful financial professionals. Other winners will be announced here throughout the next week.
Nanette Buziak
Firm: ING Investment Management
Years in Industry: 18
Previous Firms: Bear Stearns, First Marathon America, J.P. Morgan Asset Management
Status: Senior Vice President, Head of Equities Trading
Success Formula: Work Hard, Trade Right and Get on the Hartford Train.
Take all the math courses that you can in college. Be willing to do every job that fellow trading professionals shun. And be able to say honestly on Sunday night that you are eager for the trading week to begin.
Those are some of the principles that have guided Nanette Buziak, the head of equity trading for ING Investment Management. She used them to go from an entry-level financial analyst job at Bear Stearns in 1994, to an eight-year stint as a portfolio manager at J.P Morgan Asset Management, to her position today heading a trading desk. It was an arduous climb. And only those with a strong commitment should try, Buziak cautioned.
How does a young woman follow her career path?
"It means not being afraid to take on some of those ugly projects that nobody else wants to do," she said.
Why?
"Because those are some of the best learning experiences," she said. These experiences have included cost-control projects that helped clients.
"I have always been willing to do side projects to help out portfolio managers," she said. "These would include tracking the impact of tax loss selling or the impact of M&A for some securities."
Possibly the most challenging "ugly job" was consolidating three desks into one during the market meltdown. That was a task she was ready to take.
"The financial crisis," she noted, "also brought on new challenges, such as managing the news flow and trying to not create additional stress in what was a very stressful environment."
The key to success, Buziak said, is that "one must be ready to go above and beyond whatever their initial job responsibilities are."
Kelly Mathieson
Firm: J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services
Years in Industry: 24
Previous Firms: Goldman Sachs
Status: Managing Director, Global Custody and Clearance Business Executive, Worldwide Securities Services
Never waste a crisis and never fail to learn from any job.
That could be the mantra of custody and clearing executive Kelly Mathieson of J.P. Morgan Worldwide Securities Services, who has developed skills in myriad crisis situations.
She prepared for these financial wars through stints in both asset management and the institutional business, as well as something that comes in handy during these tumultuous times: the ability to manage during a crisis, which she saw firsthand at the beginning of her career, in 1987.
"I had several career experiences that helped prepare me for the financial crisis of 2008,” she said. Beginning in the business as an analyst in Goldman Sachs’ money market division just a few months before the crash of 1987, Mathieson experienced something that would help her incalculably. She was witness to how money managers coped with a crash. Even though she was not then making decisions, the experience was a vital part of how she succeeded.
"I was a sponge for information. I witnessed firsthand how people reacted and coped with the crisis," she said. She notes the parallels between 1987 and the meltdown of 2008.
Mathieson would need to soak it all up, including how important it was to be organized and stay in constant communication with key players. But a bigger challenge was just a few years away.
Running the custody and clearing department during the meltdown of 2008, Mathieson did more than find an immediate solution. She has been instrumental in working with the Federal Reserve Bank of
"This is something in which I have the most professional pride," she said. "The repo market and the underlying clearing market are being transformed and will ultimately look very different from how they did in 2008.”
