Sete Ondas - #14

Jumping seven waves for luck as the start of 1994 brings changes

Although 1993 was a year of significant new friendships and new beginnings just as1992 had been, by December my position in Brazil was officially ending as Brazilʻs economic and political situation deteriorated. Decisions were at hand.

I had been offered a job with the Project Finance group in New York, an assignment I could slip into comfortably. From the Bankʻs perspective it was a perfect fit; for me it was almost as though the Universe was throwing me a test, an option that was exactly the opposite of moving forward towards my emergent life purpose. Project Finance means financing huge developments like power plants and mines that shift externalities and environmental consequences onto mostly non-European, non-white countries. This was my past, not the future to which I was committing. It represented the opposite of the vision of the future in Carmanʻs Mass for the 21st Century.

Somehow, though, it felt almost too obvious, too easy to say no. And I needed to flesh out what my next steps would be if I declined and left banking. I did not give an answer immediately, quite reasonably asking for time to reflect over the holidays. Paulo and Christina had travel plans and offered me their apartment in Rio de Janeiro for a last minute retreat, a nice thank you for the extended use of mine in New York. I could walk the beach at Copacabana, read in the sun, meditate and journal.

Nelsinho was also heading to Rio to be with his parents and daughters over the holidays. As we had just resumed dating, he was not ready for me to join the family reunion. For my part, I truly needed to be in my own space to listen to my heart and guidance. But he said that I would be welcome for New Yearʻs Eve, which he planned to host for close friends and family at his apartment in Leblon. I accepted the invitation as an ideal next step, being sure to pack a white nightgown along with a white dress for the evening. I knew we would end up with millions of cariocas on the beaches of Rio, dressed in white with offerings of flowers for Iemanjá, skipping seven waves as the new year arrived.

Meanwhile, each day after my morning stroll and dip in the ocean, I sat at Paulo’s desk and began sketching out ideas. Surely there was a business in supporting the various creative people and projects that were coming my way. One morning I found a voicemail from a colleague. Jennifer was the private banking officer for Latin America and many of the executives with whom I dealt in their corporate roles were also her clients. When I called her back, I confessed I was in Rio and told her why. She listened attentively and asked what I thought I would do next. She knew that my circle of friends in Brazil were mainly people in the arts and culture arena. I explained that was increasingly true in New York as well and I felt drawn to supporting them.

“If that is what you decide,” Jennifer offered, “I have to introduce you to my friend Alvenia Bridges. Her husband went to graduate school with us.” I inhaled sharply as the energy tickled the back of my neck. This was one of those moments I had come to recognize as an omen appearing.

Alvenia Bridges in her apartment on 58th Street, circa 1994.

“Wait a second,” I replied. “I have to go get the book I have been reading.” On Paulo’s bookshelf I had found one of Nelson’s books, a compilation of columns he wrote during the 1982 World Cup in Spain. Every four years he would travel with the Brazilian press corps, writing social commentary to accompany the sports news. Hunter S. Thompson is Nelson’s journalistic hero, and this was his gonzo journalistic take on the scene surrounding the soccer championships. I had just read a chapter that takes place in Barcelona. Nelson’s cousin Vera called to invite him to a party. To this day I remember the play on words with which he introduced the paragraph: Prima Vera em pleino verão – like saying “Spring in the height of Summer.” The party was being hosted by Alvenia, an African American model who had lived in Europe, then had a career in the music industry working initially as Roberta Flack’s road manager, then as Mick Jagger’s right-hand person accompanying the Rolling Stones on tour. She was possibly the last person to see Jimi Hendrix alive. Clearly a party not to be missed.

Jennifer is fluent in Portuguese in addition to her native Spanish and the English in which we’d been speaking until I read her the paragraph. “That’s her!”, Jennifer exclaimed. We fell into silence. OK, I had my sign. When I got back to New York, I would resign from JP Morgan.

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Resigning turned out to be way more difficult than I imagined.

To explain, I need to back up a moment for another “what happened before what happened happened.” As I noted in my tale of why I was not on Pan Am 103, I had joined JP Morgan to do financial advisory/mergers and acquisitions work for mining companies. With a $4.3 billion transaction in 1989 concluded, I wondered if I could try something new at the Bank, despite my being an outsider, someone who had not gone to an Ivy League school or joined through the training program. I approached Sandy Warner, at that time head of Corporate Finance. He suggested a couple of options for me, but offered his own opinion which was that I should take a position in their newly created department where freshly hired MBAs went for on-the-job experience right out of the training program. He thought it would give me an opportunity to see different areas of the institution as I supervised my team on their assigned projects.

I was only a year and a little into that position when CEO Lewis Preston was tapped to head the World Bank. Dennis Weatherstone moved into his slot and the Board requested he produce a strategic plan – the first ever for this esteemed Wall Street firm. Dennis turned to the best strategic thinker in the leadership ranks, John T. Olds. John’s answer was that he was not interested in creating a planning department, but would put together a small team and write the first plan in less than two years; then they could do whatever they wanted with it. I had met John in his role as head of Asia-Pacific, and was shocked when he called to invite me to join his team as the analyst to translate scenarios into financial models.

“But John, I can’t even read a bank’s financial statements,” I argued. “Why me?”

John laughed. “You can learn to read financial statements. I want you for your analytical mind and your willingness to speak truth to power.”  He had me there.

We had a blast writing the strategic plan. In the process I got to know all the members of the Bank’s senior leadership team pretty well. John was assigned next to run Euroclear and left for Europe. And I got talked into to what I came to call the assignment from hell, the beginning of years of continual downsizing of employees. Now that I wanted to leave, I went straight to the head of Human Resources. I explained it was time for me to move on, and asked him to offer me an exit package. I felt they at least owed me that.

First, he asked if it was because I was unhappy about my bonus, the #1 reason for year-end departures in the financial world. He immediately retracted, reflecting, “No, can’t be, for you it’s never been about the money.” Ouch. How much had I left on the table all these years, if everyone knew that? He asked what my plans were. Then he asked me for patience. “I have to talk to Sandy. He will kill me if I just let you go.” OK, that was a little salve on the wound, knowing that the now President of the Bank would again want a personal say in my future.

They got back to me with a surprising answer. With more women entering the professional ranks, there was pressure to create some flexible career path models for all employees. Would I be willing to design a job where I could work half-time, leaving me time to explore my new interests? At the end of a year, we could re-evaluate whether I still wanted to pursue a new career, or wanted to lean in to the possibilities at the Bank.

Following my intuition that a simple “no thanks” might not be where the story was headed had brought an interesting twist. Intrigued, I agreed, asking for a few weeks to think through ideas and talk to the managers of those areas about them. I already had some thoughts. For example, the Internet revolution was underway, and I knew we had a small initiative around venture capital. I started mapping out a couple of options.

Then one morning I got a call from Tom Ketchum, the current head of Corporate Finance, asking if I could come up to his office. Tom and I had been friends since he was head of our Hong Kong branch and we made a trip to Beijing together, the first for both of us, in 1985. As I entered the office, Tom just motioned with his head, a bemused look on his face. My mentor John Olds was sitting on the couch. After we exchanged hugs, John said, “I heard what you are up to. I will be coming back in June to do a turnaround of our Private Banking/Investment Management division. I don’t need your time, I just need your mind.”

That was an offer I could not refuse. I looked from John to Tom and back again. “Of course, I’m in. But it’s the beginning of February and this won’t even be announced until May. What am I supposed to do for the next four months?” Tom responded with a shrug of his shoulders. “You know everyone. Find projects and keep busy.”

As I write this story more than three decades later, I still find it painful that a young woman without an Ivy League diploma would be skipped over for promotion to Managing Director and routinely given lower bonuses than male peers who had equivalent or even less responsibility in their positions. But that pain is also balanced by a sense of wonder and even delight. Wonder that the old JP Morgan culture believed building personally supportive relationships created value for the firm. Humbled that these truly talented leaders saw potential for contribution in a small and unusually feisty young woman, even if it was rewarded more with freedom and interesting work than with dollars and titles. Delight in the retelling of it, that a stodgy Wall Street firm with over 13,000 employees would have the flexibility to let this misfit help nudge them in new directions. Satisfaction in how much of my integrity I managed to preserve in that environment.

1994 turned out to be a year I got to work creatively with many of my favorite people, both inside and outside the Bank. Skipping seven ocean waves indeed brought me waves of good fortune, and this was just the first of those swells.