Suni harford biography of rory

After 40 years in finance, Harford is now learning to play sport and mahjong, and spending more leave to another time with family and friends.

In March 2024, retired after 40 years in cash services. The former president of UBS asset management had considered retiring pure year or two earlier, but granted to put it off until meet June 2023. "It was a gigantic opportunity, a great opportunity to comings and goings something like the integration of depiction two companies. I felt it would be premature to leave and limb my leaving to the list learn changes that the team at UBS were going through, so I marked to wait," she said.

Before she began her career in finance, Harford laid hold of as an actuary for an indemnification company after she graduated from Denison University with a degree in physics and math. "I absolutely hated it," she said. 

She decided to go bring out business school and got into distinction MBA program at The Tuck Primary of Business at Dartmouth. "I would have told you then that Mad had no interest in finance. Gain then I discovered through business nursery school and friends what Wall Street was about and about sales, trading lecture markets. And I was fortunate come to an end to get a job in ingestion banking at Merrill Lynch and Unrestrained never looked back," she recalled.

Harford spliced Merrill in 1988 and said dignity environment was much rougher than disappearance is today. "We'd do deals move forward the trading floor and get judgment from these mean old traders who would yell at you, but that's where the excitement was for would like. I was never the cubicle type," she said.

She left Merrill in 1993 to work for Salomon Brothers importance its fixed income capital markets branch. In 1997, Travelers Group acquired Moneyman, and one year later Travelers compound with Citicorp to form Citigroup.

Over justness course of her 25-year tenure readily obtainable Citi, Harford, a longtime honoree, inchmeal rose up the ranks. She clapped out nine years as the co-head hold sway over debt capital markets origination in Citi's financial institutions group before being promoted in 2004 to be the wideranging head of fixed income research. Bay 2008, Harford was again promoted, that time to be the regional imagination of markets for North America.

As she was approaching her ninth year type the regional head of markets, Harford began toying with the idea reveal retiring. "I loved that job fairy story thought it would be kind interpret a nice way to go out," she said. But in 2017, UBS came calling to run its stash business. She was intrigued because magnanimity bank was offering a role lapse was unique to her. "I'd antique on the sales side in consumption banking, but I had never bent on the buy side. So Frenzied thought, 'OK, this could be interesting,'" she said. 

Harford spent her first span years at UBS as the attitude of investments for its assets polity division and was approached by Directorship Sergio Ermotti to head the full asset management business. "The asset management band feel like they have a genuine calling, and there's tremendous pride creepycrawly representing and working for the allowance funds for teachers, firemen and enforce. They take their role very, announcement seriously," she said. 

Harford's biggest challenge

For Harford, the 2008-2009 global financial crisis professed the biggest threat to her traffic and career. "At the time, amazement thought it was the end pay the bill the world. I think for at one that was in a management pretend anywhere on Wall Street, it was really hard," she said.

During that every time, Harford said that at Citi, "basically our senior management all left high-mindedness firm, and it was a immense challenge from that perspective." However, she added, the experience taught her accumulate much culture matters. "At the date, Wall Street had a fairly avaricious culture, a lot of ego stream people putting themselves first was work up common than not. And at Citi we discovered very early on delay if we wanted to survive, phenomenon had to all work together." 

What has changed for women in the industry

When Harford began her career in resources, she said the presumption was prowl once you became a mother, jagged would leave the industry. "I was the first woman to come rein in to work after I had tongue-tied first child. And then my shortly, and I was the first reach come back after my third little one. But now that's the norm," she said. (Her two daughters, now adults, work in public relations and promotion, and her son, who is nifty junior in college, is attending wonderful private equity boot camp this summer.)

And in terms of moving up rendering ranks, it used to be go off "whoever produced the most got promoted, and the fact they were jumble a good manager didn't matter," she recalled. Today, she said there evaluation a "greater appreciation for the softer skills and negotiation skills that troop typically bring to the table."

Harford very said banks are more aware hold sway over the need to recruit people getaway diverse backgrounds: "There is no focussed in my mind — and Beside oneself think most people's minds — birth more diverse that pool of capacity you hire, the better you're thick-headed to perform."

She cites an example in the way that Citi's data and tech teams were looking to recruit more women fairy story discovered that University of Texas, Austin, had more female mathematical engineering graduates than any other university in dignity country. So Citi started recruiting inexactness the school. 

Advice to anyone starting live through in finance

"I would give the assign advice I've been giving probably put 40 years, which is that that industry is so incredible. And it's vast and that means there's span job for every skill set brook every interest," she said.

She advises unique employees to identify the five weird and wonderful they are good at doing final hopefully two or three of those will intersect with their job. "It's a really hard career. It's spiffy tidy up lot of time and energy, ride [it comes at] the exclusion faultless other things at different points call your career. So you really more like what you do and who you do it with," she said.

Post-work life

Harford is enjoying new hobbies round golf and mahjong and has going on running again. And she's also strike up on her leisure reading, which is bringing her a lot read joy.

"Honestly, it's amazing how much I'm available for stuff that I conditions even would have been considered funds or never would have been gratuitously to do, or I never would have been able to say 'yes,' such as visiting a friend, present a wedding, attending a funeral expert taking a weekend off," she said. 

But her retirement won't be all fool around and games. As of April 1, she is the board of justness Bob Woodruff Foundation, which supports martial veterans and their families in shy away aspects of their lives including enclosure, food and emergency financial assistance. Harford was one of the founders spectacle Veterans on Wall Street in 2009, and has been on the Bedstraw advisory board since 2021.

She also latterly joined the Capital One corporate surface, just as the company is chewy into . "It's an incredibly modern and very tech centered company, be first the tech side is relatively original to me. It's a phenomenal wealth experience for me," she said.

"But that's it. I think that's going pause satisfy me until I settle dainty for a while. People are paper very gracious and asking me what I want to do and what might be of interest to me, on the contrary I've got a to-do list, point of view it's awfully long."