State Street Global Advisors has a plan to improve gender diversity on corporate boards. A New York City group is focusing on getting women in the pipeline first.
Girls Who Invest, founded by Seema Hingorani, a former chief investment officer for the New York City Retirement Systems, aims to increase the number of women in leadership and portfolio-management roles in the asset-management industry by helping mangers get more female job candidates.
Surprisingly, the number of female asset managers is shrinking. According to data from 2015, the most recent available, 7% of investment managers in the $15 trillion mutual-fund industry were female, according to Morningstar Inc. That is down from 10% in 2009.
Among its efforts, the nonprofit group organizes an intensive summer educational program, joining with professors at several large universities and executives at asset-management firms. Following this four-week education program, where these college students receive what Ms. Hingorani calls a “crash-course M.B.A.,” the students then embark on six-week paid internships at firms such as Bank of America Corp. , Oaktree Capital Group LLC and Wellington Management Co.
This summer, about 60 women are taking part in the program, which began on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania. Next year, the group hopes to have about 100 women at Penn and the University of Notre Dame.
“More gender diverse teams get better outcomes. The firms believe that, they just don’t know how to get it,” said Ms. Hingorani, who has had a long career working for such firms as Pyramis Global Advisors, a unit of Fidelity Investments, and T. Rowe Price Group Inc.
She said when she had asked most investment executives why they don’t have more women, the most common answer was they don’t get resumes from women.
Within the asset-management industry, alternative assets—which includes private equity, real estate and hedge funds—has the lowest percentage of female representation. Adding a few more women to these areas, which run large pools of money, could help Girls Who Invest reach its goal of having 30% of the world’s investible capital managed by women by 2030, Ms. Hingorani says.
The issue of women in management was in focus this week after index-fund giant State Street said it voted against the re-election of directors at 400 companies this year on grounds they failed to take steps to add women to their boards. The money manager, a unit of State Street Corp., said it discovered that 476 companies whose shares it owned lacked a single female board member. Of that group, the Boston-based firm said 400 companies failed to make any significant effort to address the issue.
State Street, which oversees more than $2.5 trillion in assets, had pledged in March to throw its weight behind the issue of gender diversity this year. The firm commissioned and placed a bronze statue of a young girl across from the iconic bull on Wall Street.
Ms. Hingorani, over the past few years, met with industry executives, endowment chairs, college professors and college students directly to launch the program. Many of the asset-management firms that financially back the program—which is free for the students—also take on a student as an intern.
Ms. Hingorani’s hope is to expand the program to a total of 150 students and three locations within the next few years. Students don’t have to be finance majors to apply, with liberal arts, engineers and other majors accepted.
The one thing she doesn’t want is too much expansion.
“It’s more than just educating women. It’s about providing real jobs,” she said. “By creating a boutique-like structure, we can do that.”
Write to Geoffrey Rogow at geoffrey.rogow@wsj.com
Original article and pictures take s.wsj.net site
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