4-Year Check-In

So then, has it been a very deliberate journey for you where you checked off certain boxes along the way, or did you zig & zag, according to that analysis, every three, four years?

Like anything else, life is not a continuum. I mean, you have to zig & zag and you have to have curiosity. But again, I go back to having that four year check in, which is a magical number on where you're really headed. And I think that helped me navigate through my career to the World Bank, to Franklin Templeton and now Nuveen.

So give us an example of when you did that sort of self-analysis. And was there one scenario where it was a pivotal point for you? Were you at the four year mark? You said, "you know, this is not the direction I want to go in." And how did you accommodate for that?

I think taking risks is important. And so every four years, if you're gonna switch jobs or switch careers, you're really, taking a big risk because you're going to a new environment that you don't really understand. So I think when I left the World Bank and joined Franklin Templeton, I literally took my kids, my three girls were very young at that time and we moved back to Mumbai, India, to run Franklin Templeton. And for the first, six, eight months, I was living in a hotel. That was my home. That was my office. It was a startup within a large organization. So that was a big risk. But again, I moved to India with a very deliberate three to four year horizon. And sure enough, I left in four years and moved to Singapore again with a three or four year horizon. Then, in about two and a half years, I left and moved back to the states.

And you and you did that, the Mumbai move, the Singapore move, with your eye on the ultimate goal, which was to keep moving up. Was that the ultimate plan?

Yeah, absolutely. And not only keep moving up, but it was also curiosity and to learn. And you don't want to be a big fish in a small pond. So that was what I was seeing in India and Singapore. And I ultimately wanted to come back to the U.S. because really this is where the financial sector is the most mature and the largest. But I did learn along the way and I did take away different cultures, different businesses, and brought it back to my role today, to where I am today.