Interview with Monica Reno, Associate, Emerging Leader Program at Fidelity Investments
This week, we had the opportunity to talk with Monica Reno, an associate in Fidelity Investments’ Emerging Leaders Program. Monica is a 2018 graduate from Wellesley, where she majored in economics and minored in math, and conducted research with Professor Olga Shurchkov in the Economics department.
We talked to Monica about her experiences leading up to her current job, her role at Fidelity, and advice she has for the next generation of Wellesley students who are interested in pursuing careers in the financial services industry.
Can you tell us about your general background, such as your majors at Wellesley and what you did prior to Fidelity, and then about what your current role is?
Monica: I’ll start with my current job. I am with the Emerging Leaders Program at Fidelity, which is a rotational program that lasts 18 months. It is specifically designed for liberal arts majors — people who don’t necessarily have a finance background. There are 17 of us in the program. We do have Economics degrees but some people don’t, and some of them are psychology or philosophy majors.
Since it’s rotational, the point of the program is to get exposure to the business and to soak up all the information we possibly can so that eventually when we finish the program, we are shaped to be better leaders in the company because we have a broad understanding of the firm. It is also meant to see what our strengths are and place us in a job that will match our strengths because most of us came in thinking “Oh I want to work in financial services, but I don’t really know what jobs are out there, or what I’m actually interested in. So I just want to test everything.” We are not necessarily doing jobs related to finance; we are very scattered right now. One is on a marketing team. There are also people in a consulting group at Fidelity.
I can talk about my background now. I’m an Economics major at Wellesley and a Math minor. During the summers after my first-year and my sophomore year, I worked for a local credit union in my hometown in Portland, Maine. That was my first exposure to financial services. I worked in the loan operations department and it was a very typical intern job. I learned a lot about loans, but a lot of the work was fairly administrative. However, I really loved it. It was a very small company… credit unions are obviously very small. It’s a company that really cares for its clients and it felt like a family to me so I loved that.
But then I realized “Oh maybe I like Economics more.” The summer before my senior year, I stayed at Wellesley and did behavioral economics research with Professor Olga Shurchkov. Although I adore behavioral economics, and that part is definitely what I loved the most, what I learned from that summer was that I just don’t like research. When I look back, I’m really happy that I did it because I got to know that I don’t like research. But at the same time, I wish I could have done it the year before, because a lot of people get job offers in their junior summer. So I came into my senior year without a job offer, and I had to look for jobs then… That was hard… But I’m still glad that I did it. I don’t regret it.
What is your current rotation and what are you planning for the remaining rotations?
Monica: So the first 3 months, we have three 1-month rotations that are customer-emergent. The whole point is to get to know Fidelity’s customers. We work with these 3 major business units within Fidelity. There is Personal Investing, Workplace Investing, which is like 401-K’s and pensions, and then Fidelity Institutional.
We had really short rotations with them. We did projects for the end of our rotations but mostly, it was just learning and sitting in meetings, going through workshops, and absorbing information. 2 or 3 weeks ago, we just started our first long rotation, which will be 4-months-long. It’s technically our operations rotation (that’s our general theme) with an emphasis on data analytics. I was placed onto a team that specifically does data analytics for the Personal Investing side of Fidelity. It’s very interesting because we get all the data from phone calls. For example, when a person calls Fidelity with questions, maybe about a transaction, we get all the data and we look for all the trends, reasons why people are calling Fidelity, trends in call volumes, possibilities for digitizing, etc. I’m basically doing data analytics, which is very interesting and I don’t have a background for it. I’m learning Tableau, which is a big tool in my group.
We didn’t know what our rotations were going to be. We knew the theme was operations, but we didn’t know what it was until a week before we started. After this rotation, we have two more formal long rotations. At the very end, we have a 2-month-long capstone project, where the people in the Emerging Leaders Program will get together into teams and solve a business problem. And then we present it to Abigail Johnson, the CEO of Fidelity, which is crazy. We didn’t know because we were only the program’s second cohort. The people in the inaugural class haven’t even graduated from the program yet. It’s very interesting that the program keeps changing.
Can you tell us a bit more about your experiences at Fidelity, the firm’s culture, and your specific program?
Monica: Fidelity is an amazing company. My original view of the firm was that it would be super conservative but really, they are not at all. They are really embracing technology and Abigail Johnson is so cool. She’s really trying to move the company forward. Apparently a few years ago, everyone had to wear suits to work all the time. Now, we wear jeans to work. They are trying to make it more tech-company vibe. The culture is great; the people are so friendly and so willing to help you and meet with you. People care about my development. We can just email VPs to ask for half-an-hour chats casually. I was very shocked by the culture and how progressive it is. They are really putting forward initiatives to make it more diverse and younger, and bring in all the good talent and people that they actually want. The change is happening.
It’s also great that with this type of program, you will have peers with similar age and background experiences.
Monica: Yeah, I love having a cohort. I think one of the coolest things is coming into a company with 16 other people who are literally in the same boat as me. We are all fresh out of college. Another good thing is that they pooled people from all over the country. We are such a mixed group with a lot of different majors and background stories. I think coming into a job with a cohort is huge and something that I love.
Do you have any advice for people who are interested in finance in general or this role in your company? What can people start doing now, especially since Fidelity doesn’t recruit on campus?
Monica: Yeah you are completely right. Fidelity is a relationship company (they say that all the time). You all know that networking is super key. But it is really hard for Wellesley students to know how to get into that environment. You can find a way in absolutely, using the alum network or so on. I guess when you are applying to the program or just thinking about financial services in general, one thing to consider is that companies are changing. Fidelity specifically is moving forward, trying to compete with firms like Amazon and Robinhood so they are looking for liberal arts candidates. There are some technical skills that are useful to have under your belt like R, Tableau, SQL, etc. These skills are super important, but they really want liberal arts students, people who can solve problems and think on their feet. This causes positive changes in the company. I think that’s huge in terms of applying. Definitely leverage your liberal arts background.
The other thing I would say is as an Economics major, a lot of times the Economics department will push for economic consulting. So many Wellesley students who graduate go into economic consulting. I applied to all these jobs as that’s what I thought I was supposed to do. However, those jobs are not suitable for me at all, and I knew it. I knew I wasn’t sure this would be what I wanted to do even when I was applying to those jobs. The big thing is to know yourself, to know what you are actually looking for in a job. For me, I really want work-life balance, and I wasn’t going to get that in consulting. Applying to jobs is really hard and not fun, but I would say if you could wait for the job that actually interests you, it will be so worth it down the line. Don’t settle for something that’s not going to actually get you excited. You don’t want to dread your job on day one. You want a cool experience. So I guess that would be my best advice. It’s kind of general and not super applicable to finance.
Commentaires