Hi Safia! Thank you for taking time to speak with Investment Society today. Could you please introduce yourself to ISOC members?
My name is Safia Williams. I grew up in Portland, Oregon, and I am part of Wellesley Class of 2019. At Wellesley, I studied computer science and I minored in math.
How does your day-to-day look like at Harding Loevner and what was the recruitment process like for the position?
To give some context, I did Girls Who Invest. Basically, it was during my sophomore summer and it's a four-week intensive program at the University of Pennsylvania designed to introduce you to the field of asset management. They teach you some basic finance stuff, but also get you prepared to do things like give a stock pitch. Then after that, they have several firms that they partner with and you're partnered with a firm for a six-week internship. I did this six-week internship with GMO, which is an asset manager based in Boston. Then, the following summer I did an internship with Wellington Management, which is also a partner firm with Girls Who Invest. So that's how I got into the industry. Then after that, I knew I wanted to stay in this industry. It's very much the kind of job that aligns well with someone who has a background in the liberal arts because you have to bring together a variety of skills to be able to critically evaluate an investment idea. You need to have quantitative math skills, but you also need to be able to communicate well and write. You're going to be learning about different industries, whether it's healthcare or energy. Anything that you've studied in college, you could probably find a way to tie into investing. So I knew I wanted to do some sort of supportive research position and I just applied for a lot of jobs my senior year. This is the one that happened to come through and it was something I very much wanted to do. I wasn't sure about moving to New Jersey; I've been to Newark airport before, but that was not enough to compel me to move here. It turned out really, really wonderful. New Jersey is the Garden State. It's not quite the Pacific Northwest, but there are parts of the state that are really beautiful, so that was better than I expected. As far as the day-to-day goes, I do a variety of support research. I support analysts; I might help them do research on a particular industry, or on a particular company, or both. For example, I helped one of our analyst research animal healthcare companies. I've been learning about how vaccines are made for pets, which is not something I ever thought I would be studying. I also work with portfolio managers to help them analyze the risk of their portfolios. We run reports every quarter to monitor our portfolios' tracking error and volatility and we ask questions such as "Which stocks contribute the most to tracking error? Why is that? Is this a change from previous quarters or previous years?” So those are the kinds of questions and I guess that's a little more quantitative work, but I do that sort of thing. I'm also involved in ESG (Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance) initiatives. We do get a lot of questions from clients about what is the carbon intensity of your portfolio and which companies do you own that are the highest polluters, and are you engaging with them at all on that? I support with those kinds of initiatives as well. It's a little bit of everything.
How's your transition from college to an environment where you have to work 40+ hours a week?
I think Wellesley is very rigorous. I think most Wellesley students are probably working more than 40 hours a week, so it's actually kind of nice to transition and be like, “Oh, my weekend is actually a weekend.” I don't have to work on the weekends and you don't have that constant burden of “I need to be studying for something.” Of course, having said that, I actually am studying to become a Chartered Financial Analyst, which is known as the CFA. That is an exam that my employer requires that our research team members complete, so that is an exam that I did have to study for. But besides that, there are no exams. Our weekends are free to do whatever you want. I would say Wellesley has prepared me very well in terms of, as I alluded to earlier, the liberal arts education. I think being able to write well in my position is especially important, and I think Wellesley prepared me really well for that.
What activities would you recommend students who are interested in finance do and what experiences do you think students should expose themselves to?
Going into this, I think the stereotype is that you have to be majoring in economics, or finance, or something like that to get into this industry. In hindsight, computer science and environmental studies would have been a killer double major. I would say computer science has been really helpful just because programming is a skill that's in high demand, so it's a useful skill to be able to program. But I would say you don't have to be an econ or finance major. I mean, Wellesley doesn't even have a finance major. I would say pursue something that really interests you. It could be biology, or it could be, like I say, environmental studies, or it could even be history. I wish I'd taken some Mandarin classes. We do a lot of investing in China and I think it would have been really helpful to have a little bit of background in something that you wouldn't necessarily think ties directly into a career on Wall Street or in finance. So I would say it's helpful to have some quantitative skills, whether that be in programming or statistics or something like that, but besides that, I would say pursue whatever interests you.
Do you use any concepts or skills that you've learned from Wellesley at work and how has a liberal arts education benefited you?
As I say, the skills most valuable were Python. GMO, which I mentioned earlier, was specifically looking for someone with a programming background. Their investment strategy leans more quantitative, so having someone with that kind of background was what they were looking for and if I wasn't a computer science major, I wouldn't have been matched with them. So Python, or R, or something like that would be really helpful. Also a strong background in statistics. This is kind of Harding Loevner specific, but we very much pay attention to the principles of behavioral finance, so that's something that I think if you are interested in finance, it's an interesting field to go into because it combines psychology and you learn about decision making and that's very important in investing, but it's something that could be learned outside the school. Writing is also a really valuable skill that Wellesley and a liberal arts education we're preparing for.
What is the best piece of advice you have ever received?
Well, my dad was the one who said you should really take at least one computer science class and one personal finance class. At the time, I kind of rolled my eyes but I was like, you're paying for my undergraduate education, so I don't have much of a choice. Turns out that was excellent advice. He couldn't have foreseen the path that I took and I had no idea, but that was really good advice. One thing that people at my firm have told me is to have confidence in your ability to execute on a process. This advice was given in the context of investing, but I think it's also true in life: You can't always control what the outcome is going to be, but you can have control over your process and how you evaluate the situation and make decisions. If you have confidence in that process, that's going to take you a long way and the outcome doesn't matter as much as the process does. That's something that I've found to be really great advice in investing but also, personally.
Lastly, what's the great book you've read recently?
I actually have a book club going at our work. In terms of investing related or decision making related, I would recommend Noise by Daniel Kahneman. It's a book that discusses how to become better at making decisions and to become more consistent about making decisions. For example, one of the things he talks about is how, depending on the time of day, judges may make different decisions based on if they're hungry or if the weather is bad outside and that's a big problem in our jury and in our legal system. So how can we understand where this bias is coming from and how can we take steps to mitigate it? That's one of the examples that he draws upon, but he goes into depth about how you can become a better decision maker so I think that was really good. In terms of perhaps less investing related—actually, one of the research projects that I did for work was to better understand how companies deal with the risk of cybersecurity and the threat that hackers pose to companies, so I did read a book called Cyber Security for Beginners by Raef Meeuwisse. If you're at all interested in learning the basics of cybersecurity and getting a good foundational understanding of it, that was definitely an interesting book.
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