Winner of our Trailblazer Award, Mangala Ananthanarayanan, MD & Head of Business Management for EMEA & APAC, PIMCO
How are you seeing diversity impact the industry?
The industry in Europe is much more global and diverse today, across a variety of measures including gender, with a clear focus on meritocracy. This is a huge positive as we now have a larger talent pool to recruit from for entry-level roles at present. That said the journey is far from over. Science, Engineering, Technology and Mathematics (STEM) oriented subjects, which are critical for success in the investment management industry, still have low take-up by girls for their university degrees today.
What does this award mean for you?
In many ways, the award reflects what I have experienced in my time at PIMCO and what keeps me at PIMCO. At PIMCO we feel comfortable asking ourselves why we think the way we think and listening to other perspectives before coming to a conclusion we can move forward with. So, while the broader themes of diversity and inclusion run throughout PIMCO, diversity of opinion is celebrated here, and this award reflects that for me.
What would you like to do, to support positive change in the industry?
I am passionate about the need to get more girls to study STEM related subjects as they are a crucial part of the entry requirements for the core roles in financial services. That’s where we really struggle. Scientific enquiry and quantitative skills are essential when it comes to portfolio management functions, we simply do not have enough girls doing the degrees you need to become a strong portfolio manager.
It is very important for some of the change to happen earlier, so we can increase the number of senior women in finance. Physics and further mathematics are the A-level subjects that seem to be perennially unpopular with the girls. It all starts there, at school and college.
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