This Wall Street veteran is changing the conversation about women, and men, investing
Women should own it.
It's a sentence up for interpretation. For Sallie Krawcheck, one of the most powerful women in finance and now CEO of women-focused investment platform Ellevest, it should definitely apply to stock, and it should also apply to behavior in the workplace.
That's why Krawcheck titled her new book "Own It: The Power of Women at Work." It's a mix of personal anecdotes of her time on Wall Street and advice on how to navigate the world of finance and investing, especially if you're a woman.
Speaking with Mashable's BizPlease podcast, Krawcheck shared some of those tips as well as her view on media (turns out she was a journalism major in college), the gender pay gap and diversity in the workplace.
Don't expect to hear or read about yachts, cocaine and sex, à la Wolf of Wall Street, but Krawcheck isn't shy about the details on the sexism and other strange encounters she faced on the floor and at her desk.
"People have gravitated toward the one little anecdote I tell in the beginning of the book, that when I first went to Wall Street, shortly after I started, there were xerox copy of male nether regions left on my desk every morning," Krawcheck said. "It was pretty hostile, but that being said, I loved my time on Wall Street."
Despite her enjoyment of working in finance, she saw many problems within the industry and for the people they served — Wall Street and investing wasn't made by or for women, for one. This lack of interest and engagement in investing hurts the street financially and doesn't help individual women.
After Krawcheck left Wall Street, she started building for a solution. Back in November, as Mashable first reported, Krawcheck opened her digital investment platform Ellevest to everyone.
Unlike other online advisors like Betterment and Wealthfront, Ellevest adjusts it advisements to how women differ from men.
The idea initially spurred a lot of backlash. It's not about speaking to the "little lady brain," Krawcheck said, but rather it's about being thoughtful to the differences.
"Not a single person thought 'for women' meant better, or smarter. There was an assumption that different meant less good," Krawcheck said.
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Kerry Flynn is a business reporter for Mashable covering the tech industry. She previously reported on social media companies, mobile apps and startups for International Business Times. She has also written for The Huffington Post, Forbes and Money magazine. Kerry studied environmental science and economics at Harvard College, where she led The Harvard Crimson's metro news and design teams and played mellophone in the Band. When not listening to startup pitches, she runs half-marathons, plays with puppies and pretends to like craft beer.
