Alyssa Coon

I've been working in the financial services industry for a little over 10 years now. After graduating from Manhattan College with my MBA in accounting, I started my career at Deloitte in their audit practice out in New York City, where I went through a couple of busy seasons. When I was moving to Chicago, I thought it was a good time to see what else was out there, and I came across Standish Management working with a recruiter. I liked how it was still client service because I felt that's the best way to learn as much as you can working at one company. For the past 8 years, I've been at Standish Management, a fund administration firm where we do the back office accounting for private equity firms. I'm currently a senior manager and one of our pod leads, which means I have a group of around 20 to 25 people who work below me, and we work on all similar types of fund structures. Within my role, I help with staffing, business development, as well as overseeing all of the clients that are in my pod. What I'm most proud of is that everyone who has worked with me or under me and has left the firm has told me in our goodbye chats that they really enjoyed working for me because I actually cared about them and how they felt. A lot of companies just focus on the bottom line, but as a manager, I really care about the people who work with me, because at the end of the day, if you're working somewhere all day, 5 days a week, you want to enjoy what you're doing and also enjoy who you're working with. I think having that personal touch really goes far in helping people develop personally and professionally. I'm also a mom of two young girls, and becoming a mother has really helped me develop even more as an employee and a person. They're my reasons why now when I wake up - I want to show them that if you work hard and you put your mind to things, then you can really succeed in anything that you want to do.