Deborah Smith

I'm pretty good at seeing opportunity - recognizing a good opportunity as opposed to a bad one - and being able to do something with it. As I've gotten older, I've found there's a lot of talkers out there, but not a lot of doers. Being able to take an opportunity that's a good opportunity and see it for what it is, but also be able to transact on it and turn it into something, that's what I attribute my success to. I think it's about being able to execute, not just talk about ideas.

At the end of the day, no one is responsible for your career except you. There's lots of people that will help you along the way, but at the end of the day, it's on you to make of it what you will. I also received three pieces of advice from one of my college professors when I got the job at Morgan Stanley that have stuck with me all these years. First, never say anything bad about anybody, because nothing good can ever come of it. Number two, never tell anybody how much money you make, because nothing good can come out of that either. And number three, never change who you are, because investment banking could do with a girl from the farm in Australia - you will be a breath of fresh air to the industry. I didn't know what he meant by that at the time, but I certainly do now. I'm still a country girl at the end of the day, and these pieces of advice have served me well.

In banking, finance, and real estate, it's a tough space - it's not for the faint of heart. If you're going to come into this space, you have to be prepared to stand your ground, to speak your mind, and be unafraid. Be unafraid. Don't worry about what other people think. Don't second-guess your decisions. If you feel it's the right thing, if you have a question, you just put it out there and just be fearless with it. Don't worry about what anybody says, don't second-guess your decisions, just run with it and deal with it, and don't look back. Stop thinking about what you think everybody else is thinking in the room. Just stop thinking about it. Just think about what you want to say and what you want to convey, and be unapologetic about it. Particularly women don't do that - guys do it all the time and enjoy it. You gotta go in there and you gotta stand your ground. Be loud, stand your ground, and be fearless in it.

One of the big challenges facing everybody right now is how AI is going to impact the labor force, particularly for kids coming in at an entry level. I think in white collar work across banking, investment management, and finance in general, that role is going to change and get redefined. The old way of doing things is not going to exist a year from now. So the question is, if you're coming out of college, how do you accommodate for that when you've just done an entire degree learning the old way of doing things, and you're coming into a workforce that requires a new way of doing things? For employers, it's finding people and figuring out how to screen for that. How do you figure out if you've got someone coming out of college that fits into the new world, as opposed to being in the old world? You can't just tell it off a GPA, or where they went to school, or the courses they did. A big challenge is thinking through how we make the next generation successful when the way we used to think made them successful no longer holds. There's so much unknown, and the world is changing so much that we're living it real time. As someone who's living it as an employer, it is not easy to navigate. I can make an argument that kids coming out of college have learned the wrong things for where the world is going. Six months from now, the disconnect between what they've learned in college and what I think the banking or investment management job requires will be so far apart.

Integrity and trust are most important to me. If you're going to say you're going to do something, I'm expecting that you will do it. I've been very fortunate throughout my career - my business partner and I have been friends almost as long as I've been in the United States. I have a lot of clients that we've worked with for 10 years plus, which in banking is highly unusual. I'm a relationship person, and I think for every relationship to be successful, it requires two people, and I'm willing to do my part. The anchor of it is you do the right thing by people, they'll treat you back that way, and I take that perspective in how I built out our relationship management and how we work with our clients.