Amy Reichard was recognized for Excellence in Institutional Sales Trading at the 2015 Women in Finance Markets Choice Awards.
What follows is a lightly edited transcript of a December 22 telephone interview.
Markets Media: Describe your role at Bloomberg Tradebook.
Amy Reichard: My role is a sales account manager, focusing on sales and trading for institutional clients. Some relationships I've had for many years and some are new. My territory is kind of throughout the country -- since I came back from the West Coast in May, I'm still maintaining clients out there, and also cover regions closer to the East Coast. I engage daily with traders and the portfolio managers, sometimes on high-touch sales trading actually working orders for clients, and sometimes we're having conversations on low-touch electronic execution strategy. Here at Tradebook it’s about overall account management as well as day-to-day trading specifics.
MM: What do you (and by extension, your team and organization) do to achieve excellence in institutional sales trading?
AR: I think the ‘secret’ to achieve excellence as an institutional sales trader is to listen very carefully to your clients, understand their needs, and find the fit where our product and platform best meets their needs. You also have to continuously follow up -- never leave anything open or hanging, and always follow up.
One of the things that I love here at Tradebook is that the team all works similarly and very much supports one another in the whole effort of trying to find the fit of the platform and the client, and making sure no client ever feels that they're number two. Everyone really focuses hard on taking care of the client relationship, which makes me proud to come into work every day. .
MM: What is your perspective on being a successful woman on Wall Street, i.e. what has been your experience as a woman in a field that at least historically has been dominated by men? What is your advice for young women who aspire to a career similar to yours?
AR: I've been fortunate in where I’ve worked and where I was taught this business. It has been a long road with many challenges, but in each place I've been given the opportunity to take it to the next level and work hard to make it a better environment. This is for women and men alike, as diversity is a key to success in any organization and I feel here at Tradebook and at Bloomberg we really embrace that.
I've been given the opportunity to co-lead the New York chapter of the Bloomberg Women's Community. I had started the chapter in San Francisco and when I moved here in May, I was given the opportunity to take on the role in New York. I'm excited about this because 2016 will give us an opportunity to take it to the next level -- we’ll be involved in communication, leadership development, community engagement, and philanthropy with the firm.
When you work in this day job for as many years as I have (although I'd like not to admit it!), sometimes things crisscross. When I moved back to New York after 10 years in San Francisco, I was happy to find that some of the relationships were still the same.
I'm trying to get back involved with was the work that I did at NYU. It wasn’t easy, but I wasn't about to give up my seat on the Goldman trading desk way back when, so I went to business school at night. Through that, I formed relationships with a lot of women who are still in the industry with whom I now have the opportunity to reconnect.
I'm hoping now that I'm back in New York I can go back down to NYU, get more involved in alumni activities and continue to work with women in trading in Wall Street because it’s important to me personally.