Carla Harris is a Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley, the most recent of many posts in her 35-year career at the firm that included serving as Vice Chairman of Wealth Management, heading the Emerging Manager platform, and running deals for decades as an investment banker and capital markets professional. She is the author of three books about navigating careers and leadership, Expect to Win, Strategize to Win, and the upcoming Lead to Win, each of which contains lessons she dubs “Carla’s Pearls.”
In the last few years, Carla added Board seats to her professional portfolio and currently serves on a host of Boards including SEO, Harvard University, Walmart, and MetLife. She’s also an accomplished gospel singer who has sold out shows in Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theatre.
Our conversation offers Carla’s pearls of wisdom in navigating a career from her earliest days on the Street. We cover her background, path to Wall Street, framing a personal narrative, learning what’s important to an organization, being authentic, taking career risks, and evolving multicultural opportunities in asset management. We then turn to lessons from Carla’s new book, from sitting in the Boardroom, and from a letter to her 25-year-old self.
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Show Notes
(3:38) Carla’s background
(10:56) Early career lessons
(12:51) Expecting to win
(15:16) Adjectives of success
(19:11) Learning from relationships
(22:21) Being yourself
(27:41) Client dynamics in banking
(30:28) Engaging with ESG trends
(33:32) “Pearls” from Carla’s book
(35:21) Creating trust and leaders
(38:47) Experiences from the boardroom
(41:06) Growing communication abilities
(41:55) Closing questions