Babson Welcomes Wellington CEO Jean Hynes for a Candid Fireside Chat

On a recent spring evening, the Stephen D. Cutler Center for Investments and Finance in partnership with Scholars of Finance - Babson Chapter hosted Jean Hynes of Wellington Management for a fireside chat and reception.?

One of five female CEOs among the top twenty asset management firms, Jean was a prime pick for the center’s distinguished speaker series which regularly brings finance thought leaders to campus twice a year.??

Bruce Herring '87, P'19, the former president of Fidelity’s Strategic Advisors, Inc., moderated the chat. A 1987 Babson College alum who sits on the college’s board of trustees, Bruce seamlessly wove through many personal and professional subjects.?

On the personal front, Jean covered her life story and the advice she gives to her four daughters. On the professional side, she spoke about diversity, ESG, the markets, and healthcare.??

Gabriel P. ‘23 and Peter D'Ambrosio ‘24, Babson students who head Scholars of Finance found the fireside chat fascinating. According to Gabriel, “In terms of the content of the event and the turnout, we were both really thrilled.”?

Peter added: “The entire purpose of Scholars of Finance is to inspire character and integrity in future finance leaders. Hearing Jean embody those principles throughout her career and life was very powerful for all of our members. You hear it a lot on an intellectual level but to see someone put it into practice as Jean has is awesome.”?

Patrick Gregory, CFA the Cutler Center’s Managing Director, said Jean’s advice to focus on secular trends that are going to impact the market hit home. In addition to making good investment opportunities, Patrick said, those trends also make for savvy career moves. “We want to be positioning students not just for a career to be relevant today, but five and ten years from today.”?

What’s Jean’s story? How did she rise the ranks in finance to become CEO of Wellington??

Jean is proof that anyone with intellect and work ethic can enter finance. The daughter of Irish immigrants who settled in Milton, MA, Jean didn’t grow up talking about stocks. Her father laid bricks and her mom took care of her and her five siblings. The first time she heard about the stock market was when it crashed in 1987 during her freshman year at Wellesley, where she received a significant scholarship.?

During her junior year, Jean took a famous sociology class at Wellesley that required an internship. After applying to positions across industries, she landed at a brokerage firm in Boston. “I didn’t like the brokerage part but I really liked the thought part.”?

After graduating from college during a recession, Jean interviewed for an administrative assistant position at Wellington. “I wish I could find the recruiter I was working with back then because she was so passionate about the culture at Wellington and sold me on the job.”?

The now-CEO differentiated herself immediately by writing Wellington’s ‘Morning Meeting,’ a daily tradition since 1958. “I did the morning meeting notes once a week. I did a better job at this task than anyone and that’s how I got recognized.”?

Jean’s adept morning meeting execution put her on the radar of Ed Owens, whom she would go on to work under for the next twenty years. “He was probably the most successful portfolio manager not just in healthcare, but at any mutual fund at the time. He had the best record. I was lucky to be able to work with him and lucky to get the break.”?

In 1992, Ed was starting to manage Wellington’s healthcare arm and tapped Jean to help him with writing, which he knew Jean was skilled at from her morning meeting performance.??

That opportunity proved to be Jean’s big break. “He took me to every biotech and pharmaceutical company meeting from day one and just provided this umbrella for me to learn and make mistakes.”?

What advice would Jean give to recent grads embarking on their careers??

Jean has four daughters who are about to start or starting their careers. She tells them to find a company that has:?

• Positive integrity?
• A really strong culture?
• People you love to work with every day?

In addition to a strong company, Jean tells her daughters to find a job that excites, challenges, and educates them every day.?

To find the right role, Jean recommends taking strength finder tests to uncover your natural ‘edges’ and see what types of roles energize you. Jean’s strengths are that she’s a hyper-organized connector. Her exceptional organizational skills have enabled her to rise in a male-dominated industry while raising four kids. Meanwhile, her ability to connect with people has set her apart as both an investor and a leader. Lastly, Jean’s intuition has set her apart from day one. “I always thought CEOs had to be big visionary people and that wasn’t who I am but in reality, I’ve always been visionary in my own way through connecting dots.”?

Finally, Jean recommends learning coding to some degree. She had all her daughters take an MIT computer science class one summer and hundreds of younger investors at Wellington have gone through Python training. “It’s an important skill set that will help you manipulate data to gain insights into the world.”?

What advice would Jean give to mid-career professionals??

Jean recommends considering moving abroad to grow both personally and professionally. In 2007, she moved her family across the pond to start Wellington’s investment platform at their new London office. Born and raised in Boston, Jean comes from a large, close-knit family. Removed from her support system, Jean was stretched in ways she had never imagined while abroad.??

“Leaving the cocoon of Wellington’s Boston office was actually really good for me and my family. Moving to London was probably the most important thing we've done in our lives. Professionally, it allowed me to have more independence and grow at an accelerated rate.”?

Another move Jean made around this time that she recommends to mid-career professionals: working with an executive coach.

“If you can, work with a coach sooner than I did. Executive coaching taught me what motivated me and my teammates. It sort of unleashed me not to worry about every little thing on the path to leadership.”?

This experience helped Jean oversee Wellington’s healthcare team, a high-asset, pivotal arm of the firm. Leading healthcare gave her “a mini experience of running a business within Wellington,” setting her up on the path to Managing Partner and ultimately CEO.?

What qualities make exceptional investors according to Jean??

In Jean’s view, three qualities make really good investors. These include being:?

1. Insightful: The best investors research and connect the dots to form differentiated insights about companies around the world.?
2. Risk-taking: Depending on your risk profile, you might need to train yourself to take more chances or hold back.?
3. Curious: This is the most important, must-have quality for an investor

In the same vein as curiosity, Jean says you should always be learning as an investor:

“My education didn’t stop when I left Wellesley. I went back to Harvard Extension to take biology and get my CFA. Learning shouldn’t stop when you graduate.”?

How has Wellington successfully integrated DE&I initiatives?

Asset management has historically struggled with fostering diversity. When Jean first came to Wellington, not only were employees mostly white males but they were also only from a few universities. “It was a very narrow place. A wonderful but narrow place.”?

Jean, on the other hand, is a big proponent of diversity.?

“From a very big picture context, we have to generate insights every day about the world. If you have to figure out what’s going to happen in China, what's going to happen with inflation, what's the next big drug emerging, you can't do it by yourself and you can't do it in a silo. The more diverse perspective you have, the more effective your insights will be. It should have been obvious 15 years ago but it wasn’t. There wasn’t as much data around it. But now there’s beautiful data that shows that diversity of thought is really important.”?

Jean said that Wellington just had a gala for their foundation and someone commented on how refreshingly young and diverse its employees had become. This evolution didn’t happen overnight, though:?

“I think the reason we're making a lot of progress is because we've been very deliberate about it. We’re making a concerted effort to hire more women into management. And then when we hire out of undergrad, one of the things we say is that we want humanity represented.”?

How does Wellington embrace ESG in its investment process??

About five years ago, Jean says she had an ‘aha’ moment that ESG was going to potentially change how the markets operated over a long period. Her revelation came about partly because of the ‘ESG’ label emerging – naming the fact that environmental, social, and governance issues affect company valuations – but also because of regulation:

“If you go back over time, regulations change market structure. After the 2008 financial crisis, for instance, regulations moved a lot of lending to private credit, for example. So I realized that ESG could also change the structure of financial markets as assets flowed.”?

While ESG investing is extremely important in most markets, Jean says the ‘E’ part has become a focus for US politicians.

“The decarbonization of the world is likely to be a major trend over the next thirty years, just like technology was a major trend. And so at Wellington, we’re providing research to our portfolio managers and investors and having everyone incorporate ESG into their own unique, authentic philosophy process.”?

What does Jean make of the turbulence in the current market??

Having lived through declining interest rates as a consumer and investor, Jean says the last five years were actually an uncomfortable period for her as an investor:?

During this last period of disinflationary, globalizing money, “companies could so easily get money that they were doing things that weren’t smart. Events were happening that were more unpredictable from a value creation perspective so in some ways this current period makes more sense to me.”?

In terms of the SVB banking crisis, Jean says that despite the speed at which money left institutions, it doesn’t compare to the 2008 financial crisis in severity:

“To give you some perspective, ‘08 was scary. This is not like that. After SVB, the range of options is wider. That was a credit crisis and this is more of a liquidity issue.”?

Moving forward, Jean says, ensuring there’s enough lending in the system to prevent a recession will be key.?

Having worked for Wellington’s healthcare arm her entire career, how has Jean seen healthcare evolve??

According to Jean, there are two big opportunities in healthcare:?

1. Data-driven patient treatment?

Jean says that the 2009 American Recovery Act allocated 30 billion electronic medical records.?

“Electronic medical records might turn out to be the US government's most important investment over the next hundred years because now you can actually use data to really accelerate value-based care (i.e. how you deliver health care in the lowest cost setting with the highest quality).”??

2. Gene sequencing?

The genome was sequenced for the first time in 2000. Despite its recent start –the industry didn’t even begin researching sequencers until 2010 – Jean says that sequencing can now occur for just $250. Deep experiments over the last five years have made gene sequencing a biological revolution that will dramatically increase standards of care.?

The Stephen D. Cutler Center for Investments and Finance at Babson College hosts a Distinguished Speaker Series that highlights thought leaders in finance. You can register for future events or reach out to Farrah Narkiewicz to learn more at [email protected]. Special thank you to Elise Plugis for this report.