Relationships Are Built On Trust - How Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri of TPG Cultivated That Trust

Anilu Vazquez-Ubarri is a Partner and the Chief Operating Officer at TPG, a global alternative asset management firm. Anilu started her career as an attorney; then spent almost 12 years at Goldman Sachs in Human Capital Management, eventually becoming the firm's Chief Diversity Officer and Global Head of Talent. She moved to TPG as the Chief Human Resources Officer before being promoted to her current role. (This is part 1 of our interview.)

You started your career as an attorney. Then you spent 12 years at Goldman Sachs in Human Capital Management, which is what Goldman calls HR, specifically diversity and talent development.

Then you moved to TPG, eventually becoming COO. Obviously, you are very good at what you do. And when you have that, relationships can take you to the next level. So, can you talk about what role business relationships played in your very successful career?

Everything in this business is relationships. We spend more time at work than with our family and friends. And we spend that time during very formative years. So, your peers, those that work for you, and people that you work for are very influential. They are your ecosystem.

For me, the majority of the opportunities that have come my way, whether I wanted them or not or whether I thought I was right for them or not, actually came from someone else because they saw something in me or they saw something in the opportunity that I couldn’t see.

Quite frankly, at the time, not all of the opportunities were sexy. But each of them built the steps that made it possible for me to have this great job that I get to do now.

So were there one or two or three people who really made a difference in your career? What did they do that helped you?

They were mostly either my internal clients or my bosses who I developed relationships with through situations or things we were working on. Several people come to mind. Edith Cooper was one of the most successful Black partners at Goldman. She herself had a pivot in her career - she moved from sales and trading to eventually heading Human Capital Management for Goldman Sachs. She gave me what I think was the first opportunity to think about my skillset in a different way.

My first role in HR was in Employee Relations, which was very closely related to what I had done as a lawyer. But Edith asked me to be her chief of staff and that opened up a whole new world. She opened up my mind to a lot more than employee relations and helped me to really think about human capital strategically, as a business imperative, and as something that could influence the business. That meant it needed to be aligned with the business.?That’s how I moved into talent and diversity.

I've had a series of wonderful women, women partners like Lisa Shalett, who always looked out for me. To this day, Lisa is an inspiration to me.?I've benefited from 360 feedback that was invaluable, from people who were more senior to me to peers to junior people.

Along the way, there were a number of people who mentored me who were very different from me. And I think that's very important. I had a couple of white males that have been really critical in my career.

One of them is Eric Lane. He was the head of Goldman Sachs’ Private Wealth Division and eventually Asset Management. He's at Tiger now. And he was my internal client. When we first started working together, we did not see eye to eye.?I was in a position where I had to disagree with him.

How do you disagree with and advise someone who is a lot more senior than you and at the same time develop a relationship with them so that they trust you? You have to convince them that you understand their business, that you have their back, and that you're disagreeing with them because you care.

I couldn’t always do things exactly how Eric would mentor me to do them.?But he challenged me. And that helped move me forward and do things differently, but in a way that was still authentic to my style.