Patricia Walsh Chadwick

The 13th episode of Read the Bull is a fascinating conversation with Patricia Walsh Chadwick, author of "Breaking Glass, Tales from the Witch of Wall Street." Patricia enjoyed a 30-year career in finance and held roles as a research analyst, portfolio manager, director of research, and investment strategist.

The book details Patricia's career, which began at a time where the majority of women in finance held administrative roles.  Patricia explains that she had a long-held secret from her colleagues that only came to light when she published her memoir, "Little Sister" in 2019. Patricia was forced to survive on her own, when at age 17 she was abruptly dismissed from the religious community that her and her family belonged to since she was six years old. The community had transformed into a cult over time and Patricia never revealed anything about her upbringing until she shared her book with her colleagues and friends.

Her second book, "Breaking Glass," details her meandering but ultimately, impressive career after being cast out of the cult. Finding her way in the late 1960s, at a tumultuous time in our country, was challenging in its own right, but Patricia had the added challenge of being thrust out in a world where she had never read a newspaper, never seen a movie, never went to a restaurant and didn't know any curse words.

Still, she was equipped with a stellar education thanks to her teacher and first mentor, Sister Ann Mary Cobb.

Patricia explains how she navigated the world in those early days and eventually landed a secretarial position at Ladenburg Thalmann, a Boston-based brokerage firm.  She talks to Stefan about those early days and details how she continued to gain experience and advance her investment management career, working for places like Citicorp, the Ford Foundation and Invesco. She credits much of her success to a handful of mentors, and dedicated the book to those individuals, including George Burden, Sherif Nada, Jay Light and Peter Vermilye.

Patricia details the ups and downs of her career and provides her perspective on the 1982 bull market, 1987 crash and other moments she witnessed first-hand. She also explains how she earned the nickname "The Witch of Wall Street," a moniker she was unaware of until her 70th birthday party.

Stefan and Patricia end the interview discussing what women starting out in finance can learn from her experience. Patricia also highlights her work on boards and and her current role as pro bono chief executive officer of Anchor Health Initiative Corporation, a Connecticut-based not-for-profit health care organization she founded in 2016 that provides primary and specialty health care needs of the LGBTQ community. 

Books detailing women's careers in finance and investing are rare, but more women are detailing their journeys. "Breaking Glass" is a worthy addition to the burgeoning genre.

Go to ReadTheBull.com for more information.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to Read the Bull, the only podcast dedicated to finance and investing books. I'm your host, Stefan Prelog. Today, I am thrilled to welcome Patricia Walsh Chadwick.
She is the author of Breaking Glass, Tales from the Witch of Wall Street. Welcome, Patricia. Thank you. How are you doing? I'm very well, thanks. Okay. Well, I'm going to read your bio real quick, and then we're going to get into it.
But Patricia, who's born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I won't say the year, even though you do have it on there. She received a BA in Economics from Boston University and had a 30 -year career in the investment business,
culminating as a global partner at Invesco. And today she sits on a number of corporate boards and blogs on issues social, economic, and political. She also mentors young women in high school and college.
And in 2016, Patricia co -founded a healthcare company Anchor Health Initiative, which provides primary care to the LGBTQ community in Connecticut.
That's an impressive resume. - Thank you. - Okay, so we're gonna get right into this. You had a 30 year plus career in investing. You worked at Invesco, you worked at CityCorp and many other firms that are some long forgotten.
But you wrote this book, but you had a 60 year - friends and colleagues on Wall Street didn't know about until you wrote your first book in 2019, which was a memoir titled Little Sister.
Can you tell me what that memoir was about and why you finally decided to reveal that secret to the world? Little Sister is the story of my upbringing, and my upbringing was unusual because I grew up in what was originally a religious community that consisted of a number of married couples,
their children who totaled 39, a dozen married couples, and some single men and women. And it was in Cambridge. And it started off as a community that was very dedicated to the Catholic faith.
And over time, it morphed into a controlled and by a few people at the top and ended up being what has to be called a cult.
And parents were separated from children. Children couldn't speak to their parents. We were schooled within the organization. And the purpose was to create a community of people dedicated to one thing,
which was the dogma of no salvation outside the Catholic Church, which meant that we were the only people perhaps in the world who were going to be saved when we died and go to heaven. And we were being bred as children,
I was one of the oldest of the 39 children, to be monastic when we grew up. So the parents were forced into celibacy, and then the children were being bred to be nuns and brothers,
you know, unmarried. And around the time I turned 14 or 15, in a pretty normal way, I began to have crushes. And it was on a couple of the men in the organization,
which proved me to be unfit to be a member of the community. And so when I graduated from high school and all of our schooling was within the community, I was kicked out.
Wow. And at what age were you kicked out? I was 17. You were 17. And your parents? were remained? They remained along with my four siblings. Okay. Wow. So you reveal this secret in 2019 with this book.
Yes. So you have this amazing career which we're going to talk about. This book obviously was the way to tell people, but what was it like when you when you gave people a book or told people that you're writing this book and they learned the story?
What was their reaction? The fact of the matter is, I didn't know how to talk about my upbringing. Most people, when you ask them, they say, "Where did you grow up?" I grew up in Toledo, Ohio, and I went to this university,
and then I did this. Mine was too complicated, so I never shared it with anyone. And it was when I was about 55 years old, not about, on my 55th birthday,
I was sitting with both my parents. My father was 86, and my mother was about 75 years old. said to them, I'm thinking about writing the stories of my childhood. And they were very,
very supportive. I said, I look back with a lot of pleasure on my childhood. And so by the time I started writing, which took me five years, and then had to learn the craft of writing,
by then my father had passed on. But my mother read every chapter, every chapter. and she said, "parts of it make me sad," but she said, "it's all true and you need to publish it." And so I did.
And in doing so, I shocked the Wall Street people that I knew and kind of grew up with because I had never shared their part of my life, because I simply didn't know how to.
And once I was, you know, on my own and fairly successful on Wall Street, I didn't see a reason to, so. I can't even imagine.
I mean, you worked with some of these people for years. You've known some of these people decades. Were there any reactions that stuck out or just anything that you can recall? People were shocked and surprised.
But the fact of the matter is, they knew me as the person that I was. And what I think was important, which comes out in the second book, was that a little... of what I went through as a child,
the structure, the engagement, the values that we were given, many of them ended up being extraordinarily valuable in my life on Wall Street,
getting myself from having to survive to ultimately thriving. And it was through, I would say, the ability to adapt some that I had had to learn when I was growing up in the community.
- Yeah, it's an amazing story. I haven't read that book yet, but you do get a little bit into that to kind of set up this book, which when I found out, we just thought it was an interesting story because you don't have a lot of stories about women who've had long careers in Wall Street,
particularly going back to the '60s and '70s. So I thought it was just going to be a unique book. that and then learned about this year past. So it was very interesting. So I didn't show the cover,
but this is the cover. Tales from the Witch of Wall Street. So you don't look like a witch. I'm gonna have to ask you about the nickname there. But so you decide to write, why did you decide to write the second book then?
- I had really not planned to. - Okay. - And a very good friend of mine, actually my husband's closest friend, a man I've known for many years. he's said to me, you know,
you've got to write the second story, the story, the arc of the story isn't complete. Yeah. Unless you do that. I hadn't thought about it that way. But once he talked about it, I thought, yes,
there is perhaps some value added. Because again, how does one, when one's way through life, when you come out of an environment in which you have never made a single decision.
on your own. And so I come back to that necessity of being adaptable in order to survive and then to thrive.
And ultimately to be able to reach the epitome of what I was looking forward to doing. - Yeah, you had a great career. But so let's go back to that. You were at, you were 17,
you were cast out. You were sheltered from the world essentially from the time you were about six years old. - Yes. - So you do say in the book, you were focused on survival.
So what were those first days like and how did it lead to your first job? - Well, I think it's important for your listeners to know that during my childhood, I never read a newspaper,
never watched a television show. Never went to the cinema. - Oh my God. a restaurant, never went to the supermarket. So I came out very, very naive, classically educated in a wonderful,
wonderful way. And ultimately, I had to take what I had learned and get through those first few steps. And I did it by being very,
very silent, keeping my eyes open, my ears open, and my mouth closed. I had never heard a swear word. I had never even heard, you know, a slang.
So I didn't know what half the vocabulary was. I didn't know a single actor or actress. I didn't know a single baseball player. So it was eye -opening.
And I just absorbed in silence for a while. Yeah, I can't even imagine what that was. like. And what year, so what year, your cast out when you're 17, what year was that?
- That was 1966. - And probably volatile times in America as well. - Well, it was, and it's quite interesting because a lot of people are very anxious about today's environment.
And I say, I lived through those late '60s when the Vietnam War was very much in people's homes because our own men... were over there. Today is different,
it's an observation of what is going on, but it feels to me today very much like it did back then. And in that regard, I am able to say,
I hope correctly, this too shall pass. - Yeah, yeah. They say history doesn't repeat, but it rhymes and it does feel like that in a lot of ways. So you've seen this. So you land at...
Boston's Hillcock Secretaryal School. - Hillcock's Secretaryal School, yes. - Thank you, okay. How did you end up in the school and what were those early days like at the school? - Well, my education had been very classical.
But we were, all 39 children in the community were being schooled within our community. And they realized that they had to get the school accredited or they might take us out and send us to the public school,
which, was considered not at all what they wanted for us. And so I was made to apply to two colleges, one of which was Bates, where my father had gone, and just as a parenthetical,
the people in this community were highly educated, very intellectual. My father had majored in mathematics, and then had gone on to get his graduate degree in philosophy.
The other school that I applied to was Vassar. And I think they very much wanted to prove that someone schooled within this community could actually get into an excellent school if I hadn't got in.
They would never have mentioned that I had applied. I got into both and it was on that basis that the school became accredited. That being said, the only purpose for there allowing me to apply was to get that accreditation.
And so I was forced to. write two letters, one to each of the schools saying I would not be becoming. And then Sister Catherine, when she kicked me out, determined I ought to have a few skills and sent me off to secretarial school,
which was intellectually vapid, but was the only set of skills I was being given. And so I got through. And then my first job was as the receptionist at a brokerage firm.
And I like to suggest that. had I been the receptionist at a car dealership, I might have had an entirely different career. But this one was one that allowed me step by step to move forward and learn more about the business,
the industry, and ultimately becoming an investment manager. It's a little bit serendipitous, I guess, because I did put you on this path. So tell me, so the firm you ended up was Ladenburg -Fallman.
- Yes. - Tell me about that firm and what you learned there. - It was an investment banking firm in Boston. And I started off as the receptionist, greeting people, answering the phones and making myself as useful as possible.
And that was one of the things that I think I did. And there's where adaptability came in. I needed to be energized. I needed to find excitement,
you know. work. And so I would do things just offer to Xerox things for the brokers or get their lunches or fix their telephones. And little by little,
I was being given more responsibility. But it was only within about a year and a quarter of having been there when the head partner,
a wonderful man named George Burton, no, I actually consider a mentor. came to me and said, I'd like you to go to New York tomorrow. And we're closing on a deal.
I didn't even know what a deal was much, much less. What did it mean to close a deal? Right. And he said, we're going to have you fly to LaGuardia. There'll be a car there.
They're going to take you to five different investors in this fund. Each of them is putting in a million dollars. Now this was in 1968, so a million dollars was plenty more than it sounds like.
- Sure. - And I was to come home with that five million dollars in my handbag and give it to them. And I was so excited at that opportunity. And I picked out the most professional looking clothes 'cause I had not that I had very many,
that professional. and went to New York and got all five checks for a million dollars, came home that night, delivered it to the, to the partner, to George.
And then he and the other partner took me out to dinner at the Ritz Carlton Hotel. And that night I went home and said, wow, this is the lifestyle they live. Right.
I wonder if I can get there someday. Right. So I mean, yeah, you're not out, not out of this. this religious Commune cult for just a year or so you're in a half or so. Yes,
and you're being exposed. Was that your first flight? No, okay. I had flown I had flown to other places. Okay, but it was my first business That's for sure collecting million dollar checks So in those early years and those early jobs Starting first the with Landberg Thalman,
you know, you were always interviewed by teams of men. You wrote that you, despite as a neophyte in the world of business, you never felt unencumbered by your gender, what do you mean by that? - I never felt that being a woman put me at a disadvantage and I thought a lot about that and I realized that I looked back to my childhood and I do quite a bit of that in this second book.
- Yes. - And within the community, my parents were not allowed to talk to me, so they were not men. or parental, I got no parental advice from them. The place was run by one woman.
Her name, we called her Sister Catherine. She co -founded the organization as it were, along with an incredibly brilliant Jesuit priest. But it was very apparent that she was the power behind the throne.
And so she ran the place. 100 people, 60 men and women, 39 children. And she ran it with an iron hand. Within our community,
we had, as I mentioned, our own little school. And the person that was the principal of our school was a woman named Sister Ann Mary, who had grown up in Massachusetts,
had gone to Radcliffe, had gotten her master's degree. Her father was the principal of our school. school in a town nearby. She was the epitome of a brilliant and dedicated teacher,
and she was an incredibly wonderful woman. I remember her from the second grade when I was reading. She taught mathematics in the school, she taught the violin,
she taught the trumpet, all of these things I took from her, and I admired her so. much. And she was a very, very different. She had a different personality and a different way of engaging from Sister Catherine.
Sister Catherine was, as I mentioned, a powerhouse. And she ran the rules. She made the rules, and she ran the place by those rules. And not one man pushed back on her,
not one woman, and definitely not one child. And so when I look back... I think to myself, Sister Catherine was actually a role model for me.
She certainly wasn't a mentor. But subliminally, subconsciously, she was the person that I observed how she ran things.
Sure. Not that it was my instinct ever to run them that way. But when I found myself out in the world, as I describe it, the fact that I was a woman did not in any way tell me that I wasn't capable.
And I think I have to give her some credit in terms of the personality that she was to say, I was fearless. My gender did not inhibit me in any way.
Meanwhile, it was Sister Ann Mary, who as the principal was aware that I was a woman. be leaving, even though they were keeping this a secret from my siblings, from 90 % of the people there.
And in that last few months of my high school, she would call me into a room in the afternoon and just the two of us would talk. And she would tell me how bright I was and how well I would do out in the world.
And even though we were not supposed to make any familial. indications of parents or anything, she said to me, and you have the best of, and she would name my parents. Sister Elizabeth Ahan was what we called my mother and brother James Aloysius,
my father. And she said, she would say, you have the best of them. And that gave me some confidence. So that when I went out, while I knew nothing, I didn't think I was worth nothing.
- It's very interesting 'cause you have these two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two. you these tools. When did you, was it upon reflection when you were writing that you realized that Sister Catherine,
you know, gave you kind of this this role model that fueled you throughout your career? It was definitely, not even when I was writing the first book, which took me ten years to write.
It was a book that was not easy. to write. Not that I felt it was cathartic and I had to get it off my chest, but I was just absorbing it. And frankly,
I was coming out. Nobody in the world knew that that had been my life. When it came to my second book, I had come to realize over the last few years how much I had benefited from my upbringing.
Strange as it was. And you know, unlike... any that I would ever wish on anyone. Sure. But by going back and revisiting the times that I grew up and observing what I did subsequently,
I saw the value of so much of what I had learned. Yeah. So, you were naive maybe in culture and socially,
but you were actually pretty prepared in terms of... education. Is that fair to say? It is fair to say, but it is also fair to say that almost the moment I got into Latin Berg Thulman in a very,
you know, unpretentious position, I said to myself, "You've got to get your degree." And I started going at night, and it took me nine years, but I ultimately got a degree in economics from Boston University.
That's great. That's great So you were you were working during the day going to school at night? Yes And you know and again when you said this was in the 60s and this is an era where white, you know White men dominated the world of Wall Street Some might say they still dominate the world of Wall Street.
How have you seen things change for women on Wall Street over the years? Well, certainly when I was young and through much of my career Women did not play a very large role on Wall Street,
nor did they really in the corporate world. It's been the last 20, 25 years where you've really seen the burgeoning of women's roles in the top echelons of management.
And so I didn't think anything about myself as a woman with an objective. I saw each opportunity as something to...
grasp and learn and manage and then take the next step. I had no plan in mind. I had no path I planned to go down.
But I did have mentors and for me, my book, "Breaking Glass" is dedicated to the mentors. And I allow Sister Ann Mary, even though she was before I came onto Wall Street,
I allow her as one of those mentors. But outside of her, I never had a female mentor in my life. The people that were in the world of finance and Wall Street and the brokerage business were all male and I've got about eight or nine of them to whom I dedicate the book,
but as well as to mentors around the world. But for, from them, I... helped so much in my kind of devious meandering path till I got to where I was very comfortable.
It was meandering, but yet when you look back at it, and we'll talk about this, but you have kind of a nice ascension into the world of investing. So we talked about a couple of mentors,
but another one, you met after you left Laydenberg, you go to Philly. for a job working for the Pennsylvania group. It's a research boutique So research boutique. Yeah,
so tell me about tell me how you ended up there and the mentor that you had there Well along the way, I made the best friend life friend I could ever have imagined and she was a woman a little older than I a few years old And I had gone to college and had all the normal Existences that everybody would expect to her and her name was Susan Harburg or she was offered a job in Philadelphia.
And I was, this was 1972. So I was six years out of the center at that point. And I had become a secretary and was doing some statistical work for one of the analysts at the firm,
who was an airline analyst. And she said to me, "I'm so excited. "I've been offered a new job." And I went, "Oh, fabulous, where?" And she said, "Philadelphia," and my heart sinks.
And I think, "Oh my God." And this best friend, I told her nothing about my childhood. - She knew nothing. - Knew nothing. And so she then immediately says to me,
"Will you come to Philadelphia with me?" I didn't even give it a thought. I said, "Yes." Because I was aching to get out of Boston. - Sure. - I wanted to break the tie to Boston.
that people knew, could say I knew her when, when she was the receptionist, and I wanted to fly and find a new path to wherever I was going.
And so we moved together to Philadelphia and it was through the man that had hired her that he said there's this wonderful research boutique, the Pennsylvania group,
and they're interested in the study. She needs to interview there. I barely knew what a statistician was, but that's okay. And there was an interview with four men.
And every one of them had a responsible position in the firm as an analyst. In other words, doing research on various industries. One was trucking, one was insurance, one was the lodging business.
And that was the gentleman, Sharif Nada, who had come to this country from Egypt in the late 1950s and had gone to Duke University. And was one of the four or five,
six people I actually reported to even others that I didn't interview with. And all I had said to them is this much I ask of you. I don't want to just put numbers on a piece of paper for you. I want to learn about the industries.
And if I ask you questions, will you answer them? for me? They all said yes, and truth be told, they all did it. But Sharif did it in spades, and he allowed me to come to New York with him on a visit to a new company he was picking up,
and he allowed me to co -author the research report. So it was the first time I did that, and that was 1974, just as the economy was in the tank and oil production.
were through the roof, and I got laid off. Oh, man. Do you remember, you traveled to Cleveland? Yes. That's a little bit later when I became a machinery analyst.
That's right. We're going to talk about that. So, okay. So from the Pennsylvania group, then after you get let go, you go to New York and you work for another research firm,
headed up by Brad Landon. Yes. and you start to you're still a statistician But you start to specialize in sectors like airlines Railroads trucking insurance. That was at the Pennsylvania Group. Okay,
then I had this little sojourn back to Boston, okay? And it was meandering so yes, I was meandering and I don't have to give it all chronologically No, that's fine in Boston.
I had a job that lasted for all of about eight weeks, okay? because once again The stock market was in turmoil and we were suddenly being acquired. And that was the wonderful gentleman who sent me to New York.
And he said, "I can't get you a job, but I can get you an interview. The rest is up to you." And he was my boss for a total of about two months. And when I came back from that interview in New York,
I said to him, "I've been offered the job." And he had been the director of research at Fidelity. And at that time I was too naive to realize what an important role that had been.
And I said, "Oh, I'm torn. You know, I just moved back from Philadelphia. My family's all here because by then my family had all left the center." And he just looked me in the eye and he said, "Do you want to make it big?" And I said,
"Yes." He said, "Go to New York." And that's what I did. And that was the man, Brad Landon, who hired me there. And he was a machine analyst. He specialized in capital goods manufacturers.
And it was an amazing experience, very different from insurance, very different from trucking, but fascinating, absolutely fascinating. And within the first week or two of coming to New York,
he and I took a trip to Cleveland. And he had asked, he had told me, you need to prepare all the questions. right for this company And that's that's what you were. Yes. Yes, so you interviewed the CEO and you came up with was something that no one else had had asked about What was that?
Yeah, so Eaton was the manufacturing company of Transmissions yes on highway truck transmissions giant transmissions and they were had a very large profit Market share at the time and I did my homework on the company and I noticed that they had a large piece of Swiss franc debt coming due.
And I was concerned because the dollar had appreciated a lot relative to the Swiss franc. And if they had Swiss franc debt and they had to pay this debt back in dollars,
they suddenly had to pay a lot more. And I said to Brad, "I think I'm going to pay a lot more. I'm going to pay a lot more. I'm going to pay reports.
So he said, great, we'll talk about that. He and I went out together. It was the first and only time we went together to see a company. After that, he said, you're on your own.
You make the appointments, you go out. Right. And so at the end of that interview, I said to the, to the CFO, I said, so I see that you've got this debt coming due, and it's going to cost you a lot more money because,
and I basically told him how much and what that would, what the impact would be on the, on the earnings per share. And I said, did you hedge that loan? And he said,
no. So I said, so you stand to lose this much money. And he said, yes. And that was when Brad on the way home said that was great information.
Yeah. I want you to get on the phone and call all of our customers and tell them that story. Wow. And that was my first real stock research analysis.
And it worked out very well. You were obviously a quick study. And as you said, you go on to start visiting companies, interviewing them. And these are machine companies. You're interviewing CEOs.
I imagine they were all men. - They were all men. There were no women anywhere. I mean, the women would play the role of being this receptionist or the secretary. - What was that like interviewing these CEOs and you're asking these very intelligent in -depth questions?
How were those interactions? - For me, they were just intellectually stimulating. I felt so lucky. I had the brain of a power woman. who was making incredible decisions that had a bearing on the price of the stock.
And I was at liberty to ask any and all questions. Now, the interesting thing is you can't do that today. CEOs don't spend their time with 26 -year -old analysts or even 56 -year -old analysts.
They don't have the time for it. They have whole divisions that now disseminate information. And there are lots of restrictions. I mean, there's always been the rule that you couldn't deal on inside information.
But you could ask a lot of creative questions, and you could put together your own mosaic about a company through asking the right kinds of questions. That, to me, was the excitement of the job.
It was a sleuthing of sorts. And I found it just... exhilarating. - At the time you said it was the greatest job you could have. - It was the greatest job I thought, absolutely. - So from there,
so what happened? How long were you there? And I guess what happened after that? - Well, so that was January of '75 when I moved to New York.
And in May of '75, literally five months later, there was something called May of '75. it was when negotiated rates came out on Wall Street.
And the expectation was that it would have a devastating effect on small research boutiques. And that was easy to assess and it was completely accurate.
So from having been laid off in Philadelphia to going to Boston and having a job for two months because we were being acquired to coming to New York. And May day,
May 1st, 1975, our revenue got cut in half. One day, cut in half. Well, that wasn't very good for business. And the next thing I knew,
I was without a paycheck. Which went on for several months until I realized I couldn't really afford to go without a paycheck. And so I left.
Brad's firm and went to Columbus Circle, which was another asset management firm. And shortly thereafter went to the Ford Foundation as their machinery analyst.
And it was very interesting because when I left Brad's firm, Brad's firm was what's called a cell side firm. They are the brokers and they do research and people who manage the firm.
their research. Suddenly now I was the customer. And at the Ford Foundation, it ran a $3 billion in a foundation. And we managed it all in -house.
And so I went as the machinery analyst and I was there hardly a day when I got a call and there was Brad on the phone saying, "Congratulations. Now you're going to be my customer." And that and it ended up being a one and fruitful relationship.
- That's amazing. - So there's a thread too I want to go to because you start to travel a lot and travel is a big part of your career and just of your life. And so I'm just thinking for these years that you were sheltered and never went anywhere,
what was it like? You went to some amazing places that you detail in the book. So talk about travel in your life and for work. work. - One of the wonderful things I think about my childhood,
I mentioned these people were very intellectual. They came from around the world in some cases. Two of them were from Lebanon. There were people from Italy, Spain, and our lives growing up were all about the stories of the saints.
Well, there weren't very many saints in the United States of America. The saints all came from the Middle Eastern part of the world. They came from Europe. They came, you know, hundreds, and in some cases a couple of thousand years earlier.
And as a child, living in Cambridge, we had the world shut out to us with this eight foot red fence that was built around the houses where we lived.
And I was a curious child. I mean, curiosity was the bane of my existence once. Sister Catherine decided that it was a vice. But for me, it was the only way I could learn about things,
and I had to ask questions. But when the world was cut out with this great big red fence, all my stories came from the tales of the saints. So I would hear expressions like the rolling Tuscan hills,
and I would think, oh my gosh, I have to go see the rolling Tuscan hills, or the cedars of Lebanon. or, you know, I would see pictures of Israel, which was then, you know,
we referred to it as the Holy Land, or the pyramids in Egypt. I wanted to go to every single one of those places as a child, and all I could really do was learn about them either from the lives of the saints,
or when I learned geography, which was in the third grade, and it became my absolutely favorite. subject. All I wanted to do was explore the world, which was not available to me.
So getting out and traveling even through the Midwest, which was a lot of what I did, and then down into the Gulf when I started following the oil service industries, and then eventually overseas,
because Caterpillar, John Deere, they all had facilities in Europe. And so they would go, they would take analysts on trips to see how the process worked in different places.
And for me, that was a way of satisfying that pent up, you know, desire to see every corner of the world. That's amazing.
And you did get to travel a lot for work. So it helped kind of fuel that desire as well. Yes, it was finally satisfying something I'd been aching for. So let's,
your career starts to take a real, you're on a real fast track. After the Ford Foundation, you go to work for Citibank. Yes. And you go to work for Peter Vermilier.
Yes. Is that correct? Yes. In 1980. So you go to head up the research for the capital goods sector. And Peter, you know, is another mentor of yours. Absolutely. So talk about your time at Citibank and what it was like there.
- That was the most transformative in a way because I had reached a certain level and Peter had been hired a couple of years earlier and he was building out city of corporate investment management to be the premier asset manager in the world,
basically. And he was adding portfolio managers and analysts at a very rapid rate. And my interview with him was fascinating. because, you know,
we talked for maybe 45 minutes or an hour, and all of a sudden out of nowhere, he said, "I want you part of my group." And, you know, it was not the time when you had quite the level of HR involvement as you have today.
But I knew that Peter was kind of overstepping what the norms would have been. But I felt so. excited because he was picking me out of the crowd.
And he's the one that sent me off to Japan. He said, find out what's going on over there. He's the one that turned me from being an analyst into a portfolio manager.
And that was in, I'd been there just a year and a quarter when he called me into his office. And he very seldom did. that. So I was wondering why he used to come up and just walk around and go into your office and sit down and talk.
And I thought, why does he want me to come down? But I went in and out of nowhere he just said, I want you to become a portfolio manager. I want you to join the team. And I was shocked.
Now in the world of investment management, the portfolio manager role is deemed to be a step higher. on the ladder than an analyst. That wasn't what I was seeking.
I loved what I did. He hired me to be the capital goods analyst to hire anybody I needed and wanted. And I said, Peter, I've got the best job in the world and I've got it because of you.
And how do you know I'll be a good portfolio manager? And it was that moment of kind of protecting myself protecting myself, but, and Peter just said,
"I need you." And I said, "Will you let me think about this?" And he said, "Sure." And I went back to my office thinking, "You have just turned down this man who has thrown you in the deep end of the pool,
has been pleased with what you've done, and you've turned him down." And I felt guilty about it because he wasn't doing it for himself. He was doing it for me.
He was doing it for the organization sure, and I didn't have the decency to see the big picture or or the sophistication to see the big picture but in fact I thought about it and then I didn't go back and talk to him about it and this is a very good case where Adaptability became a lesson to me.
Yeah, and a few weeks later we had a large investment team and there were a dozen portfolio managers just on the institutional side. And three of them made an announcement that they were going off and starting their own firm.
And I knew three out of 12, that's a big percentage. And I didn't think anymore. I just got out of my office, went down to his office and said,
"Peter, I'm yours." I will join the team." And it was very good for me to look back on that and realize there was a case of being adaptable. And I think I had become a little set in my ways,
and I think I was in the sweet spot of my career, but in fact, he needed me for something else. And I had obviously been a little afraid of doing it, but I went in and became a portfolio manager.
And I had loved it. as I mentioned, the intellectual stimulation that came of working with talking to CEOs and CFOs, when you're a portfolio manager, you don't,
you lose that ability to be engaged with them as in his concentrated away. And I was afraid that intellectually, I would wither because I didn't have that opportunity.
And in fact, Peter was right. I learned so much more. and I learned about a broad array of industries and I learned how to put a portfolio together and how to work with people and all of that.
But I went from a large corner office as the head of the capital goods to a tiny portfolio manager's office next to somebody who was to whom I reported,
but it was a great migration and a great experience. Do you remember how much you were given to manage at that time? - The first account I was given one account and it was $16 million.
And that was in 1982, January of '82. The market was as abysmal as it has ever been that year. And in that summer,
summer of '82, August 12th, to be exact, Peter Vermilier decided that was the bottom of the market. He was right. to the day and he went around truly yelling,
"Get invested. Get invested by the end of the day." There was one of the portfolio managers who was on vacation. Where is she? I said, "She's in Paris with her husband. Get her portfolio invested." I said,
"I can't do that. Yes, you can." I mean, it was really, he was adamant. He was right. He said, "We're going to have a bull market." the likes of which you have never seen yeah and at the end of that year I had hugely outperformed the market and then he started loading me up with more money and I was soon managing billions of dollars and going to Europe and being part of their investment process over there and it
was it was heady and it was wonderful wow that's amazing well I guess until 1987 when they're was a little moment in the stock market. - Well, I think that's one of those times when people do talk about what happened in 1987.
And it was a short -lived situation, but it was catastrophic. I mean, one day, the market is down 22%. And my husband was also,
I met my husband at Citicorp, and by then in 1987, we were married. married. And the market was down 22%. And I remember at the end of the day, the only thing I could say was,
well, four more days of this and there's no market. And we know that's not going to happen. So let's try to sort this out. Peter had left by then. He had been forced into retirement at the age of 65.
But I did call him. And John and I had planned to go to the Awani Hotel I said, "Peter, you know, with the market acting this crazy,
can I go off on a vacation?" And he said, "Yes, go !" He said, "The market will always be here." And I thought, you know, he's so sage.
And he was. Yeah. That's great. So another one of your mentors, but it's clear that you have a great work ethic throughout your career. and it was evident in the way that you worked your way up,
but you do find out that you've gained a reputation. Tell me how you found out and how you reacted. Well, the subtitle of my book.
Yes, let's get to it. Yes. Yes, you've waited a long time for that one, as tales from the witch of all street. Right. And it was my 70th birthday. I'm now 74.
so it was just five years ago. And I hadn't even started, I had just kind of finished writing my first book, which was out. And a lot of my friends at my party were Wall Street people.
And none of them knew anything about this. And one person got up and told the story at my birthday party about how she had been asked to follow me as an institutional salesperson.
from a company that was Bear Stearns. And she said, "I knew of the woman. She was older than I was, but I had never met her.
I just knew her from the name she had on the trading floor, which was the Witch of Wall Street. I was so shocked at my 70th birthday because it was the first time I ever, ever heard of that moniker.
But you know, I think the moniker is kind of fun in a way. And the reason I put tales from The Witch of Wall Street was because my book was meant to be a series of stories that help enlighten the reader as to one path,
one person's way of getting to the end. And it's not written for women. It's not written for men. It's not written for young people or old people. And it's not, it's a follow,
it's a sequel. you don't have to read the first book right to get the second book and I felt to myself I'm not really I don't feel as though I'm a witch right I but I was very driven yeah and you know we all know that insane at least I'll call it insane movie the the Wolf of Wall Street sure so and it was totally not Wall Street and it was totally not true and all that.
I mean there was a character but in a certain way you know the wolf of Wall Street sounds like a powerful, driven person and I've thought about the fact that when men exhibit certain characteristics of strength,
of impatience, of you know perfection. those are considered leadership. But when they come from a woman, they get her dubbed witch.
And that's the real world. And I was shocked at the time, but I've actually come to understand that it is still a male dominated industry,
more so than other industries. But there's a... certain way in which it's a 24 /7 business. And in some other industries, there's a little more time for freedom.
And I think for women on Wall Street, you almost have to overprove yourself because there's always in the back of someone's head,
well, is she going to stay around? Or is she gonna choose another career? - Right. was part of my own predicament as I was going through my career. I was fearful that I couldn't do everything well.
I couldn't be a good businesswoman and a good wife, and I had become married at the age of 36, and also have children. And I came to a point where I decided I wanted them.
- You do talk about that, about women having to face this. And I will say, you've owned the... nickname, The Witch of Wall Street, and I thought that same thing, if these attributes were exhibited by a man,
they wouldn't be nicknaming the person a witch. What advice would you give a woman starting on Wall Street today? I think you have to understand that it's a tough business,
it's a highly competitive business. Yeah. And I think in a certain way, to get ahead, you also have to prove yourself better. And I don't say that in a way that says women are better than men.
But there's always, I think, lurking in the back of people's minds that run these companies, is she going to be around for the long term? And might you not be around for the long term if you chose to have children and then made a decision to exit Wall Street?
So I think that women have to-- accept that they're not going to convert everyone to disregard that notion. It doesn't mean you can't have a wonderful career.
But it also means, I think as women, we accept myself completely in that, have to reach your own determination about what is the right balance of work and let's just call it motherhood.
- Okay. - And in my case, there can't be... I mean, I was 45 years old when my twins were born. So that put me a little at the upper end.
But there came a point where I wanted maybe guided very much by the fact that I didn't have my own parents around when I was being raised. And I wanted to be an important force in my children.
It was fine when they were babies. and play dates and that kind of thing. But when they were starting to go into school, I felt I want to play a much bigger role. I also wanted,
in a way, to allow them to do the things I had not been able to do as a child. And so for me, it was very exciting.
And it was my husband who brought home to me that I was working, again, tried to turn, but turned out to be very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, very, peak of my career in a way.
I was 51 years old. And I said, it's time to do something different. And I had no idea what I would ultimately end up if I would end up with a second career.
but I was willing to find something else that would allow me to share the time of being a mother and being a professional. - Yeah, so you retired at the age of 51.
You talked about that decision, but you do some interesting work when you retire. You become an expert witness, and your first case is a rather well -known one. Can you just touch on that?
- Yeah, so it was in the early, very early 2007. and 2002 or so. Right after a lot of companies, a lot of major companies had gone bankrupt. And one of them was Enron.
And it was a quotes, quotes energy company. And, you know, I had owned the stock. I had seen the management many times. I was a little dubious about a couple of members of management.
But I drank the Kool -Aid or whatever you said. And I... owned the stock until there came a point where the stock was, the company's performance was facing hurdles, and I got rid of it.
But the management kept on with a very, very, very good tale, all the way till it went bankrupt. And shortly after I left Wall Street, I continued to be on Squawk Box and other shows,
and I got a call from a woman one day who said to me, I had an economic consulting firm and I see you on television a lot. And I think you do a very nice job.
And I'm wondering if you would like to be an expert witness in the areas of investment. And I really didn't know what an expert witness was. I mean, I'd seen it on television shows and things like that.
And what they wanted was for me to come in and be an expert in there for. first case that I did was on Enron, where the state of Florida, which had owned Enron in its portfolio was suing both Alliance Capital,
the asset management firm, and a wonderful, wonderful, very brilliant portfolio manager named Al Harrison, whom I knew very well because he was always my competition when we were trying to get new business.
Okay. And I knew he had an extraordinary track record. And he did, even with the state of Florida's money. And so I had no qualms about taking on that case.
And it was fascinating because ultimately I was in front of a jury, six people and six alternates. And they were trying to make a case that the marketing materials were fraudulent.
And I could tell the lawyer, you know, was pulling. little tricks of sorts to try to convince the jury. And I could see that the jury was not quite comprehending what was going on.
It was just too dense. And so I just turned to the jury and said, "Okay, I think I need to explain to you, you know, what marketing materials are all about and why they can seem to be different from the actual investment process." Sure.
- And at the end of that, my little spiel, which I think lasted about 10 or 12 minutes to the jury, the lawyer asked me one more question and then said,
"I'm done." And I mean, I was not the only expert witness. There were half a dozen expert witnesses. - But you helped there. - And the case went to the jury and Alliance Capital and Al Harrison won every single point.
So it was a wonderful introduction. - Thank you. witness that career that lasted for 20 years. - For 20 years? - Yes. - Yes. - So tell me how you're spending your time these days besides writing this book.
- Yes. Well, I just finished this book, so I'm going to be on the road a fair bit. But I do a lot of pro bono work and the mentoring,
which I've mentioned to you. I also sit on... corporate boards and, and, you know, uh, mutual thumb boards, um, but I also started a company, a healthcare company for the LGBTQ community in 2016.
And, uh, it was kind of a labor of love. I just saw a need. It wasn't that, you know, I had any personal engagement that I felt needed to be,
you know, satisfied and it's been wonderful. We have a small group of, you know, people, about 35 people. We have, we're in Connecticut only, and we have offices in several different cities.
And we have almost 4 ,000 patients today. - Amazing. - And it's just amazing. - Well, congratulations. - Thank you. - Well, Patricia, your story is amazing. I recommend this book to everyone because there is a lot to learn,
whether you're just a fan of Wall Street and want to learn like a history from someone who lives in the city. about just an amazing story about a woman who survived a religious cult and came out and just had an amazing career.
It's fantastic. Patricia, that's your time on Read the Bull. Thank you so much. Thank you for having me. I really appreciated it.