Patricia Chadwick Of Ravengate Partners On How We Can Increase Women’s Engagement in Leadership and Management
An Interview With Vanessa Ogle
Because women have long been excluded from the top echelons of corporate power, the corporate culture (in many companies and across multiple industries in the US) has ossified. There appears to be a reluctance to change what may be perceived as “successful” without exploring the possibility that change may enhance performance. The industry I am most familiar with is that of investment management and investment banking. It has one of the less successful records of boldly expanding the responsibilities of professional women who have proven their mettle. Often the decision-makers are men who have made it to the top without women in their sphere. That can lead to a cycle of “more of the same.”
Despite strides towards equality, women remain underrepresented in leadership and management roles across various sectors. In this series, we would like to discuss the barriers to female advancement in these areas and explore actionable strategies for change. We are talking with accomplished women leaders, executives, and pioneers who have navigated these challenges successfully, to hear their experiences, tactics, and advice to inspire and guide the next generation of women toward achieving their full potential in leadership and management roles. As part of this series, we had the pleasure of interviewing Patricia Walsh Chadwick.
Patricia had a thirty-year career in the investment business as a research analyst, a portfolio manager, a strategist and eventually overseeing the New York institutional investment business for INVESCO, where she was a Global Partner.
Today she sits on both corporate boards as well as boards for not-for-profit companies. She is also active as the full-time pro-bono CEO of Anchor Health Initiative, a company she co-founded in 2016 that is dedicated to the healthcare needs of the LGBTQ community in Connecticut.
Patricia has a degree in Economics from Boston University. She lives in Greenwich with her husband, John, and they have two adult children. Her passions include worldwide travel, the opera, reading biographies, and canning.
Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would like to get to know you a bit more. Can you tell us a bit about your “backstory”? What led you to this particular career path?
I was born into a religious community-turn-cult in 1948 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. From infancy through high school, I had no knowledge of the “outside world.” The community of 100 people (39 children and 61 adults) was under the authority of a Catholic priest — Leonard Feeney, a Jesuit priest who was excommunicated — and a woman “Sister Catherine” who ran the day-to-day operations with an iron hand.
The community was dedicated to a dogma of the Catholic Church that said that there was “no salvation outside the Catholic Church.” Children were separated from their parents and parents were forced to take vows of celibacy. The community was shut off from the “outside world” — there was no access to television, radio, newspapers nor was communication allowed with family members who were not part of the community.
The children were being groomed to become adult members of the community; however, in 1966, at the age of seventeen, I was evicted from the community because I was not interested in becoming a religious nun for life. The proof was the crushes I was having on different boys.
Despite an excellent classical education, and having been accepted into Vassar College, I was prohibited from attending the college — I was told it would be the ruination my soul. Instead, I was allowed to attend only a secretarial school. Upon graduation from secretarial school, I was on my own (my family had remained at the cult) without parental advice, or a mentor or money.
My first “real” job (after a year as a typing teacher at the secretarial school) was as the receptionist at a brokerage firm, and it was from that “bottom-of-the-ladder” position that I worked my way up to secretary and then statistician, all the while earning my undergraduate degree in Economics from Boston University. Moving to New York, in 1975, I became a machinery analyst for a research boutique on Wall Street, covering heavy equipment stocks both domestically and overseas. In 1980, I was hired by Citibank where I assumed responsibility for the all the research on the capital goods sector of the economy, and two years later I became a portfolio manager at Citibank, responsible for some of the country’s largest pension plans. When our division of Citibank was bought by Invesco in 1997, I became a global partner and had responsibility for the New York office’s institutional business.
My career path was not one that I had planned. I entered the workforce in 1968 as an unworldly young woman who simply wanted to be the best receptionist in the world, but who longed for the college education she had been denied. As soon as I joined the brokerage firm, I found the world of stock investing both challenging and intellectually stimulating. Following my drive to learn everything I could about the stock market, I memorized the symbols of every stock on the New York Stock Exchange and and then took the national exam to become a stockbroker.
At Boston University, which I attended four nights each week after work for nine years, I selected Economics as my major, with Finance as my minor. The world of investments was both challenging and intellectually stimulating. I had the benefit of a series of excellent mentors, all of whom were men because there were very few women in positions of leadership in the world of Wall Street.
I published the story of my bizarre childhood in a memoir titled: Little Sister in 2019. In May 2024, I published a sequel titled Breaking Glass: Tales From the Witch of Wall Street. This latter book is dedicated to the mentors who were invaluable to me on my career journey.
Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you began your career?
The most “interesting” story was one that happened early in my career, but it gave me such a sense of accomplishment that it influenced me for years.
I was still a receptionist at the brokerage firm of Ladenburg, Thalmann in Boston and was only 20 years of age, when the head partner, George Burden, called me into his office and asked me if I might be willing to go to New York City the following day to help the firm “close a deal.” I wasn’t even quite sure what “a deal” was, but I jumped at the idea. Handing me a ticket on the Eastern Airlines Shuttle for the next morning, he told me that a limousine would meet me when I landed at LaGuardia airport. For seven hours that next day, I went to the offices and the home of five different investors, each of whom gave me a single check for $1 million. Returning to the Boston office at the end of the day, I handed over the $5 million to George Burden. As a thank you, he and Godfrey Birkhead, the other partner, took me to dinner at the Ritz Carlton Hotel that evening. I was spellbound by the elegance of the restaurant — the atmosphere, the service, the décor, and the food. That night in bed, I lay awake for a long time thinking about the success of the day and wondering, “Some day, maybe I can have that lifestyle” — the one the partners had that allowed them to do “deals” and have dinner at the Ritz Carlton.
Can you share a pivotal moment in your career that significantly influenced your path to leadership?
It was the summer of 1974 when the economy was in a deep recession on account of the quadrupling of the price of oil. Inflation was soaring and interest rates were skyrocketing. I had just moved back to Boston from a two-year stint as a statistician for six research analysts in Philadelphia and had found a job with a small money management firm. The chief investment officer, the gruff sounding but highly intelligent Stew Harvey, offered me the title of research analyst and I was thrilled — those years of night school had paid off. All I had left to do to get my degree was to write my thesis, but that didn’t prevent him from giving me both that title and the responsibilities that went along with it. I had just celebrated my twenty-sixth birthday.
Less than two months later, I heard a rumor that our firm was going to acquired by larger asset management firm. I made a beeline for the office of the man who had hired me and asked if it was true. He confirmed it was, and I then asked, “So, is it last in, first out?” I was referring to an accounting rule about inventory, but he knew just what I meant. “I’m afraid so,” he said. A small tear came down my cheek, and I returned to my office, wondering how life could be so seemingly unfair. Less than an hour later, Stew Harvey was standing at my desk. “I can’t get you a job,” he said, in his deep baritone voice, “but I have gotten you an interview. Tomorrow morning at 10am be at 666 Fifth Avenue in New York.” He gave me the name of the firm.
The firm was a Wall Street research boutique specializing in the capital goods stocks. The interview took a full day and at dinner that night, the lead partner offered me the job as a machinery analyst, starting on the first day in January — enough time for me to find an apartment and get settled into New York.
I returned home to Boston bursting with excitement. Then for hours that night, I lay awake, pondering the reality of that job offer. I had just moved back to Boston where all my family lived, and I was thinking of buying a house. Now this.
The next morning, I was in the office exceedingly early in the hope of speaking to Stew Harvey alone. He was there, as I expected. The smile on my face told him I had good news, and after giving it, I took a deep breath and shared my concern. “I have just moved back to Boston where all my family are. I am torn about leaving them once again.” Stew was silent for a moment and then spoke, “Do you want to make it really big in this world?” The answer was on the tip of my tongue, “Yes,” I said strongly. “Then go to New York,” he responded.
I did and never looked back and have thanked Stew Harvey ever since.
None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?
My just published memoir, Breaking Glass: Tales from the Witch of Wall Street, is dedicated to seven people — the primary mentors from my late teens until my early 30s. I now reference one of those mentors.
In 1977, when I was 29 years old, I applied to the Harvard Business School, (HBS) and was accepted. After resigning from the Ford Foundation (where I was employed as the machinery analyst for the Foundation’s assets, that were managed internally) I turned for advice to Jay Light, a consultant to the Ford Foundation. I chose him because he was also a professor at the Harvard Business School. I was having second thoughts about my decision to take two years off my career that I loved.
His words to me were invaluable. “If you want to change careers — for example, if you want to get into corporate management or investment banking — then an MBA could be very helpful. However, if you plan to stay in the investment business as an analyst or go into portfolio management, then you don’t need to go to HBS. You are already a success, and you have a great future ahead of you.”
That advice was invaluable, and I never regretted turning down HBS. Some twenty-five years later, Jay Light became Dean of HBS.
Is there a particular book that made a significant impact on you? Can you share a story or explain why it resonated with you so much?
In 1974, when I was 25 years old, I read Oriana Fallaci’s newly published memoir, Interview with History and was mesmerized by her boldness, her tenacity, her fearlessness, as she interviewed world potentates including, Indira Gandhi, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the Shah of Iran, Golda Meir, Yasser Arafat, and others. My career was just beginning to take shape, and I visualized her as my role model when I began preparing for interviews with the CEOs and CFOs of some of the world’s largest machinery companies. They were the “potentates,” and my challenge was to get them to share with me the information I needed to make an appropriate investment recommendation.
Do you have a favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Do you have a story about how that was relevant in your life or your work?
“Don’t spend time regretting the past. Look to the future and make the most of it.”
I remember my father using that expression on more than a few occasions in giving me advice as a young adult. It was particularly poignant because I was sure he had told himself that on many occasions, as he thought back on the life he could have had as a father raising his five children and living with our mother. However, he (admittedly unwillingly) had allowed himself (with my mother) to forego that life because he had promised, as a member of the religious community he had joined, to obey whatever he was told to do by the leader, a Catholic priest (who was eventually excommunicated from the Catholic Church).
How have you used your success to make the world a better place?
As someone who benefitted immensely from the mentors I had during my early career, and enjoyed a highly successful career, I felt it incumbent upon me to give back in the same way. After leaving Wall Street at the end of 1999, I spent a number of years mentoring middle school girls at a Catholic school in East Harlem. I continue to be available to some of them today as they are in college and graduate school. That mentoring today is primarily among young women who are attending college.
In 2016, after a successful second career as an expert witness in the world of investing, I co-founded a health care company for the LGBTQ community in Connecticut. The purpose was to provide a safe place where members of that community could feel safe and knew they would be respected. Eight years later, I remain the pro-bono CEO of the firm that now employs 45 people, is about to open its third office in CT and has 4000 patients.
Ok, thank you for that. Let’s now jump to the primary focus of our interview. According to this report, only about 31.7% of top executive positions across industries are held by women. This reflects great historical progress, but it also shows that more work still has to be done to empower women. In your opinion and experience what is currently holding back women from leadership and management?
This may not be the answer that many would like to hear, but after decades of experience in a career in the financial services industry — and I would hasten to add that I have spoke to women in other sectors of the economy — I have come to understand and appreciate that there sometimes comes a time in a woman’s career when she reaches a conscious decision to make adjustments to the priorities in her life. The reason is often the result of an expanding family.
Only a woman who has become a mother is in a position to decide how she should distribute her time between the responsibilities of her career and those of caring for her children. Women need not leave the workforce to find the right balance of time and energy between those separate responsibilities. Oftentimes, the resolution can be made by allocating less hours to her career. In the world of business, there is generally a positive correlation between a person’s rise on the corporate ladder and the perceived time and energy they have directed to their career.
Rightly or wrongly, it stands to reason that if a woman chooses to cut back on her career hours, she will likely reduce the speed with which she goes ahead up the corporate ladder. That being said, there are entire sectors of the economy in which the corporate leadership is “an old boys club.”
The world of investment banking is a good example of an industry where I would be surprised if more than 20% of top executive positions were held by women. There are other industries which are far more accessible to women, which is proof that women are up to the task.
A lot of industry leaders are risk averse when it comes to the membership in the C-suite. They are afraid to change what they “know works.” Without a policy of “positive discrimination,” progress will be slow. Positive discrimination is one forceful way to allow women to show their worth to a company.
This might be intuitive to you but I think it will be helpful to spell this out. Can you share a few reasons why more women should become leaders and managers?
Diversity of thought, diversity of experience, diversity of culture, diversity of knowledge — those are lifelong experiences that can offer corporate value in the C-suite and in the boardroom.
Diversity of experience will bring the table different approaches to solving problems. Diversity of culture will provide new and different insights into looking at a problem. Diversity of knowledge will be valuable in problem solving.
A simple examination of those important and valuable differences among employees should offer opportunity for finding capable women who provide value to a company because of their diversity.
Can you please share “5 Things We Need To Increase Women’s Engagement in Leadership and Management?”
If you can, please share an example or story for each.
1 . Because women have long been excluded from the top echelons of corporate power, the corporate culture (in many companies and across multiple industries in the US) has ossified. There appears to be a reluctance to change what may be perceived as “successful” without exploring the possibility that change may enhance performance. The industry I am most familiar with is that of investment management and investment banking. It has one of the less successful records of boldly expanding the responsibilities of professional women who have proven their mettle. Often the decision-makers are men who have made it to the top without women in their sphere. That can lead to a cycle of “more of the same.”
That does not mean that no progress is being made. In fact, one strong proponent of finding highly qualified women to fill roles in the investment industry is Larry Fink, the CEO of BlackRock, who has for years given more than lip service to that issue. He has a reputation for hiring the best and the brightest women from his competitors and putting them in positions of power. A case in point is Rachel Lord who is currently Senior Managing Director and Head of International. She also sits on the firm’s Global Executive Committee, amongst a small minority of women (5 out of 20 members).
2 . Entry level employees, both men and women, need to be treated as equal members of the employee body and processes should be put in place to monitor AND TRACK THE RATIONALE for promotions or lack thereof. Discrepancies need to be analyzed, because there is little reason to assume that gender should impact the promotion opportunities of young, new employees. There may be unconscious bias in reviewing the employees, or there may be something awry in the hiring process.
Beyond the earliest years of employment, it is also important to follow the career progress by gender as employees move up the corporate ladder. Employees will take notice if there are obvious discrepancies in the rates of promotion, and it will cause the best and the brightest women to look to move to a company that has a better record of rewarding accomplishment.
3 . Mentoring programs can be an important part of onboarding and helping a new employee to understand both the culture of the firm and some of the specifics of the job. That being said, the choice of mentors is critical to the success of the program.
Not all seasoned employees make good mentors, and not all new employees make good mentees. The mentor/mentee relationship requires a genuine commitment on both sides. A good mentor must be generous with time, a good listener, patient and knowledgeable. A good mentee must be motivated, curious and willing to take advice.
The management of a successful mentoring program requires collaboration among a number of parties within the corporate structure, including, the HR department, a leader of the sector who can provide value-added information on potential mentors, and a designated employee who can assess the success of the program.
To ensure that a mentoring program is successful, the company must be able to select highly qualified mentors.
4 . Managements should encourage engagement on the part of employees. They should also offer open door policies to employees and encourage them to make use of them.
My own experience, during the many years I was climbing the corporate ladder step by step, was to take someone at their word when they said their “door was always open.” The result was rewarding — never did I get turned away.
That said, the purpose of an open-door policy is to encourage employees to seek insights and information from an authority. It is not meant to be an opportunity to complain. The employee will be wise to use that invitation to the advantage of company, insofar as it allows her to improve her value-added to the company.
5 . Women should be encouraged to make their own voices heard from their first day of their first job. Asking questions is part of the process of learning, of engaging, of sharing and of proving oneself as an interested party in the business of the company.
Women must be seen and heard. If stepping up and being vocal is not comfortable in the beginning, just treat it as one more new experience in the workplace. It will soon become second nature, and co-workers will come to expect that hand to be raised.
Asking questions is part of the process of learning and becoming an expert. It is not a sign of weakness. Not engaging is a sign of weakness.
In your opinion, what systemic changes are needed to facilitate more equitable access for women roles?
Because history has shown that women have been systematically excluded from positions of leadership for decades, it is legitimate to make up for the errors of the past by including a proportionately higher number of qualified women to fill executive positions today.
The effort is not only to make up for past mistakes but to change the culture within the top echelons of business management to reap the benefits of diversification of thought, culture and ability.
What strategies have you found most effective in mentoring and supporting other women to pursue leadership positions?
In my many years of mentoring, I have found that the essential element of a successful mentoring engagement is the chemistry between the mentor and the mentee. For a mentoring relationship to be most effective, the mentor must be willingly generous with her time and the mentee must respect and appreciate what the mentor has to offer.
Mentoring is hard work, and it cannot be taken lightly. Mentors need to be generous not only with their time, but also with their talent and their wealth of experience. They need to be thoughtful and patient listeners. The mentee needs to be prepared in advance the questions for the mentor and should leave an engagement feeling better about the issue under discussion.
Mentoring is not babysitting. It is good to put the burden of solution on the shoulders of the mentee, but it is important to offer direction and options and ideas to the mentee. It is also the responsibility of the mentee to seek the advice, not for the mentor to find reasons to reach out.
A good mentee will (hopefully) become a good mentor one day.
How would you advise a woman leader about how to navigate the challenges of being a woman in a leadership role within a male-dominated industry?
Being in a leadership role provides both the opportunity and the obligation to engage with other employees — not only those who report to you but also with associates who are in similar positions of leadership. Constant communication with value-added content is essential for building one’s reputation and credibility. In many ways, I have found that women can be better communicators than men, who might be less comfortable to approach women than women are to approach men. By approaching men and incorporating them into a conversation about a topic of value to both is one way to reduce the discomfort they may have in leading that communication.
In large group meetings, my experience has been that men are bolder and
How do you balance the demand for authoritative leadership with the stereotypical expectations of female behavior in professional settings?
This answer may come as a surprise, but my experience in the world of investment banking and financial markets in general has been an expectation that the behavior of women would the same as that of men. They are expected to be vocal and opinionated. A silent attendee at a meeting is a useless attendee. Smart, dedicated, and driven professionals want full participation from all members of a team. I have many times been the only woman in a meeting of 15–20 people. That environment should be empowering for a woman and the best way to gain the greatest respect from the men in the room is to prove oneself by being a vocal participant. Women who engage in authoritative leadership are respected by those who are themselves professional. There will always be some skeptics who do not think that women can match men in the world of business, but women can easily prove them wrong by playing hardball — voicing one’s opinion and pushing back. Practice makes perfect.
You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good for the greatest number of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
To inspire a movement that would embrace diversity in all its forms — cultural, racial, religious — would open up a world of tolerance and appreciation. However, I do not have the inspiration to find a way to achieve that lofty goal.
How can our readers further follow your work online?
My website: www.patriciachadwick.com has numerous articles, interviews relating to the two books
Thank you for these fantastic insights. We greatly appreciate the time you spent on this.
About The Interviewer: Vanessa Ogle is a mom, entrepreneur, inventor, writer, and singer/songwriter. Vanessa’s talent in building world-class leadership teams focused on diversity, a culture of service, and innovation through inclusion allowed her to be one of the most acclaimed Latina CEO’s in the last 30 years. She collaborated with the world’s leading technology and content companies such as Netflix, Amazon, HBO, and Broadcom to bring innovative solutions to travelers and hotels around the world. Vanessa is the lead inventor on 120+ U.S. Patents. Accolades include: FAST 100, Entrepreneur 360 Best Companies, Inc. 500 and then another six times on the Inc. 5000. Vanessa was personally honored with Inc. 100 Female Founder’s Award, Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year Award, and Enterprising Women of the Year among others. Vanessa now spends her time sharing stories to inspire and give hope through articles, speaking engagements and music. In her spare time she writes and plays music in the Amazon best selling new band HigherHill, teaches surfing clinics, trains dogs, and cheers on her children.
Please connect with Vanessa here on linkedin and subscribe to her newsletter Unplugged as well as follow her on Substack, Instagram, Facebook, and X and of course on her website VanessaOgle.
Patricia Chadwick Of Ravengate Partners On How We Can Increase Women’s Engagement in Leadership and… was originally published in Authority Magazine on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.