Between billion-dollar investments and global market shocks, partners at Goldman Sachs have no shortage of things to worry about. But two of them share a common nighttime preoccupation.
Business Insider separately asked Meena Lakdawala-Flynn, co-head of Global Private Wealth Management and One Goldman Sachs, and Asahi Pompey, global head of the Office of Corporate Engagement and chair of the Urban Investment Group, what keeps them awake at night.
“I’m always thinking about our people,” said Lakdawala-Flynn, who has been at the firm for more than 25 years and became a partner in 2014. “You’ve built talent, you’ve invested in talent, they’re cultural stewards. To me, it’s about retaining people.”
She added that having a “rotating door” makes it more difficult to create strong businesses and client solutions. Lakdawala-Flynn manages teams of private wealth advisors, who themselves work with the bank’s ultra-high-net-worth clients. As of late last year, Goldman had 39 private wealth management offices around the world.
Pompey, who is nearing two decades at Goldman and became a partner in 2018, also said “our people.”
“You have the careers of all these individuals in your hands,” she said. “Are you doing the very best you can to amplify their talents, give them the opportunities that they need to succeed? I think about that. That keeps me up.”
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The firm will, she said, “ultimately win or lose on the back of the talent that we have and the development of that talent.” Pompey oversees initiatives including 10,000 Small Businesses, 10,000 Women, and One Million Black Women.
Goldman is about to announce its next class of managing directors, who sit one rung below partners in the firm’s leadership hierarchy. The bank has come under scrutiny in recent years for an exodus of female leadership and a general lack of women in the most senior positions. Yesterday, CEO David Solomon said Goldman had “made a bunch of progress, especially in the senior ranks, but candidly not enough, and we continue to be focused on creating opportunities.”
Pompey also said that she still worries about the little things when trying to fall asleep.
“The thought that the more senior you get, you somehow don’t sweat the details — I sweat the details about what we’re doing, being stewards of the firm’s resources, that we’re doing it at the highest level for maximum impact, where we should be pivoting or doing things differently,” she said.
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