The first time Helena Morrissey had a child, she was passed up for a promotion. When she asked why, Morrissey—the only woman on a team of 16—was told point blank that despite her stellar performance, there was doubt over whether she could fully commit to work with a new baby at home.
“That planted a seed in my mind,” Morrissey told Newsweek. “If ever I was in the position to do anything to help other women not go through that kind of setback, I would.”
That jarring experience led her to an opportunity at Newton Investment Management, a London-based investment management firm, where Morrissey would eventually become CEO. While leading the company, she was invited to speak at a diversity event that would change the trajectory of her career.
Conversations she had that day gave rise to the 30% Club, a campaign aimed at increasing female representation on UK boards, to at least 30 percent. When Morrissey founded the club—which she named deliberately as a play on the “old boys' network in the UK”—only about 12 percent of Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 boards were held by women.
Eight years after Morrissey’s “club” was founded, the FTSE 100 reached that 30 percent threshold in 2018. Female representation has continued to grow in the UK, with women now making up 43 percent of boards.
Between growing Newton’s assets from £20 billion to £50 billion, advocating for gender diversity and chairing the UK investment industry's trade body, Morrissey was also made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II and appointed as a life peer to the House of Lords.
Today, Morrissey is the mother of nine children.
“I’m not easily put off,” she laughed from her seat in the UK Parliament, where a wall decorated in ornate gold and deep reds served as a backdrop to her interview with Newsweek.
It’s true. Morrissey really doesn’t waver much. She’s confident in her decisions and judgements. It’s a skill she believes made her a successful investor. It’s also why some people mistaken her to be relaxed, when she’s really just focused on staying present in the moment.
“I worry like everybody, but I’ve got to give it my best shot then and there. If I think about next month, next week, next year, I’ll go crazy,” she said. “Let's lead the life that I’m living right now and do the best I can in this moment and trust myself that I’ll be able to manage if something [unforeseen happens].”
“You’ve got to trust your instincts,” she added. “A lot of women come to me and say, ‘I’ve heard this. I’ve heard that. Someone said this to me, someone said that.’ They’ve all got opinions, but it’s only your life. You will know much better than anybody else."
As a leader, Morrissey has been able to tap into exactly that. The decisions that she makes not only reflect her own priorities but also pave a way for other women in finance to make their own strides.
For example, four of her children were born while she was the CEO of Newton. While the timing to grow her family had been right in her life, she decided deliberately to do it while holding a leadership position to set the agenda for others.
“I was saying, ‘It’s okay to work around.’ Obviously, you have to work for the company. You have to put in the hours... But it doesn’t have to be done in a certain old-fashioned way, where you’re sitting at the same desk, morning, noon and night,” Morrissey said.
After the 30% Club reached its goal, Morrissey took a step back from her labor of love. She was motivated to push for those objectives not only to create more opportunities for women but also to improve decision-making in the boardroom. During her final year chairing the Investment Association, she set up a diversity project, spearheading the Pathway Program, which aimed to increase the percentage of female investors.
“I suppose the 30% Club covers the power game. How do you get people to share their power? How do you get people to work for what you want? This [program] has been much more about building community,” she said.
Morrissey said she's so passionate about diversity in the workplace because having other inputs has been critical to her own leadership. Reflecting on her career, she said she learned the hard way that, “Two brains are better than one. Six brains that you admire are better than two.”
The 59-year-old has developed a reputation for her soft-power approach. Today, she believes that leaders need to inspire and empower their teams rather than force their ideas to be carried out.
“It used to be command and control, but now, people are more loyal to their social networks or their own communities or their friends. They’re not necessarily loyal to their boss,” Morrissey said.
“You need to be a sounding board." she continued. "You need to be on the other end of a phone or contactable. If they want to have your input, you can’t just say, ‘Go to it. I’ll come back and see how you’ve got on.’ By empowering people, rather than controlling them, you get people feeling much more genuinely fulfilled.”
Despite all her success and the progress that’s been made for women in the workplace, Morrissey has been disappointed at its pace. She thought that having more women on boards would encourage those leaders to inspire and help women on management teams, and so forth, but she’s realized that people continue to pay a lot of “lip service to culture.”
“A lot of the women that come to see my nowadays, in theory, have the opportunities. In practice, they feel that... they’re still not given a real seat of power,” she said.
“We can’t just say, ‘Job done. This is finished,’” she said. “We haven’t seen the opportunities that I’d hoped to see. Only a few women can serve on boards, obviously, so [the 30% Club] to me was just the start, not the finish.”
