Apurva Schwartz is a portfolio specialist at Harding Loevner LP. She was previously a principal at Rocaton Investment Advisors, where she was a senior member of the investment team. Prior to that she held a series of roles in equity analysis and investing. Our conversation starts with her serendipitous start in finance and how that experience of picking stocks drove her to launch her own hedge fund. Her interest then expanded to analyzing managers themselves and a career in investment consulting. This came full circle then when she chose her next move, which was back into the investment management field.

David Semmens is Chief Investment Officer at Cadro and an External Investment Committee Member at Wealthify where he was previously CIO. He holds additional Investment Committee and advisory roles and is an adjunct lecturer at Heriot-Watt University. 

Monisha Varadan works at Google focused on Privacy and Partnerships, and is a partner at Zephyr Ventures, an acquisition vehicle set up to invest in profitable, growth businesses. She is Director of the Start up Bootcamp and is Entrepreneur in Residence at INSEAD, my own alma mater, where she also completed her MBA.

Our global Women in Tech series is an exciting collaboration between Fiftyfaces Productions and Monumental Me, an organization committed to wellness including resilience, mental fitness and strength designed to help you thrive in life and your career. It also hosts The Mindshare Podcast. In this first series of the collaboration, host Liana Slater talks to four senior female tech executives about what drove their success, how the tech industry is changing and advice they wish they had learned sooner.  

Vivian Lin Thurston is a Partner and Portfolio Manager at William Blair Investment Management, where she is based in Chicago. She previously covered global consumer stocks in a research role both at William Blair and a series of other financial services firms. She is Chairman of the Board at the Chinese Finance Association of American and a Principal Dancer and Director at the Xilin Dance Company. 

Kourtney Gibson is President of Chicago-based Loop Capital Markets, one of the largest privately-held investment banks in the country. After joining the company as an intern more than 20 years ago, she has held various roles at the firm, including spearheading its global equity division for more than a decade.

An empowering discussion of rising to excellence and the importance of people of under-represented backgrounds seeing themselves succeeding in a diverse set of careers.