Joyce Chang on Market Themes, Defi and Working with Jamie Dimon

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Joseph Cass

Welcome back to Fixed Income In 15. My name is Joe Cass. I am the creator and host of the podcast. So today, I am talking to Joyce Chang, Managing Director and Chair of Global Research at JPMorgan; and Alexandra Dimitrijevic, Global Head of Research and Development at S&P Global Ratings. Today, we're going to talk about sustainable finance, the metaverse, and leading women in finance.

So a very quick reminder that the views of the external guests are their views alone, and they do not represent the views of S&P Global Ratings. Great stuff.

Joseph Cass

So Joyce, we'll start with you. As the Chair of Global Research at JPMorgan, what key themes are you discussing with your clients that could affect markets for the remainder of 2022 and also going into 2023?

Joyce Chang

Well, thank you so much for that question. The key point that we're making is that we are embarking on a period of regime change. And it's really regime change in 5 different areas. So what we have seen is that COVID has brought new macro policies to boost growth, to reverse inequality.

And we're moving into a world of higher inflation, bigger deficits and greater macro volatility and in our opinion, faster-moving cycles, which ends the era of great moderations that we had over the last 4 decades, which was marked by low inflation and also massive returns to investors.

So the first regime change is the macro transformation, the end of the great moderation. The second regime change is the market transformation. We are seeing with the growth of passive investment, index investing, and also lower market liquidity, a market transformation that is occurring very rapidly. We estimate that liquidity in the markets is probably about 30% lower than it was before the pandemic.

At the same time, we've seen the growth of alternative asset universes, private equity, private debt, digital assets, return of hedge funds that have expanded at a rapid pace, at a faster pace than some of the universe of traditional bonds and equities at the same time that where market liquidity has fallen.

Now the third regime change is really the U.S.-China relationship. And in China, there is an endemic change as they embark on their common prosperity agenda. But also U.S.-China has really moved to a more competitive and in some cases, confrontational stance. And this is one that I think will endure and cover emerging technologies, human rights, and democracy issues.

The fourth regime change is energy transformation, the widening implementation gap between climate change and the energy crunch that we're facing right now. So even though we've seen 140 countries pledge to net zero targets, we are seeing more challenges to meeting these targets, and the first time where we're actually seeing outflows from some of the ESG funds.

And finally, the fifth regime change is the political transformation that we've seen more polarization, populism, and more of a debate of democracy versus autocracy. Looking at the trends for the last 15 years, we've seen that authoritarianism has been on the rise, while democracy has declined. So those are the regime changes that we're looking at.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Joyce. So Alexandra, what are S&P Global Ratings key themes for this year and beyond thinking about a world redefined?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes, Joe. So indeed, the overarching theme that we have for 2022 and probably longer is a world redefined. And there are a number of common points with what Joyce was saying unsurprisingly. Just taking a step back, we are really going through extraordinary times with not just one, but really a series of historical or redefining events that are reshaping the whole landscape.

So we had, obviously, this global pandemic of severity not since the Spanish flu in 1919, then now a war here in Europe, in Russia, in Ukraine, inflation, flooding with double-digit levels, again, not seen since the '70s, and energy crisis and also a series of extreme weather event, whether mega drought or deadly floods around the world.

So against this backdrop, we've defined 6 key themes, which we think are redefining this credit landscape. The first one, as we started the year was around reshaping recovery. But as we progress towards the year, it's probably going more towards derailed recovery. And indeed, as Joyce alluded to, we have this very high inflation level that's pushing central banks to tighten their monetary policy in a much more aggressive way, which in turn, increases the risk of recession on a number of the world's largest economies.

Then the second theme is around the escalating geopolitical risk. We started the year here with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which really puts an end to a world order that had been in place since the end of the cold war. But even before that, before COVID, we have the continuous tensions between the U.S. and China, and the episode this summer surrounding Taiwan remind us how vivid these tensions are.

But also more generally, the increased inequalities that have been exacerbated by the pandemic and now the energy and food crisis, which fuel a rise in populism both across developed and developing economies. So that's a second key theme.

A third key theme is around the reshuffling of global flows. So again, this environment that we've been speaking about, there is an increased volatility and uncertainty that have prompted investors, government and corporate to rethink and in some cases, reroute some of the capital flows and trade flows.

On the capital side, I mean, if we had this podcast just a few months ago, we were talking about what seemed to be a never-ending low interest rate environment. And now all of a sudden, we've moved from QE quantitative easing to QT with this rise of central banks in hiking rates in the fight against inflation, propelling the U.S. dollar at 20 years high.

And we've seen -- come from a period where you had abundance of liquidity flowing through to the bottom end of the rating scale and the weaker credit to now some parts of the bond market, particularly high-yield part being virtually shut down.

On the trade side, I think both the pandemic, the supply-demand imbalance in this economic rebound and now, the weaponization of energy as part of the conflict in Ukraine, all of that is underlying the complexity and interdependencies that have built up in the global supply chain over the past decade through globalization and really leading governments and corporate to rethink their supply chain and their strategy. So that's the third theme that we've been looking at.

Moving to a fourth theme and very dear to us as a rating agency is resurfacing credit headwinds. And we think that we are -- really have now an inflection point that is looming. It's fair to say that over the past couple of years with all of this abundance of liquidity and really investors looking for ways to generate returns, this has eclipsed, to some extent, the focus on credit risk.

But now in the current environment, we're going to see increasing pressure on ratings and importance of credit fundamentals. And that comes in a situation where global leverage has taken another step up following the pandemic and also where we have an extremely high share of low-rated credit that are more vulnerable to default.

And 2 last themes which are more structural, but nonetheless increasingly important, just in a few words. One is the move towards net zero, really the increased awareness of the risk related to climate change and the urgency to move to a low-carbon economy and its implications, both for government and corporate.

And the last topic, which Joyce alluded to is around digital disruption. And the past couple of years have also been years of major breakthrough in the world of decentralized finance, but that's maybe something that we can discuss a bit later in the podcast.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thank you very much, Alexandra. So Joyce, in your view, what could the kind of the real long-term implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict be for markets and economies?

Joyce Chang

Well, the implications really have been summed up by Janet Yellen in moving to an era of friendshoring and looking at securing the supply chain. And at the heart of this is the energy transformation, commodities. But also, we are seeing that -- we are having much more discussion on political regimes as well.

So I think the longer-term implications of this is the greater focus on national security as a priority. And this has really brought us into a different dialogue, which I do think points to higher inflation. Previously, if you built your supply chain on the lowest cost and greatest efficiencies, now you're looking at a different criteria. So this means, I think, that higher inflation is here to stay.

And what we've really said to investors is that previously, if you thought about a world where an expansion and a recession was 10 or 11 years, we think the current cycles are going to be shorter, 5 to 6 years. We used to talk about a world of global growth of 2%, maybe look at 1%. We looked at 2% inflation, maybe look at 3% to 4% inflation as the new normal.

And treasury yields, we think, could go to 5.5% by the end of the decade. But from Russia, Ukraine, we see much more focus on national security, securing the supply chain, friendshoring, working with more predictable regimes. And I think all of that does mean higher inflation and greater volatility is here to stay.

Joseph Cass

Great. Great, Joyce. Alexandra, a similar question to you really, kind of what could be the longer-term implications of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the unfolding energy crisis, but when it comes to credit ratings.

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Thank you, Joe. So I mean, obviously, one of -- there are far-reaching implications, one that we just discussed already on the geopolitical balance here. And the second point, which is really important is this shift in paradigm around energy. So since the Paris Agreement and with COP26, there has been this really strong focus on energy transition in that strive to a lower carbon economy.

But obviously, now with the situation here, the weaponization of gas as part of the conflict, energy security has come back on top of the agenda for governments and not only energy security, but I think there's a third dimension here, which is really important, is energy affordability. We've seen the increase in energy prices, which we think are going to last into 2024 and remain high thereafter.

So that -- really that strategy for government, corporate really taking into account, these 3 dimensions. There's also this, obviously, implication at the macro and financing conditions level, just to make it short, higher energy prices feed into higher inflation and push central banks to hike rates and tighten their monetary policy more aggressively, which in turn increases the risk of recessions and put more pressure on lower rated credit.

So what does that mean for ratings? I think it’s -- well, overall, it's not painting a very positive picture. But it's fair to say so far, there has been some resilience in credit ratings for a number of reasons. The first reason is that there's still a lot of positive in the first part of the year, at least positive from the economic rebound.

So governments with high level of revenues also helped by inflation at the corporate level, still a strong demand, the books from companies full until the end of the year in certain number of sectors. Also, a lot of companies and government have been able to take advantage of the very favorable financing condition to reprice their debt over the past couple of years, push down the debt maturities, improve their liquidity profile.

So overall, there are a number of buffers still. And as well, I think it's important to keep in mind that the ratings level overall are still below the pre-COVID period, just reflecting generally a higher level of leverage. That said, we expect downgrades to increase. We've had already some increase in the past few months, but we expect more negative outlooks and more downgrades, particularly in sector like consumer goods, retail, auto, some utilities.

And we also expect default to pick up. We've actually already seen some of that pickup starting in August from historically low levels. And we expect that default rate under a base case could triple to around 3%, 3.5% in the U.S. and in Europe by the middle of next year.

Joseph Cass

Great. And Alexandra, moving on to a topic that seems to evolve on basically a daily basis, ESG. So how could a potential deglobalization nations looking to take back control of their energy supply, which we've mentioned already, positively or negatively impact broader ESG and climate goals?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

I think there's a lot to unpack on this question. Maybe ESG is quite broad as it includes the social governance dimension. But maybe if we try to focus on the environmental question, I think it really gets back to the discussion that we had just before on energy security, energy affordability. And essentially, I guess your question, Joe, is, is that going to delay the energy transition and the necessary transition to a lower carbon economy? Well, it's complex, probably a bit early to tell.

I think there are obviously some negatives. We've seen that countries like Germany had to reopen some coal facilities to compensate for the shortage in Russian gas. But at the same time, if you look on a more medium term, this also builds the case for the importance of governments to be the alternative sources of energy, renewable energy, wind, solar, but this takes time to build the infrastructure.

But nonetheless, I think that over the medium to longer term, I think this puts more emphasis on that necessity to transition also for security reasons. And it's not only a supply question. I think it's really important that the path to a low-carbon economy is also a demand question. And we've seen the European Commission here asking for a reduction of gas consumption by household or corporate by 15%. And we have to see if this can lead to changes in habits.

For instance, putting your thermostat 1 degree lower, getting a jumper at home or on a more personal note, I have been looking at maybe installing thermal heating. And so there might be change in habit that are positive for demand.

So what's really clear, Joe, I think, here, and if you look at the number of regularity of the extreme weather events, you've had deadly flood in Pakistan. You've had mega drought in China, in Brazil, in Europe, torrential rain in Australia. All of this really reminds of the acute need to -- for the world to decarbonize, move to a lower carbon economy. This isn't going away, and companies and government are going to have to step up their effort.

And I think as part of this, this is going to remain central for capital markets, that's for sure. And all the efforts also to improve the transparency, standardization, disclosure on Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions and efforts to also better define Scope 3 are going to be an important part of shaping that future path to net zero.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Alexandra. So Joyce, I'd be really interested to hear your view on this. Do you think ESG is facing its first real-life resilience test? And could any kind of recent events stop ESG investing in its tracks?

Joyce Chang

Well, I think we're evolving into a new phase, which I call ESG 2.0, in the face of simultaneous global crisis. And if we look at today's crises, they cover a spectrum of pandemics, energy security, food security, and racial and social injustices. And you have that all amidst a landscape of geoeconomic interest, which are shifting as we've talked about with the supply chain with the focus on national security priorities.

So ESG 1.0 is focused on incremental strategies, raising awareness, setting targets. ESG 2.0 is focused on the unbundling of various strategies, and it's hard to universally define this. It can mean a lot of different things to different investors. Now what we have seen is that there has been a pullback in some of these ESG flows. If we take a look at the numbers, the total ESG ETF, AUM worldwide has actually fallen by about 10% year-to-date. And we see that the net inflows have decelerated.

Taking a look at the U.S.-listed ESG ETFs, they've received inflows this year that were only $4.5 billion after attracting $32 billion of inflows in 2020 and 2021. And we have actually seen that the regulators are scrutinizing this much more carefully as well as the disclosures, what U.S. regulatory discussions are taking place around.

And for example, if you take a look at Europe, Morningstar actually removed the ESG label from 25% of the funds claiming to promote sustainability. So there's a lot more concern about greenwashing, how to define and to ensure accountability on ESG targets and implementation. So I think that this debate will continue, but ESG is here to stay.

If anything, the tension between energy security and climate action and higher energy prices is actually going to, I think, accelerate the attention on the energy revolution and transformation. But this is a long transition. Moving to low-carbon energy is consistent with energy security, but this is going to take some time.

But I think it's important to point to the change that has occurred in the last few years, which I think is here to stay. A few years ago, only 2% of corporates had set up carbon targets. Now you have that more than 50% of corporates have done so. In the government, this has gone up to 90% of the governments. I think we have a lot more focus now on some of the nontraditional energy supply.

So hydrogen is under a lot of focus. It could be ready to make a big impact in the next decade if we find a way to use it at scale. And it's also put more attention on the supply chain of commodities that are needed for the energy transformation, nickel, cobalt, lithium, rare earths, all of that, which is getting more discussion at the policy level, which is needed to address resiliency.

So every indication is that we're going to need multiples of today's production of multiple minerals. So the reality is we cannot get to a cleaner energy world without improving the supply chains for many minerals. So I think that this is a new phase of ESG with respect to the accountability, but also with respect to the range of spectrum of how we're defining ESG as a result of the pandemic and Russia's war on Ukraine.

Joseph Cass

Great. And Joyce, on to a slightly different topic, and topic we're kind of speaking more and more about on this pod is digital assets. So I saw that JPMorgan opened a virtual lounge in Decentraland. So that's one of the largest metaverses out there for people who don't know. So Web 3.0, NFTs, metaverse, cryptocurrency, CBDCs, DeFi, there's a lot to take in there. So what's your kind of high-level takeaway of the role and the future of these areas within more traditional finance?

Joyce Chang

Well, I think that, first of all, we're still very much in the early innings of development here. And I think it's going to take another 5 to 15 years to develop broad material use cases and proof points here. The crypto infrastructure sector right now is in focus as Ethereum shifted from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake consensus mechanism earlier this month, a protocol referred to as the merge, which opens up a new era for the second largest blockchain ecosystem.

So the proof-of-work consensus mechanism required a very large amount of energy to solve computational problems to validate transactions on the blockchain, whereas the proof-of-stake mechanism validates transitions based on the percentage of coins already held, which should boost the efficiency and lower energy consumption tremendously.

So I think we need to see how this develops, but I would say that we're in early innings. And the institutionalization has not occurred that quickly. So over the next 12 to 18 months, I think you're going to see a focus on the crypto infrastructure sector, companies, the protocols that will help to enable the core functionality of crypto companies that are now expanding to become enterprise grade.

One thing we have seen is that these infrastructure companies have continued to generate sustainable revenue this year by servicing emerging use cases. But if we look at the overall valuations for cryptocurrencies, they suffered just a brutal selloff, a real crypto winter, a 70% drop for Bitcoin since the previous peak.

So I think institutional investors are going to take this very slowly. I think it's another 5 to 15 years to develop some of these broad material use cases and proof points. And then we still have the whole regulatory environment to sort out as well. So all of these developments are ones that we're going to continue to track.

But I would say that this has still been, for most institutional investors, more of a side show because they have not really made big allocations into the sector. And even if you look at our overall asset allocation strategy and alternative assets, I mean, we have had a very minimis allocation to crypto. It was less than 0.5 a percentage point. So I think this is something that really will continue to be monitored as we focus on the kind of infrastructure and regulation that's going to guide these developments.

Joseph Cass

Great. So Joyce, JPMorgan, they published data on the female labor force participation and the disproportionate responsibility that women bear for childcare at all income levels, specifically during the time of the pandemic. So would you be able to talk to us a bit about how the pandemic disproportionately impacted women in the workforce? And what kind of policies could better support working women?

Joyce Chang

Well, we really did call this the she-cession because it was really the first recession where more women than men lost jobs when we look at this historically because the job losses were concentrated in the services sector.

So when the U.S. entered the lockdown in March and April, more than 5 million people left the labor force. And it was about 3.5 million mothers with school-age children who left active work, either shifting into paid or unpaid leave or losing their job or exiting the labor market altogether. That's almost 1 in 2, 45% of mothers of school-age children that left at the time of the pandemic.

And this compares to 1.8 million men who left the labor force. So you had a real impact on women and a labor force participation rate that actually went down to the lowest level for women that we've seen in 33 years. Now that's come back now. Now that we're at record low unemployment levels. We're finally back to some of the levels that we were at pre-pandemic.

But what it really did was put a spotlight on the whole childcare situation. Childcare costs exceed the federal definition of affordability in every state in the United States, which is defined as 7% of household income. And we see that labor force participation rates are lower in areas where childcare is difficult to access.

We also see that the female labor force, even though it's inched back from the historic declines, we have seen more of a concern on those who are working sort of part-time versus returning to the workforce full time. And we're also seeing more of an impact on women of color and low-income households, which face greater setbacks.

If you look at Black and Hispanic workers, they face 1.6 to 2x the unemployment rates of their White counterparts at the time of the pandemic. And this was after actually making some real gains in prior years. But just looking outside of the developed markets, women in emerging markets were really the hardest hit. due to the overrepresentation in informal labor markets, and they continue to lag developed market countries on all gender metrics by an even wider margin after the pandemic.

Joseph Cass

Thanks, Joyce. So Alexandra, you're a founding member of the S&P Global Diversity Research Lab. So can you tell us a bit about the research you've published and maybe share some of the takeaways of recent publications?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes, Joe. Indeed, S&P Global has a very strong commitment for diversity, equity for our own employees and stakeholders, but generally also what we're doing through this diversity research lab that I created 4 years ago with my colleague, Nathan Hunt, is using the -- just extraordinary data and expertise and research that we have across all our divisions to published some research that shows with statistics, with analysis, the benefits of greater diversity, both at the macro level as Joyce was describing, but also at the sector level or at the micro level, at the corporate level.

And so we've done, for instance, research showing the benefit of increased female participation on the U.S. GDP or on capital markets. But I'd like to just maybe share a little bit more about 2 research, one that we are in the process of doing. We are working with some think tanks and academics. And here, at the moment, we are sponsoring a research from New Financial, which is a think tank here in the U.K., on an investor diversity toolkit contributing to that research as well.

And I think it's a really interesting topic because diversity is complex. We're in the business of data and analysis, and that's really one area where it's difficult to get data, especially at a global level data that’s consistent, that goes beyond some of the female on board or -- and also some of the data is actually not legal to collect in certain countries. I'm from France, and you can't collect data on ethnicity, for instance, in France.

So I mean, this is an interesting research project confronting the corporate view on how corporate would like to be able to share what their actions on diversity and equity, the type of data that they're able to collect and share with investors.

And then what investors are looking at, as we discussed earlier for ESG, different investors might be looking at diversity data for different purpose. But again, beyond the women on board, what are the type of information that they are interested in and is it available. So that's one research that is in progress and that will be interesting to share.

And there's another research we published last year, which I found really interesting, which is on women CEOs during COVID. So here, we looked at companies from the global BMI, broad market index, 12,000 companies globally. So it's the first global study. And we've used our in-house data from market intelligence to be able to identify the gender of CEOs of this company, which is not some information that's usually reported.

And looking first at the representation of women's CEO, it's only 5% globally around this, 12,000 company with the largest market cap globally, ranging from 0 in certain countries like Japan or up to 14%, 15% in some Scandinavian countries. But what's really interesting here is that we've then used natural language processing and sentiment analysis to identify the way women's CEO led during the peak of COVID.

So from March to December 2020, looking at the earning transcript and the words that were used more frequently by men and women CEO during that period, and the findings are -- maybe putting that behind some intuitions, but we found that women had more leadership style showing empathy flexibility, that they were looking at -- caring for a broader range of stakeholders, being employees, customers, suppliers, community, while men leadership style tended to be more driven by performance.

We didn't find evidence of different performance over that period of company just based on the gender of the CEO. It was more driven by sector or countries, but really different leadership style. And so I'm actually proofreading an update of this research right now covering '21 and beginning of '22, some really interesting findings. So you have to invite me back on the podcast, and I'll be happy to share that once it's published.

Joseph Cass

Yes, I'm sure. That sounds good. So Joyce, you've been included in lots and lots of lists recognizing women in finance. So there's -- I'm just going to name a few here, but there's a lot. So the Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance by American Banker, Barron's 100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance, and The Wall Street Journal, Top 50 Women to Watch. So what lessons and takeaways from your career to date would you share with young women looking to pursue a career in finance?

Joyce Chang

Well, first, I just want to say and really congratulate Alexandra and all the work that she is doing on diversity. It's a topic that I'm also just so passionate about. But I'd say to a lot of the younger women, what this pandemic has taught us all is that you have to continue to adapt. And you also have to be able to turn a disadvantage into an advantage.

I remember many times early on either being the youngest, the only female or sometimes the only minority in a room, and I realized that if I wasn't well prepared, everybody would penalize me more, but that if I was overprepared and sort of came across well, I would be remembered more just because there weren't that many people like me in the room. So you need to turn a disadvantage into a more competitive advantage.

I think the second thing I tell young women is don't take it personally. And I think that a lot of women look at a situation and think, gee, if I could only do that over again, I would have done this better or this differently or have made a different impression. So you can't take it personally. You have to realize that it's a market, to some people, it's just a game, and you need to sort of move on and understand that it's normal to feel uncomfortable. You need to force yourself to speak up.

I often tell a young women, you need to speak up twice so that people don't think the first time is just a fluke. And you need to create your own opportunity, your own brand. And if you're a researcher like we are, sometimes that means starting small, but you need to become the go-to person, somebody who can be entrusted. And sometimes you need to start small to sort of get that expertise and to gain that trust.

So I think that it is a point also where just we're all in this world that has been sort of virtual to back in person, where everybody is kind of just grappling with what is this new normal as we look at a hybrid world and how do we come across whether we're doing this online, in person, and use and maximize those opportunities.

Joseph Cass

Excellent. That is really interesting, Joyce. So Alexandra, you've worked at ratings for many years. You've led hundreds of employees across that time, interacted with countless clients and investors and stakeholders. So what's been one of the most challenging times for you whilst at S&P? And what helped you overcome this challenge?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

So first, I'd like to say that I'm very humbled to be invited by Joyce, and congratulations for all of these prices, and thank you for all the tips. Well, I think one of the most challenging time, and I'm probably not the only one here, were the first few months of COVID, with this first lockdown.

I mean, it seems really far now, but if you remember, all these empty streets, empty supermarkets and all of a sudden working from home, having the children at home and trying to figure out what was really happening and what could be the implications. And obviously, a huge human toll from the pandemic.

And I think I've been really privileged in that period to be in that position of Global Head of Research for S&P Global Ratings, a leading rating agency, having this access to a wonderful team of economists, 1,700 rating analysts across the world on the ground. And at that time, we created -- we had a daily call. We also had some health experts trying to figure out what was happening. It was a very uncharted territory and volatile situation.

But having this strong sense of purpose and really everyone doing their extraordinary engagement to really service the market in that period, really try to be that beacon for the market. And remember, we had concept meeting with policymakers and investors and Central Bank, everyone trying to figure out what could be the implications of that situation. And this focus on transparency and sharing what we were learning with the broader market so that we could really collectively navigate through that period.

So I mean, it's been really both challenging, but at the same time, a formidable human adventure and with all people united behind that sense of purpose. And for me, that's really what I would take away from that experience, is in front of a challenge, you're not alone. It's really a whole organization, a whole group of people that can work together to face and solve it.

Joseph Cass

Great. So Joyce, in addition to JPMorgan, you've worked and studied a host of leading institutions like Salomon Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Princeton, and Columbia University. So during your time with these institutions, which individuals have been the most memorable and why?

Joyce Chang

Well, I have to say at JPMorgan, Jamie Dimon and Daniel Pinto, I mean, really are just both remarkable to work with. I mean, Jamie, partly because he is just somebody who is so authentic and really can make a big company still small and is also -- he’s just so engaged in the policy dialogue and really stretched us to make our objectives bigger.

So if you look at our diversity networks, for example, I mean, we really put out targets like we want to win $10 billion to women-owned businesses, $30 billion to minority-owned businesses, affordable housing. So he made a lot of the discussion, very real targets in the community. Daniel Pinto is somebody who has just been brilliant at managing through every cycle in a crisis with a lot of calm and rigor and discipline.

So I feel like the leaders that I have worked with and who sponsored me, Daniel Pinto being one of them, just have been just remarkable leaders to work with. But there's a few people I would point to in academia that just really stand out to me.

At Columbia, Adam Tooze in the history department is somebody who's really interdisciplinary. And he has a great service, he has sort of Chartbook, he has Substack where he really brings together a lot of different issues. You can follow him on Twitter that intersect economics, politics, geopolitical risk, and also what's happening at a community level as well as a macro level.

And I am just very grateful to Princeton just because the pipeline of just top economists and people who went through the policy school where I graduated from have just been this lifelong network for me of people who are often my go-to people, have stayed in policy, have worked through a lot of the official creditor institutions and in other places.

So it's just been a real privilege also to be in a place like JPMorgan, where I've been able to keep that engagement with the universities. And on the policy side, even while working at a big bank.

Joseph Cass

Fantastic. Thanks very much, Joyce. So just one more question, and Joyce, it goes to you. So what senior women in finance do you think would make a great next guest on an episode of this show?

Joyce Chang

Well, some of the people that I've had a chance to sponsor this year, either through our women's network or our Asian employee network or the Fixed Income Analyst Society, I can just name a few. So Barbara Novick, the founder of BlackRock, and a lot of her sort of perspectives and history and what she's sort of -- how she looks back on the lessons learned over the cycles, what needs to happen with regulations and market reform.

I want to really give a shout out to Ida Liu at Citi because we worked on a number of things on Asian American diversity together and have been in a number of different events like in the industry and also outside of the industry.

There are people on the buy side like Penny Foley at Trust Company of the West, who's just been a long time person I have admired my whole career, but also at TCW, they've just put in their first female President, Kathryn Koch. So I just think that there's a lot of people in the marketplace that come to mind who I've had a real privilege to interact with over the years or even interview in forms much like the one that you're hosting.

Joseph Cass

Great stuff. Thank you very much for that list. I will note it down. So thank you very much, Joyce, Alexandra, for joining me today, everyone watching and listening. See you next time on Fixed Income In 15.

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Thank you.

Joyce Chang

Thank you.