Mary Pryshlak on Generative AI in Credit Research, & How To Manage 130 Investment Professional

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Joseph Cass

Hello, and welcome back to Fixed Income in 15. My name is Joe Cass. I'm a senior director here at S&P Global Ratings. So I'm the host and the creator of the Fixed Income in 15 podcast, and on this episode, we are very happy to be joined by Mary Pryshlak, head of investment research at Wellington; and Alexandra Dimitrijevic, global head of research and development at S&P Global Ratings.

So today, we're going to talk about investment outlooks. We're going to talk about how AI could impact the financial sector and also what books fundamentally changed our guests' lives. So the compliance section here, a 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. Okay, thank you both so much for joining today.

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Thank you, Joe. Very nice to meet you, Mary, on the podcast today.

Mary Pryshlak

Hi, Joe. Nice to see you, Alexandra.

 

Question and Answer

Joseph Cass

Great. So Mary, let's kick off with you. Would you be able to share a bit more detail at a high level about what your role involves at Wellington and what your responsibilities are?

Mary Pryshlak

Sure. Yes. So thank you. So I am the head of investment research for Wellington Management. We are fairly fortunate that our roots at Wellington are deeply rooted in research. So research is the engine of the firm. It's a cross-functional organization where we have core fundamental investment analysts that are spanning across equity, credit, macro, technical derivatives and ESG.

I've had the privilege of managing this team since 2018. And prior to my current role, I was a global industry analyst for the firm covering insurance companies. Our investment research team is about 130 people deep, and we directly manage over $135 billion of assets. As a research team, we conduct in-depth long-term research and provide investment recommendations across Wellington's global investment platform, and that spans about 900 investment professionals worldwide.

So my core responsibilities are really around oversight of the investment research function, including talent evaluation and development and ultimate accountability for our research portfolio performance.

Joseph Cass

Fantastic. Thanks, Mary. So Alexandra, a similar kind of question for you. What did your role of head in research and development at S&P Global Ratings entail? And what main kind of innovation projects are you working on right now?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes. So I have a team a bit like of around 100 experts. And I think there are two parts to what my team does is the more credit research team that does the traditional credit research, credit outlook, ratings performance. This team also runs our credit conditions committee, which is the S&P Global Ratings internal analytical risk monitoring platform.

So this is where we define at the macro credit level, the house base case that underpins the credit rating as well as the key risk that we are monitoring. As part of the research, we focus a lot on the thematic research as well -- and in particular, on the key emerging risks, the fundamental trends that are reshaping the world and are ultimately impacting credit.

So just to give a few examples, energy transition, impacts from climate change, cybersecurity, DeFi, tech restructuring, just to name a few. So that's the research part of the team. And then I have a team more focused on innovation, developing new products for foreign entity. Like S&P Global Rating, when we talk about new product, it's really opinions and insight beyond traditional credit rating.

So in particular, we have -- we do a lot in the space of sustainable finance such as second-party opinions. So I have some analysts that [ take ] some deep, deep expert that develop this insight and then a team of sustainable finance analysts that delivers the sustainable financing opinions.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Alexandra. Mary, I wanted to dig into kind of a key area of research that you guys are focusing on at Wellington. So what does the transition to renewable energy look like from an investment standpoint?

Mary Pryshlak

Yes. I mean, it's a really important question. As Alexandra mentioned, the transition to renewables is really one of the biggest trends that's taking place in the world today. If you take a step back and say, what is the energy transition, it is about decarbonization. So the primary objective is really to replace fossil fuels with clean energy.

And so there's three main areas that we see as opportunities for investing. So the first is really the renewables and clean energy itself, the second is really the electric networks and the third is really about power generation and storage. So the first step in the transition is about the need to build renewables.

This is a really, really big investment opportunity. Most investors spend a lot of their time here. So think about wind and solar. It's such an important part of the transition that we at Wellington have a dedicated individual helping us think through what the opportunities are investing in the renewables themselves. But the investment in the power grids is -- to support those renewables is as big of an investment.

And so when you think about the utilities, we really think the utilities are at the forefront of this megatrend. And these companies are putting enormous amounts of capital at work to really modernizing the electric grid. So once you build the renewables and then you wire the networks to support them, you have to think about intermittency, and you have to ensure that you've got enough power when you need it.

So this leads to the third theme, and that is all around having reliable power. So think about storage, batteries; think about backup power plants. They'll be gas-fired in the future, we believe. And think about baseload power, that's nuclear. So those are the three key areas of investment opportunity that we see.

I'll also just add, when you think about elevated energy prices and an increased focus on energy security, these themes really add to the tailwinds that we're seeing in the transition. So you can see improved cost competitiveness from the renewables themselves. That's driving towards higher returns for clean energy.

And we actually think kind of all things electric are going to be growing. So electric vehicles, electric heat pumps, electric appliances, all of this is going to require increased demand for electricity, and that's then going to create even more opportunities. I'll add one last thing. At Wellington, you know, we think it's really important to think about the transition across the entire value chain.

So we did merge both our energy and our utilities team to ensure that whether it's the resource in the ground or the pipes that move it, it's important for us to look at the entire value chain to know where those investment opportunities are.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Mary. So Alexandra, S&P Global Ratings recently acquired CICERO Shades of Green, who are a leading provider of second-party opinions on green bonds. So interested to know what strategy is S&P Global Ratings pursuing in the sustainable finance market.

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes, Joe. And maybe I'll start by rebounding on what Mary just explained on how critical this energy transition and the investment in all of the technology is to move to a low-carbon economy. Some of the question is how do you get to finance all of these investments, and one of the tool to finance these investments are the green bonds or more generally the social or sustainable or sustainable linked bonds or loans that are issued on the market.

Just to give you an idea of the number, we estimate that in 2023, these issuances could reach $1 trillion. That's up from $200 million in 2018, just to give an idea. And getting back to where we were in '21 because as we all know, issuance has come down generally in the market in '22. And out of the overall bond market, we see a share of around 14% to 16% of that, which is around what is called the GSSB issuance.

And we expect that this trend is going to continue to increase for the reason that Mary explained, some of the key drivers as well-being from policy, regulation, transparency initiatives. We can name a few. I mean, Mary mentioned the utility sector, regulation on EV, new regulation on transparency, new reporting requirement for investors with SFRD (sic) [ SFDR ] and the IRA, so the Inflation Reduction Act in the U.S. that's going to encourage more investments in green project.

There's also still a big financing gap, in particular, on climate adaptation and resilience. So generally, we think that there will be more demand in the market for some credible sustainable financing debt. And at S&P Global Ratings, we think that we have a role to play here to be the trusted voice in this sustainable finance market by sharing -- by applying our rigorous independent and transparent methodology and approach as we analyze all of this sustainable financing instrument.

And this is in this context that, as you mentioned, Joe, S&P Global Ratings was very fortunate to acquire last December, the Shades of Green business from the CICERO climate foundation. It's a Norwegian climate foundation that has over 100 climate scientists. And Shades of Green have been really championing this SPO in the global financing, green financing market since the very first issuance by the World Bank in 2008.

And since then, they've developed a very strong brand in the market, thanks to the multi-award-winning Shades of Green methodology that assigns a shading to investment and activity to reflect the extent to which they contribute to this lower carbon or more climate resilient future. So that team is complementing the existing team that we had at S&P Global Ratings, sustainable finance team.

We have now close to 70 analysts in the sustainable finance team with very deep expertise on physical risk and resilience. We have some forestry expert. We have some social expert. And altogether, this team already has evaluated over 40 and 60 billion in green financing. We've completed over 500 SPOs.

And I'm really, really proud of the quality of the work that the team that's been recognized by 13 industry awards, including already four in 2023. So it's very important for us at S&P Global Ratings to really be providing that trusted view on this market, and we're working really hard on that at the moment.

Joseph Cass

Thanks, Alexandra. So Mary, you're managing investment research professionals who essentially provide recommendations to portfolio managers. Can you talk a bit about the relationship between the investment research and portfolio management? And should that relationship be challenging and even get a bit heated at times?

Mary Pryshlak

Yes, Joe, thanks so much for the question. I think in order to really understand that relationship, it's important for us to spend a moment talking about the distinctiveness of the role of a global industry analyst at Wellington.

So our GIAs have their own philosophy and process. They are deep subject matter experts. When they come to the firm, the expectation is that they're going to spend the entirety of their career studying those industries. And we think it's critically important that each set of industries has their own philosophy and process.

Each industry has its own set of drivers. So we really try to ensure that our GIAs have a specifically curated philosophy and process to exploit the inefficiencies in their universe. But we're not research for research's sake. Our global industry analysts also manage money. And the act of managing money does a couple of things.

But most importantly, it really hones how they think about and take risk. That's really important in generating alpha. And this structure puts them on equal footing with our diversified portfolio managers. But I don't want to confuse the issue. You know, being on equal footing doesn't mean that we always have consensus. That doesn't mean that we don't debate or challenge each other. In fact, it's quite the opposite.

We really believe in the importance of healthy and robust debate. It makes us better. Challenge, wherever it's coming from, is really an attempt to just get at what the right answer is. Is the market undervaluing or overvaluing that security? And then you add in the fact that our diversified PMs themselves, they have their own philosophy and process.

So there are a lot of times where we can and do actually have a difference of opinion. And that's okay. That's exactly what our process is intended to do. And you can have different answers depending upon what your different philosophy and processes are. So we definitely do have the debate. We think it makes us better. The idea is to build a mosaic and connect those dots and engaging with our portfolio managers is a critical part of that process.

Joseph Cass

Thanks, Mary. So Alexandra, as the head of global research, what's your credit outlook for the rest of 2023? What market topics do you think are particularly concerning right now, and essentially, what keeps you up at night?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes. So Joe, it's fair to say that the past few years have been a very interesting environment to be a credit analyst. And I'm sure it's the same on my side, where we've gone from a pandemic to a war in Europe, and energy crisis and now this unprecedented time of monetary tightening. And I think everyone's more -- trying to understand what could be the implications of that.

So just maybe where do we see things going for the rest of the year? Our base case is that we're going to see a continuation of the trend of credit erosion, which is really mild credit deterioration that we've seen started in the summer of last year with more downgrades. The share of credit that we still have on a negative outlook indicates that there's -- there are more downgrades to come, and I can give you more sectors a bit later.

And we also expect default to pick up. We actually just revised our default forecast and published earlier this week where we expect default to increase to 3.6% in Europe and over 4% in the U.S. But generally getting to above long-term averages, but we don't see a credit crunch. So just let me maybe go a little bit deeper here.

I think what's been a surprise to many in the market has been the greater resilience that we've observed since the beginning of the year, particularly at the macro and also at the credit level. So on the macro side, the still strong backlog of orders from COVID, the easing in supply chain, employment remaining strong and then the reopening of China. And obviously, here in Europe, the easing of the pressure on the energy where that was one of the possible risks for Europe.

So all of that have been rather positive surprises that have led to more resilience on the macro side, but the Q1 earnings also show that a number of companies have actually been able to keep some pricing power and translate some of the increase in input costs on to their prices. So although we expect a deterioration in '23 compared to '22 in the performance of company, we start to see maybe this quarter, the beginning of an earning recession.

Overall, the trend that seems to be emerging here is one of increased divergence in credit. So on the one hand, you have these credits at the lower end of the rating scale in the big category and below sectors such as consumer goods or retail, where we see the highest percentage of negative outlook. We expect more downgrades, more defaults.

You also have sectors like commercial real estate that are particularly impacted by the impact of the rapid increase in interest rates on the valuation and refinancing. But on the other hand, we've also seen quite a number of upgrades since the beginning of the year in sectors -- some of them recovering from the pandemic. So in airlines, for instance, where we've had quite a few upgrades in the past few weeks, but also in the sectors such as auto or capital goods.

So overall, I would say, credit erosion, increased divergence. But then what keeps me at night, what are the key risks that we're watching. One is obviously related to inflation. This is going to be critical for Central Bank to be able to tame inflation and because that's going to determine when Central Bank can pause the increase in rates and eventually start decreasing.

So for Europe, particularly, we see inflation -- core inflation remaining sticky through the end of '24, so we expect rates to remain high. But that's going to be one of the key areas to monitor together with employment, unemployment. But overall, we think that we have yet to see the full impact of the rapid increase in interest rate and monetary tightening.

It's the first time in history that we have all major central banks increasing their rates at a very high pace and at the same time, and we all know it takes time for monetary policy to impact on the real economy. So we wouldn't be surprised if there are more episodes of turbulence coming, other areas of vulnerabilities.

For instance, in the nonbank financial sector or property in cases where you have high leverage, structural liquidity mismatches or significant asset quality issues. So these are the risks. And obviously, still geopolitical risk. There's still a risk around escalation around the conflict in Russia and Ukraine, tensions between China and the U.S.

So our base case is a mild deterioration, but we've increased the potential downside risk in the current environment. I'll stop here. I mean, I could speak for another hour on that, but I'll stop here for now.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Alexandra. So Mary, moving on to kind of a different topic now. How do you think about the future of investment research and how it's going to tie into generative AI? So what skills, what tools will someone in investment research need to utilize to be successful in the future, do you think?

Mary Pryshlak

Yes. So it's another really important topic. I mean, there's a lot that we don't know about generative AI right now, so if you will allow me to answer the question sort of on two dimensions. So the first will be a market or alpha perspective, and then the second will be exactly on, you know, thinking about building a team for the future.

So from a market and alpha perspective, we do really believe that we're still in the early innings of understanding how generative AI will impact the world. But Wellington, we think, was early to focus on the advent of machine learning and technology like this when our team in 2016 took a trip out to the Bay Area with a specific focus on really understanding the early development of this technology.

So we -- while we believe generative AI is powerful and somewhat disruptive, this isn't the first advancement in AI that we've invested in, and we're fairly certain it won't be the last. As investment professionals, this is what we get excited about. Disruption tends to create volatility. Volatility creates dispersion and active managers like ourselves are able to capitalize on that volatility and that dispersion.

I mentioned before, our analysts, they – you know, we really focus on this spread between capturing the winners and avoiding the losers. And if we are able to capture that alpha spread, we should be able to generate alpha. So we're excited about the disruptive effect that generative AI can have on the markets.

Now from the perspective of building out a research team for the future, over the last five years, we have been really deliberate in hiring individuals that we had what we would call skills of the future. And skills of the future, for us, really revolve around this idea of agility with data. And so what this means is think about how can you use technology to your advantage that will enable you to build your own data set.

So if you're our hotel analyst, imagine how powerful it would be if you were able to scrape all of the information that's publicly available, but come up with your own data set that gave you an edge in understanding hotel vacancy rates or if you cover Netflix and you were able to scrape the web and figure out and get an edge on subscribership levels, which we think is a determinant of the value of the stock, that's pretty powerful if you have your own insights and your own data set that's not publicly available to everybody.

So data agility is pretty important, and we think it's really fueled by advances in technology. We hope it helps investors connect the dots and get ahead of the market. I'll also add that we do have experts at our firm that do nothing but spend the entirety of their time really studying what's happening at the software technology companies.

They don't just help me in thinking through and understanding how tools are evolving, but they also work with our investors because this is really disruptive across all sectors. And they help our other global industry analysts really understand the second order impacts that this technology will have on the world.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Mary. Alexandra, sticking to the AI theme. How can credit ratings, and credit ratings analysis in general, be impacted by AI in the future?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes. Joe, I just -- I'd like to rebound on some -- what Mary said. I really loved your point, Mary, about the skills of the future. And there's one that maybe I would add to this, which is the critical thinking. And because if -- in our job as analysts, I think AI, and generative AI and -- could bring, as you said, more data and potentially facilitate productivity on some of the more basic part of the work on data gathering.

But where human is still making a difference with a robot or with technology is about the ability to apply critical thinking and form an opinion about the future. And we've all discussed in that podcast today so many of the trends that are completely disrupting the world, whether it's climate change or energy transition or tech disruption with generative AI, and it takes some of that critical thinking to just figure out the implication that this might have.

And maybe I'll take just a bit of a different angle from what we discussed on that topic and -- I was reading, I'm sure you saw it last month, a very interesting article in The Economist where Yuval Noah Harari argues that AI has hacked the operating system of human civilization because it really gives the ability to technology to master language, stories and ultimately take decisions independently from the humans.

So there were articles as well comparing this generative AI as a major breakthrough equivalent to the invention of the printing press. So potentially quite a lot of changes and disruption ahead. And here, I think from a risk analyst standpoint, I think what's going to be really important for us is to understand how companies or governments, what their approach in terms of governance and risk management as they deploy generative AI within their organization.

How much it might depend on some external provider, what type of risk in terms of protecting the IP, potential misuse, fraud, ethical consideration, rising cybersecurity concern, legal risk. There are a number of potential risks, and so the governance around responsible AI, I think, is going to be an interesting part of how we analyze companies going forward.

Joseph Cass

Fantastic. Thanks, Alexandra. Mary, you mentioned, I think it is in your intro, you're leading a team of 130-ish investment research professionals, and they're managing $165 billion in client assets. So can you talk a bit about your personal management style and how you try and get the best out of your staff?

Mary Pryshlak

Yes. So let me just start with sort of -- a major part of my job is to really focus on ensuring that we are attracting, retaining, motivating and developing world-class research talent. So my goal is to ensure that we always have the best talent working on behalf of our clients. If you think about my personal management style, I'd like to try to distill it down to the interplay between being candid and caring.

Now, I share that because I've had my fair share of disappointments and moments of adversity being an investor for the majority of my career. And these periods have really punctuated the importance in my mind of empathy and compassion when you're working with people. And we are in a talent-based, people-based business, so it really shaped how I interact with others.

I found that it's critically important to care, and if people know that you care, you can be candid. And that combination can be really powerful in helping somebody grow and develop and achieve new heights. It sounds so simple, I know, but I really do think that in the people business, this combination is critically important.

Now you asked the question how do you get the best out of people, and I guess I'd start with saying it's hard. Everyone is different and how people are inspired is different. So I have to spend, and my leadership team spends a lot of time just trying to get to know individuals, really trying to understand what motivates them and what worries them. And so if you said, all right, no, Mary, you have to distill this down into one thing. What's the one thing that enables you to get more out of people? I'd say it's really the power of belief.

I often find that if I lend somebody my genuine belief in them, that's oftentimes all they need to have the confidence themselves to take that risk, to take that new job, to make that -- invest in that security that they were really struggling with. So the power of belief in people sometimes is just really enough that gets them to get to a better place. So those are just some of the lessons that I've learned.

Joseph Cass

Fantastic. Thanks, Mary. So Alexandra, you also manage, as you mentioned before, over 100 professionals across the globe at S&P Global Ratings. What type of leadership style do you find most effective when you're thinking about driving change and growing your talent pool?

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

So I guess maybe in terms of the context of the team, it's a formidable team with depth of expertise, very experimented leader on their market, on credit, on sustainability really around the globe. I feel humbled working with such a group of talented individuals.

And in terms of maybe the role I can play in that context and then the leadership style, I view my role here as helping connect the dots, get the bigger picture, linking both to the trends in the market that we've discussed, but as well some of the strategy of the organization. And I guess it's a transformational leadership in terms of approach, really trying to associate my leader in helping us transform the organization.

So usually, I take a very inclusive approach in having lots of discussion, engaging with them in setting the strategic direction for the team, leveraging on the deep insight that they have on their market, but really getting them to connect or getting us to connect, and discuss, and share and iterate to create this connection and frame the direction.

In terms of the -- how to get the best of people through that transformation, I'm a believer that people need to have space to be able to grow, to create, to lead with their own style, to identify with their team the best way to serve their market, their customers and get this engagement at all level to drive change.

So for me, it's a constant balance between providing sufficient clarity in the direction, but being here and support when it's needed to tackle challenges or when some decisions need to be taken, but then also leaving enough space for this very talented and experimental leader to grow their own leadership and better serve the market.

So it's a constant steering. Every person is different, as Mary was saying, but even every situation is different. So I feel it's a permanent adjustment about what's the right, you know, balance between -- in a way, like the caring, so the support, but as well the space to innovate and grow. And it's really, for me, like the potency leadership, if I can call it like that, is helping create the future leaders of the organization.

And I do, like Mary spend a lot of time understanding the people in the team, their aspirations and to the extent possible in our organization, put the people in roles where they can maximize their strengths so that they can flourish and the organization are flourishing as well. So that's –we all say, don't ask a fish to climb a tree, right? So what's the right role for the right person that will enable the person and the organization to grow.

Joseph Cass

Perfect. Thanks, Alexandra. So a question for both of you now. So what book are you reading at the moment? And what book have you read that fundamentally changed the way you think about everyday life? So Alexandra, I'll start off with you.

Alexandra Dimitrijevic

Yes. I've been thinking after this question, Joe, and I'm not going to take one book, but it's rather maybe a series of books that have shaped the way I think -- I mean, you've heard me talk a lot about innovation and change in this podcast. And I think that's just because fundamentally, this is something that drives me personally.

I love the change. I love the challenge of creating and innovating, but it comes also with a lot of challenges of how you do that. I think my journey here started with an excellent program I did at the London Business School called Exploiting Disruption in a Digital World. And one of the speakers, Peter Hinssen, wrote that book called The Day After Tomorrow.

And I thought there was a very powerful idea here in really thinking about how much human capital, how much time, how much money or leadership time organizations spends in addressing today's problem as opposed to thinking about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow. And so that got me to start thinking around – you know, triggered some thinking on this topic of innovation.

And then one book that came later in my past in my reading is the famous The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen. That was published in the late '90s, I still -- I think, has a lot of relevance. And in that book, really, the idea that struck a chord with me was to release this useful distinction between sustaining innovation and disruptive innovation.

Because when you think about innovation like the disruptor, the Netflix or the Facebook, you often have that idea that you need to work in a garage and where your flip-flops to really get the next disruption that's going to create the next big thing in the sector.

But I think it's really useful to think in terms of this sustaining innovation and not all innovation is about disruption, not all innovation about -- is necessarily about new product, but it's really about that mindset and that process to constantly improving the services, the process, employee engagement, productivity.

And also some really interesting reflection on as an organization, how you shape the culture, how you drive that change can be linked to, you know, do you have the right incentives, do you have the right decision process, do you have the right resource allocation to support some of that change and innovation.

Joseph Cass

Great. And Mary, same question to you. So what book are you reading right now? And what book have you read that kind of fundamentally changed the way you think about everyday life?

Mary Pryshlak

Yes. I really appreciate the question, Joe. And I guess I'll start by saying I really consider myself a lifelong learner, and I've read a lot of books over the course of my life. And to really distill it down into one is really hard. I feel like every interaction that you have with people and everything you read has the ability to influence and evolve who you are, so I'm constantly evolving and learning.

I guess I find inspiration in a lot of places, so lately, I've been focused on reading books around studying professional athletes. You know, I think there's so many similarities to what we do in investing with professional athletes. There's a rigor that's required to win. There's repetition required for mastery. There's resilience needed to overcome adversity and there's grit that you just -- you need to get through everything.

So a book that I just finished reading is a memoir by an elite runner called Des Linden. The book is titled Choosing to Run. And I guess I wanted to talk about this book because I find myself falling into this trap often where I tend to see these professional athletes usually on the biggest stages in the world.

And I'm guilty of saying, wow, they're so natural. They're so gifted; they make it look so easy. But truly understanding the adversity that they go through, the mental strength, how they get the mental strength to continue to push the boundaries of what they are physically and mentally capable of is fascinating to me.

So that's a book that I just finished. A book that I'm currently reading has a similar but slightly different tone to it, and it's called The Captain Class. It's by Sam Walker. This book is really exploring the qualities and characteristics of exceptional leaders in the world of sports. And it identifies a group of captains that have achieved extraordinary success.

So the book spends a lot of time studying and analyzing leadership styles and strategies, but it also does underscore the important role that leadership plays in building and sustaining winning teams. So I wanted to share a book that I finished and a book that I'm currently reading. And now you say, is there one that has profoundly changed me?

I think as a leader -- as a new leader in 2018, I was traveling to Asia visiting our team over there, and I had the book called Turn the Ship Around. And it was pretty powerful for me at the time because it really -- it's about a naval ship and how there's -- every person on the ship has a role and a function, and there's this hierarchy and you have to go through of all these different people to get something to change.

And this new leader came on, this captain came on the ship and was like, why don't you just make that decision? You're closest to making that decision instead of going up to have five different people talk about it.

And it was just so different on the ship, but it highlighted for me the importance of really empowering leaders, of really making sure that whoever is closest to the decision should be the ones making it, but then providing clarity around who has the decision and when do you need to elevate certain items to me or to others in the organization. So I do have to say that, that did profoundly change how I think about and lead with my directors' investment research.

Joseph Cass

Great. Thanks, Mary. So Mary, the last question of the whole podcast, it goes to you. So I typically will interview leaders, influential investors from the world of finance on the podcast. Thinking about everyone you've met, anyone you've worked with or anyone you've just seen from afar, who would be the most interesting potential guest I should ask to join a future episode of the show?

Mary Pryshlak

Well, they're so hard. I say that there's -- the one person that comes to mind is Kim Posnett. She is the global head of investment banking services at Goldman Sachs. I've interacted with her, not very much, but I do follow her on LinkedIn. And I'd say she is definitely somebody that you would like to invite on your podcast.

Joseph Cass

Brilliant. Well, thank you so much, Mary and Alexandra, for your time today. As usual, for everyone watching, everyone listening, see you next time on Fixed Income in 15.