When Candice Tse was tapped her senior year at Rutgers University to work at Goldman Sachs, the opportunity was incredible yet a little daunting. She took the leap.
Almost 20 years later, she’s still working for Goldman Sachs but has risen to Vice President of Strategic Advisory Solutions for Goldman Sachs Asset Management.
Tse now takes her financial know-how on the to road to share the importance of women in the global market and empowering the female investor. Her March 6th presentation to students and community members marked the first event in Converse’s new Presidential Leadership Forum series.
The forums are one of several steps President Krista Newkirk is taking to build connections between businesses and the College, with the goal of benefitting all involved. As a member of the One Spartanburg Talent Action Team, President Newkirk is helping create a framework for convening large employers and colleges to discuss unmet workforce needs, technical skills and professional development needed by companies in the Upstate area. According to Tse, companies with diverse leadership make better decisions, perform better in the marketplace and generally create better work environments.
“I think the benefit to an institution like Converse is that you have the ability to reach out to a lot of women…you are starting off with a great base of talent so if you … bring them into the financial industry they might be able to participate in different capacities they might not have known about before,” said Tse.
“Companies in the Upstate, especially those with a homogeneous workforce, will benefit by hiring Converse students,” said President Newkirk. “We are working hard to ensure that our students are graduating with the education, professional and technical skills, and the behavioral competencies they need to be successful in the current jobs available and for those jobs of the future that haven’t even been invented yet.”
In a master class held earlier that day, Tse explained to a room full of business and marketing students the importance of persistence in attending job fairs, working at internships and making meaningful contacts which go a long way towards opening up opportunities.
Tse also emphasized that students are graduating into a world that’s accommodating to those who want to go out and make a change. Even within industries like finance, there are ways to create something in order to help people. “You can make a difference if you choose to,” Tse told students.
Elisa Gonzalez, a double major in Business and Spanish, connected with Tse’s approach to success in the workplace as a woman and the various roles she played in her life. “I left feeling empowered to use my degree in Business Marketing not only to contribute to the organization I work with, but also to contribute to the world in small or large scale,” said Gonzalez.
“You can help people in many different ways, including by working at a large investment and finance firm like Goldman Sachs, which developed an initiative to fund women’s businesses and entrepreneurial endeavors,” said President Newkirk.
Goldman Sachs is leading the charge when it comes to empowering women in the workplace. The fifth-largest bank in the US has developed ways to initiate women and small business endeavors through the 10,000 Women and 10,000 Small Businesses Initiative. Goldman Sachs also coined the phrase “Womenomics” in 1999 after they developed the research that shows the importance of pay equity and education for women and how it improves the total economic performance for a country.
A woman’s role in the global economy is becoming increasingly evident, as well as a need for women to become more involved in finance.
“There’s an incorrect perception of what the financial industry is…I believe that my calling is to educate women on the different roles within finance. There are actually more opportunities than what people think,” said Tse.
(Written by Converse student Makayla Gay ’19.)