YouSaid · the spoken record

Roz Hewsenian

lines on the record: 103
first: 2018-08-06
most recent: 2018-08-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“We have a director of risk and operations whose job it is to ensure that we're taking the risk we want to take and we're not taking the risk we don't want to take. We have the broad targets, we have themes that help us within those targets figure out where we're looking for investments. And we spend a lot of time on looking at the incremental impact of every investment that we make. The second thing is, and this may help you a little bit, is that we have a maximum of no more than fifty managers billion dollars. That makes us very different from our peers. It also makes the situation much more manageable. So we might have multiple products with a particular manager, but it helps us manage our overall risk because we know a manager will have a similar risk profile for all of their products because”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's where the opportunistic comes from. If I had a specific bucket with a target, I'd have to fill it, which means that not only am I investing in the best if I can get into the best, I might have to invest in the second best and maybe even the third best to get my allocation filled. So the fewer target allocations I have, the happier I am. And our investment committee gets it.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, we don't have set target allocations to those themes because they're opportunistic. We use the themes to help us narrow down where we're going to look because we can't invest in everything. And the themes represent those areas the economy where we have the highest probability of success because the market is rewarding them right now. So instead of having a specific allocation, we look to find what investments are available and invest in the best of the investments.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Healthcare is a big one, longevity and health care, as people are aging, their consumption of healthcare is increasing, and their consumption patterns are changing. What people in their sixties and seventies consume are different than what people in their twenties and thirties consume. So people want less stuff when they're older and more experiences, and younger people who are building their families and buying homes and buying furniture and buying stuff. So it's different. And the baby boomers are a major segment of the poor population. So that's a theme that we've been developing. Technology and disruption is another one of our themes. And that's an extremely rich one, and we've been investing in that to the hilt. So you can see that we're not forecasting these things. The marketplace is showing us these themes, and we're just taking advantage of them.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Effectively our investment committee is responsible for overall strategy. They approve our broad policy, so the liquidity tiers and the allocations. They're also responsible for approving new managers. So the way that we bring opportunistic to them is that we have broad themes that we develop. So a member of our staff is our director of strategy and research. It's her responsibility to identify broad themes, and we're not looking for her to forecast the themes. We're looking for her to identify the themes that exist and we want to ride the wave.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Left some of them still permanently impaired, some of those foundations still have not gotten back to their two thousand seven high watermark. So we recognized having learned from their lesson that if we can fund the grants from a committed standby line of credit, let the markets recover, use our safe assets category to fund the capital calls from our private capital, then we could take advantage of the market sell off, investing at the low. Fund our grants and not impair the financial health, and when markets recover, pay back the loan.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The safe assets category is at 20%. The semi liquid is at twenty two percent. The illiquid category is at twenty five percent and the balance is in the liquid category. We put the plan together, we presented it to our investment committee, they approved it. We paired it with a committed standby line of credit. And the committed standby line of credit can actually fund the grant making so that we can fund the investment side because one of the things that happened to Ford Carnegie Mellon Hewlett Packard is that in two thousand seven, all of their private capital managers raise big funds. And then when the market sold off, they started hitting them for capital calls here. At the same time they're trying to get money out the door for their grants. That fight for cash is”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was convinced of it before. I was really convinced of it now. And number two, that managing liquidity was critical. So we have four liquidity tiers. Safe, liquid, semi liquid, illiquid. And they're defined simply by how quickly we can get the money back. Because in a crisis, I have to know where I can get money in order to get that money out the door.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, anyway, needless to say, we're very sensitive to that here, and her grandsons are our trustees. Great guys can't say enough great things about Mrs. Helmsley's grandsons. They're young guys, well, relative to me, but I would follow them into hell. I mean, I have a great deal of respect for them. So when I got to Helmsley, it became clear that liquidity was an issue in managing the five percent and the benefit that we had is that the money came out of Mrs. Helmsley's estate after the financial crisis was over. So we had the value of her estate that had not been marred by the financial crisis. That gave me an opportunity to talk to all of my peers to understand their lessons learned having come through the financial crisis, and out of that came opportunistic investing.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Leona and Harry Helmsley were prosecuted by both the state of New York and the federal government for income tax evasion and specifically for having paid personal expenses from business accounts deducting that from income and then paying tax on the difference. So Leona Holmesley went to jail on the federal charges, but she was acquitted on the New York State charges with a different legal team.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Number one No Boxes The Frank Russell Company was famous for coming up with boxes growth, value, large cap growth, mid cap growth, small cap growth, boxes for everything. And I recognize right away that the box approach to investing was a disaster. It forced you to fill a box because you had one, and then you had to pass on an investment if you didn't have a box for it. So one of the things that became clear is that opportunistic investing has a place and should be celebrated. So the way that we manage money at Helmsley is that the biggest risk we have to manage for a foundation is liquidity risk because we have to pay out five percent of our assets every year. And we have no say in that. The IRS requires us to do that, otherwise we lose our tax qualified status, and I might remind you. Happened to our beneficiary”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“known of me, but we had never met, and when we met, we hid it off immediately. And we met a couple of more times. And I don't know how she did it, but she convinced the trustees that they needed to hire somebody like me. And then she brought me in to interview with the trustees. And she had already laid the groundwork. And I was in the supermarket a couple of days later. I'll never forget this. I was in the produce section, and my cell phone rang, and it was Linda offering me the job. And that's how I ended up here.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Aha. So Clayfinlay gets closed, and And now I'm thinking, all right, I was lucky once what's going to happen a second time. I had no idea. So I just started having lunch with my friends and talking to people. And one day Tom Stevens, who's the founding partner of LA Capital, who was one of my former partners at Wiltshire, called me up and he said Linda Strumf, who was my client at the Ford Foundation, but she's now retired, is chairman of the investment committee at the Helmsley Trust. It's a brand new foundation that's getting off the ground, and she's looking for somebody who could be a chief investment officer who's really good at dealing with difficult boards, and I thought to myself, you've dealt with Cowpers. So Linda and I met, and I had always known of Linda, and Linda had”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because I was an investment consultant. I went to all the investment consultants and I said, we're not ready for you to hire us yet, but watch us. I'll tell you when we're ready, but watch what we're doing, and I explain the plan. Benefit of that was when we were closed, the battery acid splashed all over old mutual, and that meant everybody at Clay Finley were viewed as the victims, not as the perpetrators of the problem. And so virtually everybody landed on their feet in the middle of the financial crisis, including Josh Fenton, who's now working for me here again.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So within six weeks I had a business plan on old mutual's desk for what it was going to take to turn Clay Finley around. That blew them away. Apparently none of the other affiliate money managers had ever delivered a business plan to the parent. But I gave them a business plan with staffing revenue projections, cost savings the whole bit. I just put the whole thing together and went about executing the business plan and then old mutual blew a hole in its balance sheet, having nothing to do with Clay Finley. And it needed capital from wherever it could get it. And so a decision was made way high up to just shut Clay Finley down. But the benefit was that I stuck to my business plan, and part of my business plan was for me to go out and start telling the outside world about what we were doing.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“the industry to replace Francis Finley who's retiring. So I said sure, why not? They had no idea whether I could run a money management firm, but they thought that they would be able to help me. So I got there, and the situation was a little more dire than what they had led me to believe. And my first day actually was the day of my birthday. That's why I remember it. It was November seventh of two thousand seven. Well, guess what happened?”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was having a great time for myself, and then somebody found me. It was Mad Applestein who had worked at Fidelity and now is working for Old Mutual, and he called me up and he said, Now that you're not working for anybody, we'd really love if you could come to Old Mutual's annual meeting and with no restrictions tell us what you really think. So I went into the meeting and I gave my speech and after the speech was over, the head of old mutual asset management pulled me aside and said, I'd like you to have breakfast with me tomorrow morning. I said, okay. So I had breakfast with him in the morning. And during the course of the breakfast, he said, we have a subsidiary Clay Finley that's in need of a turnaround and in need of someone with gravitas.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was Clay Finlay, so that was an interesting story. I left Wiltshire, not knowing what I was going to do, and I had been working so hard that when I stopped working I was still sort of bouncing off the walls. And a friend of mine said to me, You know what you need to do? You need to go hiking in Zion National Park. So we drove to Zion National Park and we went hiking for several days. I had never hiked before. And once I did, I realized why that was a good thing to do because it thoroughly and totally physically exhausted me. I decompressed emotionally, came back from that trip and I was like, well, okay, I have no obligations, responsibilities, or worries, so what am I going to do? I'm going to go visit those parts of the world I'd never seen before. I went to Bali. I went to hearts of Asia. I went to countries in Europe I hadn't seen.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If there was something I thought you could do to talk me out of this I would have told you I said Look, you gave me a fabulous opportunity and I worked my ass off for you. It was a fair trade. But now it's time to close out the trade. And we left on phenomenal terms and now Helmsley's a client of Wiltshire. So where I worked for them, they now work for me.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I knew I had nothing to worry about. So after those three years, quite honestly, I was exhausted. I had no gas left in the tank. And I couldn't even pull myself out of bed to go to work in the morning anymore. I was just really tired. So I walked into the office one day and then I just picked up the phone and I called dentists and I said, Do you have ten minutes? He said, sure, come on down. Went into his office and I said I quit, and he looked at me and he said What can I do to talk you out of this? And I said”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mutual fund trading. I'm sorry. Mutual fund trading. And the way that our managing partner managed the capital was trading mutual funds. So to make a long story short, it was three very intense years where my day job was managing all of my clients with the overhang of an SEC investigation. And my nighttime job was going through every sheet of paper that Wilshire published to see if there was anything that the SEC could misconstrue use against us, and it was a very, very intense time. After three years, Wilshire came through with flying colors squeaky clean. Dennis Tito was the managing partner at Wilshire as an interesting guy, but I always knew that he was an honest guy, a straightforward guy, and I could take that to the bank.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“21 years That is an interesting story Wilshire's managing partner managed our partner's capital, and he did it by trading hedge funds. And in the early 2000s, there was a scandal in the United States. Wilshire found itself in the midst of an SEC investigation. We found out later on we were not the target. The firms we are trading with were the target, but the SEC doesn't tell you that.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Approach has helped Calpurs steadily compound the returns in fixed income. So it has the ballast effect that you would want in an overall investment portfolio. Because they manage it internally, it's very cost effective, and the staff has delegated the authority within broad guidelines as to how to do it, and it's worked out very, very well. The other areas where they have active management is in real estate and private equity. They brought in strategic partners, Blackstone in particular, to help them on the private equity side. On the real estate side, it actually makes some sense for them to actively manage the real estate. KalPurs is so big they can go out and buy a shopping center. In fact, at the time when shopping centers were doing so well, Calpers owned a lot of them in the United States as an example.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, they've been moving in that direction, so they eliminated hedge funds, they dramatically reduced their active management component, their equities are pretty much 100% indexed. They've internally managed their fixed income, and they've done it in a very modest way. It's not indexed, but instead of swinging for the fences, they went for little singles and doubles.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“their fees, and Ted Aliopolis, the chief investment officer, eliminated the hedge fund program. And he got a lot of heat from that, primarily from the hedge fund industry, because I saw it as being very negative. And he came to meet with me one day, and I said to him, that was a great decision. And I've been on the record in the industry talking about that because people know that I was the investment consultant to Calpur's. And I said, look, if you're a $3 billion foundation, hedge funds can work for you. When you're a $300 billion governmental pension funds, not so much. Context is everything.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they still had two hundred twenty billion dollars left over. So you can see how the law of large numbers work against traditional active management. So from a cost standpoint and from a volume standpoint, CalPERS at Wilshire's recommendation has a significant portion of its assets indexed to the Wilshire $5000 stock index. And the reason why is because you can't hire that many managers. When hedge funds started coming into the consciousness of institutional investors, CalPurs went down that road. And I said to them, I'll help you do this, but I think you're going to find that it's going to be difficult for you to invest. And sure enough, the best hedge funds wanted nothing to do with CalPurs because CalPRS wasn't willing to pay.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's take helpers specifically because it's three hundred billion dollars. The biggest challenge we had was where to put all the money And the problem was they couldn't hire enough active managers to even move the needle. They would have to hand out billion dollar chunks. They could hire twenty of them.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Q to those three broad principles that are sufficiently broad that you can accommodate in a consulting arrangement, for example, the client's desires and wishes.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if you can hold true to those three principles, you can get a lot done. So if you start out with, well, I'll never do an energy investment because fossil fuel is bad. Well, guess what? It's a pretty significant portion of our overall economy. So how can you make it a good investment, number one? And number two, how do you make sure you have a seat at the table so that your concerns about the environment are well voiced? So I never adopted this all or nothing attitude toward anything because invariably life isn't that black or white or cut and dried. And usually if you keep your eye on what the bigger picture is, you can figure out a way to get there with virtually any investment. So it's important to hear.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm a student of the efficient market hypothesis. I'm also a student of due diligence is the most important thing that you can do. I'm also a student of the importance of the trade off between risk and return.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's face it. Nobody can ruin your day faster than your boss can. So what are the reasons why bosses ruin your day? Because bosses want what they want, and they don't want to hear no. And now that I've been a boss for as many years as I've been a boss, I'm not too thrilled with hearing no either. So, one of the things that I tell my staff is don't ever tell me no. Figure out how to at least get me something of what I'm asking. And if you show me that you've thought about that and that you can do some of it, but not all of it, and here's why you can't do the other part of it, I'm more willing to listen than if your immediate reaction is no. Because that tells me you're not valuing what I'm asking you and you're not thinking about it. And that's what people really want to know.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're an investment consultant and there are only twenty four hours of the day and you never say no to the client, you're either trying to figure out how to get forty eight hours worth of work into twenty four hours. Or you never say no and then figure out how to give them at least some of what they want so that this way you show them that you've heard them. And that's 90% of what the issue is. The client wants to be heard. So I took that a step farther and decided well that's a really good mantra for dealing with your boss. And from that I never said no to a boss I either said Let me figure this out or I hadn't thought about that, but I'm going to think about it and I'm going to come back to you with what I can do. But I never say no”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most important thing that Allen taught me was that it's not about me. Okay, it wasn't about him. It wasn't about me. It was about the client. And you're dealing with the client who's right in front of you. And because the governance issues and because the politics which could change every four years, it was about the client. So by being 100% apolitical and not getting caught up in the client's politics was exceedingly important. The other thing that he taught me, which is really, really, really important is you never say no to the client. Now, think about that”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so Allen hired me, and he was the second mentor in my career because he really taught me how to be an investment consultant. And from him I learned how to really think on my feet and under pressure in public meetings with the press because Cowper's ended up being my biggest account when he left Wiltshire. I ended up as the lead investment consultant to Cowper's. And I worked at Wilshire for twenty one years. And I worked with Cowper's the whole twenty one years. And if you look at the wall over there, you'll see a certificate Calpers gave me a resolution thanking me for my work as a contractor. Usually that was only bestowed upon board members and high ranking employees. I was the only contractor they ever gave that to. And that made my career. That gave me a global presence.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he and I worked together and he was looking to expand his staff. So about eighteen months into my tenure after we landed the Calstur's account, he called me up one day and he said Why don't we go to lunch? I said okay fine and I meet him to go to lunch and he said we're going to have sushi. I hate sushi. But I was too polite to tell him I didn't like sushi, so I went and I figured out how to eat sushi. And in the course of the lunch, he offered me a job. When I thought about this, and the part about it that intrigued me is that when I was at Pepsi I saw the entire investment landscape. At a money management firm I only saw the money manager's point of view. And I saw this as a way of going back and seeing the broader landscape by working at Wilshire Associates.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I had worked with the dimensional people, and it was very early days for them. They didn't even have five hundred million dollars under management. That's how many years ago this was. And they were looking to expand and they offered me a job to join them on the West Coast when they moved out to California to Santa Monica. So I went with them, and that's how I got to Santa Monica. And I worked with them for about 18 months. And in the course of my working with them, I worked with Wilshire Associates in order to land the California State Teachers Retirement Fund account for dimensional fund advisors. So I was on the DFA side of that equation, and a gentleman by the name of Alan Mkin, who was an investment consultant at Wilshire at the time, was the investment consultant to what we affectionately refer to.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So again I was rated away. In the course of my work at Pepsi I had recognized that diversifying away from what had been traditionally the nifty fifty, the fifty largest companies in the United States which dominated everybody's investment portfolios. Could have an impact. And I worked to recommend to Pepsi's board to hire dimensional fund advisors. And it's my understanding that today that manager is still in Pepsi's portfolio some thirty some odd years later.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that was very exciting. My day job was to look after the pension fund and Pepsi was on the leading edge of everything. And when Congress changed the tax law to allow the creation of what we now lovingly know as 401k plans, Pepsi put one of the first 401k plans in as an employee benefit. And I was on the team that instituted that. I created the investment options that were used for Pepsi's plan. So being on the front lines of that was really, really important.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just a hard charging, hard driving environment. And I was hired as an associate working for the person who headed up pensions and investments. But titles meant nothing at Pepsi. You got involved in everything. And so while ostensibly I was promoted to the manager of pensions and investments, I worked on a restructuring of the company that resulted in their getting away from noncore businesses and focusing on beverages and snack foods. Most people don't remember this, but at one time Pepsi owned North American van lines moving company, they owned a trucking company, they owned burpee seeds, they owned Wilson Sporting Goods, none of which had anything to do with snack foods and beverages. So we worked on a team that quietly came up with a plan to divest of all of that stuff.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was there about three years. I was head hunted away by Pepsi, General Foods was very stayed and very methodical, and Pepsi was the wild wild west. And it was a fast paced environment. People worked around the clock. You could get three meals a day at Pepsi. And if you needed to, there was a cot and showers.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me is, well, what didn't I do for you in terms of either direction or instruction or were you not ready to handle this? Or the focus was on what could he have done better as a manager? And that was a lesson I took from him for the rest of my career. So when something goes wrong in the office, my first reaction is, okay, well, how could I have done this differently for my team?”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My very first boss at General Foods was a fantastic guy. He and I got along famously. He was hysterically funny, and he taught me how to bring humor to the party. He saw the funny in everything, and that helped a lot. He was also highly regarded and highly respected, so there was a bit of a halo effect because I was working for him that helped a lot, whereas my friend Ronda was working for someone else who wasn't quite as well regarded and as well respected and she had a more difficult time. So he was a tremendous mentor in getting me going. He taught me the most important rule of management, which is you're a teacher first and I could relate to that. The first thing he taught me about management is that when I did something wrong, the first question he asked”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the extreme sexual harassment no virtues. I mean, that was par for the course. None of the laws that exist today even existed back then. And we had to make our way in the world. So that's what it was like. And my view was, look, I entered this field. I knew it wasn't going to be easy, but I loved the intellectual challenge. I love being able to work with the numbers and out of that create a new brand, a new product, a new strategy, a new something. And that was exciting to me.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, I was a woman entering a man's field, so I was the only woman in my department, and then a couple of months later they finally hired a second woman, and the two of us, her name was Rhonda, the two of us became fast friends because we were the only ones. The only other women in the department were the administrative assistants. So it was the late 70s. We're getting our start, we're trying to make our way in the world. And we had to deal with everything from we weren't part of the club”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And once I got over the shock of that, I realized, oh my God, I really love this stuff. And it was that very first finance class that set the course for the rest of my life. I left there and went to what is now Craft General Foods. So it was Kraft. So it was General Foods at the time. And I went to work in the Maxwell House Division. So coffee. In fact, if you go to the supermarket and you look on the shelf and you find Maxwell House master blend coffee, you can still find it. It has one facing, which means that there's only one row back as opposed to rows across on the shelf. That was the first thing I worked on.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so by default I was left with business. And I went into applying for an MBA with the idea that I would continue my sort of helping profession orientation and I would go into human resources. That's what I thought until I walked into my first finance class. And initially I thought I was born and raised in the United States. We all speak English. How come I don't understand a word the professor is saying?”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, to remain in education, I would have to get an advanced degree. So, I knew I was going back for a master's degree or an advanced degree. And if I wasn't going to get it in education because teachers were getting laid off, then what was available to me? Well, medicine law or business. Well, lawyers were getting laid off at that time in the 70s. There was a glut of lawyers. We didn't need any more lawyers. As far as medicine is concerned, I can't stand needles or the side of blood, so that was that.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a big one. It's very important to have clarity of thought and communication. You can't just start talking. Just like you just can't start teaching. You have to have a plan and you have to have a plan for how to communicate. And you've got to recognize where that plan could be taken off course. So you do have to have that flexibility. And those are things you're taught in student teaching scenarios, in teaching methods classes, and they have served me well my entire career.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“and you start there. And by doing that, you de-risk the situation for everybody involved. So the person you're talking to doesn't feel threatened, just like with a child, when you start out with where the child is, the child won't feel threatened and put up a wall and therefore is more willing to learn. The other person who's an adult won't put up the wall and is more willing to hear.”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. The first is you have to start with where the student is And that sounds rather basic, but you have to understand that if you're going to teach the child how to read or if you're going to teach the child how to do math, you need to understand where is the child now? What does the child know or not know? What are the skills? What are the deficit? And you've got to start at that very basic level. And if you want to communicate effectively with an adult, you've got to understand where is that adult coming from to begin with and start there. You can't start with where you're coming from. Otherwise, that gulf is too big to bridge. And that's why communication breaks down. If you know you're going to try to convince somebody who has a different point of view of a point you want to make, you've got to start out with, well, what is that person's point of view? Why do they believe what they believe? What are their priors and bonus?”
2018-08-06 · Capital Allocators · Roz Hewsenian –Helmsley Trust's Chief of People and Process (Capital Allocators, EP.63) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source