If you want to see Carla Harris do something — anything — just tell her she can’t, then stand back and watch her go. When Harris was a senior honors student at Bishop Kenney High School in Jacksonville, Florida, her guidance counselor advised her not to apply to any Ivy League schools. Not only did she apply to several, she was accepted to each one and chose to attend Harvard University.
When her mother wondered aloud how they would pay for it, Harris responded, “I don’t know, but I’m going,” and she worked her way through school to make it happen. In the college’s core economics course, a teacher told Harris, then a freshman, that she didn’t have the aptitude for economics. “You can’t think, girl,” he said. She, of course, promptly chose to major in economics and went on to graduate magna cum laude after producing a senior thesis of such high caliber, it remains housed in Harvard’s archives alongside the work of such iconic alums as John F. Kennedy Jr.
Count on Harris to defy the odds whenever they’re stacked against her. Earn an M.B.A. from Harvard? No problem. Become a managing director at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, one of Wall Street’s preeminent investment banks? Done. Record a solo CD during the same year that you help execute one of the largest initial public offerings (IPO) in U.S. history? All that, and more.
As head of her firm’s relatively new Equity Private Placement Group, Harris helps both public and private companies raise capital through private investors. On the verge of turning 40, she just celebrated her first wedding anniversary and is now contemplating her next feat — starting a family. She recently talked with BLACK ENTERPRISE about her grab-it-all approach to life and the lessons she’s learned so far.
IN HER OWN WORDS
Someone asked me a while ago, “What really does it for you? What motivates you?” I think it’s that I want to have credibility when I look somebody in the eye and say, “You can do it because I did it.” In order to be able to tell somebody that and have him or her really feel it, you have to have some tangible evidence. I have plenty.
I fell in love with investment banking in the summer of ’82 because of SEO [Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, a nonprofit mentoring organization]. I tell everybody, SEO changed my life. I walked into Harvard in 1980 thinking I was going to be a lawyer. Then, the summer after my sophomore year, I tried the SEO internship and got a fabulous opportunity working on Wall Street. That’s when I realized that I liked finance and that my perception of what a lawyer did was, in reality, what a businessperson did.
I thought lawyers put the deals together, but that summer I realized that it was really the bankers. I wanted to be the one that called the shots. I wanted to be the one to give advice. I thought, “I have good judgment. I have good people skills and analytical skills, and this investment banking thing fits all of that.”
When I walked into this firm, there were no partners who looked like me, but I was not focused on that not happening [for me]. I’d bought into a firm where I thought it could happen. At the time, I wasn’t looking at the 10- or the 15-year plan. That’s why it’s so fascinating to me now, 15 years later, that I’m still getting excited about it, frustrated by it, still liking it. Initially, I sort of saw it in two- to five-year increments, and then I would re-evaluate. I’m one of those nerdy people who every quarter stops to think, “OK, are you doing what you want to do? Are you happy?”
The turning point for me was at the four- or five-year mark when I was moving from mergers and acquisitions work into equity capital markets and realizing that I’d learned the advisor side of the business, and now I was learning the financing side of the business. That is really the bread and butter of investment banking. I think that’s when I started to say, “OK, I’m now going to really think about this on a more long-term basis.” Getting to that point, though, was tough.
Probably the most difficult period of my life was from year two to early year four in this business. I was working with a woman who was very difficult to learn from at a time in your career when, primarily, what you want and need to do is to learn. It took me a while to realize that not everybody can teach you.
There is also some expectation that you will teach yourself. I walked in here thinking, “Hey, I’m bringing the hard work, the raw intellect to the table. Now, mold me.” I never realized that I would run into someone who might not have the capacity to do that, or who was too insecure to do it. It was tough coming to understand what that means and then what you must do about it.
I remember thinking to myself, if I let this person stand in my way I’ll never get to my goals. The journey was really tough at times, but I never shed a tear on the premises, no matter what. It’s the never-let-them-see-you-sweat approach. I might go home and let go, but here, I knew I had to just keep pushing. And soon enough, she was out of the way.
It goes to show, never second-guess yourself because of someone else. And never ever think about giving up because there’s always something else around the corner. Just wait. If there’s something that you really care about, don’t give up. Keep pressing on, and you will definitely get to your goal. I know because I’m here, and she’s not.
That’s one of the reasons I spend so much time mentoring and coaching others today. Because [the road is] not that hard, but someone needs to be
able to lay it out for you so that you can see it. I had to learn the hard way: by falling in the hole, getting back up, getting blown up, putting myself back together again, and getting back on the right road. Eventually, I did discreetly call on resources outside [of the firm], and that was enormously helpful. Why didn’t I do it sooner? If you’re smart and you’ve been doing well and you’ve never had to reach out for help, frankly, you don’t know how. We’re not comfortable telling people when we have a problem. Growing up, I was just always expected to do well, and I came to expect that of myself. It had been that simple and suddenly, it wasn’t.But the older I become, the more I realize that it really is that simple, and so much of it is in your head and in your perceptions. Yes, there can be someone that will stand in your way or try to make you feel uncomfortable, but you have the power to be unaffected by it. Your ability to do that depends on where your head is.
Whenever I talk to SEO students, M.B.A. students, or anyone looking to make it, I tell them there is no substitute for knowing your business. Get good at it, and don’t think that you have a year. You have three months. No longer, no substitute. As a person of color, you’ve got to be good.
Also, make sure that you understand the landscape, the spoken and unspoken rules of the place where you’re working. Maybe the thing to do is to have lunch at your desk, and people never go out. Maybe everybody goes out. Whatever the unspoken rules are of a culture, immerse yourself in them.
Finally — and we all need to realize this — perception is the co-pilot to reality. How people perceive you will directly impact how they deal with you. If somebody asks a college classmate of yours, “Did you know so-and-so,” whatever the perception was about you, that is what she is going to say, whether she knew you or not. So think about three key things that you want people to think about you. Whatever those three adjectives are, you must actively act them out everyday.
Mine are tough, smart, and hardworking. Tough was actually not in the original equation. It came because, about five years into my career, someone said to me, “You know, you’re smart, but I don’t know if you’re tough enough for this business.” I remember thinking, “Hah! You ask any
of my friends. They’ll call Carla Harris a lot of things, but ain’t tough is not one of them.” But then I said, wait. Before you dismiss this guy, what if he’s right? What if I’m the only one thinking that I’m tough, and there is a perception out there that
At the beginning of each year, I write down all of my goals in two columns. On the right is, what kind of person do I want to be? The top of that column is usually ingrained in my faith. I always want to get deeper and stronger in that. When I am spiritually lined up, I am fearless.
In the left hand column, I write more definitive goals like, I want to get $50 million in revenues in my business this year, I want to develop 100 new buyer relationships, I want to lose 20 pounds. (That one’s always on there.)
When I wrote my list at the beginning of ’99, I knew it was a big year. I was up for partnership, I had been working really hard, and I felt that I was truly ready. Doing a CD, doing something professionally on the singing side had always been in my mind. But as I wrote down my goals every year, it was something that was always rolled over into the next one. I didn’t want to get to the end of the year again and have that thing that was so personal and critical to me get rolled over again. So I said, “No matter what happens at the end of this year — whether they make the right decision [about my partnership] or not — I will not look at myself in the mirror and say, I didn’t get this done.”
So I started working on it, even though I had no idea how to produce a CD. Late that year, Carla’s First Christmas was born, and it was just a blessing. It was one of the biggest thrills of my life. I didn’t have any real goals for it, but the distribution people told me that most new artists don’t even sell a thousand records. I wanted to give all the proceeds to two schools so I said, “Trust me, if I have to sell them out of the back of my car, we’ll sell a thousand records!” So far, we’ve sold almost six times that.
At that time I was on the syndicate desk, so I was pricing deals — four or five a week, working 12 to 14 hours a day — then leaving, going into the studio and never missing a beat. I remember the day that I started laying down the tracks. It was the same day I kicked off the Martha Stewart IPO. I laid down my last track the day I priced the United Parcel Service IPO, which, at that point, was the largest IPO in U.S. history. I tell people all the time, pursue your passions because they can fuel what you’re doing on a daily basis. It was probably the busiest year of my life, but it was also the most rewarding.
When the partnerships were announced, I had made my peace. There was nothing else that I could have shown the firm to prove that I was ready and I expected them to agree. After all I’d gone through, never crying, no matter what, the moment I walked into the room, I could feel my face getting hot and I could feel the tears coming.
There was a ring of men, and as I walked into the room, the senior [partner] said, “I just want to say congratulations to my newest partner.” It was a great moment.
If you had asked me 22 years ago what drives you? What makes you successful? How do you get these A’s? I would not have been able to answer you. My faith was there, but I wasn’t conscious of it and didn’t know how to call on it. Understanding where my power comes from, and knowing how to call on it and harness it and use it is the greatest lesson I’ve learned. I learned it through tough trials, through hitting a wall and questioning myself, through having my confidence busted then putting it back together, and through realizing it was the prayers, it was the faith, it was the expectation of winning that got me through. That’s why, every year, at the top of my to-do list is [the goal of] getting a little bit deeper into that. Because every year I learn a little bit more about how powerful I really am with Him in front. That’s been my greatest lesson, no question, hands down.
Carla says…Succeed
Don’t handicap yourself. “I would never say because I’m black I’m going to be behind, or imposed upon. I just do what my mom and grandmother said: Always go for the top. Be the best at whatever you’re doing.”
Here are the key points of her grab-it-all approach to living.
- Expect to have it all. “I work hard and I play hard and what gets sacrificed in the middle is some sleep. So I may have a couple of extra moles or lines from that, but I feel like I’ve had a chance to do it all.”
- Don’t go it alone. “If you want to sit and chitchat, and tell me everything’s fine when it’s really not, then you’re wasting my time. Let’s get to what the issues are so we can solve them together.”
- Take a risk. “Ask yourself, ‘What’s the worst that can happen?’ You get blown up. So you’ll get up and start all over again. What it costs you will be nothing compared to what you gain. You’ll learn something. And you’ll never make that same mistake again.”
- Remain humble. “I am one woman and my job is to do as much as I can with everything that I’ve been given. But it’s no better than what someone else is offering. Both are equally valued at the end of the day.”