Career conversations: Finance as a force for positive change

As an engineer, I never paid attention to all these things that are finance related, I had no purpose for it. I thought, if you build better ships, better technology, things will get better.

But this made me rethink the role of finance in making a lot of difference in the world and how the lack of ethics in finance has been the cause of so much problems in the world. My name is Meera Siva. I'm based in Chennai, India. I'm a CFA® Charterholder and I've been working in the (Silicon) Valley from 1995 to 2008.  

And when the global financial crisis happened, I saw the devastating effects it did. All the good work that the technological advances and all these things that had brought in terms of economic growth and markets and prosperity were all just undone in no time during the financial crisis.

So I started getting some interest in this and looked at what may be some options for me to understand this a little better and maybe look at a career in this where I thought I would be able to do this in a more ethical way.  

And when I looked at options such as MS in Finance, MBA in Finance and all that, I found that the CFA® curriculum was the one that paid a lot of importance to ethics as a subject, and I also looked at what all it covered in terms of the subject matter over the period, and I thought it was the most comprehensive compared to the various MS in Finance and other programs.

I had two young kids at that point. They were three and seven years old, and I was also working, and I found the CFA® (Program) gave me the flexibility to pursue it, where I was and didn't have to go to college and leave my job and all that. So I found it to be the right fit in more than one way, and I enrolled for the CFA Program, basically with zero background in finance at that point.

The whole curriculum, starting with the Level I, giving the foundations, and then building on it with different instruments, and getting very technical in Level II and in the Level III, bringing it all together so that someone is able to take these learnings that may be a little theoretical and dispersed into something that is practical, which is doing a financial planning and being able to work in the industry with that.  

When it comes to working in the field of finance, trust is very important and trust comes from having proper ethics. Ethics that is seen and ethics that is seen over a long period of time, not just your ethics, but the ethics of everyone around you as well. And I think the CFA Program and the CFA Charterholders are viewed as upholding good ethics. 

One aspect of the CFA Program that I valued the most was the networking and the continuous learning bit. I started volunteering pretty much very early on and this was a great way to meet fellow CFA Charterholders. So it really gave a lot of practical knowledge.  

Currently, I manage a fund called the Shelter Venture Fund, which invests in early-stage startups working on affordable housing solutions, and it's a global fund. So we look at innovative ideas that help solve the housing issue, which is a large problem globally.