Markets Media Group is pleased to present its 10th-annual U.S  Women in Finance Awards, to be held in New York on 21 November 2024. We looked back at a selection of the award winners at the first event in 2015:

Excellence in Exchanges 2015 – Stacey Cunningham, then chief operating officer at NYSE

Cunningham became the 67th president of NYSE in May 2018 and the first woman to lead the exchange since it was founded in 1792.

She held that role until the end of 2021, when she was succeeded by another woman, Lynn Martin.

Cunningham joined private equity firm Advent International in October 2022 as an operating partner but remains on the NYSE board.

Achievement 2015 – Seema Hingorani, founder and chair of Girls Who Invest

Hingorani launched the non-profit organization in 2015 to increase the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in investment management.

Girls Who Invest aims to have 30% of the world’s investable capital managed by women and gender nonbinary individuals by 2030.

In 2015 Hingorani was a senior advisor at fund manager Crestview Partners.

In 2019 she joined Morgan Stanley Investment Management, where she is now a senior client advisor and member of the investment management operating committee.

Higorani is also senior sponsor of investment management’s diversity council and a member of Morgan Stanley’s diversity and inclusion senior leaders advisory council.

France awarded Hingorani the insignia of Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur (Knight of the Legion of Honor), the country’s highest civil and military award in 2021.

Excellence in FinTech 2015 – Blythe Masters, then chief executive of Digital Asset

Masters joined Motive Partners in 2019 and is chair of Motive Ventures, the venture capital firm’s early-stage investment capability.

In August 2024 she became group chief executive of FNZ, a wealth technology platform and global fintech with assets under administration of $1.6 trillion, and a Motive Partners portfolio company.

Before joining Digital Asset, the enterprise blockchain fintech, Masters spent 27 years at J.P. Morgan where she became known as the creator of the credit default swap.

When she left the bank she was a member of the corporate and investment bank operating committee and firm wide executive committee.

Excellence in Investment Management 2015 – Michelle McCloskey, then president of Man FRM

In 2017 McCloskey became president of Americas at here fund Man Group.

She is now executive chair of the Strategic Investment Group in Arlington, Virginia and serves as an independent director on a number of boards.

Excellence in Trading Technology 2015 – Ann Neidenbach, then chief information officer at Convergex

At the beginning of 2015 Neidenbach was senior vice president of global technology products and services at Nasdaq OMX Group.

In April of that year she moved to Convergex to define the strategic direction of all technology solutions for the firm’s trading and clearing businesses, before it was acquired by broker Cowen in June 2017.

She left Cowen to join the London Stock Exchange Group In 2018, where she became chief information officer capital markets and global head of LSEG technology.

In 2022 she joined the board of Pico, a technology provider in financial markets.

Lifetime Achievement 2015 – Amanda Pullinger,  then chief executive of 100 Women in Finance

Pullinger was chief executive of 100 Women in Finance between 2014 and 2023.

100 Women in Finance which operates under a guiding principle that it calls Vision 30/40  with the aim for women to occupy 30% of senior investment roles and executive committee positions by 2040.

At the beginning of 2024 she became the founder and principal of Global Female Investors Management, a global advisory firm focused on providing strategic and practical talent, career and business solutions aimed at increasing the number of female investors across asset classes.

Excellence in Strategic Investing 2015 – Rana Yared, then Goldman Sachs

Yared became a partner at Goldman Sachs in. 2019, the first in the Principal Strategic Investments Group and later in GS Growth.

In that role, she oversaw investments in financial technology and enterprise technology, as well as the commercialization of Goldman Sachs’ technology assets in both New York and London.

In 2020 Yared joined Balderton Capital, a venture firm focussed on European founders, as a general partner in 2020 and is also on the board of Tradeweb Markets in an independent capacity.

Nominations for Markets Media Group’s 2024 U.S. Women in Finance  Awards close on Monday 16 September. The 10th-annual event will be held at the Hard Rock Hotel in New York on 21 November.

Please nominate today, and we hope to see you in November.