Here are some key quotes from my latest podcast with Christine Chang on being a CEO and family offices:

“I think throughout my career, it’s been consistent that I’ve always tried to take the more quantitative or the harder route, because that’s more difficult to prove later on in life.”

“I don’t think that being a business person is mutually exclusive to having a liberal arts degree.”

“So I really do think that [having served] as a Chief Compliance Officer, that was an important factor, being able to add a differentiator in the [CEO] seat of this industry.”

“Those are the most important things [to me becoming a CEO], which is I had some technical skills that were important to this position, but I was also a trusted advisor to the family.”

“In terms of being a CEO, I think that one of the defining factors is that you need to have a vision and you need to have a strategy.”

“In the family office world they have this expression, which is ‘You’ve met one family office, you’ve met one family office.’ Everybody does it differently.”

“As you get more and more senior in your career – and this is not probably exclusive to being a CEO – but the decisions and the role that you play become greater and greater. And so you can’t just sit around and hope that somebody else is going to fix it. You have to fix it.”

“What I always say as well is, ‘The budget doesn’t lie.’ If you think that something’s really important, you’ll devote resources to it. If you say that something isn’t so important, and you’re devoting a lot of resources to it, that also tells you something.”

“In terms of a family office, I think everybody has a different definition. . . . What I would say are probably the two major definitions, or you should distinguish between because there are different needs and characteristics, is whether or not the reference is to a single family office, which typically their net worth is upwards of over 100 million, or a multi-family office, which is under that.”

“I’m also very, very supportive of women and minority-owned businesses, as well as some not-for-profits. Bottomless Closet, for example, I’m retired as board chair, but I’m very still actively involved on the board. And what we do is we provide disadvantaged New York City women the opportunity to become economically self-sufficient.”

“So I’m looking for the right portfolio company to advise, that’s growing, that is innovative, that’s moving in the right direction. And that’s where I hope to be in five years.”