Sponsored Insight
Allocator
Entrepreneur
This sponsor insight features Melanie Pickett, Executive Vice President at Northern Trust, who is responsible for leading the Asset Owner segment in the Americas.
Melanie joined Northern Trust five years ago to create its Front Office Solutions business, which today works with $450 billion on the platform across more than forty asset owner clients. Prior to Northern Trust, she spent six years as Chief Operating Officer at Emory University’s investment office and over a decade rising to Executive Director in investment operations at Morgan Stanley.
Our conversation dives into Melanie’s background, technology challenges in the investment office, and her passion for addressing those challenges at Northern Trust. We cover the evolution of Northern Trust’s business for asset owners and Melanie’s perspective on trends in asset allocation, technology, performance and risk management, data science, and the future of the business.
We are incredibly grateful to Melanie and Northern Trust for being a longtime sponsor of the show and are eager to highlight their value to the institutional community.
Show Notes
2:01 Melanie’s background
4:44 Stepping into the buy side
9:39 Managing a variety of challenges
10:43 Landing at Northern Trust
14:18 Building systems at Northern Trust
18:11 A client case study
20:28 Competitive landscape
24:17 Being intrapreneurial in a large organization
26:42 Trends for asset owners
30:18 Vision for technology
33:19 Data science and decision making
34:33 Learning from the Canadian pension funds
37:07 Short-term goals for Northern Trust
38:01 Closing questions
