Clearwater Analytics (CWAN) Leadership & Management

Why were you brought on to lead the team at Enfusion?

I’ve worked on technology that enables the buy side for my entire career in a variety of roles. I started my career as an engineer knowing nothing about finance and leaning heavily into the technical aspects of my first job at Lehman Brothers. Over time, through on-the-job training followed by completing an MBA and earning the CFA designation, I became proficient in finance and business as well. Through several corporate shuffles from Lehman to Barclays and then Bloomberg, I transitioned into account management, then added business development and ultimately landed managing a sales and account management team. 

I then joined BlackRock and led a client-facing research and thought leadership team, helping clients understand their portfolios — particularly the complex securitized products inside them. Through all these different roles I had always had an affinity and “side role” that involved helping determine the future of the products. I knew eventually I would find a place working in a product role. When such a role opened at Axioma, I took it, eventually leading product and research. It was through Axioma that I got to know Enfusion as a partner, and really understood the power that linking the full investment management operational chain together can have for clients. I joined Enfusion because I believe it’s a technology-first solution to the problems that the buy side faces, and has a huge potential to grow from its already solid base.

How do you plan on building team culture?

I believe that a leader’s purpose is to guide and lead his or her team toward the execution of their joint vision. For this to happen, first the vision must be set — and not always by the leader in question. What’s important is that there is a vision, people understand it, are motivated by it and it’s executable in the medium term.

Once the vision is established, it becomes a matter of execution. You’ll often hear the mantra “people, process and technology,” but to that I would add that values are of the same importance. How you work, or the culture that is created by the values you hold, is also of critical importance to how the team functions.

Software product management is a team sport, no single person can manage it alone. However, a former leader of mine also pointed out that software is an unfair sport — a team of 10 can outperform a team of 100 under the right conditions. As a leader, it’s my responsibility to make sure the conditions are there that allow the team and the culture to outperform our competitors in the marketplace. In practical terms, that means we put a lot of work into how our teams function, work with each other and are empowered to achieve success.
 

What impact will the next big project have for Enfusion customers?  

Enfusion has been working for some time now to get ready for the next phase of its growth. A lot of thought and effort by many teams has gone into our three-year plan, which we are now starting to execute. The strategy has us expanding our capabilities significantly to handle larger and more complicated clients, who have more assets and more intricate ways of working. But with these extra challenges comes a new place for us to use technology to bring a superior product to our clients.

The execution of this strategy is going to require us to hire significantly and build new capabilities within the firm, and to build an ecosystem of partners and new functionality around our platform. Notably, we’re going to invest significantly in our product and engineering teams while continuing to build our design capacity.

In our space, we are unique in having a technology-first mindset, and our products have some capabilities our competitors cannot match. The roadmap not only allows us to serve larger clients, but it makes the world better for our existing clients. I’m extremely excited to be able to be a part of this expansion of Enfusion’s team and our platform.