Originally published on bloomberg.com
Lizzette Lara and Bloomberg’s Sustainable Finance Product Management Team work to help financial markets prepare for and optimistically prevent the next big climate crisis. From weathering major financial crises to relocating from Mexico City to New York to take on one of the most enriching challenges of her career, Lizzette’s journey has been a fascinating one, and driven by her passions.
Read on to learn how structuring derivatives and risk management became Lizzette’s focus, her top priorities as a Bloomberg Product Manager for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG), and how she sees the future of sustainable finance.
Q: Tell us about your background and career journey.
A: l’ve always been very passionate about finance: understanding what drives banking and currency crises, how the financial market reacts to them, and the impact it has on the economy. Because of that, I wanted to do something that was connected to derivatives and risk management.
When I was in school, I was told that the French banks were the best at structuring derivatives. It had become a dream of mine to work for a French bank, and I had an amazing 10-year experience working for two during the Lehman crisis. Those experiences provided me with so much insight and knowledge — it was like receiving a PhD on risk management and derivatives structuring.
In 2014, I was working on the structuring team of a French bank in New York. I was expecting my second child and had to make a decision between my job and my baby, ultimately choosing to take a sabbatical the year after the birth. One month after resigning, Bloomberg reached out asking for an interview. I wasn’t expecting much from it, considering I was six months pregnant! Little did I know about Bloomberg’s management, culture, and support for women’s careers in finance.
After seven years here as a market risk specialist covering Latin America, I joined the ESG Product Management team as a climate product manager, relocating from Mexico City to New York. I remember reading that being a product manager was one of the toughest jobs in the market. And that the level of skills needed to perform this job well is beyond any standard. I have always been passionate about challenges, and product managers are certainly not the type to shy away from a challenge.
Q: What are some of the top priorities of the ESG Product Management Team and some of your top priorities as a Climate Product Manager?
A: In the product manager role, I get to be completely immersed in one of Bloomberg’s core principles: customer satisfaction. Our team is fully committed to building not only the best products, but the products that effectively solve clients’ problems. We focus on benefits, not features and on outcomes, rather than outputs.
In my role, collaboration is critical for success. Engineers, sales, lawyers, quants, analysts, and customers are all key stakeholders in our day to day. We constantly need to validate if our product is effective for our customers. It is important that we understand market trends, challenges and anticipate, so we are constantly looking for user’s feedback. Our management’s principle is to “fall in love with the problem, not with the solution.” So we are constantly collaborating with each other, explaining the problem, the vision and constantly testing and validating our hypothesis with clients and sales..
Product managers overall are great communicators, strategists, innovators, organizers, researchers, and on top of it all, outstanding collaborators. And we have to be agile, which makes product management roles uniquely challenging.
Q: The shift from Mexico City to New York must have taken some adjustments. How has your experience been with the relocation?
A: When thinking of adjustments around my new role and new location, I can say that my cultural background has served me quite well. I attribute my tenacity and resilience to my Mexican roots — we are always looking to the positive side so that we can make things happen. This has also proven to be very important in my current role. We face a lot of challenges, so having a positive attitude has proven to be quite an important asset.
Q: What is a typical day like for your team?
A: Understanding the transition to a low carbon economy and the impact of climate change is critical for the subsistence of our people. Trying to define which problems we want to solve and which data, solutions, analytics and tools will help us to solve them, and then defining which projects should be prioritized, is not an easy task, especially in the climate space.
This requires the team to be unfalteringly connected at all times, and extensive reading is mandatory if we want to stay up-to-date. There is always a new consultation, regulation or a new protocol from the science community that can change the world we know.
Q: What inspires you about your work?
A: In the climate space we are facing global challenges, which will require global solidarity. Investors are making overarching commitments to contribute to the transition toward net zero greenhouse gas emissions. We cannot do this right unless we have the governments committed. So governments will have to step up decisively, introducing effective long-term incentives, restrictions and disclosures to their industries and their investors. This will come with disruptions, costs, and uncertainties. But it will also bring benefits and opportunities.
We need to work fast and stay focused to make exponential changes. Everyone can contribute somehow, somewhere with something. We have to be missionaries of our vision, believers, doers, and have fun on the way. It requires hard work, commitment, passion, and curiosity. We are consistently finding ways to test, validate, re-evaluate and learn along the way.
