How Sallie Krawcheck defied the old boys’ club on Wall Street in the early 2000s

At just 35 years old, Krawcheck took over as head of research firm Sanford C. Bernstein and then went on to hold high-ranking positions at Fortune 500 giants Citigroup and Bank of America. Today, she manages $2 billion in assets at Ellevest, an investment platform and financial education program she co-founded, primarily for women. And she graces the cover of Assets not once, but twice.

Krawcheck, now 59, leafs through the 2002 magazine at AssetsIn a recent video interview with me (above), he recalled that “defining moment” at the New York headquarters.

Assets

In 2002, Assets Reporter David Rynecki described Krawcheck as honest, unlike other analysts with conflicts of interest who were recently revealed to have hyped up stocks publicly and denigrated them privately. And Krawcheck herself seemed similarly skeptical of her colleagues: “How do you know when management is lying?” she asked Rynecki, before delivering the punch line: “Their lips are moving.”

Under her leadership, Bernstein survived the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2000. That was in part due to a controversial decision she made years earlier as Bernstein’s head of research: she closed the firm’s lucrative investment banking business. While others regretted the move, the lack of exposure ultimately protected Bernstein as stock prices fell and other investment giants came under pressure.

Some of her critics complained anonymously to Rynecki about the next article, which caused Krawcheck to AssetsIn June 2003, a front-page article appeared seven months into Krawcheck’s tenure as CEO of Citigroup-owned brokerage Smith Barney, asking, “Can Sallie save Citi?” and also, quite pointedly, “Is she up to the task?”

Assets

Analysts at Krawcheck told the Assets One writer said the challenge of saving the company’s wealth management business could prove “beyond her grasp.” And a “respected” CEO of a major financial services firm said, “Smith Barney is a huge management job and I don’t know if she can handle it. It’s almost unfair.”

“Of course I did my best to turn things around, but I was part of a team,” Krawcheck reflects as she flips through the 2003 magazine. “I wasn’t the CEO then.”

Krawcheck went on to become chief financial officer and then head of wealth management at Citi – but was abruptly fired in 2008 after clashing with Citigroup’s new CEO, Vikram Pandit. She later said she was fired “because I was a woman.” Nevertheless, she went on to take on other high-level roles and cemented her reputation as a trailblazing woman in the executive suites of Wall Street titans.

During this second Assets Although the cover story may have been more “biting” than she would have liked, Krawcheck now brushes it off with a different joke: “The picture is cute.”