Carmen Campollo, Sr Vice President FTSE

Carmen Campollo
Sr Vice President FTSE

Meet Carmen Campollo, Senior Vice President – Relationship Management, FTSE (FTSE – Financial Times Stock Exchange) who finds satisfaction in contributing to the success of her company and co-workers. Born and raised in Mexico City , she has a BA in Latin American Studies from the University of the Americas in Mexico City and an MBA from Marymount  University in Virginia.

While studying for her MBA Carmen worked at the World Bank and became interested in business and finance. Upon graduation she was offered a choice of positions in the World Bank administrative field or database area.  She chose working for the IFC, the private arm of the World Bank, at the Emerging Markets Database Unit. This unit coined the term “Emerging Markets” in 1987 and tracked the performance of emerging stock markets. Carmen became an index analyst and was responsible for the development and analytics of the IFC Emerging Markets Indexes. In 1998 Carmen joined Standard and Poor’s as a Senior Director of International Indexes (indexes are used to measure the performance of international stock markets). In 2003 she became a VP for Business Development and was responsible for alliances with Dow Jones, NASDAQ, Institutional Shareholder Services, ISE, PHLX, Research Affiliates and initiated discussions with Charles Schwab. She is currently a SVP Relationship Management and has responsibility for all strategic planning and outreach to the North American public plan sponsors, corporate pension plans, as well as foundations, endowments, consultants, 401K service providers that help with benchmarking decisions, investment vehicles and investment strategies.

To be effective at FTSE, Carmen says she does a lot of reading to keep abreast of new trends in the market. She is responsible for identifying potential clients and understanding their needs and investment policies. She also discusses investment strategies, statistics and competitive analysis with institutional investors and looks for ways that she can assist them.

Some of the attributes that are keys to success in her work are staying focused, being persistent, effectively communicating and identifying new trends like “Fundamental Indexing”.  Carmen believes that this is the beginning of a new trend, and a new way for the American people to invest their money, with a better return and controlled risk. In general a trend may take several years to develop, but investing in the FTSE RAFI Fundamental indexes for US stocks, international stocks and Emerging Markets have gathered more than $19bn in just three years, and this is extraordinary.  In the U.S. , 1 out of 10 products launched becomes a success story. Thanks to Carmen’s initiatives, five out of seven initiatives became a success.

For graduates in finance today, Carmen sees Defined Benefit Plans, (public plan sponsors) going more into alternatives, commodities and global real estate investments. She believes Defined Contribution Plans (401K plans where companies’ participants save a proportion of their salary) and Personal Financial Planning as growth areas.

She finds the personal and business relationships that are formed and the business travel rewarding.  As far as other interests she enjoys cooking, her book club, walking in the Bay Area or by the beach and going to the movies.

Her favorite book is the Soong Dynasty.