Episode summary
Asha Mehta traces her path into global investing and discusses emerging markets and technology.
Key takeaways
- Emerging markets play a role in global growth.
- Data and technology are changing investment strategies.
- Representation and career exploration matter for women entering finance.
About this episode
In this episode of Rocking Finance, RTSWS CEO Ashley Leftwich speaks with Asha Mehta, Global Investor and author of The Power of Capital. In this session, Asha shares her journey from a pre-med student to the founder of Global Delta Capital, highlighting the pivotal experiences that shaped her career in global and sustainable investing.
This conversation explores:
-The importance of emerging markets and why they’re critical to global growth
-How data and technology are transforming investment strategies worldwide
-The vital role of women in finance and why representation matters
-Career advice for students navigating their path in the financial industry
Whether you’re a student curious about finance or a professional interested in sustainable investing, this fireside chat offers powerful insights into building a meaningful career while shaping the future of capital markets.
Discover how purpose and passion can bridge the gap between education and opportunity.
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Learn more about Rock The Street, Wall Street and our mission to bring the M in STEM to life: https://rockthestreetwallstreet.com
Disclaimer: All financial and investment information contained in this podcast is merely for educational and informational purposes. It is not intended as a substitute for professional advice. Should you decide to act upon any information in this podcast, you do so at your own risk.
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Transcript
Transcript supplied by Riverside; it may contain transcription errors.
speaker-0: Welcome to Rocking Finance, the Rock the Street Wall Street Podcast. Real stories, real access, real path into finance. Join us for candid high-impact conversations with industry leaders sharing the insights, experiences, career pivots, and journeys that can help young women advance through the financial industry with great confidence. Rock the Street Wall Street equips high school and university students, especially young women, by bringing the ⁓ and STEM to life through financial and investment fundamentals. We provide direct industry access and guidance supporting students and young professionals on their journeys from classrooms to careers while expanding participation in the capital markets. Through cohort-based learning, mentorship, and individual career connection, we help students build confidence, capabilities, and networks that open doors. Our goal is clear: expand participation in the capital markets and strengthen the future of finance one cohort at a time. Today I'm your host, Ashley Leftwich, CEO of Rockmistry Wall Street, that lets rock finance. Asha, thank you so much for joining us. You've been called a pioneer in sustainable finance in emerging markets. And your book, Power of Capital, an Adventure Capitalist Journey to a Sustainable Future, combines business insights, geopolitics, and personal experiences into a powerful story. So let's begin with your journey. What first drew you to global investing, and how did that path lead to you founding global delta capital?
speaker-1: Ashley, thank you so much for hosting me and inviting me onto this program. It's nice to be with you and with Rock the Street, Wall Street. I'm so impressed by the work you do and happy to support. And thank you sincerely for picking up a copy of my book. That's flattering. I'll give you a little background on why I wrote the book and how I got to where I am as a founder of. A small investment boutique. It began my career, I think, when I think of the beginnings, it was very much in my undergraduate experience. I was a pre med student at Stanford University in the late 1990s. And I come from a family of refugees. Both of my parents come from different parts of the world, but had to flee for their own reasons. And I was really drawn in by their own histories and and the suffering that had happened in the communities abroad where they had come from. So I sort of found my way into anthropology where I ended up getting one of my majors. And I spent a summer abroad in university on a pre-med project that went awry. I went to India on a vaccine distribution project, you know, following the the guidance of my parents to become a doctor. And when I landed in India, I quickly learned that the funding for my project had gone away and I was going to be here, you know, for the summer with nothing instead. And this is before the days of cell phones and, you know, internet, easy access, chat GPT, the tools to figure out how to, you know, sort of redefine the purpose of the summer. But as I looked around me in one of the poorest states in India, I was UP, U to Pradesh, I could see around me people who had kind of tattered clothes and often didn't have shoes at all and looked like they hadn't bathed for days. And what hit me in that moment was that what these people need more than health was wealth. And I was pre-med, I was pretty naive. I wasn't sure how I could reorient my summer to participate in wealth generation. So I did, you know, what seemed sensible at the time. I went to a phone book, which we don't really have anymore. But back then I found a phone book and I looked up bank and I found the Bankers Institute of Rural Development. Turned out it was a microfinance organization. So this is a group that gave micro loans to borrowing groups in villages in India. I found my way over to their offices and I offered my services and I was offered an unpaid internship for the summer. And I remember what I did for them was log their loans. And I remember putting into a database, which I was creating for them, 10 rupees for a sewing machine or 25 rupees. For a cow. And while I was really excited to add value to this organization and help update their systems, build a database for them, I'll never forget my first journey into the field with them. We went deep, deep into the villages, you know, off the main roads, off the dirt roads, and further deep. And there we met these women in the borrowing groups. And I couldn't understand the local language, but I could see their expressions as we were handing out small. Loans to them on the order of rupees, which is really equivalent to a quarter or a dollar. I could see before my eyes that we were helping these women build financial independence, helping them support their families, and helping them build their local economies. I thought that was fascinating. It was very visceral again, all very sensory-based, since I couldn't understand the language and I was hooked. So I graduated college in 2000. made my way to Wall Street and sort of committed my career to to finance. I got a degree in banking. One thing led to another and and now I work as I mentioned before in asset management.
speaker-0: That's an incredible journey and such a story that we can resonate with. I mean, I felt like I was there with you on the journey. For students new to global investing, can you break down what macro investing means and why emerging markets are so critical?
speaker-1: Yes, of course. So when I think of investing, the way you characterize it is helpful, Ashley. You know, there's macro related themes and micro related themes. So on the micro side, you're looking at assets, you know, one company versus another company. How do I feel about this management team versus the other? On the macro side, you're thinking about larger, more structural economic shifts. So rather than company versus company, you're looking at perhaps country versus country. There are other ways to interpret macro, but I think for simplicity, we can think companies versus countries. You mentioned global investing. So my boutique is currently focused in emerging markets. And from a macro lens, we think the opportunity for emerging markets is outsized and incredible, especially relative to how investors are currently allocated. In the US, we find that most investors have a US bias. They tend to think US markets are the strongest with the best long term fundamental. And it's fairly common that most investors, whether institutional or retail, will have a disproportionate amount of their investments in the US. But there is an incredible case for emerging markets. Part of the case for emerging markets is growth. The reality is emerging markets, on the basis of purchasing power, they represent more than half of the world's GDP. It is an indispensable engine. For expansion with the young demographic and emerging markets. This asset class represents the future labor supply. It represents the opportunity for increased consumption globally and increasingly, I know we'll talk about technology. In many ways, it is an innovation engine for the world. And the scale cannot be understated. Two of the three largest countries on earth economically today. Our emerging market countries, China and India. I could go on, but I'll just, you know, emphasize the growth point and the scale point. And I won't go into as much depth, but the reality is emerging markets are highly integrated into broader structural flows. So I'll pause there.
speaker-0: I do love that you said that they're innovative and indispensable engine. It's a great way to articulate that. In your book, In the Power of Capital, you are exploring difficult topics as well as sustainability and globalization. What inspired you to write the book and what do you hope students take from it?
speaker-1: Well, I was inspired to write the book in part because I had just spent twenty years of my career studying these markets that I've touched on. And I was fascinated by them. And I felt I needed to process my own experiences having traveled around the world. And I felt that these stories, these, you know, like I mentioned, the microfinance story, I felt that so many of the thematics related to them were underappreciated. And that these are stories that needed to be heard. ⁓ I am an investor, I meet commonly with other investors, companies, individuals interested in investments, and I get so many interesting questions about emerging markets and even about sustainability. Questions like, you know, is it worthwhile to invest outside the US? Is China a superpower? Is China even an emerging market? Is it a developed market? Saudi Arabia. Is it a growth engine or is it ruled by a malicious tyrant? There are kind of some interesting kind of themes embedded there around what does the future look like? You could take this in another direction as well. What is sustainable investing? Is sustainable investing concessionary? As investors, can we actually make a difference in the world we want to live in? Here's one of my favorites, and it's a spoiler alert for anyone who is actually tempted to pick up the book. What is the greatest emerging market in the world? The largest, most untapped emerging market. And the spoiler alert there is women. And we can go into that as a theme as well. But ultimately, I wrote the book partly to just tell the stories that needed to be told and to offer readers, you know, students and professionals alike a greater understanding of today's markets, an understanding of how sustainability can align with the current economic framework. And maybe a little inspiration to travel the world and see these countries with your own eyes.
speaker-0: I mean, something that we talk about with our students so often is that investing and being within the financial profession is such a great opportunity to help others and to make a difference in our world, right? And I think that you've really shared that through some of your stories with us today. You've also shared a really powerful idea, which is that data is a primary store and creator of value. And that really resonates with me. Both of my parents are computer programmers, and I've always loved math and tech and I I remember listening to the markets with my parents and now I get to do that with my own daughter. And it reminds me of how connected everything really is. One of the things that I think is interesting is how have you seen data and technology transform the way that we invest today?
speaker-1: ⁓ it's just been a sea change. I think of it not as not as generational, but You know, one of those once in a millennium major changes. And we're still in the middle of it. You know, I mentioned I was graduating university in the late 1990s. Those were, you know, the original go-go days of Silicon Valley. And we are still in the early stages of this massive development in technology. I mean, you know, what are the developments I've seen? And when I first started my career, it was very challenging to do business across borders. It was hard to get data on companies in emerging markets. It was Hard to submit a trade if I wanted to trade in India. It was very hard to place that order. You have to trade by appointment and go through so many. checks along the way. Today it's not like that. Today, if you want to do an execution in China, they have actually leapfrogged the rest of the world. You know, here in the US, it can take one or two days to settle a trade because we've come from the days of paper and pen booking. And China looks at us like, why do you have to do so much manual booking with you know pencil and paper? Settlement should be instantaneous. We call it T plus one, T plus two here in the US. China's Literally T plus zero, instantaneous. Those are just a few examples of how much the world has changed in the last. You know, call it 10 to 20 years. But on a forward looking basis, technology is completely reshaping the opportunity set. And I should have mentioned that at the front. I do run a boutique investment manager. We invest in emerging markets, as I've talked about. And our investment strategy is entirely technology driven. So the way we gather data and the way we form an investment thesis, entirely data technology driven. The way we develop portfolios and execute those trades is really leveraging them. The technology that exists today. But it's more than that. I mean, the business models that exist across the globe today are completely being redefined. How does banking work? How is credit? Credit assigned to an individual or to a company. It's completely being reshaped as we speak. In the emerging markets, where historically there hasn't been a formal, you know, economy in many parts of the emerging markets. Today, when everyone's shopping online, credit scores can be based on what are you buying in your online markets, you know, on your online carts. You know, I we see that here, of course, in the developed markets as well. AI is everywhere. But I think what's so fascinating is how. emerging markets are leapfrogging in their transition to adopt technology and in many ways invent it. Well we've
speaker-0: talked about how you founded a firm, you've written a book, you've traveled globally, and that's a lot of intensity. So what are some habits that have grounded you in your career and your personal life?
speaker-1: Yeah, thank you, Ashley. It's true. It's been very busy. I certainly feel that I live life to the fullest. I appreciate you mentioning your daughter in one of the prior questions. I also have a young family. I have three kids. ⁓ they just started school yesterday, elementary, middle, and high. I've got one of each. And I'll bring up family, just because I know we're talking to students who are thinking about their careers. And I myself landed in investment management. When I came across a woman, I don't know her name. We never met in person, but I saw she was profiled in an article and she talked about how she was able to balance this industry with a family. She had four kids, I could only have three before I said no more. And I thought that was so inspiring, a career where you can do meaningful work and balance family as well. But I want to make another point in this question. One thing she talked about in that article that I remember so vividly was that she managed money. She saw her role as managing money on the behalf of her beneficiaries, which in her case was public plans. And she talked about the meaning in the work she did helping these retirees enjoy their retirement. And I'd say for me myself, that's what keeps me grounded and keeps me moving in my career. As you mentioned, I've got a lot happening on the professional front and I've got a lot happening at home. How do you keep up with the day-to-day without getting overwhelmed and you know, seeing sort of the big picture? For me personally, it's really about finding the meaning in the work, finding the purpose. And this is part of think what comes out in the book itself. I see power, I see meaning. in money. And and I think it's not just me, ⁓ you know, research and psychology and organizational behavior, it consistently shows that finding purpose is one of the strongest and most sustainable motivators.
speaker-0: I couldn't agree more. It absolutely is. Students often ask us, you know, as they're looking at how careers really unfold and how people really end up in the positions that they end up in. It's often because of a mentor or someone that they have been in front of. So can you tell us about a mentor and what you learned from that individual or that experience?
speaker-1: Yeah, I I think it's true. Finding someone who you can learn from and who can be a champion for you can be instrumental in career development. I in my career I've seen mentorship go through a few different inter iterations. Do you need a formal mentor? Do you actually need a champion, as I just mentioned? And I wanted to highlight the notion that mentorship, it doesn't even have to be a formal association. I'd say one of the greatest mentors in my own career. maybe never even considered himself a mentor to me. I just worked alongside him. He saw my potential. He gave me opportunity. And it was never a defined function, but I consider him one of the greatest mentors in my career. You know, he was a founder as well. And he inspired me and taught me how to take chances and be bold, how to be analytical and be smart. Because if you're taking big risks and you're doing it thoughtfully, there's a meaningful chance that you're You know, you're making a good decision, you're taking a risk that's going to be merited. So I couldn't agree more the importance of having role models or mentors, but they're hard to find in a formal context. And I think if you strive for one prototype, you could be disappointed. So I'd encourage students certainly to find that mentor, but be open-minded around what does mentorship look like.
speaker-0: That's wonderful advice. I also had a mentor and about 10 years in I said, just so that you know, you've been my mentor for for two years now. I don't know if you knew or not, but it's interesting though, you know, those conversations and they really it doesn't have to be so formalized. So thank you for sharing that.
speaker-1: Exactly.
speaker-0: So we have briefly touched on the fact that you're a champion for women in finance, but we haven't talked about it much. So you've been a champion for women in finance. Why is it so important to you? And how do you encourage more women to lead in investing?
speaker-1: ⁓ so interesting. Well, it's important to me because there's a remarkable gap in terms of gender representation in this career. I think I was really fortunate to find that article in Barron's magazine that I mentioned, you know, a couple of decades ago, because it's an incredibly rewarding. Career. I graduated Wharton in 2004 and the school does every five year assessments. Students who have graduated ranks them in various career categories on compensation, how how do different careers compensate, and happiness or satisfaction. And interestingly enough, investment management. Scores very, very well on compensation. It also scores very well on happiness. And you could argue, well, the money is buying the happiness, but I really think it's a separate concept. It comes back to meaning. The reality is investment management is a power center. Allocating capital enables us to build the world in which we want to live. So I personally think it's a very meaningful career. And it's just like I said, incredibly underrepresented with respect to gender. I mentioned I was pre-med in medicine. More than half of rising doctors today are women, and more than half of rising lawyers, or maybe right around half, are women. And in investment management, about 10% of portfolio managers are women. And you guys have probably seen the stats from the Knight Foundation that less than two percent is run by anyone other than a white man. So the gap is just tremendous. I myself feel that. It's really important to allow women that opportunity, but I also think it's better for portfolios. You know, it shouldn't be a profession that is only able to be addressed by a small portion of the globe's overall representation. There are studies that show that women actually are. better risk takers than men. They're more mindful around the risks that they're taking. To be honest, those studies are very hard to validate because there's not enough sample. Like you don't have enough examples of women running money, which is, you know, kind of underscores the point that I'm making here. But ultimately I talked in the book and gave away the spoiler alert. My notion is that technology is everywhere. Borders are becoming more ambiguous, at least from a country definition standpoint, because we can do business across borders so easily. If we think of an emerging market, as you know a an investment opportunity that historically has been undervalued and is vastly represented and has incredible potential. I use that framework to make the call that the largest emerging market in the world is women.
speaker-0: I appreciate the spoiler that women are power. And if you were a student and we have so many students that are actually unsure about where they belong in finance, what would you say to them?
speaker-1: Well, I to be fair, I think it's, you know, every everyone has their own passion. And as I mentioned before, industries are being recreated as we speak. And fair enough, finance perhaps is not for everyone. I myself find it a meaningful career. And I mentioned the Wharton studies and and I would recommend it. But of course, you know, each of us have different callings. For someone who's predisposed to finance and they're not sure, I'd highlight, of course, you know, the the One really fun feature of this career is how multidisciplinary it is. If you feel like you're talented across multiple academic domains, math, economics, history, anthropology, finance is an incredible career where you can pull many of those concepts together. There's a lot of grinding in the early days, a lot of spreadsheets. Who knows, maybe AI arbitrages the need for spreadsheets into the future, but it's intellectually. very stimulating. As I mentioned before, finance is a power center. And so I think recognizing that you know it's going into this career, it's one that gives not only the opportunity for personal fulfillment, but really a opportunity to build the world in which you want to live. So if you're looking for robust responsibility as your career evolves, I think it can be very powerful. And then finally, you know, that I'll underscore that piece again around purpose and meaning. The book, as you touched on, is about sustainable investing. And I talk in, you know, the spoiler alert chapter, Women is the largest emerging market. Is it that there's a disproportionate amount of women. In sustainable investing. And sometimes I've wondered if ESG is the pink suite. You know, it's where the women investors go. Yeah. And it kind of has a hint of rubbing the wrong way. But really, there's another way to look at it. If the legacy of women in finance is to make the capital markets more responsible and better governed, it's kind of an amazing legacy for women in finance to leave. So I'd say there's, you know, part of it is just own it.
speaker-0: What would you say to students considering a career in finance?
speaker-1: That's a great question. Yeah. If you're inspired by these comments and you're in a position to take action now, I'd say harness this moment. Go for it. Become educated. Read an article in a topic in Forbes or, you know, Economist, Bloomberg. Become educated on a theme that really impassions you. Other places you can look to be educated, find a podcast you like, follow someone on LinkedIn. ⁓ selfish plug, grab my book, read my book, subscribe to my newsletter on LinkedIn and Say the first thing you can do is get educated and find a way to keep that stream of education coming to you.
speaker-0: Thank you so much for joining us today and sharing such wonderful learnings and to our students. Stay curious, stay bold, and the habits you build today can open doors that you haven't even imagined yet. Thank you.
speaker-1: Thank you.
speaker-0: Thank you for joining the conversation. Visit Rock the Streetwall Street.com to learn more. Make sure to follow and join us for the next episode. Until next time, let's keep rocking Finy.
