How a Schoolteacher Became a Top Wells Fargo Portfolio Manager

“He was a good mentor to me but also really good at pushing my confidence level to say ‘just because you don’t have the background or ever thought about doing this, doesn’t mean you can’t do it,’” she explained.

Quickly from there, Miletti became an analyst, covering media and entertainment and then biotech and then technology, and now she’s a lead portfolio manager, managing $4 billion in assets across several mutual funds.

“I kind of failed my way to success,” she said. “Everything that I was planning on doing didn’t happen and yet I ended up with a job I really like and have been fairly successful doing.”

Miletti, who serves as a mentor in a Wells Fargo program that pairs fund managers with female analysts, thinks her story could help persuade more women to consider jobs in the finance industry.

“When I’m talking to women about considering the field or considering about how to advance in your career,  I try to focus on their strengths and attributes and try to be what my mentor was to me: a boost in their confidence,” she said. “And pushing them to say, ‘It’s not undoable. There are people that have done it and have come into this industry in a very different way, and actually that’s a positive thing because it brings a different thought process.”

Miletti thinks the absence of women in the industry is partially a lack of awareness among female high school and college students and also a lack of mentors within the industry.

“As we’re looking at the pool of candidates that we have, there’s very few women in those pools,” she said. “We’ve done things like reach out to the local universities and develop relationships with professors there, and … they would say ‘it’s a pool problem for us as well.’”

Miletti finds it interesting that “very, very few women” consider finance programs when entering college.

“That says to me, we have to start younger than in college into the high school level,” she said. “How do we get girls to become aware of careers in finance or in asset management? There’s a lack of awareness of what that means.”

Of the 15,000 portfolio managers Citywire tracks worldwide, just 10% are women. According to Kristi Mitchem, head of Wells Fargo Asset Management, Wells Fargo is slightly ahead of the industry trend, with women representing 12.5% of the company’s portfolio managers.

“What’s striking to me is that it’s always been male-dominated,” she said. “While other industries have changed, it hasn’t really changed much. So therefore, you don’t have role models.”

— Check out Next-Gen Panelists Talk About How They Became Advisors on ThinkAdvisor.