WOTM Podcast: S3E5: Casey Halliley

Casey Halliley:

I have had a few incredibly influential mentors over the course of my career, and I can say very clearly that I would be nowhere without them.

Sam Saperstein:

Welcome to season three of the Women on the Move podcast. I'm your host, Sam Saperstein. Women on the Move is a global initiative at JPMorgan Chase designed to help women grow their businesses, improve their financial health, and build their careers. In the first two seasons, we spoke with a range of business leaders about gender equality and the leadership lessons they've learned throughout their careers. I highly recommend you go back and listen to those episodes if you haven't already.

Sam Saperstein:

In season three, we're focused on female business owners. While many business owners are struggling during this pandemic, women and people of color have additional challenges. We wanted to tell their stories of resilience and grit, and how they're meeting the needs of their customers and communities.

Sam Saperstein:

Women who own and manage businesses have a unique set of challenges, including access to capital and creating networks. One exciting way we've been connecting with business owners is through a partnership with the Vinetta Project, an organization committed to closing the funding gap for women seeking venture capital. Together, we've provided one on one coaching to 10 female founders by matching them with senior executives at JPMorgan Chase.

Sam Saperstein:

Today, we'll speak with two women involved in this mentorship program. They are Casey Halliley, founder of a company called Wealthology, and Elizabeth Ellsworth, the head of marketing for JPMorgan's innovation economy sector. The three of us discuss Elizabeth and Casey's strong mentoring relationship, and how financial literacy education in this country is still a major work in progress. I hope you enjoy our conversation.

Sam Saperstein:

Well, Casey and Elizabeth, thank you so much for joining us on this Women on the Move podcast. It's great to have you here.

Casey Halliley:

Thank you so much for having us.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Exciting to join you.

Sam Saperstein:

So Casey, let's start with you. We'd love to hear all about Wealthology, the company that you started in 2015. Can you tell us about that?

Casey Halliley:

At Wealthology, we're on a mission to provide outstanding financial literacy training to students and young professionals. And the bulk of our business is offering financial wellness sessions to people in their workplace as early on in their career as we possibly can. Sometimes we speak at colleges and universities as well, but we speak mostly at corporations. And our overall goal is to help people learn how to accumulate wealth, and to start as soon as they possibly can, so they can live the lives they want and deserve to live.

Sam Saperstein:

Casey, tell us about your background before starting Wealthology and what inspired you to start the company.

Casey Halliley:

I went to graduate school right out of college thinking I wanted to work in nonprofits. And while I was there, I got an internship in fixed income, which really catapulted me from wanting to work in nonprofits on a shoestring and save the world to watching people trade hundreds of millions of dollars and really being excited by that. And so as soon as I got onto a trading floor, I realized that that was the place I wanted to work.

Casey Halliley:

So I went through a capital markets training program, which was a lengthy training program and covered lots and lots of different topics of all of the things they thought we needed to know about the capital markets. And I worked in foreign exchange for a few years, and then I transferred over to structured credit. And I worked in things like CDOs and asset-backed securities and credit default swaps and things like that.

Casey Halliley:

And so I worked in structured credit until I got pregnant with my first child in 2008. And I decided to work through the credit crisis, which was difficult, but I ended up working until about two days before I delivered my first child. And while I was on maternity leave, I realized very quickly that the 542 train in the morning and the dinners out at night were not really in line with how I wanted to raise my family. So I decided to take a break from working in Wall Street.

Casey Halliley:

And so I would sit up at night thinking about what I could do to make a difference in the world. I thought about, "What am I good at? What do I like doing? How can I make the biggest difference that I can given the skill set that I have?" And I had mentored a lot of young people, mostly women, while I was working on the trading floor.

Casey Halliley:

And I always told them, in this business, it's not enough to be naturally smart or really hardworking. The only people that survive in this environment are people who are willing and able to do both. You have to be really good, and you have to kill yourself trying every minute of every single day. So it's incredibly important that you like what you do.

Casey Halliley:

So, at this time I was also starting to focus on our own personal finances for the first time in 10 or 15 years. And I realized how very little I knew about how to manage my own personal finances. So there I was, I had a graduate degree focusing on finance from NYU, I had gone through this really elaborate training program, and I had spent the past nine years trading hundreds of billions of dollars of assets. And throughout all of that time, not one person ever had taken even an hour to teach me about my personal finances. And so I sat up at night nursing my first child thinking, "I can really make a difference teaching people financial literacy." And that's how Wealthology was born.

Sam Saperstein:

I'm curious if you miss the trading environment, the pulse and the energy of being on a trading floor?

Casey Halliley:

I miss it a lot. I miss reading the Wall Street Journal on the train in the morning, and I miss being part of that really competitive, challenging, stimulating culture. It was a challenging way to work, but a really wonderful way to work, and I learned so much every single day.

Sam Saperstein:

Was that nerve-wracking to take that leap from a corporate world and the security that comes with that into being an entrepreneur?

Casey Halliley:

Not at all. No, it wasn't nerve wracking at all because, well, I left Wall Street smack dab in the middle of the credit crisis. It was like watching a train crash in slow motion most days. It was a really difficult time in the market, and my baby really made the decision for me. But I was really fortunate to work on Wall Street at a time and in a product that was really lucrative, and I was always very careful with my money. So that made the decision for me to leave a lot easier, because I had saved money in my twenties by being smart with my earnings and my bonuses.

Casey Halliley:

And so one of the things I always teach people is that we want to grow our wealth, not so we can buy fancy shoes or live in a fancy apartment necessarily, but we want to grow our wealth so that we can live the life we want and deserve to live. And being careful with my money early on in my twenties allowed me to take that plunge without it feeling like I was jumping off of a diving board.

Sam Saperstein:

So we here at the bank do financial literacy and we often hear particularly women say, "I never learned this stuff. Nobody ever taught me this in school or sometimes at home," unfortunately. Do you hear that as well?

Casey Halliley:

I hear that all the time. I just had a session this past week with a commercial bank, and one of my students said, "I just learned more in the past two hours than I learned in the four years I was an undergraduate." So yes, I hear that a lot.

Sam Saperstein:

When you look at some of the gaps that your students have in their knowledge, is there an area where they seem to have the hardest time understanding things? Or just a reluctance to acknowledge things when it comes to money?

Casey Halliley:

One of the most powerful lessons that I am able to teach people, which is of course an incredibly simple lesson, is the impact of time on your savings and your investments, and also your debt, I suppose. People are incredibly surprised to see how powerful it is to just start early. And I find a lot of my students think that they, much like I did, think that they will wait to get promoted or get married or start thinking about starting a family, or maybe wait until they get really old and turn 30 to start saving and investing. And that's precisely what I did, and luckily I was saving before, but not in a terribly smart way. And just the impact of starting early and understanding some of these principles as early on in your career as possible is one of the most powerful lessons I'm able to teach people.

Casey Halliley:

And I just had a session last week with a bunch of young people, and it was their second day of their training program. And I told them, "It just brings me so much joy to literally speak to you on the second day of your career and give you this information, because time is one of the most powerful tools we have for building our wealth."

Sam Saperstein:

So you're talking about the power of compounding, of your money growing. And then you've also talked about gamification. Do those things go hand in hand? Can you create some sort of games where people then take pleasure in watching that compounding work for them?

Casey Halliley:

Yeah. One of the things we do in some of our sessions is we come up with, in the beginning of our session I say, "So we're going to do these few things, and at the end of our session, we're going to come up with a $5 million plan for you to start working towards." And sometimes people's eyes go wide. And then I say, "If $5 million isn't enough, then we can come up with a $10 million plan, or seven, or if you think three is the right number, that's okay too. But you're going to be able to come up with a plan to work towards that in whatever way works for you."

Casey Halliley:

And we work through our session, and by the end of the session, it becomes apparent that if you start early enough, it is really possible to work towards a plan like that. And I offer them this incredibly simple Excel program that I've created, just that shows the time value of money and the power of compounding, and they're allowed to play around with it. Their mind is blown, because again, if you start saving and investing when you're 22 or 23 or 25, it's pretty amazing how much you might be able to accumulate by the time you're ready to retire.

Sam Saperstein:

So now I want to talk to both of you about your relationship, your mentoring relationship, and how you came to meet each other. And you came to meet each other through something called the Vinetta Project. And to educate our listeners. The Vinetta Project is an organization that's dedicated to getting more women founders access to capital and mentorship, and they focus on the high tech industry and they support growth companies in several cities in the U.S. and Canada.

Sam Saperstein:

Now, Women on the Move sponsors Vinetta in New York, and so we were able to match 10 of our executives from JPMorgan Chase with founders for a three month membership. And beginning in March, we use virtual technology, of course, to support these mentoring partnerships, and to make sure that we could meet with female founders on areas that they wanted to focus on in their business. So the feedback we've gotten from both mentors and the executives has been so positive, and everyone who's been paired up has indicated that they really benefited from this, and they're actually going to continue meeting on a regular basis, so that's really exciting for us.

Sam Saperstein:

Elizabeth, let me turn to you as you are one of our mentors for this project. So first of all, thank you for that time that you put into it. But let me ask you this question. Why did you want to get involved with this program?

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Well, I work in marketing as you know, Sam, and one of the things that we most need is inspiration and energy and insights. So whenever I find the opportunity to mentor anyone, in this case, Casey as a founder, I find it's really mutually beneficial. It's fun to share what I know and what I do for a living and my soft and hard skills, but it's really great to get feedback and insights into what they're doing, what they're facing, how they're approaching things. It's just inspiring and energizing, and a nice change from the day job.

Sam Saperstein:

Yes, yes. Very much. So Casey, what compelled you to apply to Vinetta for this program?

Casey Halliley:

I have had a few incredibly influential mentors over the course of my career, and I can say very clearly that I would be nowhere without them. So when I saw this opportunity to apply for the Vinetta project, it was a no-brainer.

Sam Saperstein:

Casey, you're a resource to so many people as you instruct them on financial literacy, so I know you often mentor other people. What was it like in this case to be the mentee in the relationship?

Casey Halliley:

It was terrific. Like I said, I've always had mentors and I've always mentored, and I love to learn and I love to teach. And as Elizabeth said, I get so much out of both sides of that. I read a ton and I've developed a habit of writing letters to authors I admire, and luckily I count some of those people as mentors. I look for mentors, I'll talk to any mentor that's willing to talk to me, and I've been so privileged to have Elizabeth as a mentor.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

And one of the easiest things about working with Casey is she's got an incredibly curious mind and she's super open. She likes to look at things from all sides. And in our case, I was able to, I think, shed light on things that she hadn't seen and she was very anxious and open to seeing and debating and talking about it. So, when you're working with someone who is that smart, that humble, that curious, and willing to learn and debate all sides of an issue to get to a solution, it's exciting.

Sam Saperstein:

So Elizabeth, tell us about the partnership from when you first met to the three month mark. What did you focus on? Where did you start? And then what areas did you decide to focus on together?

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Well, as you're hearing from Casey, she's an incredibly thoughtful person who knows how to draw on outside resources to help bring her vision to life. So by the time I met her, it was really easy and I was very lucky to get her because she had done a lot of work. She had generally identified the areas that she needed the most help with, and she had found some really talented people to bring her some good marketing strategies.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

What she needed and wanted at that time was someone who could evaluate that. So it's one thing to pull together research, data, recommendations. It's a whole other thing to decide which one is right and for what reasons. So that's my wheelhouse and it was kind of from the moment she was like, "This is kind of what I need," I was like, "Yes." So it was terrific.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

And as you mentioned, we met just at the beginning, the dawn of the pandemic. So everything we were doing was by phone and through PowerPoint documents. She'd put together that I would evaluate over the weekend and we'd hop on the phone and we would hash it out. And each time we met, she had evolved exponentially. So for me, each time was a new set of challenges and a new set of considerations. It was extremely productive and a lot of fun.

Sam Saperstein:

Is there anything else you can think of as people listen to this and wonder how they could mentor and support female founders? Are there other things you would suggest that they do?

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Key to Casey's success was her preparation. She would let me know what she needed from me, she would give me my homework to do, and then she would set it up so that she could take what she needed efficiently, and that made it so smooth. So I think being prepared, being proactive, being open, and not being afraid to push back. There were several times I was like, "You know, I'm kind of leaning this way," and she was like, "I'm not," and we'd kind of talk it through. And she's the founder. My job is to give her perspectives, not to give her advice. And I think that's something to keep in mind. Casey, would you concur?

Casey Halliley:

Absolutely. I was going to say that my advice for people that are looking for mentors are to find the smartest person you can and ask them questions, and then be open to the answers that they give you. So yes, I would absolutely concur.

Sam Saperstein:

And Elizabeth, when you spend time with Casey, having learned now up close and personal what she went through with her business, are there lessons that you can take away too and bring back to your job?

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Yeah. One interesting thing is, what Casey does for others is what she does for her business. So her focus is around educating others to be really smart and to buy into those things that are going to work. And she's applied those things to her own business, which is why she's successful now, is going to be successful going forward. She really has come full circle from wanting to help people going through her corporate world to coming back to wanting to help people. And the passion that she brings every day to what she does, in spite of all the noise and distractions of real life, it's inspiring for me, and it reminds me why I went into the field that I went into. And we share the same passion around financial education, empowering everybody. It's particularly necessary now, and it's particularly necessary with the generations that are following the economic crisis we're facing today. Everybody needs to be smart and especially financially stable or independent.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

So what I take back is never forget every morning why you do what you do. And if you don't love it, move on to something else.

Sam Saperstein:

Oh, that's so important. Well, you touched upon the importance of understanding money, particularly right now in this pandemic as people are losing their jobs, have some unsteady income and future ahead of them. So Casey, what are the things that you particularly want to stress right now with people, given what we're all going through?

Casey Halliley:

I thought about that before we got on this call, and our lessons are always the same, surprisingly. Start saving early so that when disruptive things like this happen, you have choices. And they will happen. In my short 20 year career, I have seen in 2001, we had 9/11 and Y2K and all of the Enron-type bankruptcies. And then we had that 2008 horrible mortgage crisis. And now we've got this. And there are disruptive things that happen every so often, and this probably won't be the last disruptive thing that happens in your career for young people, or any of our careers, I suppose.

Casey Halliley:

So, start saving so that you have a handle on your personal finances, get a handle on your debt, make sure you understand it and you are managing it. And I also always tell people to make sure some portion of your savings is invested. And those three lessons are the same to me, no matter what's going on in the world. And I would also say that one of the challenges that young people are probably going to have going into their careers right now, which is very similar to a challenge that I had going into my career.

Casey Halliley:

I started in my training program, I was in London during 9/11, and it was a really, really yucky time in the markets. All markets, not just the stock market and bond market, but all professional job markets. And when you start out with a lower salary, it can make it harder to claw yourself back up to the normal range of what you would expect a salary to be, so know your worth, and if you start out at a lower salary, negotiate, and don't be afraid to ask for a higher salary if that's what you think that you deserve, because it can take a long time to recover from starting at a lower salary point.

Sam Saperstein:

This is critical. It's certainly critical to many women. So it sounds like what you're saying is in this time when people are lucky to have jobs and might take a job maybe at a lower salary than they had anticipated just because they need it to work right now, you're saying over time, check in with that, make sure you're staying on top of that. Knowing your worth in terms of the current market value of your skillset, not only at your company, but possibly at other companies.

Casey Halliley:

Absolutely. Yes.

Sam Saperstein:

Yeah. That is I think something a lot of people struggle with is that asking for a raise, understanding how to portray that and how to position that to bosses, but it's critical. And the answer might be no, but at least you've asked the question, and you've put it out there.

Casey Halliley:

Yes.

Sam Saperstein:

Have you had to adapt during this time in any certain ways, both professionally and personally?

Casey Halliley:

I've been spending a lot of time with my best friend 4:00 AM. I've always been an early riser, and I attribute almost all of my success to being up early. I used to walk onto the city trading floor, which was a football sized floor full of computer screens, and I would wave my arms to turn the automatic lights on because I was the first person on the floor. So I have been waking up early. I get up really early.

Casey Halliley:

Homeschooling has been a challenge. I have four children between the ages of five and 11. It's been a challenge, but it's also been really great to see how my individual kids learn and react to different things in different ways, so that's been special.

Casey Halliley:

And it's also forced me to take stock on what I'm doing. So I started Wealthology so I can educate as many people as I can. And I ended up spending a lot of time doing the other stuff, some of the things Elizabeth and I were working on, like marketing and branding and getting in front of a bigger audience and admin and accounting, and all of the things that come along with starting your own company or having your own company.

Casey Halliley:

And luckily, about halfway through our mentorship, I was approached by a company that is interested in merging with me. So we are at the very late stages of negotiations, and I believe strongly that Wealthology is going to merge with this other company, and I'm very, very excited about that. Mostly because it's going to allow me to focus on the things that I want to focus on, which is teaching and creating content so that I can make as much of a difference for people as I can.

Sam Saperstein:

Well, congratulations. That's very exciting for the business, and motivating after putting in so much hard work for all those years. But it allows you, as you say, to maybe do more of the teaching and less of some of the business building, perhaps, with the operations that just come along with starting and running a business?

Casey Halliley:

Yes. This company has a Casey-sized hole in them. They have a marketer, they have a brander, they have a sales force. They have a CEO that is pretty sharp and has a pretty incredible vision and shares my passion for financial literacy. And believe it or not, they didn't have somebody focusing full time on educating. And so I think it's going to be a really beautiful marriage.

Sam Saperstein:

That sounds like you fit right in there. That's very exciting. So Elizabeth, knowing this, what's a prediction for Wealthology or for Casey in the next five years? What would that look like?

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

Well, hard to predict, especially these days. But what I love about how this has turned out for Casey is that this opportunity allows her to do what she really does and lets her step away from the things that she doesn't want to do. And every founder has to really understand what his or her strengths are, what their skills and passions and interests are. And by getting rid of those things that she doesn't want to do or doesn't have the skillset or the interest or the time to join in with a partner who can do those things, it's a perfect kind of symbiotic relationship, and I couldn't be happier for her. I think great things will come, and many people will be educated thanks to her passion, commitment, and drive.

Sam Saperstein:

So Casey, I'm thinking about your story. You've identified a passion that you had early on. You taught yourself what you needed to know. You've asked for help from people. You joined the Vinetta community to find that. You really seem laser focused on what it is that you want to get done. You have four children, so let's also bring that into the mix. That is a very hard job as well. How does this all get done? What do you attribute your success to and your ability to stay the course on things that you want to do?

Casey Halliley:

I told you my best friend is 4:00 AM. No, I'm kidding. I do wake up really early, which really does help. I have an amazing husband who supports me in everything that I do. And I'm lucky. I found my passion, and I am really, really dedicated to doing what I can to make a difference very early on. I sat up at night nursing my child, thinking, "What can I do? What am I good at? How can I make a difference?" And I have found that, and I am incredibly lucky to have found that. And so I'm happy to work as hard as I can to do as much as I can.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

I think the reason Casey is so successful, and always has been regardless of the journey, which has been a long and winding road with common themes, but I think she's successful because she's courageous and persistent. Yes, she's smart. Yes, she's diligent. She's done her homework. But she is really courageous and persistent and passionate, and I think nothing's going to hold her down.

Casey Halliley:

Thank you.

Sam Saperstein:

Casey, I'm sure your family would say that too. I am curious, what do your kids say about what you teach them on financial literacy? What makes them excited when it comes to thinking about money?

Casey Halliley:

I have two boys and two girls. And my girls especially are really, even if they don't quite know it, they're very proud that they have a mom that has a title of CEO. And they're very proud that I have my own company and they talk about it a lot. And when I started my company, when I was just out of the weeds from baby-making, I decided to go volunteer at a nonprofit called Kids in Crisis, a really terrific local organization that takes care of kids in crisis. And one of the first things that I was doing as I was thinking, "Oh, well, I'll go up and see how I can help." And they said, "Well, what do you think you can do?" And I said, "I think I can teach financial literacy to the teens in your program." And they got really excited.

Casey Halliley:

And on my way home from that meeting, I was thinking, "I'll fire up my PowerPoint, and I will stand in front of the room and teach them everything they need to know about managing money." And then I realized these are kids in crisis. And so what I did was I came home and I tried out a bunch of games on my own kids. And I created this series of games using tactile props, like beakers, that mimic debt overflowing, and popsicle sticks that have careers on them and the salary that you need to live within the means of, or fake money.

Casey Halliley:

And so with my kids, I developed these games that I then brought back to these teens at this amazing organization. And that was actually the first thing I did to teach financial literacy. And I'm not even sure if my kids really understand how influential and important they were in helping me develop some parts of my curriculum. They've been with me obviously all along, and their support is really important to me. And I particularly love seeing the pride in my daughter's eyes when I go to her Girl Scout troop and teach financial literacy lessons or something, and she gets to hand out the fake money. She's very, very proud of me, and that keeps me going.

Sam Saperstein:

Oh, I just love that. I love all of that. The pride and the fact that they were your helpers in developing all these tools, and so many other children and young adults can really benefit from that. So thank them on our behalf.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

What I love about that story, they're going to know now, Casey, because they're going to listen to this recording, and they're going to say, "Hey, she's talking about us! We helped!" I think what I love about this story is how inspirational it is for your children who are then going to understand that women can own their own company. They can own their own journey. And I think when a lot of working moms go off to the office and come home after a long day, kids don't really have that view into what you do and how it matters.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

I also took time off from my corporate career and ran my own business, so my kids had the same experience. Super proud. And it informed the way they think about their careers, and it informed the way they thought about me. And one advantage if there can be one in this pandemic is that a lot of kids are getting to see their moms work at home, and they're getting to understand their moms are leading missions, leading teams, making a difference, delivering critical input into projects and helping companies thrive, survive during this time. And one advantage, hard as it is to work from home with kids, is that your kids are actually seeing what you do. And I think in your case, you've inspired four kids. That's cool.

Casey Halliley:

I could not agree more. It's very challenging, but also very rewarding. And they are very, very proud of me because I have a YouTube channel, which they think is really cool, because they want one too.

Sam Saperstein:

I love that. Well, good, they can follow in your footsteps.

Casey Halliley:

Yeah.

Sam Saperstein:

I just want to thank both of you for being here with us. We really are inspired by your stories. Casey, by the company that you built and your next steps, and Elizabeth, by the support that you provided to Casey and also your own background as an entrepreneur. So, thank you both for sharing these stories with us. We really appreciate it.

Elizabeth Ellsworth:

It was fun.

Casey Halliley:

Thank you so much.

Sam Saperstein:

I want to thank Casey Halliley for reminding us of the importance of financial education and of starting early, and Elizabeth Ellsworth for helping us to see the impact that mentoring can have on female founders. We wish Casey the very best as Wealthology enters its next chapter. I encourage you to visit wealthology101.com and vinettaproject.com to learn more about these companies.

Sam Saperstein:

The mission of Women on the Move is to help women in their professional and personal lives. Our goal is to introduce you to people with great ideas, inspiring stories, and a passion to make a difference. If you enjoyed this episode, please rate, review, and subscribe so you won't miss any others. For JPMorgan Chase's Women on the Move, I'm Sam Saperstein.