New York — Linda Zhang started managing money in 2003. At the time, a little more than one in 10 portfolio managers were women. Almost two decades later, that number has barely changed.
Now, after a career at asset managers including the giant BlackRock and MFS Investment Management, she’s the founder and CEO of her own firm, New York-based Purview Investments. Companies’ efforts to increase diversity often end up recycling and further stretching the few women who make it into the industry. The same female managers are being continually tapped to manage funds, in a way that mirrors the tactics of corporations trying to diversify boards through a limited pool of familiar executives. Lower down the ranks, women still face well-known obstacles.
The Ark funds are unusual among ETFs because Wood actively picks stocks for most of them, rather than tracking indexes. But Ark is not so niche any more: Wood’s flagship fund, Ark Innovation ETF, gained 149% in 2020. It ballooned from about $1.5bn in assets in March 2020 to a peak of $28bn in February.