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September 9, 2024

Kelly Young

CEO, Acadian Asset Management

On the road to becoming CEO of Acadian Asset Management, Kelly Young found that with age, “the
confidence, the certainty and the clarity become greater,” she said.

 

Born into a family that worked in the trades in the U.K., Young’s fascination with finance began at a young age watching news coverage of the 1987 stock market crash. After studying economics and finance at Brunel University London, she landed her first job in investment banking, but had the realization at age 22 that the industry “wasn’t the right fit for me.”

 

“To decide fairly early on that it wasn’t for me did require a bit of soul searching because it’s like, ‘Well, if it’s not this, what’s next?’ There wasn’t really a backup plan,” Young said. But the challenging decision to change industries “turned out to be a great transition” as she started in asset management as a portfolio manager at Barclays Global Investors.

While she enjoyed taking portfolio management roles, Young realized her strengths were in building relationships with clients. Finding it easier to make a pivot at age 30, she took her first role at Acadian as a relationship manager, becoming the firm’s third employee in the London office.

 

By the time she was tapped to lead the firm in December 2023, Young “didn’t have to think more than two seconds,” she said. Today, she works from the $112 billion firm’s Boston headquarters and takes pride seeing the number of London-based staffers has grown to 25.

 

She enjoys making an impact — whether its through engaging with charities like Women’s Money Matters or Challenge Africa, or through strong returns for retirement fund beneficiaries — for which “if you do things well, you’re going to ultimately improve people’s lives,” she said.

 

“That’s something that still gets me up every morning, as much as it did 20 years ago,” Young added.

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