When Raelan Lambert was 12 years old, she wanted to be president of the United States.
“I’ve always been ambitious,” Lambert said. She switched from pre-commerce at the University of Virginia to pre-medicine, but “realized I do not have the stomach for medicine” and moved back to a path that led her to a role at Goldman Sachs.
“I thought I’d bombed the interview — the last question they asked me was ‘why should we hire you?’ I blurted out ‘because you’d be a fool not to.’”
And she got the job.
Although she says she was a “fish out of water” in her new company, she thinks being a little naïve has actually benefited her career.
For example, in preparation for a meeting on Y2K, she assumed her boss wanted her to actually present to senior partners. He allowed her to do so, and that naivety, ambition and self-belief — “I just don’t question the fact that I belong or that I have a right to be at the table” — has contributed to her high-profile role. “I see an objective and see something that I know will benefit the firm, colleagues or the industry, and I go for it,” Lambert said.
And while her career hasn’t necessarily taken her to the White House, it has taken her to Tokyo, Hong Kong, and now California, for her current role as global alternatives leader at Mercer. She manages more than 260 professionals across 32 offices worldwide. Mercer has a total $16.2 trillion in global assets under advisement.
Her contributions to the private markets business were evident in work during the COVID-19 pandemic, where she helped limited partners to maintain or accelerate the pace of their diversifying allocations to private markets, resulting in clients maintaining strong risk-adjusted performance across more than $50 billion in existing allocations.
And her contributions to the promotion of underrepresented groups is evident in her co-founding Mercer’s Leap Continuum — an inclusive strategy for clients focused on global private markets women or diverse-led and -owned investment strategies that advance diversity, equity and inclusion, while pursuing competitive, risk-adjusted net-of-fee returns.
It's important to think ahead — “like playing chess,” roll up your sleeves and get involved as a leader, and to prioritize “the things that make you happy,” Lambert said.