Nimisha Srivastava, head of investments, North America, Willis Towers Watson

Nimisha Srivastava always wanted to work in the finance industry, but it was watching her father's pension fund at Merrill Lynch, fall "essentially to zero" in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that sparked her passion for institutional investing.

Growing up as the daughter of a banker, Ms. Srivastava — who currently works as the head of investments for North America at Willis Towers Watson PLC — said she developed a love for numbers, math and helping people from a young age. Her father, who spent his entire career in Merrill Lynch's back office, encouraged her to get exposure to the investment side of the business via internships.

"My dad gave me a nudge, and I somehow ended up on Wall Street as my first job and that really got me into the industry," Ms. Srivastava said. "Fast forward through to the financial crisis, obviously things at Merrill (Lynch) didn't go so well. At the time, people's pensions could be invested predominantly in employee stock."

As a result of Merrill Lynch's collapse and subsequent takeover, Ms. Srivastava's father lost most of the money he'd put aside for retirement over the course of his career.

"It decimated a lot of people," Ms. Srivastava said. "That doesn't really get mentioned. There's many fallouts from the financial crisis, and that was just such a solvable one, if the rules had been right."

Seeing firsthand the devastation that the loss of pension funds could wreak on employees was the catalyst that drove Ms. Srivastava toward institutional investing.

"I said 'there has to be a better way,'" Ms. Srivastava recalled. "That was really motivating for me to see my role now leading our business and predominantly working with pension plans to just make sure that never happens again, and that we actually give people really great retirements and play a part in fixing structural things that need to be fixed to push the industry forward."