How a top Citi banker works from home
The coronavirus has colored her job—and presented opportunities.
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Stephanie Grisham is out as White House press secretary, Big Tech and Margrethe Vestager finally agree on something, and we get another glimpse of how a powerful woman works from home. Have a productive Wednesday.
– A top banker, working from home. I’m a sucker for any glimpse into the daily routines of successful women; the coronavirus and work-from-home orders have made these snapshots all the more intriguing.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday gave us a peak at a day-in-the-life of Alison Harding-Jones, Citigroup’s head of M&A for Europe, Middle East, and Africa, who’s sequestered 90 minutes outside of London with her husband, three children, four dogs, and six chickens. It’s a full house, with Harding-Jones being careful not to walk into the background of her daughter’s TikToks.
The coronavirus has colored her job. Work on active deals is slowing, face-to-face meetings that are so essential to M&A are on hold, and clients are playing close attention to COVID-19’s longer-term impacts. “No one knows what that looks like,” she said.
But adjusting to life in the coronavirus era has also presented opportunities. She’s more efficient without a commute. Getting ahold of people and having a real conversation “is much easier…because everyone on a human level is looking for interaction.” Plus, she’s found time to bake bread—just like the rest of us.
One of the more stunning aspects of the coronavirus crisis is that it is an experience shared on a scale never seen before, so there’s much that resonates in a vignette like this one, even if your quarantine setting isn’t—as Harding-Jones describes her own—”like something out of Dickens.”
Claire Zillman
claire.zillman@fortune.com
@clairezillman
Today’s Broadsheet was produced by Emma Hinchliffe.