Bloomberg's Elizabeth Blanchet writes why pensions should treat their 'plan like a university'
How do women in Canada’s pension fund business keep moving their career forward? That’s the question we tried to answer with the help of leaders in the industry at a recent Bloomberg Women’s Buy-Side Network event at The Art Gallery of Ontario. Six women from public and private markets in Canada said, in short: build a rock-solid technical core, stay relentlessly curious, communicate with clarity, and don’t be afraid to pivot across asset classes—or into entirely new functions—when opportunity knocks.
Career paths aren’t ladders - they’re lattices
One executive, now head of capital markets at a major Canadian plan, has held seven roles over 16 years, spanning infrastructure, private equity, talent/operations, asset allocation, and public markets. Another began as an engineer, moved into advisory during the early wave of Canadian infrastructure investing, then helped launch a global venture platform. A third toggled between equity research, hedge funds, emerging markets, private credit, and external manager platforms; a fourth built and now leads a broad credit investing business covering corporate, real assets and structured finance.
What these zigzags share is intent. Within pension plans - long-horizon investors with diverse platforms - lateral moves can be accelerants. “Run toward the problems,” one panelist advised, describing a stint in a strategy/talent role as the toughest job of her career—and the one that multiplied her network, judgment, and enterprise context.
Takeaway: Treat your plan like a university. Seek rotations that stretch you across public/private, direct/co-invest, and investing/operating. Pattern recognition—of people, processes, and risk—is a compounding asset.
The skill stack that travels
Early career is about building “investor intuition” the hard way: models, comps, analyses, and stress tests. Mid-career is about making meaning—translating data into positioning, pricing, and portfolio implications. Senior roles hinge on judgment and influence: distilling complexity, deciding under uncertainty, aligning partners and boards, and leading through others.
Across levels, four capabilities stood out:
- Technical depth. Valuation, accounting, credit work, portfolio construction, and increasingly, data and programming fluency. Weakness here “leaks” at every level.
- Curiosity with stamina. Markets reward those who keep asking why long after others stop.
- The courage to change your mind. Humility is alpha. New facts, new view.
- Communication. From memos to boardrooms, crisp storytelling is a career-long force multiplier.
Several panelists described their “Swiss-army-knife” superpower: parachuting into unfamiliar contexts, learning fast, and switching between quant detail, relationship building, and team leadership in a single day.
Asset classes in motion and what that means for careers
Private credit: Once a niche defined by LBO financing, private credit has gone mainstream—now spanning corporate, real estate, infrastructure, capital solutions, and consumer/ABS. Bank retrenchment and insurer capital have opened a wide lane for scaled, specialized lenders. The work ranges from negotiation-heavy deal roles to highly quantitative, data-driven securitized strategies—broad paths for different skill sets.
Venture & growth: The pandemic’s capital deluge created fragile cultures and unsustainable unit economics; the rate reset forced a healthy discipline. Secondary programs have emerged to provide employee liquidity at private giants—another way institutions access growth while companies stay private longer. For investors, the job is learning at speed, setting strategy in ambiguity, and building portfolios that can exit across multiple paths.
Capital markets, reimagined: Tools and access have democratized risk-taking. Technology is changing how we classify and trade risk and sources of alpha are proliferating as global markets bifurcate. Success increasingly blends fiduciary judgment with fluency in platforms, data, and market microstructure.
Breaking in and moving up
Three pieces of evergreen advice threaded the conversation:
- Say yes to the mission-critical project, even if it sits outside investing. Enterprise perspective pays compounding dividends.
- Practice boardroom craft. Governance, partner dynamics, and constructive challenge are teachable—and promotable.
- Own your narrative. Your superpower may not match the person beside you. Name it, sharpen it, and put it to work.
The verdict
In the panel’s closing, each leader pitched her asset class. The real winner, judging by the audience, was the portfolio of careers on stage: fluid, technical, human, and unapologetically ambitious. For women eyeing the top jobs in Canadian pensions, the blueprint is clear: build depth, then range. Stay curious, and be willing to revise your thesis. Finally, communicate like a leader.
We want to thank all the speakers who joined the Bloomberg Women’s Buy-Side Network in Canada for this discussion: Anastassia Kobeleva, MD, Total Fund Management, CPP Investments; Brandon Gill New, MD Public Equities and Head of External Partnerships, AIMCO; Heather Tobin, SMD and Global head of Capital Markets and Factor Investing, CPP Investments; Jennifer Hartvikesn, MD and Head of Global Credit, IMCO; Olivia Steedman, EMD and Global Head of Teachers’ Venture Growth, OTPP; Jennifer Lee, Director, Credit, Capital Markets, OTPP.
Elizabeth Blanchet is a business executive at Bloomberg Canada. Since 2020, Blanchet and her team have focused on supporting Canadian asset and investment managers and pension funds with Bloomberg’s latest technology.She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and English literature from Colgate University.
