KNOWLEDGE IS KEY

Felicity Walsh, Franklin Templeton's head of Australia and New Zealand and head of institutional, APAC (ex. Japan), is constantly traversing the globe, learning as much about the business, its clients and the broader funds management industry as she can.

- Matthew Wai

Ever since a young age, Felicity Walsh has devoted herself to learning; knowing as much as she can about as much as possible has always been a priority for the Shropshire, England native.

It’s fair to say she was unlike most other kids, falling in love with mathematics and science at school.

“And I loved studying... I was completely opposite to my brother and sister. I would teach myself and was always asking my mother to buy me books, particularly in science,” Walsh recalls.

Her passion for science led Walsh to pursue becoming a chemist, studying at the University of Nottingham. That path was short-lived, however before long Walsh decided she had “had enough time in the lab coat,” and shifted gears.

While investigating what she wanted to do, and ever eager to learn more, reconnected with an uncle living in Perth who encouraged Walsh to dip her toes in financial services. He had studied mathematics at Oxford University before moving to Australia and becoming an actuary.

Finding interest in it, Walsh landed an internship at Towers Watson in Birmingham, England.

“I absolutely loved being in the office. After that work experience, I decided in my last year of university that I wanted to go straight into work,” she says.

“I was a little disadvantaged because I hadn't gone to Oxford or Cambridge like most of the graduates had, and I hadn't studied mathematics, instead I had studied science, so I had to get my maths up to where it needed to be.”

While she had always been one for the books and was studying to become a fully qualified actuary, as a consultant Walsh found herself falling in love with the client-facing aspects of the role.

“I loved the fact that you could learn technical details and then work out how to convey that to a trustee board or the investment team,” she says.