Sallie Krawcheck

On battling burnout, insomnia, and the loneliness of being a WFH CEO.

- SARA DEETER

Sallie Krawcheck is no stranger to stress. She spent 20-plus years in banking, rising to top roles and becoming "the most powerful woman on Wall Street," all while shouldering the weight of institutionalized sexism. Her two highestprofile jobs ended publicly: In 2008, she left her post as CEO of Citi Wealth Management after failing to get the bank to repay on toxic investments. Three years later, she departed Merrill Lynch because of a restructuring. In 2015, Krawcheck started over by co-founding Ellevest, a women's investment and wealth management platform that had more than 120,000 users (including this reporter) as of 2021; today it has $1.9 billion in assets under management.

Krawcheck got real with us about her chronic sleep issues, the emotional burden of being a woman founder, and her bid to confront her fear of failure.

A few years after becoming a Wall Street refugee, you went into entrepreneurship, a space rife with stress and burnout. Did you consider that?
When it comes to stress, anxiety, and overall difficulty, entrepreneurship makes Wall Street look easy. But it wasn't a conscious jump from one high-stress environment to another. I just saw a need, looked around, and said, "There's a solution set of one, and it's me." At the time, I didn't realize how stressful it would be-but I would have done it anyway.

Of all the stressors that entrepreneurship brings, did any surprise you?