TAKING THE REINS

Georgina Dudley had been with JANA for 14 years before taking on the top job and she is uniquely positioned to lead the firm forward in a quickly changing environment. Eliza Bavin writes.

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Georgina Dudley spent the formative years of her life in the Southeast of London and, while completing a master's degree at Oxford University, never imagined she would go on to become chief executive of an asset consultant in Australia.

"I went to school in Kent, then university in Oxford and studied chemistry. I think that is more normal in an English environment where university is about learning how to learn and find out who you are, as opposed to who you're going to be, which I think really suited me, because I didn't really have a clue what I wanted to do," Dudley says.

"I picked chemistry partly because of that. I thought that it was the broadest thing that I could do which would give me lots of options for what I might want to do next. I think when I was growing up, I wanted to be a vet, a doctor, all sorts of different things, and then I moved into finance as I got a bit older."

But going from a degree in STEM isn't too far of a cry from finance, Dudley says, as being in a data-driven field is something that was always attractive to her.

"I liked chemistry because it's more about the application of an idea and problem solving," she explains.

This natural proclivity towards problem solving is what led Dudley to her first internship at Goldman Sachs, where the firm brought in several young people from all different areas of study.

"... they had a couple of people from a STEM background, a couple of people from languages, a couple of people from arts. And that idea of having people that think differently and approach a problem differently is something that I really appreciated, and I still think it's a fantastic idea now," Dudley says.

"I think in investments if everybody approaches a problem the same way, you don't necessarily get a great answer."