Wall Street’s glass ceiling is hard and unyielding, and yet we’ve recently seen women start to break it. There’s Adena Friedman, who became the first woman to lead a global exchange when she took over as president and CEO of Nasdaq in 2017. There’s also Stacey Cunningham, the first woman to lead the largest stock exchange in the world, the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Together the NYSE and Nasdaq represent 39% of the global stock market capitalization, or a share of value that is larger than the value of the next seven exchanges combined.
In additional to Cunningham and Friedman, two other women hold senior leadership positions at the world’s top nine exchanges: Laura Cha, Chairwoman of the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and Stéphane Boujnah, CEO of Euronext.
Businesses and shareholders should pay attention to these cracks women are putting in Wall Street’s glass ceiling. As more women start leading major exchanges, they are also setting new agendas in equity markets.
