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Elizabeth Duggan was recognized for Excellence in Data Services at the 2016 Women in Finance Markets Choice Awards.

Describe your role at ICE Data Services.

My role is broad, but the primary emphasis is on our clients’ fixed income positions or portfolios.  I oversee key initiatives related to enhancing and expanding the Company’s evaluated pricing services, broadening overall market coverage and providing increased transparency to evaluation services.  I lean heavily on my past experience as a bond evaluator to understand the intersection of technology and the opaque fixed income market. I work with clients to define their evolving work flows due to regulatory changes, institutional changes, or the everyday market changes/volatility that exist in the fixed income markets.  It’s that point of intersection, were I love my work; defining solutions with our clients so that they can keep their focus on growing their business.

What do you (and by extension, your team and your organization) do to achieve excellence in Data Services?

Our interaction with the asset management community allows ICE Data Services to collect insight to the challenges caused by the large number of growing electronic trading venues, the regulatory pressure and business needs around best execution for fixed income securities, and lastly the changing markets now require asset managers to evolve from the traditional role of “price taker” to their new role of “price maker”.  By actively engaging the asset management community, we at ICE Data Services have developed three ground breaking tools that empowers the Asset Manager to confront the overwhelming challenges they face daily; they are Continuous Evaluated Pricing, Liquidity Measurement Service, and a Best Execution Service for Fixed Income Securities.

What is your perspective on being a successful woman on Wall Street, i.e. what has been your experience as a woman in a field that at least historically has been dominated by men? What is your advice for young women who aspire to a career similar to yours?

My professional progression was based on three key factors (very cliché): a lot of hard work, never ever believing I could not do it, and absolutely never giving up. In addition, there are two significant life lessons I realized throughout my career.  The first life lesson is that we women professionals rely too heavily on meritocracy to champion our career progression.  But the reality is that hard work is simply not enough, which takes us into life lesson 2.  I strongly recommend that professional women focus on fine-tuning our networking abilities. Our success is dependent on networking within all layers of our organizations and industry. Networking is the one “task” that most women professional will back-burner in lieu of a different task. I can’t stress enough how important networking is to a women’s career. To quote one of my clients, “we women professionals actually need to schedule networking into our calendars; we need to schedule a half hour once a week, to call someone, establish a connection, and develop our networking skills.”