Izzy Conlin, Managing Director, Head of U.S. Institutional Credit at Tradeweb, won Excellence in Trading Platformst at Markets Media Group’s 2025 U.S. Women in Finance Awards.

Can you share a bit about how you started your education and career?

I graduated from NYU with a dual degree in Economics and Psychology, where I was initially recruited to play college basketball. I actually started out as pre-med, but being in the heart of New York – the financial hub of the world – pulled me toward economics.

After graduation, I joined BlackRock as an investment-grade bond trader, leading the firm’s electronic credit trading and market structure initiatives while trading products like cash bonds, CDX, CDS and ETFs.

I’ve always loved math and the fast pace of markets. Even from a young age, I saw the potential to blend finance and technology to modernize the corporate bond space. Growing up with tech – I was the iPhone generation – it felt natural to bring that perspective to Wall Street – and that’s really been a driving force in my work today at Tradeweb.

What trends or innovations are currently shaping trading platforms and the institutional credit markets?

The continued trend toward more electronification has been front and center in institutional credit markets. Clients are increasingly shifting away from traditional voice/manual trading toward electronic solutions that make their workflows faster, more efficient and more insightful. We’re seeing this trend reflected in our own platform activity year-over-year, as well as across the broader market – for example, the share of U.S. high-grade and high-yield bonds traded electronically has risen significantly as compared to a decade ago.

This evolution is reshaping credit market structure — from influencing how firms source liquidity and determining pricing to how they integrate new electronic protocols into their trading workflows. At the same time, the rise of AI is creating powerful new use cases. We’re collaborating closely with clients and internally across teams to explore how AI can enhance pricing, analytics and overall trading insights.

Another major innovation is the growing adoption of algorithmic and portfolio trading in credit markets. Portfolio trading, in particular, continues to boom – fueled by the growth of credit ETFs and the increasing electronification of debt markets. In 2024, portfolio trades made up ~9% of total U.S. corporate bond volume – a record level that underscores how sticky this trend is.

How has technology, such as electronic trading and data analytics, transformed the way institutional clients engage with credit markets?

The evolution of technology has fundamentally changed how institutional clients access and interact with credit markets. Electronic trading has made workflows faster, smarter, and more transparent — allowing clients to connect to liquidity in ways that simply weren’t possible a decade ago. This isn’t your grandfather’s Wall Street anymore. What we’re seeing is that instead of relying solely on voice trading, clients now use powerful, data-driven tools to access pricing, assess liquidity and execute trades efficiently across a wider range of products and protocols.

At the same time, data and analytics have become a core part of the trading process. Clients are using advanced pre- and post-trade analytics for decision-making, real-time execution insights and trade execution evaluation. This richer data allows for deeper market intelligence, better pricing and more strategic trade execution.

Ultimately, technology has made credit markets more accessible, efficient and transparent — empowering clients to make faster, better informed trading decisions while enabling greater scalability and precision in how they trade.