Good morning! AMD competes with Nvidia, Waymo gets ready to expand, and a Goldman Sachs exec almost left on her way to the top. Have a mindful Monday.
– Speed bump. In 2016, Asahi Pompey was preparing to reach a career milestone: becoming a partner at Goldman Sachs. The firm’s then-chief compliance officer had been working toward this moment since joining Goldman a decade earlier. And Pompey had set her sights on Goldman at 25, when as a junior attorney at Cleary Gottlieb she helped advise the bank on its 1999 IPO.
“Partner at Goldman Sachs is the crown jewel,” she says. But that year, she found out, she didn’t make it. Colleagues from around the world, whose trust she’d gained advising on regulatory pressures and deal stressors, consoled her and encouraged her to try for the partnership again. Still, Pompey almost gave up on her goal. “It was a low point in my career, and I considered leaving the firm,” she says.
The moment echoed Pompey’s experience a decade earlier, when she left Pfizer for Goldman after not receiving a promotion she wanted at the pharma giant. This time around, Pompey opted to stay put. She was going through a divorce, and decided she valued stability—in her day-to-day life and financially—for herself and her two young sons.
Two years later, in 2018, Pompey made partner. And two years after that, she got a call from Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon inviting her to join the firm’s management committee, where she is now the only Black person among its two-dozen members.
Today, Coins2Day is the first to report, Goldman is expanding her role from global head of corporate engagement and president of the Goldman Sachs Foundation: She is adding a position as chair of the firm’s $3 billion Urban Investment Group. The group is part of Goldman’s impact investing portfolio, operating across asset classes, including real estate and small business financing. The addition officially puts an investing role under Pompey’s purview, adding to her portfolio of philanthropic and community engagement work, including Goldman’s One Million Black Women program.
Looking back now at her decision to stay on at Goldman after not making partner the first time she went up for it, Pompey says, “I’m glad I didn’t take my toys and throw them out of the pram.”
It was a learning experience, she says. “Sometimes when you think you deserve something and it doesn’t happen on the timeline you envisioned, you’ve got to ask yourself some tough questions,” she says. “You have to remember the path is not linear. Your timing is not necessarily the firm’s timing. And you have to make the decision—how badly do you want it?”
To anyone else facing a career setback, she offers this advice: “You’ve got to have resilience, you’ve got to have grit, and you’ve got to invest in relationships—not just when things are going well, but when things are not.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
The Most Powerful Women Daily newsletter is Coins2Day’s daily briefing for and about the women leading the business world. Today’s edition was curated by Nina Ajemian. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- All about chips. Lisa Su has turned around chipmaker AMD, but its progress pales in comparison to that of rival Nvidia’s—bringing out Su's competitive side. Su predicts that the market for AI chips will reach $500 billion by 2028. Bloomberg
- The sunshine state. Waymo, with co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana, is expanding to Miami, with plans to begin offering driverless rides in 2026. Next up for Waymo are Atlanta and Austin. Bloomberg
- Golf guidelines. The Ladies Professional Golf Association (LPGA) and the United States Golf Association (USGA) are preventing transgender women from taking part in certain women’s competitions if they went through male puberty. The new policies will apply to elite competitions for the LPGA and eight of the USGA women’s events. NBC
- Stressed out. Around half of working women in the U.S. Feel stressed for much of the day, according to new data, versus around 40% of men. One contributing factor: family responsibilities, with 17% of women saying they have something personal or familial to deal with at least once a day. AP
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Five Below appointed Winnie Park as CEO and to its board of directors. Previously, she was CEO of Forever 21.
MISTRAS Group, an asset protection solutions provider, named Natalia Shuman president and CEO. She most recently served as group executive vice president and group operating council member for Eurofins Scientific.
MAPP Advisors, a payments, fintech, and banking advisory firm, named Aleksandra Teichman SVP of embedded finance and banking. Most recently, she was SVP of revenue and product strategy in BaaS at Pathward.
Northrim BanCorp, Northrim Bank’s holding company, appointed Shauna Hegna to its board of directors. She is president of Koniag.
PagerDuty, a digital operations management company, appointed Sarah Franklin to its board of directors. Franklin is CEO of Lattice.
ON MY RADAR
Canva revolutionized graphic design. Will it survive the age of AI? Wired
The charm bracelet shop that keeps going viral Bloomberg
Nicole Kidman exposed Hollywood Reporter
PARTING WORDS
“Everybody always felt so bad for me, like I was so much better than where I came from—when the reality is, I am who I am because of where I came from.”
— Actor Keke Palmer on having to grow up quickly
