In this episode, I'm speaking with Marta Ricardo, who is the Director of Lawyering Skills and Assistant Dean of Professionalism at Fordham. I speak with Marta about lessons from the other side, what she learned from her male peers as she was coming up the ranks, being in a law firm, an investment bank, and now as a leader in a prestigious university. She shares her experiences when she was told that salary was standard. And what she did when she learned.
that some of our male colleagues were being compensated differently than her. Let's dive in. Securing a big salary should be as easy as asking for more, right? Turns out it's a little bit more than that. First, let me ask you, which of these apply to you? Reading org announcements with envy as other people get promoted? Working long hours with little to show for it. Getting more degrees, hoping to be seen. Don't feel bad, I made the same mistake myself without even realizing it.
And it's not your fault. In this podcast, I'm going to help you master the strategy and techniques on how to get promoted, how to double your paycheck, and how to secure more flexibility without adding more work or more degrees. You are listening to Salary Negotiations Made Simple. The show that builds your confidence and inspires you to negotiate for the career you deserve.
Do you want to double your salary, secure an ideal career, and increase your confidence to powerfully negotiate every career move? Then you are in exactly the right place. Hi, Marta. How are you? I'm good. I'm good, Dorothy. How are you? I'm fantastic. Glad to have you in the studio. We've gone back and forth a while and now we're finally here. So glad we could find a time that works. Yeah, absolutely. Would you mind starting us off with the introduction about you, what you do and how you help?
Sure, absolutely. So now I, after I'm in my almost fourth career, I am currently the Director of Lawyering Skills at Fordham Law School, and I'm also the Assistant Dean of Professionalism, which is a new role for me at Fordham and an additional responsibility that I took on. And I teach a course called Fundamental Lawyering Skills that teaches students how to interview and counsel clients and how to negotiate on behalf of clients.
And so some of what we're going to talk about today is a little bit about self promotion and self negotiate and negotiating for better terms in the workplace. Um, and I'm happy to share some of that with the, with your audience. Yeah, thank you so much for agreeing to do this because it's such an important topic and not something we necessarily learn either through especially women through high school or early years in college.
Were you always in this position where you could negotiate or advocate for yourself or how did you learn to do that and what got you here? Yeah, so I wasn't always and I certainly had to learn and even in the first job that I had that wasn't in the law firm setting, I came in as an associate to an investment banking structuring team and I, they told me standard, you're going to get deferred stop compensation and I said, Oh, okay. And I said, Oh, I thought, Oh, that would be wonderful.
Meanwhile, Someone who was a man and a little bit senior to me was getting 100 percent cash. And then when I found that out, I was like, you don't ask, I didn't even know enough to ask to get all cash in the first year. Including for all my bonus compensation, I had gotten some stock. Which is okay, because it's now JP Morgan stock and that's done well. I'm sure that man has spent all that cash.
But I, that was my first sort of first lesson in all things are negotiable in pay in a financial institution. And I've learned some lessons and I think we're calling this lessons that I learned from the men in my team or that I worked with. And one of the things I learned is that the vice president that I reported to directly kept like a running list of everything we did as a team, the value of the compensation to the value of the, to the firm, to the institution. and their contribution to that.
And I was like, well, what are you doing? What are you writing down? And he's, Oh, I keep this chart. I was like, and I didn't keep the chart that year. And I think almost actually the first year I was there, I had a baby and I was so happy in that year that they kept me and that I, they paid me. Okay. Which I thought was okay. They paid me more, which I thought was good. Meanwhile, of course, probably less than others. And I just kept swimming along thinking I was doing just fine.
And then in, in the subsequent year, we went along and I learned essentially that I thought almost, then we got to the point where they fired all the women. And I was the only women, one of the only women left standing. And that year they fired a lot of the people that had come over from JP Morgan during the JP Morgan Chase merger on my team. And I was the only vice president that was a woman left standing. And I was like, Oh, and I was working. crazy hours.
I was then keeping the chart, but still I didn't get paid a lot of money because I didn't like demand until I left. And then they're like, I'll double your pay, which just shows you how, how I really wasn't advocating enough for myself. Absolutely. And I didn't say, But I did negotiate for more money and I left to go to Barclays and I did get guaranteed compensation even though I knew I was going to have a second baby.
So I was so concerned about what having a second baby would look like that I took the money just to make sure that they absolutely had to pay me no matter whether I was, I just had to be employed on the date of my bonus. And because I'm a lawyer, I read the letter and I'm like, okay, this is fine. I will get paid what I'm supposed to get paid. And I felt a little bit guilty that I took off three months, but I still got more done than most men.
And I came back and I was there for the client and they had to, I had tell the client when I was like eight, seven months pregnant, I came to visit them. And they were like, Oh, I guess you're not going to London. I said, No, I'll be ready to go to London. I'll have the baby by the time by the time we have to go on the roadshow to London. It's fine. I'll be there and I'll work when I'm on maternity leave just for you. That was my other deal is that I will work just for you.
And the client was like, Okay, that's good. But that was the case. So about two weeks after I had a baby, I was in my bedroom at a conference call. My mother was like, she had come to help me. What are you doing? I'm like, I'm on a conference call. She's like, that was insane. But so I did do that. But in fairness, I felt fine, right? Like I had help. I had help in my home that my nanny continued to work for me when I was on maternity leave and I had my parents there. So it was fine.
But that was one of the lessons I learned. Of course, men still, of course, I thought. Didn't think I was getting paid as well as I could. I did make more money. They paid me like 50 percent more the next year, which was good. I thought my pay went up 50%. Good. I got promoted. Good. I was the only woman director there. I was the only woman at the bank who had ever been on maternity leave as an officer in the United States. And they didn't, weren't sure what they, how they should pay me.
But they said, we'll just give you three months fully paid. Does that sound okay? And I said, yeah, that sounds fine. Let's just do that. Yeah, it was just crazy. It's nuts. And this was like in 2003. It's not like, it's not like the 1950s or anything. Team 50. So this is in 2000 and yeah, 2003. They had a woman officer for an office person, go on maternity leave. Wow. So one thing you learned was keeping a running list. It sounds off all of your achievements.
Taking credit, writing the email to the group. That's the other thing I learned. We used to do these emails, which I thought were obnoxious, right? Cause I'm not, I'm not by my nature, like a. Give me a gold star for every accomplishment I do. Yeah, but we used to write these lists that say we successfully closed the 500 million offering of blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah. Thank you to blah, blah, blah, blah, and blah for thank you to the, this department and that department.
And you would send that around to the full markets division to show everyone that our group was punching bullet winning mandates, right? That's what that's called when you're a lead underwriter or for a client. I would send out, we would send out those kind of memos. And as I got more senior, I got to send the memos. They were normally sent by the vice president on the team. And you have to thank the managing director who probably did nothing.
Yeah. Uh, because the VP kind of runs the team, right? Like they, they lead the execution. They also lead like how you pitch the transaction. The managing director usually has a client relationship, but do they do much? Not always. Mm hmm. Right? They're not doers. They're just like relationship people. If things get bad, they intervene. But in general, in a really big place like J. P. Morgan, not so much, right?
The vice presidents are doing all the heavy lifting, all the managing of the associates and analysts to get the work done, all the workflow has to go through the vice presidents. I went from being the worker bee to the kind of the team manager. So what do you now, in hindsight, now that you know that you need to keep a running list and you'd need to amplify what you did, whether or not it's comfortable, what, how have you refined that over the years?
I'm presumably when you started, it was a little clunky and now it's very sophisticated. Yes. And so by the time I took those lessons from one bank to the next, and I think we, I worked at Barclays and then I worked at HSBC where I was a managing director. I ran a team and I had to interface with all sorts of divisions across the world. And I was so good at it. Ultimately, I wrote one of those messages and we closed a really big deal in Mexico.
And I included like people at the vice chairman level, you have to, the higher, the more you go up there, the higher your praise needs to sing. And I often would do transactions for the institution I've done. So the corporate treasury was my client. I worked closely with them. And they're very close to the actual CEO and CFO of the institution, right? So that gets you visibility at a level that you don't get if you just deal with external clients.
And at one point I sent out one of these messages saying we had done this big transaction in Mexico for HSBC Mexico. And the guy, the local guy who I was good friends with said to me, The whole country hates you right now. I said, too bad. The whole country didn't do the stuff I asked them to do when I wanted them to. Yeah, but now they're going to listen to and he said, yeah, they're going to have to because you have now ingratiated yourself to the head of the country.
And he is going to make sure that they do what you asked them to. I'm like, yes, I know. And that's why I sent that message. So that was a very funny response. So sometimes I say to people, I'm very scary. All of Mexico beats. Yeah. Yeah. So just in the markets division, was that intentional to go to that high level and get that cloud on your side? I had accidentally become good friends with the man that was then promoted into the head of the country.
Wow. I had very, I had been involved in the business in Mexico for almost from the very beginning when I worked at HSBC. And they shifted out, which is the case in many large international banks. The country head is a rotation, right? You wouldn't be in a country for more than, Oh, four or five years. And then you rotate out. And the man who had been in charge of the country was a very affable Englishman, really nice, very sophisticated people within Mexico really loved him very much.
The clients liked him is the team liked him. He spoke Spanish fluently. He was a really nice person. And I said to someone else in the bank, Oh, it's going to be impossible to replace him. He's so wonderful. Everyone loves him. And this man just took it in. He didn't say it in the time, but then about the next day he came to me and he said, Come with me. I have to tell you something. And I said, Oh, okay. And we were in Paris and I said, What's wrong? He's I'm the new head of Mexico.
And I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry. I said, I'm sure you'll be great. He's you seem to know a lot about Mexico. Maybe you can help me. Yeah. And so I said, sure, of course, I'll introduce you to everyone I know there. And so then when he came, I got to go down with him and they had a party to celebrate his arrival. And I got to sit right next to him. And the faces on everyone from the local jurisdiction were like, How does she even know that?
Yeah. Yeah. And it was lucky just because it was just fortuitous. And this man liked me quite a bit. I was very honest with him about some other products or other things we were working on. And he, he later did a very large acquisition that I helped him with. It was useful. Yeah. Yeah. So it was fortuitous. Like you never know who you're going to, who will be promoted. So you have to, this is my other lesson. Yeah. You have a lot of organizational awareness.
So I knew this man was very tight with the person who ran the whole, all of Latin America, all the markets or investment banking. And I thought this guy is going to go someplace. I'll meet up. Not that I wouldn't be nice to him anyway, but I'm going to make a particular time to send him things. He talks to me and he mentioned something. I wouldn't send him a note saying, Oh, I thought you might be interested in this because in, in banking, and this is maybe I think I was good at it.
It's a lot of information to take in. And then you think about who needs that information, and then you spit it back out to them. So when you cover a client, you have to always be thinking, what does my client need from me? Information, advice, markets, information, whatever it may be. And that's what I would do. I would sit there typing away this article in the Financial Times, whatever it may be that I know they need to have. And sometimes clients would do that.
Just call me and ask me for information. I'd be like, I said, this is what I think this is. I had an opinion. I usually do have an opinion. This is how I think this is going to be interpreted or that. And sometimes they would ask me, even though they were double checking what another bank was telling me, because they didn't really necessarily think that the other bank's opinion was correct. Oh, okay. So they would call me for like the second opinion, doctor.
And I said, are you asking me because am I getting the mandate? And he's like, someone else's turn. I said, are you calling me just because you trust me more? He's like, yes, we trust you, which is true. I think they could trust me more probably to tell them the truth. 'cause ultimately selling someone a, a boat of positive things isn't going to necessary. It could backfire, right? Yeah. Like you have to be, you have to build a trust and, and be realistic. You have to build the trust.
You, you have to be realistic. Mm-hmm. Right. Particularly when you quote people pricing. Right. You can't be like way off. That's a disaster. I mean, that's a lesson. Hopefully I didn't have to learn myself. Yeah. We never said we didn't promise a certain amount of price. And then all of a sudden, no, no, the markets moved. Yeah. Yeah. No, no good price discovery. Yeah. That's what I would.
Yeah. So that is the other lesson I learned is this organizational awareness and betting on the right person. So another time I had the, that person, there was another person who he and I worked on this new product at the time called covered bonds. And he had come in from Hong Kong. Again, he was the favorite of someone very senior. And I said, I'm going to make friends. I'm going to help him work on this, selling this product in the United States.
I have contacts at all the large banks, and I'm going to get those meetings at all those banks for him. And no one else had a call into Citi and Bank of America. I also, of course, I had a caller to JP Morgan. But I, so I say, I'm going to make you this meeting and the head of financial institutions is they'll never take a meeting with us. I'm like, no, they will take a meeting with us.
So I called, dialed up my friends and I said, we have this new person who's very knowledgeable has come from England and Hong Kong and knows this product. It's a European product. Can we come down and talk to you about it? Sure, of course. So I arranged it much to the chagrin of the head of the financial institutions business. And we went down, we went to Bank of America. We, I went to Citibank. That is always fun. And we pitched them the product.
And at Bank of America, we did the product for them. We won the mandate to do it with them. And that man who was very like influential, I actually helped him move to Bank of America at one. Wow. So he got this big promotion. He left after we did that. And he did this work with them. They hired him. Wow. He was so good and he left HSBC. So that was a good thing and I definitely bet on the right person. Yeah. Yeah. And also you stirred up this reciprocity, right?
So maybe sometime along the line, may or may not, but it also couldn't hurt that if something came up that fit your needs or talents, he could call you. Yeah. Oh, and I also got to get credit for doing it. So I, I also got to be the person on the structure team who supported the covered bond product. It's a bit, a little bit of a, it's an interesting product. And let me even remember what it's like, but it's a bit of a, like a hybrid between what I did and straight debt finance.
Required its approach. It's crazy how good you are at this. So we have the running list. We have the taking credit, a running list of achievements, taking credit, amplifying that, uh, having organizational awareness and betting on the right person. Is there a fifth one you want to add to our five? That's a good one. The other one is always being aware of what people are getting paid in the market. I like that. That's the other thing.
Yeah. And I would tell you, you don't even have to look for it because sometimes people will call you up and ask you what you're getting paid and then just tell you're not getting paid. Yeah. Over the years, it seems like you have developed strong connections and friendships across. The industry, how has that helped you know what you're worth and how you advocate for yourself? Can you share a bit on that? I had friends at other banks who call me up.
Banking is such a weird thing where people's only thing people focus on is money. That's all they care about. I guess so, right? That's the product. Yeah. They would call me up and be like, you're getting paid. Here. And I'm like, Oh, thank you. You should have gotten how much our people got paid. They got paid this. I said, that's very nice. Oh, wow. Yeah, it is. It is a sort of weird world, but.
Well, Marta, we have a great list going here and I'm sure we can talk about this for hours on end, but just to summarize a running list of achievements, taking credit and amplifying the impact to the business about the work that you did. Developing your organizational awareness quotient, betting on the right person, and being aware of what people around you are getting paid. Yeah. Thank you so much for your knowledge. Sure, of course. Yeah. Thank you for participating and giving us your nuggets.
Yeah. You have given us so many wonderful stories as well as some self reflection topics on how we can show up in the workplace even better than we were yesterday. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you so much, Marta. Thank you, Dorothy. Bye bye. Bye. There you have it, my friends. Some great lessons to incorporate into our own careers as we negotiate our salary and compensation packages. Thanks for listening and bye for now. As you know, I'm on a mission to close the pay gap.
Every podcast episode is designed to give you the tools, techniques, and inspiration so you can bravely advocate for yourself. Thank you for listening and bye for now. Bye.