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Her first day on Morgan Stanley’s trading floor, Susan Li was “mortified.”
Li, who is now Meta’s CFO, started at the bank around two decades ago when she was just 19, after graduating from Stanford sooner than most of her peers.
“When I showed up at Morgan Stanley for my first day, I was on the trading floor in the big Broadway headquarters at 1585, and the equivalent of an HRBP basically got the attention of everyone on the trading floor,” Li told Stripe cofounder John Collison on his podcast Cheeky Pint. “And so she wanted everyone on the floor to stop and look at me and know that no one was to serve me any alcohol at any company gathering.”
It was about par for the course for the industry, she added.
“So it was exactly the way you think about beginning your career on Wall Street, by being mortified,” she said.
The Meta CFO talked about some of the potential pros and cons of advancing through the education system so quickly.
“Well, some might say, because I started kindergarten when I was four and I graduated from college when I was 19, that having 15 years of formal education is — I’m woefully under-educated, as it were, so I’m really just having to make up for that rough start,” Li said.
She was able to sprint through her education, she added, in part because the institutions she attended noticed when students needed different challenges to keep them engaged.
“I was in a school system that identified when kids were bored in school and then just gave you opportunities to keep moving ahead, and my parents always took them,” she said.
Li first joined Meta in 2008, eventually rising to the rank of CFO at 36 years old, making her one of the youngest chief financial officers in an industry where the average age of people in similar positions is 53.
Working for a Wall Street heavyweight
When Li finally entered the professional circuit as a banker, she said she worked with Michael Grimes, the former head of global technology investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Grimes is currently a senior official at the United States Department of Commerce.
Li said she remembered Grimes’ energetic nature and curiosity, as well as his ability to outwork anyone.
“Grimes is extraordinarily, very high-energy — applies that to a whole host of things,” Li said. “You go talk to Michael about tech companies, about banking, about parenting, about why there should be more undergraduate sales programs in colleges in the country. He’s got a point of view on everything, and he’s endlessly curious.”
Morgan Stanley and Meta did not respond to a request for comment by Business Insider prior to publication.
Li added that Grimes’s behavior served as a sort of model for her own.
“He is going to outwork you and outlearn you. It’s actually a pretty spectacular thing as a young person starting in your career to see what excellence at this looks like,” Li said.
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