NSBE - Winter 2011/2012 - (Page 20)

Soaring in Finance, Grounded in Math By Siobhan leftwich “The folks in MIT’s NSBE chapter set up a support network where freshman and sophomores were mentored by more senior students. They helped us navigate the school….” M Michelle shell, NsBe Lifetime Member #171, is a vice president at Fidelity Investments in Boston and chair of the Massachusetts convention center Authority. 20 • nsbe magazine • Winter 2011/12 ichelle Shell will never forget the day she met NSBE Executive Director Carl B. Mack. Shell, who chairs the board of the Massachusetts Convention Center Authority (MCCA), was giving Mack a tour of the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center, a major economic engine that generates $1.4 billion per year for the Greater Boston area. “He took one look at me and shook his head and laughed,” she recalls. “He was just so tickled that a black woman was chairman of the board of the MCCA. He said he hadn’t seen this level of black leadership in other cities he had visited.” He was even more tickled when he learned she was a NSBE member — now a lifetime member — and an MIT grad, to boot. It just goes to show that engineers can do anything. And Shell, whose day job is serving as vice president and business line manager for Strategic Advisers, in Boston, would be the first to agree. “I was a born mathematician,” recalls the Long Island, N.Y., native. “My mom taught me fractions by having me help her measure out ingredients. I loved it. “My parents really emphasized the importance of education,” she says. “They were immigrants from Barbados — and accountants — and they wanted my brother and me to achieve even more than they had.” By the time she was a junior at Westbury High School, Shell was an alumna of Columbia University’s Science Honors Program and the Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth. “Columbia is where I fell in love with physics,” she says. “I could see the application of physics around me in everyday life. I just really took to it more than biology or chemistry. It really stretched my mind.” With her major now set, the soon-to-be class valedictorian set her sights on MIT and Cornell and was accepted to both. So, it was off to MIT. “First semester was really difficult,” says Shell. “I didn’t know how to study, and I didn’t know how I learned best. I ended up failing physics.” But, thanks to NSBE, she was able to turn her grades around in her second semester. “The folks in MIT’s NSBE chapter set up a support network where freshmen and sophomores were mentored by more senior students. They helped us navigate the school (and) taught us about the different kinds of engineering,” she recalls. “I declared electrical engineering.” Her NSBE mentors also exposed her to internships and networking. During an internship with Bell Labs in 1995, where she worked on the broadband platform R&D team, Shell discovered that she loved coming up with the product strategy for the platform more than testing the application itself. So, she changed her major to management sciences. After graduation, she went into financial services, where she became involved with product development work. “The work has a quantitative underpinning,” she explains. “We model the capital markets and the behavior of securities in order to design effective investment solutions for client needs. I get to be right at that nexus.” Shell had discovered her second true love. After stints at State Street Global Advisors and Forrester Research, Inc., she went to Harvard Business School, where she earned her M.B.A. Now 36, married and a mother of two, she has worked for Strategic Advisers, a subsidiary of Fidelity Investments, for the past eight years. Last year, she was appointed chair of MCCA by Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, an appointment that lasts until 2015. Michelle Shell is humbled by what she has achieved thus far and knows that it wouldn’t have been possible without parents and teachers who guided her, NSBE mentors who invested in her success at MIT and exposed her to career options that she hadn’t considered before, and colleagues and mentors who saw a businesswoman buried in a lab coat. And it all started with a love of math. ■ Siobhan Leftwich is a writer based in Baltimore, Md. www.nsbe.org http://www.nsbe.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of NSBE - Winter 2011/2012

NSBE - Winter 2011/2012
Contents
Engagement Matters
Worth a Thousand Words
Living Abroad
Mizanu Kebede of L ife Technologies
Marques Griffin of Chevron Corporation
Chapter News
What’s New?
Membership News
Soaring in Finance, Grounded in Math
The Programs Zone
International News
NSBE Calendar
NSBE Golden Torch Award Winers
The Professional’s Perspective
Opportunities in Emerging Africa
Improving Energy Efficiency in Signal Processing
Council Selects NSBE to Help Improve the FE Exam
The NSBE Aerospace Systems Conference
Boost Your Knowledge! Join a SIG
AE Members on the Move
Advertisers Index

NSBE - Winter 2011/2012