For the first time in its 33 years, the Securities Industry Automation Corp. has gone outside the club defined by its co-owners -- the American Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange -- to find a new CEO. The deal, sealed last month with Marianne Brown, also breaks down another gender barrier on Wall Street.
Brown will take the helm of the exchanges’ technology and operations arm on February 28 after 26 years with Automatic Data Processing, the last three as general manager of its brokerage-processing services group in Jersey City, New Jersey. “This is like venturing into the unknown,” says the 46-year-old, referring both to pending market-structure reforms for which SIAC will have to gear up and to her own learning curve. “I don’t know SIAC well and will learn a lot in the next 12 to 24 months,” she says. “But I know a lot of the players and see this as a great opportunity to be a part of the changes that our marketplace will be going through.”
Brown started out at ADP as a securities-processing clerk, planning to work for a year and save money for college. Instead, she started climbing the management ranks. She didn’t get her BS in business administration until 1997 -- she was then ADP’s senior vice president of service delivery -- after an intensive two-year program at Concordia College in Bronxville, New York, not far from her Westchester County home. Brown’s move to SIAC’s Brooklyn headquarters will mark a homecoming: She attended St. Joseph High School, just down the street from SIAC. She says, “To be the first female CEO is exciting for me and sends a message to other women that the glass ceiling doesn’t have to get in the way.”
