Saira Malik, an American national of Pakistan basis, has been hired as chief investment officer (CIO) of Nuveen, a leading international asset management firm.
Nuveen directs $1.2 trillion in equities, real estate, fixed income, natural resources, private markets, other substitutes, and responsible investments. In this new post, Saira manages the weekly market and investment insights and delivers client asset allocation opinions from the firm’s investment teams.
Moreover, Saira also heads the Global Investment Committee (GIC). While being the Chairperson of the Equities Investment Council (EIC), she writes a quarterly market commentary.
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In addition, Saira Malik is the main portfolio director for the $120 plus billion CREF Stock strategy and a registered portfolio manager for more than $30 billion CREF Growth and over $20 billion CREF Global Equities strategies. Prior to being entitled CIO, she chairs global equities portfolio management, and before that, head of global equities research.
Saira has been graduated with a BS in Economics from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, and an MS in Finance from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.
“My parents are Pakistani immigrants. As a high-school senior, I was advised by a career counselor to skip university and go to community college”, Saira Malik said on a Nuveen website.
“I didn’t listen and went off to university instead, earning my series 7 and 63 registrations (investment broker licenses) by age 19. After graduating, every Wall Street firm to which I applied rejected me. Then I earned a master’s in finance and finally, a large firm hired me.”
“It’s important to be persistent and it’s fine to reject bad advice. My grandmother was among the first class of women admitted to medical school in India, graduating with an MD in 1934. Her diploma hangs on a wall in my house. It wasn’t written for a woman; it was written for a man. On it, administrators crossed out the preprinted words ‘him’ and ‘his’ and replaced them with handwritten ‘her’ and ‘hers.’ To this day, that diploma inspires the women in my family,” she remarked.
