Wendy de Monchaux, '86

Being There: Chicago Women in Business Conference
Wendy de Monchaux's Road to the Top

Since 1993, Wendy de Monchaux, '86, has been with Bear Stearns, where she founded the derivatives department. Today, she is a senior managing director and a member of the firm's board of directors and its operations committee. She heads the fixed-income finance department and the global derivatives department, which, in 2000, had revenues of $850 million. Her goal? A $1 billion business.

Just how did she get there? After receiving her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University in 1981, de Monchaux joined Arthur Andersen, where she was among the first group of recent undergraduates to be admitted to the consulting division rather than the accounting division. After a year, she switched to another consulting company. While working there, de Monchaux entered Chicago GSB's part-time program.

A GSB classmate told her about First National Bank of Chicago's First Scholar program, so in 1984, de Monchaux applied in order to learn more about swaps. She was accepted and left her consulting job for the bank, where she started with tasks such as accounting and eventually learned how to trade and talk to clients.

Upon receiving her M.B.A., de Monchaux took a position as a derivatives specialist with Drexel Burnham Lambert in New York City. She later was promoted to head of the interest-rate products group.

When Drexel went bankrupt in 1990, de Monchaux and her group were hired by the French bank Banque Indosuez. There she served as a senior vice president and head of the global derivatives product group until she joined Bear Stearns in 1993.--K.S.