We're very excited to be back with a new interview!
Wendy Land-Carillo left home in with $5 in her pocket, and took a job with a trading firm for $170 a week. (It was the early '80s.) More than three decades later, Wendy still works in the trading world, as a floor broker. That means she executes trades on behalf of clients, including matching them up with someone who wants to make the other side of a trade. (Wendy works with people doing the same kind of trading as trader Jaime Swartz.) Wendy tells us that, “I’ve known a lot of the people I do business with for a good 20 years.”
From her start filing and photocopying, Wendy rose through the ranks by learning “as much as I possibly could from everybody that I could” and deciding she would “not let anything get in my way.” Knowing she wasn’t getting paid what she was worth, she opened her own firm, and successfully ran it for 18 years before deciding to close her doors and return to the firm she left in the late ‘80s.
It was great talking to Wendy, learning about building a long career in a rapidly changing industry, learning an industry on the job, and finding out what it’s like to run your own business.
Wendy Land-Carillo has spent the past three decades working in the trading industry, starting out filing and photocopying for $170 a week, and now as a floor broker and liaison to upstairs clients for floor execution. Along the way, she owned her own business for 18 years, which she calls "the best thing I ever did." Wendy talked to us about learning on the job, the importance of her professional relationships, and how she went from studying art to the trading world.
