When Stacey Cunningham became the 67th President of the New York Stock Exchange in 2018, she made history as its first female president to hold full leadership of the exchange.
She first entered the NYSE in 1994 as a summer intern while studying towards her Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering at Lehigh University. Cunningham had actually wanted to work as a waitress to earn money, but, lacking experience, she joined the iconic financial institution thanks to her dad, a stockbroker at Nesbitt Burns. She subsequently fell in love with the place.
Therefore, in 1996 she began her career at NYSE, working on the trading floor as a clerk and then a broker until 2005, when she took time off to complete a culinary training course.
Her time as a chef was short-lived, however, and she went back to working at a rival stock exchange, the Nasdaq, where she held several senior positions during a five-year stint before joining the NYSE again in 2012.
Within three years, she was appointed its chief operating officer, managing NYSE’s equities, equities derivatives, and exchange-traded products.
In 2018, she then took over the role of president of the NYSE Group, where she has overseen operations ever since by diligently serving issuers, investors, and global financial institutions, ensuring that the U.S. remains the world leader in global capital markets.
Her rise to the presidency is even more remarkable as it transpired in one of the most news-making and male-dominated industries, turning her into a role model for many people, particularly women in business.
“What was really clear is it was so important to not just other women, but just to people to see that you could be successful and you didn’t have to look like the picture of what people think your role should look like. And that was a teaching moment for me because I realized that it’s so important to be an example when you’re in a senior role. So I think it’s really important to recognize when you’re in a senior leadership role that you’re actually redrawing boundaries for everyone else around you,” Cunningham once explained.