{"id":723,"date":"2018-10-20T11:37:09","date_gmt":"2018-10-20T18:37:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myjuggler.com\/?p=723"},"modified":"2020-10-18T19:23:03","modified_gmt":"2020-10-19T02:23:03","slug":"ex-lehman-financial-chief-doesnt-look-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myjuggler.com\/ex-lehman-financial-chief-doesnt-look-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Ex-Lehman Financial Chief Doesn\u2019t Look Back"},"content":{"rendered":"

Erin Montella says her life today is the antithesis of the life she led a bit more than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

Then, she was known as Erin Callan. She was chief financial officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in the months before the\u00a0company\u2019s September 2008 collapse<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Lehman Brothers building in New York on September 15, 2008, the day the company filed for bankruptcy. PHOTO: JOSHUA LOTT\/REUTERS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ms. Montella \u2014 as she prefers to be called since adopting her husband\u2019s surname a few years ago \u2014 ascended to the CFO role at age 41 in December 2007, just as the financial crisis was gathering momentum.<\/p>\n

\n

Some considered the investment banker an unorthodox choice, because she had never worked as an accountant or in a finance department. She quickly became the public face of the firm,\u00a0striving to make the case<\/a>\u00a0that the business was sound through the media and in conference calls and meetings with investors.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

The highest-ranking woman on Wall Street at the time, Ms. Montella also became a lightning rod for anger from investors including\u00a0hedge-fund manager David Einhorn<\/a>, who had bet Lehman shares would decline. In June 2008, after Lehman posted a\u00a0$2.8 billion second-quarter loss<\/a>, Ms. Montella resigned. Three months later, the firm was gone, too, when Lehman filed for the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.<\/p>\n

Following her resignation, the Harvard University graduate, who started her career as a corporate tax attorney, moved to\u00a0Credit Suisse Group<\/a>\u00a0AG<\/span>\u00a0to work with hedge funds. But in early 2009, she left both Credit Suisse and Wall Street behind.<\/p>\n

In her\u00a02016 memoir<\/a>\u00a0\u201cFull Circle: A Memoir of Leaning In Too Far and the Journey Back,\u201d Ms. Montella chronicles her career and her efforts, following a suicide attempt in late 2008, to build a new life with Anthony Montella, a former New York City firefighter who she’d met in high school in Queens, N.Y. The two re-connected in 2007.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\n
\n
\"Erin
Erin Montella\u2019s 2016 memoir. PHOTO: TRIPLE M PRESS\/AMAZON<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cI was depressed, sad and angry all bundled up in one little firecracker ready to explode,\u201d Ms. Montella wrote in her memoir. \u201cThe way I looked at the world, what I did was the totality of who I was. And if I wasn\u2019t doing it, then was I anybody, really? Was there any value to me without my job?\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Montella concluded she \u201chad to change my life and my priorities dramatically so that I would never again make a decision\u201d like that.<\/p>\n

These days, Ms. Montella, 52, spends most of her time in Sanibel Island, Fla., where she and Mr. Montella live with their 3-year-old daughter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI have led a very low-profile life since I left Wall Street,\u201d Ms. Montella said in an interview. \u201cI spend my time at this point raising my daughter.\u201d<\/p>\n

In 2013, after the publication of \u201cLean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead\u201d by Sheryl Sandberg, Ms. Montella wrote an op-ed article in the New York Times in which she cautioned against\u00a0giving too much to a job<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I left my job, it devastated me,\u201d she wrote. \u201cI couldn\u2019t just rally and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I did\u2026Until recently, I thought my singular focus on my career was the most powerful ingredient in my success. But I am beginning to realize that I sold myself short. I was talented, intelligent and energetic. It didn\u2019t have to be so extreme.\u201d<\/p>\n

The volume of response from readers, she said, prompted her to write the memoir.<\/p>\n

Ms. Montella warns that small decisions\u2014to spend an hour on Sundays catching up on email, for example\u2014can quickly establish \u201ca new norm\u201d that results in work crowding out other parts of life.<\/p>\n

Achieving balance between work and personal life, she said, is not simple. \u201cIt\u2019s not, let\u2019s lean in all the way and it\u2019s going to work out. The struggle to have two top priorities isn\u2019t easy. That doesn\u2019t mean you don\u2019t try, but you shouldn\u2019t feel that if it\u2019s not easy you are doing something wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Montellas recently launched a charitable foundation called the Life Balance Foundation. They started raising money this year to support programs including grants to families who cannot afford to take maternity leave. The broader goal, Ms. Montella said, is to help people establish balance between work and family life.<\/p>\n

Ms. Montella declined to comment on her final months at Lehman beyond what she wrote in her book. One highlight: a 2015 phone call from Lehman\u2019s chief executive Richard Fuld Jr., who said: \u201c…he felt he had left me on my own to handle things and shouldn\u2019t have,\u201d she wrote. \u201cAs much as I appreciated the call, and I genuinely did, I put it in its proper place. A final closing for that chapter of my life, leaving it with a better ending.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Erin Montella says her life today is the antithesis of the life she led a bit more than a decade ago. Then, she was known as Erin Callan. She was chief financial officer for Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in the …<\/p>\nContinue reading<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":724,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-career"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nEx-Lehman Financial Chief Doesn\u2019t Look Back - My Juggler<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"MyJuggler.com - Wondering how to create a balanced life\u2026\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/myjuggler.com\/ex-lehman-financial-chief-doesnt-look-back\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ex-Lehman Financial Chief Doesn\u2019t Look Back - 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