It may be her birthday, but Diane Garnick aims to be the one giving the gifts this year. For her birthday, she celebrates by opening up a new firm that seeks to give women the gift of employment. Garnick, the former investment strategist of Invesco Ltd., is striving to improve the Wall Street job pool for women through her new company Clear Alternatives LLC.
According to Bloomberg, this New York based group is an asset management firm, comprised of a staff of three other women. Clear Alternatives plans to be a registered investment adviser that manages pension and endowment funds as well as other assets.
The 45-year-old birthday girl has high goals for her company–by the end of the year she plans to lead a staff of 12 and raise at least $500 million in assets under management. Although in its early stages, Clear Alternatives has already lined up pledges from potential investors.
“One of the biggest challenges is for women to find an organization that’s willing to accept them back after they leave the work force to raise children without taking a cut in compensation and responsibility,” Garnick told Bloomberg. “Our objective is to solve that problem.”
Garnick knows firsthand about the struggles of being a mother and an ambitious working professional. She has two daughters and still managed to work as a derivatives strategist at Merrill Lynch & Co as well as an investment strategist at State Street Corp. She joined Invesco in 2007 and earned her Master of Business Administration last year from the University of Chicago.
