Exploring investment careers with Stephanie Butcher

We were delighted to welcome Stephanie Butcher, Senior Managing Director and Co-Head of Investments at global asset management firm Invesco, to the first Careers Workshop of the year. It was an eye-opening introduction to a company which manages some $2.5 trillion in assets around the world, every day.

Having joined Invesco in 2003 as a specialist in European equity, Stephanie described her current responsibilities in overseeing investment performance and quality across the firm’s six global investment teams. Pupils were able to find out more about the firm’s role in managing longer term investments for ISAs, pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and insurers. Alongside this, they gained an insight into how asset management was helping to fund the growth of the economy – for example, in AI data centre infrastructure, which requires significant investment.

Stephanie’s career pathway provided an interesting example for pupils keen on investment. She studied History at university – gaining a Master’s degree from Cambridge University – and she was keen to stress that a humanities degree could be just as valuable to entering and progressing in a career in finance. Companies in the sector value the diversity of perspectives and viewpoints that come from having a mixture of graduate backgrounds (not just STEM and economics) as well as from a mixture of universities (not just Oxbridge). Indeed, she explained that judgement and analysis were highly prized in the sector, and that the environment was more akin to a library than a scene from The Wolf of Wall Street.

A huge thank you to Stephanie for offering our pupils a fascinating glimpse into what a role in investment finance might entail.