The Rise Of Female Leadership: A New Era Of Wealth And Power

There are men who look at the entrails of the market to divine the past. Men who sift through the ashes of yesterday’s trades, explaining what was, what went wrong, what cannot be reclaimed. Then there are the others. The soothsayers. The behavioral economists. Men like Don Barden, who spent a quarter of a century inside the roaring heart of Wall Street, who now stands outside and listens for the future.

He speaks of a dance. A beautiful dance between the lumbering beast of the Economy and the flicker-and-flame of Human Behavior. One leads, then the other. They spin, they dip. And he, the economist, simply watches their feet to see where they are going next.

Once, Wall Street was a secret. A language spoken by the wealthy in rooms paneled with dark wood.

A private affair. Then came the television, the glowing box in every home, and with it, the ticker tape streaming across the bottom of the screen like an endless, coded serpent. Thank you, CNN. Thank you, Ted Turner. Suddenly, the secret was out. Ordinary people, people who pack their own lunches and worry about the cost of milk, began to care about wealth.

And now the keepers of that wealth, the advisors, must prepare for a flood. A sea change. Barden sees it in the data, those stubborn little numbers that, if you listen closely, tell the most epic stories. By 2028, he says. A date circled on the calendar of the near-future. The year the girls take over.

Not with a bang, but with a balance sheet.

It is a quiet coup, tallied on spreadsheets and in HR reports. The numbers, when they are finally coaxed into speaking, do not whisper. They sing an aria. In the same regions, under the same sun and the same economic pressures, businesses led by women outperform their male-led counterparts three to one. Three times the revenue.

Three times the profit. It is a fact that sits uncomfortably in the old boardrooms, a puzzle that cannot be solved by the old logic. It is not just about the money, either. It is about the people. In these companies, people stay. They put down roots. A tenure of six years, not three. Think of that. The difference between a temporary stop and a place you belong.

The difference between a name on a cubicle and knowing the names of your colleague’s children.

And here is the strangest part of the story, the confusing, beautiful detail that defies the cold calculus of productivity. The work actually improves in the later years. In that space between year four and year six, when corporate wisdom suggests burnout and boredom should set in, production climbs.

Something else is at work. Some other, unquantifiable asset is being managed, something beyond capital. A different kind of wealth. So the grand cathedral of wealth, with its marble floors and hushed tones, prepares for a new kind of clergy. The dance is changing its rhythm. The music is shifting to a key some have never heard before.