Life is not a highway; it’s more like a bumpy winding country road

“I grew up in Monza in a traditional family where women stayed at home. 
They didn’t have careers, unlike men. Even as a young girl, I knew I wanted to have it all. An important job and a family.” Monica Mandelli is head of Latin America and Canada for the giant KKR, an international investment firm with more than $500 billion in assets under management. Her career is the American dream come true of a “small-town girl with big ambitions”.  With the right hunger and grit to make it to the top. 

She says: “I’ve always been a nerd, with a thousand interests and a lot of curiosity. I wanted to go to America and to do that I knew I had to study at the best Italian university. So, I chose Bocconi and I chose the most innovative and difficult course they offered: DES [Economic and Social Sciences].” Her original idea was to do a PhD and teach in the US. “But life is not a highway; it’s more like a bumpy winding country road.” 

And fate stepped in. A colleague at university told her about investment banking and Mandelli was intrigued. So much so that she joined Merrill Lynch in London in the M&A Department. The long-awaited opportunity to go to the US came soon after, with an MBA from Harvard Business School. “There was no point in returning to Europe after this extraordinary experience, given the great opportunities in the United States,” she laughs.

Then she got an interview at Goldman Sachs, where she would stay for 17 years, building a career and managing the investments of the world’s most influential families: people with more than a billion in assets. She didn’t go looking for KKR in 2015, but “they made me an incredible offer, which I accepted after reflecting long and hard. I remember handing over my trademark Blackberry and seeing the secretary at Goldman Sachs packing up my things, and I got shivers down my spine. I wondered if I was doing the right thing.” But when she got home, she found a handwritten note from the founder of KKR: “Dear Monica, we are happy to have you with us, you are a great athlete. We know you will give the performance of your life.” And all her doubts disappeared.

Looking back at her beginnings, Mandelli talks about the usual gender discrimination, about constantly being underestimated because she was young and because she was a woman: “I can give you a thousand examples. In business class, some managers asked me to hang up their jacket because they thought I was an assistant, or during a meeting I was asked to make coffee. But I reacted with irony. I’d say, ‘OK. I’ll find out who has to make it and as soon as you’re done, we’ll start the financial project analysis.’ There was silence. The lesson is, never be intimidated and have the courage ‘to pave the way for the new generations.’”

And don’t be afraid to be a mother and a career woman either. Mandelli describes her almost military approach to time management. “I am very organized. I have three children, and since they were young I have gotten them used to family meetings, moments when we tell each other about our days: Saturday is all about the family. 
I also chose to have a husband who is 100 percent supportive by my side. I always tell women: you have to be the best at what you do; find a partner who shares your dream and your mission 
in the world.”