Carla Harris

Carla Harris spent more than thirty years as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley, rising to vice chairman and managing director and now serving as senior client advisor, and the material she brings to a stage is the set of rules she worked out for getting there.

She calls them Carla's Pearls: specific, memorable tools for advancing in an organization that does not hand out advancement. The most quoted is the distinction between performance currency and relationship currency, the finding that doing excellent work buys a person their first promotions and stops buying anything after that, because from a certain level everyone performs and what decides who rises is who is willing to spend their own capital on your behalf. Sponsorship, not mentorship, is the difference, and she is direct about how to earn it.

The three books set out the sequence. Expect to Win covers surviving and advancing in the early and middle career. Strategize to Win covers starting out, stepping up or starting over. Lead to Win covers intentional leadership once a person has the title, and it is the one most often booked for executive audiences.

In August 2013 President Obama appointed her to chair the National Women's Business Council. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB in economics from Harvard College. She is also a gospel recording artist with four albums, and has sold out Carnegie Hall and the Apollo Theater, which is worth knowing because it is why she can hold a room of two thousand without visible effort.

She is booked most for women's leadership conferences, financial services and professional services firms, and leadership development programs where the audience is trying to move up rather than trying to feel better. The sessions are keynote format and unusually prescriptive for the genre: audiences leave with named tools rather than an attitude.