The Power of the Ask

From Wall Street to Inner Peace: Nirupa Umapathy’s Journey of Resilience and Purpose

• Season 1 • Episode 14

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Discover how a former Wall Street executive found resilience and purpose by embracing ESG investing and prioritizing personal values. In this episode of “The Power of the Ask,” Nirupa Umapathy shares her inspiring journey from the high-pressure world of finance to a life grounded in joy and creativity.

A former Managing Director at Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Whitebox Advisors, she was known for executing complex deals in structured credit markets. After leaving finance in 2017, she redesigned her life and founded Salons for Life, which empowers individuals to be agents of compassionate change throught art and storytelling. 

Join Nirupa and Co-Hosts Lisa Zeiderman and Precious Williams as they discuss:

  • Transcending Trauma: Hear how she overcame challenging experiences from her upbringing in India and demanding work environments to cultivate deep self-compassion and build a strong, supportive community.
  • AlignIng Investments With Values: Learn how she incorporates ESG principles into her portfolio, prioritizing companies with ethical leadership and sustainable practices – without sacrificing financial performance.
  • Redesigning a Life Around Joy: Uncover the secrets to creating a life that prioritizes well-being, creativity, and making a positive impact on the world.

Important Links:
Savvy Ladies
Precious Williams' LinkedIn
Lisa Zeiderman's LinkedIn
Nirupa Umapathy LinkedIn 

Lisa Zeiderman (00:07.293)

Hey ladies, welcome to the Power of the Ask podcast, the podcast that helps you get what you need financially and personally. We are so glad that you're here today with us. My name is Lisa Ziderman. I am managing partner at Miller Ziderman and I am one of the co-hosts with my dear friend, Precious Williams, the killer pitch master. Hi Precious.


Precious LaTonia Williams (00:30.83)

Hey Queen Lisa, it never gets old. Yes, everybody. I'm Precious Williams, officially known as the Killer Pitch Master and the CEO of the Perfect Pitch Group. And welcome back to another exciting edition. This week, we're so excited to introduce you to Narupa Umapathy, the founder of Salons for Life. So I'm going tell you a little bit about Narupa first before she gives us a little bit more tea. Narupa Umapathy is an independent ESG focused investor writer, facilitator, and classical Pilates teacher. Ooh, I like that combination. A former managing partner of Bank of America's Merrill Lynch and White Box Advisors, she was known for executing complex deals in structured credit markets. After leaving finance in 2017, she redesigned her life around joy and creativity. We need so much more joy and creativity, Narupa. Narupa founded Salons for Life.

A community pairing connection through unstructured play and writes on NARUPO founded Salons for Life. A community... I'm sorry. Sometimes my light thing is in the way. Okay. Got it.

Narupa founded Salons for Life, a community fostering connection through unstructured play and rise on empowered transitions. She also curates a unique alternatives portfolio, drawing on her financial expertise. Narupa holds a BA in anthropology and economics from Smith College. Welcome, Narupa. We're so happy to have you here with us today. Your journey from finance to founding Salons for Life is quite fascinating.

Can you start by sharing just a little bit about your career path and what led you to the significant life shift?


Nirupa Umapathy (02:20.79)

Well, thank you so much for having me on your wonderful show, Precious and Lisa. So good to really be with you both here today. My journey for purposes of this conversation started when I was 18. I immigrated from India as a spring chicken with $1,000 from my parents. And I came to the United States on an F1B visa, which is a student visa.

I was fortunate enough to have been given a full ride by Smith College and I came here to remake my future. I was at Smith from 1998 to 2002. I graduated, as you mentioned, with a double major in anthropology and economics. I spent one year at the London School of Economics and Smith not only opened the door for me to come to America, but Smith also gave me my first job on Wall Street, believe it or not. Because I was recruited into finance through this incredible program called the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, SEO. That's right. SEO actually placed me into Solomon Smith Marnie. And the reason that happened was because a Smith alum by the name of Susan Blendon, who then led the analyst recruitment program at Solomon hired me. And she took a she made her bet on a young woman from India who had no background in finance because at that time I was just an anthropology major, not even an economics major, I think. And if it weren't for the first bet that Susan took on me, I wouldn't have ended up on the training floor. I started as a full-time analyst at Citigroup in 2002. So Solomon's with Barney had become Citi by then. And I was at Citi until 2004.

From 2004 onwards, I went to Bank of America. I actually followed a mentor from Citi to go to Bank of America. I believe in perfect timing because I joined the product that was in the middle of the financial crisis in 2006. So that was, I was in a product family called Securitize Products. Lisa and Precious, know all about this. The world knows all about this. The weapons of financial destruction, if we will, in some form, not all.


Nirupa Umapathy (04:37.218)

But I was in the product from 2006 until I left Bank of America in 2015. I made managing director quite young and I was very fortunate to have had the support of a huge village that was very much responsible for helping me through my career from an analyst to MD. I joined a hedge fund for a year. They were actually one of my clients. Unfortunately, that did not pan out. And so in end of 2016, I found myself without a husband, without a job. And that's where my journey began in 2017. I don't mean to sound like a victim, the without a husband part was that I got divorced and actually my friendship with Lisa began there in such circumstances. So my divorce from finance happened in 2016. Unfortunately, my divorce in real life happened in 2014 when I separated from my husband. And my journey of...

Living this life of joy and creativity started in 2017.


Lisa Zeiderman (05:41.255)

You know, Rupe, we have known each other for so many years. It's hard to think of you without the joy as part of your life, because you are actually a really joyous person. Just knowing you, I know that about you. I know that you had started this Salons for Life, and this was actually your vision. And I'm curious as to what Salons for Life actually did, does.


And what inspired you to create this space centered on unstructured play? You can tell us what unstructured play means as well. And storytelling for adults. And if you can break all of that down. So I'd love to know the concept. I'd love to know about what it means to have unstructured play and storytelling for adults. How does that really work?


Nirupa Umapathy (06:30.998)

Yeah, sure. I'm going to answer it in a few different parts, Lisa. Thank you for asking the question. The inspiration for the salons first, because I always like to start with the origin story, is that they were inspired by the French Enlightenment salons of the 17th and 18th century, where women gathered philosophers and artists and thinkers in their living room and provided access to discourse. It was also a time when women didn't have access to university the way we do now. So I think the French enlightenment salons were a huge backbone for the enlightenment period and the Republic of Letters. In 2017, I actually was inspired to travel around the world, Lisa, and what I bumped into was artists and nomads, digital nomads, and I met a lot of people who woke up every morning not thinking about a paycheck, but thinking about the currency of voice and self-expression. And that got me thinking that I want to create these spaces where adults can come together and be free. Now you might be like, we're technically free, aren't we? To which I would say that I don't really think I was really very free because growing up in India from when I was in second standard, it's second grade here. I just remember that I was so grades focused and achievement focused and I was a product of my culture, a hyper competitive society, right? India is a country of one plus one and a half billion people almost.

So if you don't perform well, you don't survive. So I had to hustle from a very young age, like many of the kids growing up in that culture and at that time, and I became a bit of a hyper achiever, you know? And so there was really no room for, it was all work and no play, even as a young child, that's one. Second, I joined Wall Street and Lisa, you know this, you cover so many clients who are from Wall Street. We are serious like heart attacks.

There's no time for play and even when you play, know, you technically on the trading floor you they talk about pressures they talk about work hard and play hard but even the play hard is like going out and drinking like, you know, 10 drinks and like, you know, being being able to hold your drink and be able to talk and sound smart and you know, always you're always your game is always on like you're never off. So


Nirupa Umapathy (08:52.738)

2017, when I was no longer in an office space, I realized, I look back on it and realize that I spent almost 37 years of my life just basically having no like kind of play time. And I was like, it's time to change that. Unstructured play to answer your question, Lisa, is doing an activity for the sake of itself without any pretenses of looking good. Or sounding smart. It's the way children play in the sandbox and in the playground. Now, again, a very ambitious concept because I think as adults, I think play is one of the hardest things for us. We have unlearned play a long time ago. So when I started doing these salons and we actually would be completing our 45th salon in November, across 45 salons, I realized how hard it is for adults to show up and actually drop their mask and retreat and create refuge.

And so the second idea came about, which was the power of stories. I also come from a culture where we grew up with stories. India is very much about stories. The vegetable vendor will tell you a story as would your grandmother. Everything is a story and every person is a story. So I, with my co-founders, I decided that why not activate each other into spaces of vulnerability through the power of our own stories, not another person's story, but our own stories.

Let's get together and bring to the floor, bubble up the importance of precious story, Lisa's story, Narupa's story. And in the process of creating that space for us to be heard and seen, let's activate ourselves in spaces of great vulnerability without trying. So the salon's essentially, sorry, let me give you the definition in the end, which is basically, that's how I do it, answer everything backwards.

Salons are technically micro retreats. And by micro, I mean two to four hours of time that we create for ourselves and space that we create for ourselves, sometimes in a living room, sometimes in the basement of a restaurant, sometimes in an architect studio, or on Zoom, 90-minute salons on Zoom, where we can come together and be unfettered in our voices and expression and sharing of stories.


Precious LaTonia Williams (11:08.132)

Can I just say I'm over here chuckling and smiling so hard because I too went to a woman's school, I to Spelman College. I'm a SEO grad, I'm SEO grad. I was at Spelman from 1997 to 2001, did SEO corporate law, 2001 and 2002. And I almost feel like part of my story is in yours. Of going from law and, you know, when they said they worked hard and played hard, yes, it was a lot of drinking, was a lot of doing a lot of things I didn't want to do with people I did not want, I didn't particularly like at the time, very different today, and having to understand that my purpose, that was just a gateway to get me to where I am today. So I love the idea of unstructured play and really doing things without all these attachments to it that has to look, sound, and act a certain way in storytelling.

So Queen Nirupa looking over your life, were responsible for complex deals. How are you able to take those skills and transfer them to what you're doing today? If you are, you have to learn a new set of skills in order to bring about storytelling in unstructured play?


Nirupa Umapathy (12:11.65)

Mm.


Nirupa Umapathy (12:24.512)

Yeah, the great question, precious SEO baby. It's great to make. On SPSS another, the power of the network. The gift of the, it's the gift that keeps on giving, you that word. So to, you know, it's a great question again, because I honestly think that sales and I want to talk about sales and trading first, and then I'll talk about structure credit. Sales and trading.


Precious LaTonia Williams (12:28.894)

You know what it is? I was scared of NCO all the time. I was scared. I was scared. I was scared.


Precious LaTonia Williams (12:39.799)

It is.


Precious LaTonia Williams (12:50.542)

Mm-hmm.


Nirupa Umapathy (12:53.408)

I was a salesperson. I had two main clients who were my external clients who were hedge funds and banks and insurance companies and asset managers. But my first client was my trading desk and the bank and the shareholder of Bank of America or Citigroup. So the first thing I would say is that this is a lifelong skill and an evergreen skill that I'll take with me across multiple lifetimes, which is the first currency is always the power of the people and relationships and networks. You know, from one person to another, lasting relationship between a client or a salesperson and a trader, you know, that is the alchemy that makes a successful salesperson, that makes a successful deal maker, that makes a successful investment banker, right? So the power of relationships is one. And I think as a salesperson, particularly, I think from day one, I was taught that

You had to focus on earning trust and the way you build relationships, at least in the trading floor as a salesperson was that you focused on execution, execution, execution all the time. know, you know, execution is first. You take care of your clients and you take care of your, you know, you make sure that your trading desk is protected. So protecting and guarding and safeguarding all stakeholders interests is something that I think that I learned very young.

The second skill, I think, which is a huge skill is that across my sales and trading career, I traded, I mean, I transacted in products that had different velocities. When I started out, credit derivatives was a little known product, but it was a faster moving product than for instance, CLOs, which is the last product that I was really involved in. in the trading floor, you have rates and currencies that trade really fast.

So a salesperson that's in that business is like fast, fast, fast, fast, fast, right? I was in a sort of like an intermediate velocity product. So short-term and quick thinking on your feet is also something that I developed very early, reflexive thinking, instinctual thinking, and just executing, right? On the go, and you're able to make very quick calculated bets. I can do that even now. Like, you know, like a flash second decision-making that I can just make.


Nirupa Umapathy (15:10.316)

The second thing I would say is long-term thinking and why long-term thinking because when you cover clients in sales and trading, you're given like 14 to 15 clients and your job as a salesperson is to maximize the wallet with that client, which means that you're not only selling them a product, you're bringing them the bank. You're bringing them different products. You're bringing them access to different. Salespeople and researchers and traders. So you always are a long-term thinker. You're a long-term thinker on behalf of the bank and on behalf of your client. The third thing I would say, it's a huge skill is risk management. While I was not a trader or a portfolio manager, I was trained by the best because I covered some of the most sophisticated clients in structured credit. And structured credit by itself is a very nerdy and esoteric product. That's kind of where the nerds go to play because


Precious LaTonia Williams (15:59.46)

Hahaha


Nirupa Umapathy (16:04.578)

It's a lot of, Lisa will appreciate this. It's like you have docs that are like 250 pages long, they're called indentures and prospectuses. And you need to sort of, as a salesperson, you're not reading 250 pages, but you need to know the critical deal terms. like, know, risk management based on contracts and structural analyzing structure is just like a skill that I carry with myself to this day. I will just tell you, I wish women were trained in risk taking from the get go.


Precious LaTonia Williams (16:32.708)

Mmmmm


Nirupa Umapathy (16:33.922)

What is risk taking, risk management, right? So I would just say that finance, first the biggest risk I took was to leave my parents and come here when was 18, you know, but finance really taught me a thing or two about risk and I carry this to this very day.

Lisa Zeiderman (16:50.811)

I think it's so true, Narupra, what you just said, that women, if we were trained in risk taking in terms of financial matters, we would be so much further ahead in the game of life, frankly, and in the financial world. I think that women, and we've had programs like this on Savvy Ladies actually, about risk taking and about the fact that women are less likely to be in the market. They're less likely


Nirupa Umapathy (17:03.746)

Mm-hmm.


Lisa Zeiderman (17:18.525)

To take some of those risks in terms of investing and as a result they don't necessarily get that high yield that some of their male counterparts will get and it is really an important piece to understand about our makeup and how we should be training really the younger generation coming up now in the ranks and even high school and college women they need to be able to understand that. Sometimes you gotta take the risk to really make it. And so I think that's so important. I know that you as a person are very interested in environmental, social and governance investing. And I wanna talk about that a bit with you. How do you see your investing evolving in terms of ESG?

And what do you see as the future of sustainable and socially responsible investing? Do you have a mindset as to what is going on with that and how it's going to look in the future?


Nirupa Umapathy (18:22.626)

My God, that's a big question, Lisa. I'll do my best to... The first part of your question is your answer, which is that I am relatively new to ESG and I want to give you a story first. I didn't actually think hard and long about ESG until 2019 and the catalyst for it was actually...


Lisa Zeiderman (18:26.835)

Great question for a blue-haired woman.


Precious LaTonia Williams (18:26.958)

We come for real, we come with you on this, every ladies part of ask. We come with you.


Nirupa Umapathy (18:48.522)

A friend of mine who still is in finance and she's a fellow Smith College alum. Her name is Shreya and Shreya had come to one of my salons and she was like, I'm thinking of doing a panel on ESG. There's gonna be market professionals from MSCI and here and there that are gonna be on that panel. Do you wanna join? And I'm like, I know nothing about ESG. I don't know why you would ask me to do a panel. You know, be on this panel. She's like, I'm going to moderate it. It's going to be fun. you know, Shreyar is extremely thoughtful too. And she is also a risk taker herself, Lisa. And I said, yes. And I had two months to prepare. So for two months, all I did was study ESG. Like as if it was like a course at university. You know, I did. And you know, it's sure enough, like I learned so much in those two months and I, the panel was amazing. And I actually held my own.

And what really surprised me was that it introduced me, it triggered me to develop that mindset. It's so interesting, 2019, have two financial advisors. One of them is a Maryland advisor, his name is Jerry and he's been my longest standing advisor. And I invited Jerry to come and listen to Beast to support me. And after the panel, Jerry and I talked and he said that you were outstanding. And I said, thank you, Jerry.

Of course he had to say nice things, but also like I know Jared isn't bullshit, but I said, let's seriously talk about ESG, you know? And he actually had been an early mover on ESG even before ESG was fashionable. And Lisa, you know this, and I'm not saying this cynically at all. It's a highly thrown about term. It's highly greenwashed. It could be a generality in some places, you know, unfortunately, but.

The fact of the matter is that since 2019, Jerry and I have quietly worked away on, I've taken about 50 % of what he manages for me and we've started creating different filters. if it's okay, I want to go into a little bit of detail. We started out doing what I call negative selection. What I mean by that is we just created a small portfolio and we said, let's take out guns, firearms, and tobacco. Just that, we're not going to do anything else.


Nirupa Umapathy (21:07.964)

And it was also around that time when BNP and Bank of America and a few other banks were starting to stop financing, provide debt financing to gun manufacturers like Smith and Wesson. Now, I think we are all aligned on this one. I mean, I think I'm sick and tired of what's going on with gun violence in America. So it already was a personal value for me in that I wanted, I didn't want blood on my hands as much as I could help it.

So that was a very easy elimination from the portfolio. And we watched the portfolio perform across five years and our hypothesis paid off, which was that it was less volatile. It was not maybe as sexy in terms of returns, but it was less volatile. Then I had a conversation with my second advisor and he's part of an RIA called Procyon Jeff. And Jeff gave me his second nugget. He said, let's just focus on G in the ESG. He said the market is still evolving, but let's just focus on governance.

Because when you focus on governance, basically are focusing on risk. You're focusing on risk mitigation. So once again, I went back to Jerry and we created two more portfolios. One was what is based off, I think the human rights index. And it's called the LGBTQ portfolio in Jerry's world. And the third one is just called an ESG portfolio, which is based on something called, it's based on the socially the CIF forum standards. So now I've been watching this portfolio for about five years through COVID and I compare it against the benchmark portfolios, which are basically, let's say loosely indexed to the S &P or, know, steady any returns, like less volatility. And as an investor, it's not just about lesser volatility for me. I feel good that I'm not financing guns, at least in some part of my in some part of my money. And my goal actually, and I tell Jerry and Jeff this all the time, I'm not trying to be a hero or a heroine. I'm not trying to be ahead of the market because you don't want to be out of the market in this. You kind of want to move alongside the market. But what I'm at next, which is really exciting and which could be interesting for you Lisa to like also think about is the next filter that we want to use is positive selection. And what I mean by this is


Nirupa Umapathy (23:24.642)

Using leadership metrics, quantitative metrics of leadership to now start creating a subset of companies that are investing in leadership, not just to the CEO and below roles, but also systematically through middle ranks. And to see if we can remove narcissists, CEOs from our portfolio. I mean, narcissists as in Twitter pirates. I don't want to mention names, but you know who we're talking about, CEOs that are destroying shareholder value by doing the responsible things on Twitter.

I want to remove like narcissist CEOs from my portfolio first and I want to invest in CEOs and leaders that are actually like creating human and planet centric organizations. How this is going to come about is going to be imperfect and I'm not going to do this overnight but over the next five years I'm hoping that I can tilt more and more towards this. So that's my ESG story.


Lisa Zeiderman (24:14.181)

I have to say I love that.


Precious LaTonia Williams (24:16.692)

How can you not? Like, hahaha!


Nirupa Umapathy (24:19.136)

I actually want to say one more factoid for you both, because of Savvy Ladies. That two months of nerding and researching on everything ESG, okay, I bumped into this research piece called, it was about the Lehman Index, and Lehman had been charting not just women CEOs, but women leaders in companies and how they performed. And the share prices of those companies actually had an excess return of between three to 5 % over an extended period of time.

So my point is that ESG is not just about feeling good. It's actually where it makes complete sense. It makes complete business sense. The only challenge there is you don't want to be too ahead of the market. You just can't. So yeah, that's my ESG bet.


Precious LaTonia Williams (25:03.236)

I feel like I'm getting a whole education, a training and everything listening to you, Rupa. I've been thinking a lot in the last four years what we've encountered in business and finance and so much is going on and your work is truly focusing on empowered transitions and post-traumatic growth, which I have never heard of. I understand the concept by reading it.


Nirupa Umapathy (25:26.978)

Hmm.


Precious LaTonia Williams (25:30.5)

But what are some of those key lessons you've learned through your own experiences about like empowered transitions and post-traumatic growth that you can share with the viewers who are watching the Savvy Ladies Power of the Ask podcast?


Nirupa Umapathy (25:43.51)

I'm going to give you a three sentence context first, because I don't want to start talking about something that just sounds so big. But because this is a podcast that also focuses on women, I do want to make a couple of contextual points. One is that growing up as a very strong-willed and independent young girl in India in the 1980s and 1990s had its side effects. India is a very different country now. So I actually did a suffer from a lot of childhood trauma, which really informed and shaped who I became. And it also shaped the reason why I left. I will gladly go back to India now in a heartbeat because as I mentioned, gender rights and things are very different now, but growing up, I really did struggle and I actually fell in a few potholes, which really damaged me pretty badly as a child. So that's my first child of trauma part one. And the second bit is, workplace experiences. I will just leave it at that because that could be the subject of an entirely different podcast. Much of my finance career was very kind to me. I had a lot of amazing mentors and sponsors, but there were some really, for lack of a better word, I can only say adverse work experiences. Let's leave it at that. And they also shaped who I became in my 20s and my 30s.

Between the combination of childhood and work, which were a majority of like the amount of time that you spent, think about like, are, these are formative, like influences in your life. It affected my marriage. It affected how I showed up in the world. It affected how I showed up to myself. So the biggest thing about post-traumatic growth, what I want to say, the three lessons are this. One is injury does proceed growth, which means

I think that I am stronger and more full of, I was always full of grit, but I'm stronger for having gone through those ditches and potholes. That's one. I've just learned a lot psychologically, psychosomatically, financially. I've learned to be a better human being because of those experiences. I'm much more humble. The ego definitely has been tamed. Let's put it that way. But having said that, I don't think we need to have to go through trial by friar. I don't think that I'm firmly of the belief going back to joy and creativity. I don't believe that our creator brought us here to suffer. So I would at all costs, if anything, tell viewers that the one thing that I've learned from 35 years of many different trenches and pothole experiences is that I can spot a toxic person from a mile away and I'll have no problems leaving the door.

Or showing the door. Toxic ecosystems are harder to spot because ecosystems are made up of different actors and cultures and behaviors, but I've almost become an anthropologist of toxicity. like, again, like this is also something that I can spot very quickly now. And I spent a lot of time in community discussing how to avoid a narcissist and toxic environments. And that's kind of something that anyone can like talk to me about because I really do. write about it. I think deeply about it. I conduct my way through life about it. have made some very hard choices and I'm very glad to have made those choices. And the last thing I want to tell you about post-traumatic growth is that sometimes the biggest injuries that we inflict are ourselves upon ourselves.

And I take full responsibility for that. And I'm not unique. All of us do this to ourselves. We are the worst self-flagellators. You know what I mean? Maybe there's like a minority of people that are really, that grew up being their best friends from day one, but I wasn't one of them. It's taken me 40 plus years to learn to become my own best friend. And that's my goal number one for 2025 is to be my best friend. And as my therapist slash hypnotist would say, always be the best parent of your own little inner child.


Precious LaTonia Williams (30:01.538)

Woo. Beyonce, drop the mic moment. OK.


Lisa Zeiderman (30:02.609)

Wow.


Nirupa Umapathy (30:05.077)

Yeah


Lisa Zeiderman (30:08.497)

So I'm gathering, Narupa, that because of your past experiences that it became so important for you to have this joy, this autonomy, this kind of creative purpose that became central to what you were doing, what your work was all about. At what point did you realize that you needed to make this switch over? Like, was there a light that went off? Was there a moment that came?


Nirupa Umapathy (30:10.316)

Yes.


Lisa Zeiderman (30:36.081)

When you realized that you wanted to fill your life with joy and creative purpose, and that you might be leaving behind some of the other things that were essentially motivating you. And how does all of this, how do you realize this? How do you live with this? I guess one question is, do you use this balance of tranquility and creativity and joy


Nirupa Umapathy (30:56.385)

Mm.


Lisa Zeiderman (31:06.491)

Frankly, the ability to live on a daily basis. Our women out there, need to know, like, okay, it's nice that I'm joyous, but I still need to put bread on my table. So how does all this balance actually happen?


Nirupa Umapathy (31:09.612)

Nice one.


Nirupa Umapathy (31:22.408)

Great question. It's not been a tranquil process by any means, actually. I will just say, I'll start by answering the question that it has actually been the wildest roller coaster in the last seven years. I've had witnessed extreme euphoria. I know extreme. I've been through the dumps, Lisa, is the honest answer. So seven years. I'm not going to repeat those mistakes the next seven years.

To go back to your first question, the catalyst to leave a very well-defined life, a very so-called successful life, it was that the cards were handed to me somewhat. Here I was, I had made managing director, survived a financial crisis. I thought like, you know, like I really had, I felt like a strong survivor, you know, when I left Bank of America and

I didn't expect and anticipate that I was going to get laid off within a year of starting my new job, especially because it was a known relationship. was someone that I knew and covered and had known for many, many years. That was a shock and was a rude shock, but there's always another side to the story, which is that for seven years I had been in therapy knowing that finance was not the right environment for me. Finance as I knew it.

I don't mean finance as I know it now. I knew that I was not in alignment with the environment that I worked in. While there were some really amazing people that I absolutely adored and loved and stayed in touch with, I stay in touch with to this day. It was too much of a zero sum game for my sort of anthropological and poetic soul. I knew this, but it took me seven years to really come to some level of acceptance that there's going to have to be a chapter two after finance. However,


Precious LaTonia Williams (32:50.915)

Bye.


Nirupa Umapathy (33:17.568)

You know this, it's so hard to walk away from a high paycheck, like a big paycheck, especially as an immigrant who came from first middle-class or very lower middle-class family. It felt very irresponsible to walk away from something like this. And so when the layoff happened, I just had to go inward a little bit. And I'm also a very spiritual person. At that moment in time, I concluded that the decision had been made and I was going to play the hand that was dealt me.

Right? So in 2017, I had a bit of a weird out of body experience, not a near death experience, but what happened was for two weeks after I got laid off, I couldn't sleep for some reason. It was just, I don't know what it was. I couldn't sleep. in January of 2017, I'm sitting in my living room and I am so sleep deprived. I don't know if you guys, I'm sure you've had kids, Lisa. So you understand, I don't know if you've ever been sleepless. Precious, I don't know about you, but my point is.

When you're operating on very little sleep, you're almost like in this weird trance, like hallucinating state. And I remember just sitting there being like, I don't know what I'm going to do with this year because I was clearly not going to be working at this, this, this hedge fund that I was, that I was last at. Should I go back to finance? Should I interview and all of this? And there was literally a voice that said, take your time and space back. And I just sat there for like 15 minutes and I'm like, I don't know what this means. And then I, it just hit me.

Because it basically I interpreted it as you need autonomy. You are going to be the boss of your own time and your own space. And as soon as that clarity came to me, I just started crying. Like I was weeping sitting in my living room and I cried for like probably 25 minutes. And very quickly I decided that I want to take that year off. And the only promise I made myself was I will do anything but interview for jobs and finance and I'll do anything but hard work.

I want to do my very best to go out and to go out and play and see the world. So that was the resolution. But what was the homework that went into this? Because I didn't wake up one day and I'm like, I'm going to do this. You know this. mean, like I'd been building a financial foundation since I was a young analyst. You know, I'd been saving money along with my boyfriend with them became my husband. We'd been saving money since we started.


Precious LaTonia Williams (35:17.38)

I mean, that's very clear.


Lisa Zeiderman (35:20.595)

There.


Nirupa Umapathy (35:43.028)

I became debt-free from college loans in three or four years, thanks to finance, like law, precious. mean, the base salary was enough that if you were careful with how you spent it, you could actually walk away with little college loans. And I actually didn't have a lot of college loans because of Smith, but I did have loans from my junior year abroad. So I was debt-free. As soon as I was debt-free, my ex and I made a decision very young to buy our first home.


Precious LaTonia Williams (36:05.474)

Mm-hmm.


Nirupa Umapathy (36:12.354)

Even though we had very little money in the bank account. That was actually a dumb decision, to be honest. If one of us lost a job, I don't think we would have been able to pay the mortgage, but we did. Indians like to buy homes, very young. And that was the first asset that we invested in. Then we both, he was very disciplined. And I learned a lot from my ex. We put money away in our 401Ks from the first year on and we saved and we saved and we saved and we send money home to our parents. We did all kinds of things. The financial crisis happened. The world got decimated. Actually, I wasn't very different. Strangely, one of us lost a job. The balance sheet was pretty precarious. From there on, Lisa, basically became, I took on the CFO mindset, which is I spent...

The two years post the financial crisis, like slashing and burning our cost of living and really tightening up all our costs, like fixed costs, like mortgages refinanced like three times during the, after the financial crisis. I was living on so little fixed cost that I had this enormous amount of money to play with when we came out and rebounded. So I not only saved money, I made some mistakes as well, by the way, I sold my 401k at the bottom of the financial crisis.

Yes, I want our listeners to hear this because it's never too early, it's never too late. I still rebounded and I still experienced and enjoyed the biggest bull market run because I had my money invested from 2012. In 2015, one of my advisors said, you can leave Wall Street if you can tell me that you can live under $75,000 a year. And he knew that I wasn't going to be able to do that back then because I was living like anyone else.

So I then three years later in 2017, I remember that challenge and I said, I'm going to live on $75,000 a year. And I did. And that's how I got away. And I was, and I'd already saved enough by then that if I lived a very frugal life, I was going to be able to, and I'm still living a very frugal life, Lisa. I'm not staying at the Ritz Carlton when I go on vacations. I'm not eating $150 steak dinners. Everything is budgeted for, but guess what? I have an outsized travel budget.


Nirupa Umapathy (38:33.312)

and is close to an analyst eating out budget. So it really just comes down to prioritizing and directing your money to what you value.


Precious LaTonia Williams (38:44.438)

As you were talking Queen Narupa, I heard this song by a group called Phoenix. And the song is, I Ever Feel Better. And one of the first lines is, sometimes an end can be a start. And I think about that often. So we know right now one of the biggest topics that


Nirupa Umapathy (38:56.588)

Yes.


Precious LaTonia Williams (39:06.84)

A lot of people are talking about is burnout. So with all that you've been through, all that all of us have been through, a growing scaling companies, maintaining family, home life, relationships and things like that, burnout is so real. Have you ever experienced burnout? And if you have, what advice would you have for others who might be going through that right now and they can't quite see it as burnout?


Nirupa Umapathy (39:22.497)

Hmm.


Nirupa Umapathy (39:37.25)

Queen Trash's, if there was an Olympics, I would have been gold medal every single year for burnout.


Precious LaTonia Williams (39:43.94)

I think they set us up to, we just keep moving.


Nirupa Umapathy (39:48.738)

I can count. Okay, so I want to answer one thing from a financial burnout. What I just write to Lisa's in response to Lisa's question was seven years of joy, but financial burnout. My portfolio, was very, I was asset rich, but cash poor. So I want to talk about that for just a second, because we were talking about empowered transitions. As much as I could make the transition, I was living quite tight. Okay.


Precious LaTonia Williams (39:54.7)

Right


Nirupa Umapathy (40:17.44)

I was living quite tight in a very high cost area. My next seven years, I'm setting myself up for better success, meaning I'm making some tweaks and changes and I want to redesign things to make sure that I'm not breathing so tight, right? But coming back to burnout, my first burnout was when I was 14. And you know, I'm a very candid person. I had my first nervous breakdown. It was all performance anxiety around like exams and things, but it was also, as I mentioned, I had some...trauma, going into it, feeding into it. Burnout pretty badly. I didn't go to school for like two months. So, but at that age and at that time, we didn't talk about burnout. It wasn't in my vocabulary. I picked myself back up the next year as if nothing happened and I aced my final exams and I went on to college. And I had the most glorious four years coming here. And then Wall Street happened.

And I must have had at least three macro burnouts within that period of time, except I didn't know it until I left finance. Because it's only after I left finance, was really like reading about this stuff. Because you know, like, on Wall Street, you work, we worked like crazy people. I mean, we would, there were people that showed up at the desk at 5.30 and would leave at like 7.39. There was no concept of work-life balance. And I would wake up in the morning at five with my Blackberry attached to my heart and I would go to bed.


Precious LaTonia Williams (41:18.936)

Right.


Nirupa Umapathy (41:41.814)

With my blackberry attached to my chest at 10.30, okay? I was the kind of person that would get out of a business flight trip at like six o'clock, be in a cab and run to the yoga studio and do an hour and a half of like rigorous Ashtanga practice or Vinyasa practice. And I injured myself really badly. there's a concept in yoga called striving. And I know Ashley probably who's on your team will relate to this. There's a concept in yogic philosophy called striving.

If you do too many handstands and headstands and your body is not prepared for it, guess what? Injury is gonna happen. And sure enough, it happened. But I've been a lifelong striver until like 37, right? That's the recipe for perfect burnout, you know? In 2017, I got to hang out, as you know, with lot of artists and that was the first time I was introduced to the concept of self-care and radical self-care.

Radical self care. think Audre Lorde is the one who mentioned that self care is your biggest. mean, it is. Lorde, right? So it's but it's taken me seven years to unlearn not only what has been a deep personal habit, our society encourages addictive behaviors towards work. We are we are rewarded for working so hard until we burn out.


Precious LaTonia Williams (42:44.024)

Profem-centrism, Audrey Lowe, yes!


Nirupa Umapathy (43:05.194)

So my, do you want me to give like some constructive takeaways or do you want me to hold that till the very end? Because I have some constructive takeaways as well, but I don't want to sort of take this conversation off tangent.


Lisa Zeiderman (43:18.905)

you should go for it. I'm dying to hear it. I've known you for all these years. I want the constructive takeaways.


Nirupa Umapathy (43:22.466)

I think that women especially, especially women that are working mothers should absolutely put time on their calendars, literally calendar their self-care time and their alone time or whatever is their play time. That could be having mimosas with Lisa or doing like a Spotted with Precious or hanging out at a book club with me, whatever that might be, whatever makes your heart sing with joy, please calendar it. Like you would do for a meeting or an appointment. Second, definitely in your community, in addition to all your overachievers, please also have a couple of people that just like to take play as the serious profession. My sister is one. She's one character. That's my play role model. All my sister wants to do for the rest of her life is to master the art of play. I think for all the intense type A people that we have in our life, we need to have the type Bs and the type Cs and the type Ds.

You know what I mean? And the third thing is that I think we always talk about a village helping us cultivate success. We need a village to help women foster radical self-care.


Precious LaTonia Williams (44:34.564)

Mmm.


Nirupa Umapathy (44:36.31)

We need our partners and our friends to remind us to take the time off. We need each other to remind ourselves to take the time off without guilt. And we also need to, and for some of us, we might have to attribute some kind of value to it, that currency to it such that you can quantify it as ROI. Because I think for a lot of us, it's hard to take the time off because there's no value ascribed by our society towards self-care.


Lisa Zeiderman (45:06.461)

love that. I love it particularly because I'll share that this week or last week actually I guess I went to a nutritionist for the first time as part of my self care and and I never take the time to do any of this and of course my husband was like shocked and he thinks I'm now obsessed okay and basically I have hired a new best friend right because I've talked about this nutritionist all week and he said okay so you've bought yourself a best friend.


Nirupa Umapathy (45:17.259)

Yeah.


Lisa Zeiderman (45:35.143)

Really into it. I've been working out and and of course like this is a big deal because I have to fit this in and she was talking to me about boundaries and work boundaries and fitting in exercise and thinking about what I'm eating and all of that. So it's it's very very difficult because as you know Naruba and you know Precious I am I mean I have a firm it's a big firm and I am constantly working and that for me is a big reward and and I really like what I do.

But now I have to get up and I'm not gonna say that I actually like this part. I have to get up earlier in the day so I can put in this great self-care because I'm not gonna use, because I haven't reached that place yet where I'm using self-care as something that I think is really like going to take the place of work. And so I'm getting up earlier so I don't interrupt the work to help with self-care.


Precious LaTonia Williams (46:23.597)

Alright.


Nirupa Umapathy (46:27.54)

What?


Lisa Zeiderman (46:31.067)

So all I'm going to be is tired or and maybe even a little bitchy or frankly, because I'm not going to have as much sleep. And so it's, it's fascinating to me, what you've been speaking about. And I think that women do have to have to think about this and, putting it in currency, I think is really important because I will say this, if you think about if you're sick or if you don't take care of yourself, you're not going to be able to work. And so there is like a financial piece to this.

And for women who are driven, they have to think about the fact that if they want to make that long game, then they actually need to actually put in the self care. So I think.


Nirupa Umapathy (47:10.006)

Yeah, also like it's in the marathon. I'm not a marathon runner at all, but like, know how athletes like taper. They have this intense like training routine where they're running hundreds of miles and then they taper before they go for the big race. I mean, if we don't have a habit of tapering and things, but I also want to say that micro burnouts are okay. It's the macro ones that are really the problem. Micro burnouts are inevitable in our life, Lisa, but I think the tapering periods are important. The micro tapering periods are important.


Lisa Zeiderman (47:40.211)

So in terms of success, mean, I think I am hearing from you that your definition of success has evolved essentially, you know, from the time that you were in finance to today. So tell me what success looks like for you now.


Nirupa Umapathy (47:49.676)

Mm-hmm.


Nirupa Umapathy (47:58.082)

So success for 37 years or maybe 35 years was being number one according to an external report card. then in the last, from 2017, I've had to unlearn that definition of success. Success now for me, number one, and this is very unquantifiable and maybe it sounds a bit cliched, is to really learn to become my best friend. There is no way to quantify this. It's the hardest thing for me actually.

Success metric number two is to be, because I was an absentee daughter and an absentee wife and an absentee girlfriend for so many years, success metric number two is to be a better daughter, a better sister and a better partner. I am more present to my family and my loved ones right now because I deliberately carve out time. I'm the boss of my own time and space. I prioritize my time with family and my partner as much as I prioritize work and I'm working all the time. I'm working from anywhere all the time, you know?

That in a more concrete way around work, Lisa, just like you, and Preshis, just like you, I love my work. I could marry my work. I could sleep with my work. could work with my work. OK, so don't get me started about work. But I'm a multi-hyphenate at this point. I would be overjoyed if I write three good books that touch many lives. These might take me 20 years, but I'm just saying it out loud. I am working on nonfiction.


Precious LaTonia Williams (49:05.142)

No!


Nirupa Umapathy (49:22.718)

Lisa, you know this about me. I mean, I'm just learning to invest on my own. And I really would like to make a giant pot of money without damaging the planet and human beings. And I want that pot of money to grow such that it can seed one of my biggest dreams, which I've been thinking about for over 10 years. I've always wanted to see it a nano foundation. Foundation is a big word, but it's a charitable trust which will go towards becoming a sanctuary for orphans in India.

Orphaned animals and abandoned elders. So in seven years, if I could be living that dream, I really honestly would have no regrets looking back. And the third thing is that I want to touch as many bodies and spirits and minds as I'm teaching them Pilates and help people in their healing journeys. This is success for me right now. The fourth, of course, is I want to have as much fun as I can. I'm still learning to play. I still suck at it. I still suck at it.


Precious LaTonia Williams (50:19.854)

Well, Queen Narufa, I feel like you've answered questions we wanted to ask and also those that so many of our viewers didn't even know that they could ask of themselves through listening to you. I can tell you've had Beyonce drop the mic moments with me today. I feel so touched. I've gone through a lot in my life, and I've gone through burnout. I've gone through those transitions.


Nirupa Umapathy (50:39.617)

haha


Precious LaTonia Williams (50:49.294)

post-traumatic growth. And I just want to say to you that I came into this thinking one thing and I'm so glad you can never think you, you can never really predict how an interview can go. And I honestly want you to know how touched I am to feel seen, to feel heard. And I know our viewers will, our viewers and our listeners will feel the exact same way. So I don't have anything left to say other than thank you.


Nirupa Umapathy (51:20.204)

And my heart to yours, and Lisa, my heart to yours too, and to all your viewers and all the wonderful women that you touch. Just one parting thing that I wanted to mention, Lisa, is every woman that I will meet, every young girl that I'll meet, every young boy that I'll meet, never be afraid to ask for the order, as they say on the tourney floor.


Lisa Zeiderman (51:39.251)

Okay, well, so that brings us to our final and what we consider a real critical question, which is, and we ask this of all our guests, so why is the power of the ask so critical to women, especially financially? And what is this order? You texted me about it. And so before we go on, let's be real, okay? And I need to know how it all applies. So what does this mean, this order?


Precious LaTonia Williams (51:46.084)

Yeah.


Nirupa Umapathy (51:53.186)

Yeah. haha


Nirupa Umapathy (52:07.66)

So let's just say the power of the ask equals what I learned on my first day on the trading floor, which they say, ask for the order. And what is ask for the order? As a salesperson, if you don't pick up the phone and call your client and attend to their needs, you do not get the trade. You do not get the deal for the day. That's number one. Obviously, pick up the phone and ask for the order. But the second ask for the order will be when you reach out to your mentor.

The person that you've been looking at as you walk down the trading floor and you're intimidated and you walk up to them a little mousy and you're like, would you have 30 minutes or 20 minutes to have a coffee with me? I would love to tell you a little bit about where I am from and what I'm thinking about. That's how my first mentorship opportunity came about. And then you are a little less mousy as you're advancing your career. And now you're talking to a sponsor and you're like, I'm thinking I'm going to talk to my boss at the end of the year. would like to be considered for promotion to a director or a vice president or a managing director that is asking for the order you lead with your power of the ask. And the every year we have a performance review. Every year you're sitting down with your boss, whether it's you or whether it's your boss who pays you a W-2 or a 10.99 or whoever the boss might be, your creator.

You sit down and you say, is what I'm proud of this year. This is what I think I've contributed towards the organization this year. And this is what I hope to achieve for the organization and myself this year. Please, can you help me? XXXX. Get paid, get promoted, make someone else happy, make someone else rich, spread the wealth. That's ask for the order. And the last thing I would say is that there is no need to feel shame in asking to put your story out there. Because as Prashaya said, you know, in you sharing your stories of courage and valor and blood and gore and grit, you might be touching someone else's life and you might be enabling and empowering someone else to go out there and make a difficult decision that would lead to an empowered transition. And that's the power of the ask.


Lisa Zeiderman (54:19.589)
Thank you so much, Naruba. We really appreciate having you. Look, I've known you for a lot of years, but I feel like I really, really got to know you today. So thank you and precious, obviously, always. I thank you for being my co-host. It's, I mean, you are an amazing co-host and a great friend.


Nirupa Umapathy (54:38.626)

Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you so much,