Carla A. Harris

1962—

Finance executive

In 1999 Carla A. Harris was named a managing director for global capital markets with Morgan Stanley, one of the world's largest investment banks and financial-services firms. Harris joined the company after earning her MBA from the Harvard Business School, and was only the second African-American woman to become a managing director at the firm. Part of the first generation of black professionals to attain parity in the ranks of corporate America, Harris contended that bias is, in the end, irrelevant. "The older I become, the more I realize that it really is that simple, and so much of it is in your head and in your perceptions," she told Black Enterprise writer Caroline V. Clarke. "Yes, there can be someone that will stand in your way or try to make you feel uncomfortable, but you have the power to be unaffected by it. Your ability to do that depends on where your head is."

Born October 28, 1962, in Port Arthur, Texas, Harris grew up in Jacksonville, Florida, where her mother was a middle-school teacher and her father served as a captain for commercial fishing boats before taking over his family's retail business. She attended Roman Catholic parochial schools, graduating from Bishop Kenny High School in 1980. When it came time to fill out college applications, her guidance counselor tried to deter her from applying to Ivy League schools, but she did so anyway and was accepted at three of them. "I've always been negatively motivated," she joked to Judy Wells in the Florida Times-Union. "You can't tell me I can't do something."

Harris brought that spirit with her to Harvard University, where one of her professors told her that she had no aptitude for math—at that, she decided to major in economics, a math-heavy program. She was interested in finance as a career, but thought she would probably go to law school first. A minority-student mentoring program called Sponsors for Educational Opportunity provided some crucial direction for her when it arranged a summer internship with an investment bank on Wall Street. Her sole work experience was behind the counter of a McDonald's fast-food restaurant when she was in high school, but in the internship interview she discussed the challenges the job presented and what she learned from it. "The interviewer could see my enthusiasm, that I could follow the instructions well and take that above and beyond expectations," she told Wells in the Florida Times-Union interview. "They want to see if somebody is self-motivated enough."

Harris was so intrigued by the world of investment banking, where high-finance corporate deals are structured, that she abandoned her plans for law school and applied to Harvard Business School. "I thought lawyers put the deals together, but that summer I realized that it was really the bankers," she recalled in the interview with Clarke for Black Enterprise. "I wanted to be the one that called the shots. I wanted to be the one to give advice. I thought, ‘I have good judgment. I have good people skills and analytical skills, and this investment banking thing fits all of that.’"

After earning her MBA, Harris was hired at Morgan Stanley, and over the next few years she rose through the organization's ranks to become managing director for global capital markets in 1999. Her first years were tough, she told Clarke, because investment banking is a demanding and notoriously competitive field, and she was surprised to learn that "there is also some expectation that you will teach yourself. I walked in here thinking, ‘Hey, I'm bringing the hard work, the raw intellect to the table. Now, mold me.’ I never realized that I would run into someone who might not have the capacity to do that, or who was too insecure to do it. It was tough coming to understand what that means and then what you must do about it."

Harris's job involved raising money for initial public offerings (IPOs), and she was involved in several high-profile IPOs in the late 1990s, including Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia and United Parcel Service. In 2003 she became the director of the Equity Private Placement Group at Morgan Stanley. Despite the long hours required for the job, Harris was active in several professional or charitable organizations, including the Harvard Business School Alumni Association and the Food Bank for New York City, Food for Survival. Her achievements have been recognized on several occasions, and honors for her community service and professional talents include the Women's Professional Achievement Award from Harvard University and the Bethune Award from the National Council of Negro Women. Fortune magazine included her in its annual listing of the 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America, and Black Enterprise magazine ranked her in its annual listing of the Top 50 African Americans on Wall Street.

In 2001 Harris married at the age of thirty-eight after reconnecting with her high school boyfriend, Victor Franklin. They had met on a bowling league when she was twelve years old and he was fifteen, lost touch with one another, but then met again when both were in the Jacksonville area visiting their families.

Harris has also had a second career as a singer, soloing with the choir of her church, St. Charles Borromeo in Harlem, and singing at weddings and open-mike nights. In 2000 she put together a compact disc of holiday standards, Carla's First Christmas, and donated the proceeds to St. Charles Borromeo School and her alma mater back in Jacksonville, Bishop Kenny High School. She released a second album in 2005, and in November of that year she performed at Carnegie Hall in an event she arranged to benefit the St. Charles Borromeo and Bishop Kenny schools. A year later, on November 20, 2006, she performed a second concert at Carnegie Hall, also to benefit those schools. "Singing is the big joy of my life," she enthused to Wells in the Florida Times-Union interview. "I am really thrilled to have found a way to marry that with what I do as a banker. I'm blessed to be philanthropic, but to be able to use the gift God gave me to extend that has just been a thrill."

Harris has participated in numerous mentoring activities and has often been asked for career advice. Happy to dispense what she calls "Carla's pearls" of wisdom, she asserted that careful self-examination is vital to attaining success in the working world. "How people perceive you directly impacts how they deal with you," she told journalist Frank Norton in the Raleigh News & Observer. "Everyone should try and have three adjectives that other people might use to describe them when they're not in the room. That is important because key decisions with respect to your career are generally made when you're not in the room. Think about what you want those three adjectives to be and make sure you conduct yourself that way all of the time."

At a Glance …

Born Carla Ann Harris on October 28, 1962, in Port Arthur, TX; daughter of John (a commercial fishing boat captain and store owner) and Billie (a teacher) Harris; married Victor Adrian Franklin (a hotel manager), August 11, 2001. Education: Harvard University, AB (magna cum laude), economics, 1984; Harvard Business School, MBA, 1987.

Career: Morgan Stanley, investment banker in Mergers and Acquisitions Department, 1987-91, managing director for global capital markets, 1999-, director of Equity Private Placement Group, 2003—.

Memberships: Food Bank for New York City, Food for Survival, board chair; Morgan Stanley Foundation, board member; Harvard Business School Alumni Association, advisory board; Executive Leadership Council.

Awards: Women's Professional Achievement Award, Harvard University; Bethune Award, National Council of Negro Women; Lewis Rudin Medal for Civic Leadership, Coro New York, 2008.

Addresses: Office—Morgan Stanley, 1585 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

Selected discography

Carla's First Christmas, 2000.

Joy Is Waiting, 2006.

Sources

Periodicals

Black Enterprise, February 2003, p. 104.

Essence, March 2006, p. 130.

Florida Times-Union, May 20, 2007, p. E1.

News & Observer (Raleigh, NC), March 27, 2005.

New York Times, August 19, 2001.

—Carol Brennan