Anne Richards

Anne Richards speaks with the deliberate, course-correcting logic of a Navigator throughout this interview. She frames her entire career as a series of recalibrations toward where she feels most alive, from CERN to consulting to asset management, each move guided by honest self-assessment rather than a predetermined destination. As CEO of Fidelity International she applies the same orientation to the firm, mapping a patient path into China, calibrating the tension between digital and human client interaction, and steering ESG strategy toward engagement over divestment. Richards names the headwinds plainly, including insurance-company culture at MNG, the unit-cost challenge in manufacturing investment products, and pandemic pressures on women in finance, and then charts pragmatic routes through each. Her engineering instinct and long-horizon patience, captured perfectly in her allotment metaphor, define a leader who keeps the whole terrain in view while adjusting bearing at every milestone.