Adena Friedman: Adena Friedman’s Leadership in Modernizing NASDAQ

Nasdaq may evoke images of its iconic stock exchange, but President and CEO Adena Friedman oversees much more than that. Her business provides global technology solutions that support financial systems worldwide.

As COVID-19 winds down, Friedman shares three enduring leadership principles she has adopted and advocated for during its implementation.

1. Investing in the Future

Though her success might appear to have come through hard work alone, Adena Friedman acknowledges it was her determination that led her to her current position of Nasdaq president and CEO. When she was appointed in 2017, it marked the first time ever a woman led one of America’s major stock exchanges – something Friedman is keen on building upon to advance gender equity within finance.

At NASDAQ, she has prioritized increasing access to capital markets and encouraging more women into financial fields. One way she has done this is through expanding their investment in early-stage companies with its Purpose Fund – designed to accelerate startup growth through providing them with essential resources needed for success.

As Friedman considers the future, she recognizes a need for innovation in how people invest and conduct business. This could include using technology to facilitate trade and information sharing. She believes demographic trends will also drive sustainable investments like green assets – women tend to be long-term investors while younger generations more closely aligned with climate-related investments can invest with five-10 year horizons required by such investments.

Friedman has been striving to make her company more agile by speeding innovation with cloud solutions, artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies. She has utilized these tools in multiple ways – such as through its acquisition of Verafin’s blockchain-powered solution Verafin which detects financial fraud and criminal activity.

Friedman has also implemented more effective communication strategies with her employees. For example, she has switched from holding quarterly town hall meetings for all employees to weekly or biweekly meetings; additionally, as companies return workers back into the workplace under COVID-19, Friedman emphasizes maintaining an appropriate balance between employee safety and their ability to continue performing effectively in their jobs.

Friedman and her team at Nasdaq play an invaluable role in global economies. Her focus lies on making sure that Nasdaq continues to adapt so as to remain the world’s foremost capital markets exchange.

2. Driving Innovation

Adena Friedman is a staunch believer that the future of any company rests with the people working there and the culture they establish. As President of Nasdaq, Adena believes in harnessing innovation. She embraces human spirit.

Friedman was honored as one of Forbes Most Powerful Women for 2021 for her contributions in driving innovation at Nasdaq by investing in its business model and expanding the product offerings that expand beyond stock exchange trading. Along the way, she has also worked to encourage diversity at her workplace.

She rejoined the company in 2014 as President to oversee Listing Services (market technology and corporate solutions), Information Services (data and index solutions), and Technology Solutions – which together account for more than half of revenue. Her goal has been to double growth of these core businesses while seeking new markets and investing in emerging technologies, like data services.

Quandl, an alternative data firm that tracks private jets live, allows investors to track Occidental Petroleum corporate jets in real time and potentially profit from any energy deal announcement before it happens. Since being acquired, Quandl has already played an instrumental role in spurring several deals within the oil and gas sector.

Friedman is committed to fighting financial crime. She views money laundering as a $3 trillion-dollar issue that requires aggressive action and cutting-edge technologies like Verafin, which utilizes machine learning for suspicious activity detection. Nasdaq has taken significant steps toward this end by investing in Verafin.

Friedman views great leaders as those who can inspire and motivate their teams to embrace change through hard work–and her collection of four-leaf clovers! She claims she finds between 20-40 four-leaf clovers each year which she presses between books or frames in her office or even keeps in her car! Check out this week’s Office Hours with Spencer episode for more from Adena Friedman about leadership, capital markets’ future prospects and why going public can spark innovation.

3. Investing in People

Friedman made history when she made history when she became the first female CEO of a major stock exchange in the US when she took over Nasdaq in 2017. In this role, her goal was to improve efficiency, product development, growth and expansion; which she has accomplished while forging ahead as an example for other women at NASDAQ and within finance in general.

Friedman believes exchanges will continue to serve an essential function as the central hubs where buyers and sellers meet; however, she sees Nasdaq’s most crucial future function as being providing technology that facilitates capital market activity.

Friedman has led her company with determination and investment in people and technologies during her time as CEO. She’s enabled it to diversify into new lines of business such as data research and software as a service (SaaS), increasing revenues while expanding reach and reach. Furthermore, Friedman prioritizes creating an environment of innovation while supporting diversity and inclusion through efforts directed towards building culture of inclusion.

Friedman has proven her investment in people is paying dividends by leading the company to record returns under her leadership. Additionally, she remains dedicated to increasing minority and female employee ranks – something she considers part of an ongoing journey.

Friedman is also focused on developing technology that will aid her efforts against crime in the capital markets. Recently, she announced her purchase of RegTech provider Verafin – which uses artificial intelligence technology to identify money laundering and other forms of financial crime – an issue she views as multi-trillion-dollar in scale that requires attention; she hopes Verafin’s technology can keep money out of criminal hands.

As Friedman prepares to celebrate her company’s 50th Anniversary, she looks ahead with anticipation and optimism. In a recent video interview with McKinsey’s Vijay D’Silva and Roberta Fusaro she discussed where the company has come in its first five decades and where it is headed; watch below.

4. Fighting Financial Crime

After 17 years at Nasdaq, Friedman left in 2011 to become CFO at the Carlyle Group. Her decision allowed her to gain experience on the buy side at an esteemed firm while living closer to home with her family – as well as eliminating her commute back and forth between New York City and Washington, DC. But three years later she reversed that decision to return to Nasdaq – it has proven one of her wisest business moves yet!

Friedman has made it her mission as CEO to drive efficiency, innovation and growth at NASDAQ. To that end, she has implemented a dual growth strategy focused on technology products all the time; additionally she is spearheading an aggressive offensive against financial crime.

Money laundering and other forms of fraud have become all too prevalent in finance, compromising company integrity and trustworthiness while having wide-reaching ramifications on global economies. Accordingly, Nasdaq’s team led by Friedman are committed to combating financial crime as a priority.

Stock market major, NASDAQ, has made investments in financial technology to strengthen their anti-fraud efforts over recent years, most notably with Verafin’s acquisition in 2020; an anti-money laundering and countering financial crime risk management provider used by over 2,000 financial institutions in North America that uses machine learning techniques to detect suspicious activity.

Nasdaq is taking steps to bolster its capabilities by incorporating Verafin into its capital markets technology platforms, including Calypso – which offers comprehensive capital market risk management, treasury, cash and collateral management, post-trade reporting solutions as well as regulatory reporting solutions – and AxiomSL (which offers corporate and securities information management, shareholder disclosure as well as capital and liquidity management), using AI in these products to enhance efficiency and effectiveness in its anti-fraud initiatives.