Aisling's story

A seamless return to the workplace

Aisling joined Rothschild & Co’s Global Advisory office in London in 2010. She is now Co-CEO of Redburn Atlantic.

I'm sure like many women, fathers or caregivers, I was quite nervous returning from maternity leave. I'd been out for about eight months; you can feel that your knowledge has become stale and that other people have stepped into the void that you left behind.

That absolutely wasn't the case. People here, my colleagues, my juniors, my boss, H.R., other friends throughout the firm really stayed in touch with me all the time that I was away and even came into my living room, held my baby and gave them a bottle so I could make a cup of tea!

I felt like I never left, really, and when I did come back, it just worked exactly as it had done before. I felt very well looked after.

We look after one another really, and that goes for whatever stage of your life you might be at. Whether you want a lot of deal experience right now, so that you feel that you're progressing as quickly as you can, or perhaps you've got some personal goals that you're really focused on and would like a supportive set of people to help you explore those options.

I find that at Rothschild & Co, everybody is very collegiate. People are very client focused and very solutions oriented and less interested in competing internally amongst ourselves.

We very much look outside and focus on how can we do things in a slightly more interesting, more relatable way for our clients, and I love that about the group.

What we're called upon to do is give the right advice, as you might trust your doctor or your lawyer to do. You give the right advice so that your client does brilliantly over the long term. I think we've had some of our clients for 200 years!

One of the things I loved about being a junior here is that you were involved in every piece of the deal, every aspect of client management and management of other service providers. That gives you a lot of autonomy and a lot of experience at a very early stage.

Whether you decide to stay here forever, like so many of us, or not I think your opportunity set widens, versus if you're sitting just working on the financial model or just the deal process in a very large institution. I think you don't get the same satisfaction from the job. I think you don't leave with the same set of skills or relationships that you do from Rothschild & Co.

No day, no transaction, no meeting here is the same as it was yesterday or last year. We are constantly reinventing ourselves. So although we have a reputation as being an institution that has been around for hundreds of years, actually, when you get into the DNA of who we are and what we do, we are extremely entrepreneurial.

Maybe that comes from constantly looking for great solutions for your client. I think you're alive to what the opportunities are and how you're going to go after them.

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