Hailing from a small town in Indiana, Manisha Thakor ’92 was the girl next door who has now taken a full-time career in the world of finance as the Director of Wealth Strategies for Women at The Buckingham Family of Financial Services, in addition to running her own financial education consultancy, Moneyzen.
“Wellesley teaches us to speak our truth, know ourselves and have the confidence to trust our guts and intuition,” she said.
Describing herself as “chubby with coke-bottle glasses, acne and psoriasis,” Thakor was never the “cool girl.” She was the nerdy girl with the glasses who struggled to fit in, but all she wanted to do was pave her own path because she knew that those paved by others weren’t for her.
After two years at the investment management firm, Thakor went on to get her Masters of Business Administration degree (MBA) from HBS and worked at an investment management firm run by an HBS graduate for 12 years. Following this, she worked briefly at another management firm before setting up her own business, Moneyzen.
When a Wellesley alum she babysat for encouraged her to visit the campus, Thakor fell in love with the institution. “I was smart like all of us Wellesley women are. I was valedictorian of my high school class, but nobody in my family ever went to a school like Wellesley,” she said. “[The alumna] was the absolute height of chic, and I wanted to be just like her.”
“[Moneyzen was] initially set up as a standalone financial education consultancy, and then I turned it into a registered investment advisory firm where I had individual clients whose money I was managing,” Thakor explained. “Now it’s in its third iteration, back to its original roots: a financial education consultancy through which I teach, and I speak, and I write about personal finance.
Upon coming to Wellesley, Thakor majored in American Studies and minored in Economics. She was passionate about women’s independence and women’s economic empowerment, and wanted to major in Women’s Studies, “but I thought my parents would kill me, so I [took] American Studies because it was a surreptitious way to take as many Women’s Studies classes as I possibly could without getting a degree that said Women’s Studies on it,” she explained.
When asked about the best advice she’d received as a student, Thakor mentioned Professor Susan M. Reverby from the Women’s and Gender Studies department and how she once said, “Your life is like this triangle, you’ve got home, profession, and romantic life; if two of the three things are working out for you—that’s awesome.”
She reminisces about the days she used to eat pizza into the late hours in Schneider, converse with friends in the warmth of the common rooms and of course, dream near Lake Waban. A member of Phi-Sig, an intramural rower and a volunteer at a women’s shelter, Thakor also kept busy with her books and her classes.
Thakor went on to discuss that perfection isn’t always necessary, and is, in fact, an unrealistic goal.
During her junior year, she studied abroad at Oxford. Upon reading “A Room of One’s Own” by Virginia Woolf, Thakor said she “made the linkage between women’s empowerment and financial independence” and decided to fuse her passion for women’s issues with personal finance and investing.
Upon graduation, Thakor’s goal was to attend Harvard Business School (HBS), and upon matriculation, she started off in investment banking.
Within a year, she learned that she hated it. She disliked the lack of control she had over the long hours that a career in investment banking demanded. She didn’t appreciate going to work not knowing whether or not she would be able to go home at night. The transition between Wellesley and the male-dominated finance industry was jarring.
“There are two sets of dynamics in financial services. One: it’s still incredibly male dominated—and I’ve been a girl’s guy or a guy’s girl. I don’t talk sports; I just don’t like it. Two: there’s a certain personality type that’s rewarded in that field,” Thakor explained. It was a personality type that wasn’t hers.
“Wellesley gave me the courage to know that if something [was] not working, I [could] go and find something else.” She found an advertisement in The New York Times for an opening at an investment management firm, a field she knew nothing about. Still, she put a resume together, got the job and found it to be a perfect fit.
Hailing from a small town in Indiana, Manisha Thakor ’92 was the girl next door who has now taken a full-time career in the world of finance as the Director of Wealth Strategies for Women at The Buckingham Family of Financial Services, in addition to running her own financial education consultancy, Moneyzen.
“Wellesley teaches us to speak our truth, know ourselves and have the confidence to trust our guts and intuition,” she said.
Describing herself as “chubby with coke-bottle glasses, acne and psoriasis,” Thakor was never the “cool girl.” She was the nerdy girl with the glasses who struggled to fit in, but all she wanted to do was pave her own path because she knew that those paved by others weren’t for her.
After two years at the investment management firm, Thakor went on to get her Masters of Business Administration degree (MBA) from HBS and worked at an investment management firm run by an HBS graduate for 12 years. Following this, she worked briefly at another management firm before setting up her own business, Moneyzen.
When a Wellesley alum she babysat for encouraged her to visit the campus, Thakor fell in love with the institution. “I was smart like all of us Wellesley women are. I was valedictorian of my high school class, but nobody in my family ever went to a school like Wellesley,” she said. “[The alumna] was the absolute height of chic, and I wanted to be just like her.”
“[Moneyzen was] initially set up as a standalone financial education consultancy, and then I turned it into a registered investment advisory firm where I had individual clients whose money I was managing,” Thakor explained. “Now it’s in its third iteration, back to its original roots: a financial education consultancy through which I teach, and I speak, and I write about personal finance.
Upon coming to Wellesley, Thakor majored in American Studies and minored in Economics. She was passionate about women’s independence and women’s economic empowerment, and wanted to major in Women’s Studies, “but I thought my parents would kill me, so I [took] American Studies because it was a surreptitious way to take as many Women’s Studies classes as I possibly could without getting a degree that said Women’s Studies on it,” she explained.
When asked about the best advice she’d received as a student, Thakor mentioned Professor Susan M. Reverby from the Women’s and Gender Studies department and how she once said, “Your life is like this triangle, you’ve got home, profession, and romantic life; if two of the three things are working out for you—that’s awesome.”
She reminisces about the days she used to eat pizza into the late hours in Schneider, converse with friends in the warmth of the common rooms and of course, dream near Lake Waban. A member of Phi-Sig, an intramural rower and a volunteer at a women’s shelter, Thakor also kept busy with her books and her classes.
Thakor went on to discuss that perfection isn’t always necessary, and is, in fact, an unrealistic goal.
She recalls that at the end of her year abroad, she was reflecting on her experience and sat down and thought about what she wanted from life. “I drew a triangle on a napkin. On the top, I wrote ‘simplicity,’ on the bottom left, I wrote ‘small joys,’ and on the right, ‘financial independence.’” She looks back at this triangle every year, and knows that nothing has changed.
These three things are still what she wants. The only thing that has changed is that she added a ‘Z’ in the center of the triangle, standing for “zoom,” to remind her to be present and aware with no expectations.
She found and continues to find strength within this little triangle—through promotions she felt she deserved but didn’t receive, a divorce and starting over at a new firm in a new city at age 46. Simplicity, small joys and financial independence continue to be the anchors in her life.
