Woodlands Academy announces first recipient of alumna achievement award

Mary Callahan Erdoes, chief executive officer of JPMorgan Chase & Co.'s Asset Management division, is the inaugural recipient of Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart's Janet Erskine Stuart Alumna Achievement Award.

Its presentation Saturday, Oct. 3, was a highlight of the Lake Forest all-girls college prep high school's annual Alumnae Reunion weekend. The award honors a Woodlands Academy alumna "whose professional and personal accomplishments are both rare and extraordinary. The honoree is an exceptionally courageous and dedicated Sacred Heart woman who has forged new paths and distinguished herself as a leader in her field of endeavor. She exemplifies in pre-eminent ways the values and mission of Sacred Heart education at Woodlands Academy."

In accepting her award, Erdoes credited the well-rounded Sacred Heart education she received at Woodlands as a definite factor in getting her to where she is today. "We (girls) were taught we could do anything," she said.

Erdoes, who has been with JPMorgan Chase & Co. since 1996, oversees a division that's a global leader in investment management and private banking with more than $2.4 trillion in client assets. In addition to being a member of the firm's operating committee, Erdoes leads its strategic partnership with Highbridge Capital Management and Gávea Investimentos.

She joined JPMorgan Chase & Co. from Meredith, Martin & Kaye, a fixed income specialty advisory firm. Prior to that, she worked at Bankers Trust in corporate finance, merchant banking and high-yield debt underwriting.

After graduating from Woodlands Academy in 1985, Erdoes received a bachelor's degree in mathematics from Georgetown University, where she was the only female math major at the time, and a master's in business administration from Harvard Business School.

Erdoes' interest in math began at an early age. She credits her maternal grandmother with teaching her how to balance a checkbook at age 6. Her father, who was a Chicago investment banker, occasionally took her to the office. And in eighth grade she won her schools' math award.

Erdoes, who grew up in Winnetka, is a board member of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF and the U.S.-China Business Council, and serves on the Federal Reserve Bank of New York's Investor Advisory Committee on Financial Markets.

She recently launched two programs designed to give women in the finance industry a greater range of opportunities for career advancement. Her ReEntry program aims to bring women who have taken breaks from asset management back into the fold by way of a 14-week intensive training program. Her Women on the Move program helps women build their careers by sending top-ranking women at JP Morgan's New York headquarters on round-the-world trips to meet with other female staffers.

Forbes and Fortune magazines consistently rank Erdoes as one of the World's Most Powerful Women, and Bloomberg Markets magazine named her the World's Most Influential Money Manager for 2013.

She lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters, all of whom attend a Sacred Heart school there.