Amanda Saulean on Trusting Your People

On Amanda Saulean’s first day of work at Morgan Stanley, fresh out of college, her manager called her into her office and asked a question that would redirect the entire trajectory of her career. The job Saulean had taken was steady and consistent. “She sat me down in her office and said, ‘Are you sure you really wanna do this?’” Saulean recalls.

By the end of that conversation, Saulean was on a different team — one led by a powerhouse named Sheri, and that was that. Twenty years later, Saulean is still at Morgan Stanley.

"From a culture perspective, that's really what kept me here," she says. "I've had wonderful people involved in my journey along the whole way. And I don't think that's common everywhere."

It's a simple observation, but Saulean means it in a precise way. At a place like Morgan Stanley, she explains, everyone is smart. Intelligence is table stakes. What separates the culture, what makes people stay, is something harder to quantify — the willingness to invest in someone else. Amanda has been the beneficiary of that investment more times than she can count. Now, she considers it her responsibility to keep it going.

The People We Meet

Saulean thinks of herself not as someone with a singular set of qualities, but as an accumulation of everyone who has shaped her. Sheri came to be like an older sister. “She never failed to tell me when I was doing something wrong,” Saulean says. “And I always knew it was because she cared.”

The relationship lasted well beyond those early years. But more importantly, she established a pattern that would repeat across Saulean’s career: the idea that the right people don’t just support you—they expand what you think is possible.

"I'm a collection of the people who impressed me," she says. When Saulean got the MAKERS nomination in the Culture Carrier category, her phone lit up with messages from people she hadn't expected to hear from — people she didn’t think she’d even left an impression on. Saulean considers herself lucky to have a manager who is also a MAKER — someone she can learn from every day. And she said it plainly: “That's your network, those are the people you touch without realizing it.”

Every team she's ever been part of at Morgan Stanley has been more than just a team. A former boss and his wife are dinner companions. Some of her closest friends are current and former colleagues and travel companions. Work, she points out simply, is where we spend most of our time. It seems obvious to her that it should feel like somewhere you want to be.

Advocating for Yourself

Early in her career, Saulean didn’t spend much time thinking about what she wanted next. The system around her worked. Managers moved her into new roles, mentors opened doors and she followed. “I very much relied on my network,” she says. “And it was phenomenal.”

But at one point, during a large organizational shift, Saulean saw an outcome taking shape that, for the first time, didn’t feel right. In that same instance, she recognized that other people had been more explicit and asking for what they wanted. She hadn’t been.

“I realized I should be talking to people and making sure they know what I want and what I don’t want,” she says.

It also helped Saulean make the decision to change her career. She went from a strategy to a sales role and became a Financial Advisor Associate in the Paramus, NJ, Morgan Stanley branch. At that point, everything started to click, and she started to build the confidence to navigate her own career — a step she sees as often particularly hard for women.

Eventually, she decided her path led back to the Home Office. The experience she began accumulating, especially in interfacing with clients, helped her land where she is now — heading up Alternative Investments Client Solutions. While she was coming from a very different role, Saulean reiterates she had the right people around her. “They believed in me and invested time to teach me.”

Early in her career, that support often came in the form of people pulling her forward — opening doors, creating opportunities and helping her move into new roles. In more recent years, it has taken a different shape. With the support of her current manager, Ali, and her former manager, David, who she’d kept in touch with, Saulean has been pushed to stand on her own, speak up and take a more active role in how she shows up. Over the past four years in Alternatives, that shift has accelerated her growth in ways she hadn’t imagined, and she attributes the growth to their leadership. “It was unique to have both of their perspectives and learn from their different styles. They added so much to the fabric that I’ve been stitching together.”

Saulean now leads an alternative investments operations group where her team helps clients and financial advisors execute transactions in one of the fastest-growing areas of the business. The work is equal parts strategic and tactical. She came into this position about four years ago after seeing what alternatives could do for a client's portfolio. Saulean is quick to point out that the growth she's experienced isn't hers alone. It's a reflection of the team around her and the people who have supported her along the way.

The Advantage of Being Different

That perspective on uniqueness runs through everything Saulean does, and it didn't start at Morgan Stanley — it started on the ice.

Saulean grew up playing hockey. Her brother played and she thought it looked fun and wanted to play herself. At the time, there weren't any girls' teams. So she played with the boys. Her parents reminded her early and often that she would always have a seat at the table, even if she looked different from everyone else sitting at it. Saulean’s dad was the coach — and, by extension, her first mentor. The position she played required a significant amount of mental fortitude. But he always helped her feel prepared and to see the bigger picture.

She carried that with her through high school, where she became the first girl to play a boys varsity sport in her school's history. The athletic department, faced with evaluating her fitness, actually administered a test designed for seventh-grade boys. Her family still jokes about it. At the time, she recalls, it was the first moment she really noticed how strange her situation looked from the outside.

"It was more natural when I was younger," she says. "But it prepared me for later times in life. Now when I look at people who might be different, I try to help them see that that difference can be an asset."

It's a message she passes on as naturally as her parents had once passed it on to her. Her own five-year old daughter has recently started playing hockey. When Saulean asked whether she wanted to play with girls or boys, her daughter didn't hesitate. “Boys,” she said. 

A Workplace Where People Want to Be

The lesson is a familiar one. The same message her parents instilled early on — there is always a seat at the table — has continued to shape how Saulean shows up as a leader.

“My mom held an elected position,” Saulean said. “She had to please a lot of different people to make sure she could retain her position. It’s not dissimilar from the work that I do. Building personal relationships. Never burning bridges. Making sure everybody feels like they're working towards the right thing together."

To that end, Saulean’s group went on to create their own culture committee so they can run events they feel a stronger personal connection to. Recently, two women on the team raised their hands and said they wanted to do something for International Women's Month, and they did it. “If work is where you spend most of your life, fun is not just a ‘nice-to-have.’”