The Educator: Georgette Kiser, The Carlyle Group

Dan DeFrancesco talks with Georgette Kiser about how that mindset has been a major part of her philosophy since taking over as CIO of The Carlyle Group in January 2015. Photos by Noah Willman

Any teacher will tell you that in order to be a truly effective educator you need to know your audience. There is no golden lesson plan for algebra or perfect strategy for teaching calculus. Every class and student is unique in how quickly and efficiently they can consume and understand a topic. 

To put a finer point on it, teachers need to understand their clients (i.e. students). What works for the morning English class might not necessarily be as effective for the afternoon one. 

Georgette Kiser isn’t teaching Shakespeare or biology, but she is responsible for developing the technology roadmap for The Carlyle Group, the Washington, DC-based alternative asset manager. And while the two roles might seem worlds apart, Kiser, who has served as the CIO of the firm since January 2015, has an approach similar to that of a teacher when it comes to her desire to understand exactly whom she is serving.

“People who are the pure technologists out there always have to remember that the customer experience and the process are key before figuring out the underlying technology you’re going to use, because sometimes you may not have to buy that technology,” Kiser says. “It’s something that I brought into Carlyle. We’re always trying to figure out what’s the true customer experience. How do I make the Global Technology and Solutions employees here at Carlyle realize they’ve got to understand the business and what the business users really want? It’s not about the technology all the time. It could be just a process change. The technology is an enabler for the productivity.”

Getting Educated

The parallels between how teachers approach their jobs and how Kiser tackles a business issue at Carlyle are easy to see considering her background. Kiser’s mother, Annie Thompson, was an educator and had no problem putting her children to work early. Before she was even in kindergarten, Kiser and her siblings helped grade her mother’s students’ papers. Those early lessons in math stuck with her, leading Kiser to major in mathematics with a concentration in computer science at the University of Maryland in College Park. 

In fact, Kiser initially wanted to be a high school or college calculus teacher. Inspired by her mother, and hoping to give back some of what she had learned, Kiser’s plan was to get into education. It wasn’t until the end of her sophomore year during a trip to the career center that she realized the opportunities available to her. 

College Park was also where Kiser was able to further develop her critical thinking. The professors at Maryland helped her understand that technology is just a piece of the overall puzzle when it comes to solving problems.

“The one thing I liked about the Maryland mathematics program and focus in computer science is the thought process. It’s about thinking to me, and about trying to figure out the solution,” Kiser says. “It’s not always the technology—it’s the process of how to get there and then there is a product to enable it to make it better, which is when the technology comes into play. So thinking and ‘solutioning’ has always been my driving mandate.” 

Adapt

It wasn’t just a lesson in problem solving Kiser got early in life. She also learned how to adapt to different environments. Kiser, a Baltimore native, was selected to participate in Baltimore County’s gifted and talented program, affording her the opportunity to attend Pikesville middle and high school, located about 10 miles northwest of Baltimore’s city center. While the school was only roughly six miles from her home—a distance she knew all too well from the times her brother wouldn’t pick her up from school, forcing Kiser, a cross country runner, to jog home—it might as well have been a world away from where she grew up in Woodmoor, Md. 

At the time, the school was predominantly Jewish and affluent, according to Kiser. The joke was that Pikesville’s schools were the closest thing you could get to a private school while still being in a public setting, she says.

It was a culture shock for Kiser, who felt like she was out of her league. She remembers pleading with her mother to let her go back to her local school, a request that was denied. To this day, Kiser thanks her mother for forcing her to stick it out, as she labels it a major turning point in her life. 

The initial recognition of the opportunity she had been given occurred when she attended a fellow student’s house to work on a project. While she was immediately impressed by the beauty of the home, what stood out to her was how the parents treated her as if she was one of their own children. It was at that point that she realized the world is not always what people think it is, and prejudices a person might have because of their surroundings don’t necessarily hold true.  

“It helped a lot in my career, because whenever I step into a situation, people often say: ‘Oh, who are you going to get rid of? Who are you going to fire? Who are you going to bring in?’” Kiser says. “I spend time trying to understand all the people I have. What are the good things about them? What are the bad things? How can we make that work before I think about managing anybody out of a situation? I think my path helped open my eyes to the fact that everybody brings something to the table. Let’s figure out how to make it work together.”  

Communication Is Key

Kiser took that approach in January 2015 when she was named the CIO of The Carlyle Group, which has $188 billion under management across 126 funds and 160 funds of funds. Kiser took her first 30 days on the job to do an assessment of the state of the technology department before making any major changes. She remembers, at the time, the lead IT team being scared that she would come in and clean house, a tactic prior CIOs had employed, according to Kiser.

She made it clear that was not her plan. Instead, she spoke with those on both the business and technology sides to see what their strategies were and if the two were meeting. She found that they were, but that there was still a lack of communication between them. There needed to be more transparency between the two groups and better change management. 

“My first town hall they were right up on the slide. I said: ‘You guys are not bad technologists; you’re just not talking to people. You’re not telling them what you’re doing. They have no clue. You don’t really understand what they want. Are you adding any value to what they really need?’” Kiser says. 

It was a point drilled into Kiser early in her career at T. Rowe Price, where she spent 18 years before leaving to take the CIO role at Carlyle. When it came to technology projects, Rich Whitney, a portfolio manager at T. Rowe Price who Kiser worked with, would consistently tell her: “Georgette, just because you can doesn’t mean you should.”

That message resonated with Kiser, who to this day considers it one of the most important lessons she learned in her nearly two decades spent at the Baltimore-based investment firm.  

To be a successful technologist, one needs to really understand and appreciate the customer experience. At the end of the day, technology’s main goal is to help the business do its job better, she says. 

“With technology, I always thought we could build this and they will come. No, it doesn’t work that way. You’ve got to understand exactly what they need. What they want. How they work. Because it’s productivity for them,” Kiser says.

Kiser saw the benefits of getting to know the customer first-hand. She worked side-by-side with many in the front office at T. Rowe Price, managing systems for portfolio managers and quantitative teams. She didn’t report into IT—instead, she worked as part of the firm’s equity business. She built strong relationships with the team and was able to figure out exactly what they were looking for, adjusting her IT strategy accordingly. Kiser says spending time with portfolio managers and trading analysts before building the firm’s proprietary trading tools made T. Rowe Price a better organization.

The experience helped her establish guardrails when it came to deciding what technology projects to pursue. Back-office operations tended to be standardized and were outsourced, whereas front-office functionality had to be customized and therefore was built in-house. 

Be Heard

Kiser had a chance to implement that philosophy shortly after her arrival at Carlyle. The firm was in the midst of a network change when she was hired, moving from IBM Virtela to Orange. She told her team that it was important that those on the business side not only knew what was going on, but understood the benefits of completing the project.

The team didn’t see the point, according to Kiser. Frankly, who was going to care about a back-office project? Kiser disagreed. It was a big change that was very expensive. The two sides had to be transparent. 

So every week, Kiser brought up the project at the management committee meeting to keep the executives informed throughout the process. The result was two-fold, she says. 

“The team was impressed that the executive side actually understood what they were doing and would actually have conversations with them. The executive side was impressed that the project was deployed so seamlessly,” Kiser says.

The changes have continued, as Kiser has led a rebranding of the entire IT department, now called Global Technology and Solutions. The latter is an important addition, as the department looks to sell itself on the value it adds across the firm, Kiser says. 

One example of the increased focus on customer experience is what Kiser calls the “white glove group,” made up of operations employees and considered the first line of attack. They walk the halls twice a week going into people’s offices and asking them if they are having any problems with any of the firm’s products. Solving simple issues, like helping portfolio managers understand how to better use their iPhones, has proven immensely popular with those on the business side. 

Kiser has even taken it upon herself to personally open up the lines of communications. She runs a monthly blog where she discusses her opinion on different topics or talks about her vision for what the firm will be doing for the upcoming year. 

“It allows another forum where people can put their ideas out there,” Kiser says. 

All About Data

It’s not strictly all about communication for Kiser. Going forward, she says her goal will be to make Carlyle a data-driven firm. She wants the fund and investment managers to have the due-diligence, decision-support and analytical systems in place so they can ask any question and generate data without someone having to hold their hand throughout the process. 

The underlying platform is already in place for Carlyle’s enterprise data, according to Kiser, but the firm is still two to three years away from achieving its ultimate goal around leveraging its data. 

The project is a major one and ultimately part of the legacy she hopes to eventually leave at the firm. The hope, she says, is to get to a point where both external (limited partners) and internal customers (founders, executives) can ask different questions and pull data together quickly so that they can study trends and figure out how to make the overall business better.

And while the project still has a long way to go, one thing is certain: Working with those who will directly use the product will be of upmost importance to Kiser and her team.

“That customer experience, I have to tell you, I think it’s key. Really getting to understand the customer base here at Carlyle,” Kiser says. “I enjoy it. I like learning about what they do and how we can help make it better. I can say here at Carlyle, people want to talk to me because now it’s kind of like they trust that we’re going to listen to them and try to figure out what we can do about it. That trust is a big thing.” 

Georgette Kiser Fundamental Data

Name: Georgette Kiser

Age: 48

Title: CIO, The Carlyle Group

Hometown: Baltimore

Education: BS in mathematics with a concentration in computer science from University of Maryland in College Park; MS in mathematics from Villanova University; MBA from University of Baltimore

Hobbies: Triathlons, reading autobiographies, family