On
Sundays, you’ll find Barbara Goodstein, with her gym
bag, at St. Raymond’s High School gym in the Bronx, NY. No,
the financial marketing executive isn’t working out or
coaching: She’s there for travel baseball practice
with her 11 year-old son. And while this is routine for many
parents, Goodstein puts a different spin on it. When she opens
her gym bag, no sweats or sneakers spill out. Piled inside
is all of the work she removed from her desk on Friday afternoon,
along with colored highlighters, pens and post-its.
Seated in
the bleachers, while her son fields grounders, Goodstein proceeds
to spread out. She makes piles -- things for her assistant
to file, garbage, stuff that requires a response, stuff for
her boss, etc. “I have a whole office set up around me,
it’s my most productive work time all week.” (This,
despite the clamor of practice and the fathers’ boisterous
conversation (she is the only mother there). “I never
have three hours alone with no phone calls and no one talking
to me, ” she says, laughing. |
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At AXA Equitable, a member of the global AXA Group, Goodstein
is responsible for all life insurance and annuity product design
at AXA. She leads the development of all marketing programs,
sales materials and product launches and directs market intelligence
research and company-wide advertising and promotion. In
addition, she works with the company’s actuarial and finance
areas to assure appropriate product pricing, asset/liability match,
risk analysis and underwriting approach.
A household name in France, where the parent group is headquartered,
the brand is not as well known in the U.S, so Goodstein is fixed
on her goal -- “to dramatically and significantly increase
awareness of the brand.”
Goodstein joined the company in July of 2005 and 10 months later,
she launched a new national advertising campaign aimed at encouraging
the approximately 77 million baby boomers in America to take action
to ensure their income needs in retirement are addressed. Created
by Merkley + Partners, the ads feature the animatronic gorilla
that appeared in the major motion picture “Instinct” from
Touchstone Pictures (1999).
“We came up with a metaphor for people’s procrastination,
which is the 800 pound gorilla in the room. And we have that gorilla
facing people directly and telling them it is time to start planning
for retirement. It seems to resonate well with everyone.” To
date, the campaign has doubled brand awareness and sales in their
target markets – New York, Chicago
and Miami. This year, the company will continue its network
television ads in these three markets, and will expand to Washington,
D.C., St. Louis, Tampa, Atlanta, Denver, and Minneapolis. Earlier, the
ad took best in the insurance category and top overall honors,
Best of Show, in The Journal of Financial Advertising and Marketing 2007
Media Strategy Awards. “All of the other big advertisers
were there -- Schwab, Citi, E*TRADE, Fidelity -- and with our very
limited budget, we beat them.” She
added, “historically, the company and even more -- the category
-- has not been on the cutting edge of marketing. Now, that’s
about to change.”
Goodstein has been in the business of marketing financial services
for nearly 20 years. Prior to joining AXA Equitable, she spent
four years as SVP of Personal Financial Services for JP Morgan
Chase – a platform that provided a broad range of banking
and brokerage services to affluent clients within the branch system.
She essentially started a “business within the business from
scratch.” She created the strategy, hired people and
changed the way the bank did business with affluent clients.
Earlier, Goodstein was creator, president and CEO of Instinet.com,
a retail entry into the online brokerage industry. She has
also held senior management positions at Scudder Kemper Investments,
Van Eck Global, Bankers Trust and Shearson Lehman Brothers. Goodstein
graduated from Brown University with a degree in English, and went
to Columbia for her MBA.
Goodstein grew up in Brooklyn, the older of two daughters. Her
father worked in the garment business and her mother stayed at
home. Her parents thought that it was important for her and
her sister to get educated, so that they would be well rounded
adults. When Goodstein told her father that she wanted to get her
MBA, she recalls his reaction as “How will that help you
get your MRS degree?” That response intensified her determination
to go on to graduate school. “I don’t think anyone
in my family ever thought that I was going to become a professional
person with a career, and I doubt that they aspired for me to do
that either.” Her parents felt strongly that their daughter
should marry, stay home and have children.
Goodstein did fulfill part of their dream for her – she
had children, but she never stayed home. After her first child,
Josh (now 11) was born, she returned to consulting three weeks
after giving birth. While on three month maternity leave with her
second, Rachel, 9, she did what some people dream of all their
lives: She wrote a business plan, raised two million dollars and
opened Spazzia, an Italian restaurant in Manhattan. “I was
bored, with time on my hands.” Goodstein, who is a gourmet
cook, had always wanted to open a restaurant. Though she calls
Spazzia her “biggest mistake”, she loved the Cheers-like
quality of the place and always having “a table for brunch
on the upper west side.” Evidently even nonstop Goodstein
concluded that being CEO of Instinet, a restaurateur and a
mother of two small children was a bit over-the-top.
These days, Goodstein is up and on e-mail by 6:00 a.m. She wakes
her kids at 7:15, takes them to school and is in the office starting
meetings by 8:00. She chose to live in Manhattan so she can run
back and forth whenever there is some kind of event at school,
and proudly asserted that she has made every play and parent teacher
conference. She has meetings every hour or half hour throughout
the day, with an occasional 15 minutes to grab lunch. This goes
on until 6:00 p.m. when she returns to e-mail again. She goes home
briefly to see her children and then to spinning class at 7:00.
From 8:00 to 9:30, she puts the kids to bed and then it’s
back to work again. “I hardly sleep,” she said.
While Goodstein is clearly motivated by money, but she relishes
challenge and working with people she enjoys. She emphasizes that
she couldn’t do any of this without the support and commitment
of her husband, who shares half the burden and makes it possible
for her to travel for her job. When asked what she cherishes most
in her life, it is her time with her husband and children. She
is proud of her dual accomplishments of raising two well-adjusted
children and maintaining a senior role at big company – but
points out that,“The job without the family would not be
as meaningful.”
Goodstein firmly believes that women can do it all. “If
you can prioritize your family and children, the rest will fall
into line.” She does acknowledge bypassing other pleasures
like television, an active social life and learning to become a
great golfer. But, no regrets, she says, “those things will
be there someday.” She is encouraging to women considering
a career in the insurance industry, which she describes as having
unlimited upside potential because they are underrepresented.
Nevertheless, it appears that Goodstein does have know how to
combine social life with her business. On Super Bowl Sunday, she
had 45 people over to see the game and the premiere of two new "800-pound
gorilla" commercials. It was the first time in the company's
history that they advertised during the Super Bowl. And serious
foodie that she is, she still found time to cook every bit of the
menu herself.
A few weeks ago, her son mentioned after baseball practice that
he had played really well that day. Goodstein quipped that
she had seen him miss three throws. “How did you know that?” he
wondered. Apparently, he hasn’t yet grasped that his mother
never takes her eye off the ball.
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