Outgoing Bridgewater co-CEO Eileen Murray explains how she smashed the hedge fund world's glass ceiling and why her biggest early-career mistake was not asking for help

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Bridgewater Associates co-CEO Eileen Murray is stepping down from her post.

• Bridgewater co-CEO Eileen Murray, who will leave the $160 billion hedge fund next year, told attendees at the Project Punch Card conference on Wednesday that she is "definitely going to do something" after leaving the hedge fund.
• Murray went over some of the biggest mistakes of her career and explained how women and underrepresented people can break into the finance space.
• "The biggest mistake I made was I didn't, early on, ask for help," she said.
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Eileen Murray is the most powerful woman in the $3.3 trillion hedge fund industry, but admits that breaking the glass ceiling caused "a lot of glass to fall on me."

While Murray, who was an executive at Morgan Stanley before becoming the co-CEO of Bridgewater Associates, is happy about the progress that has been made in the industry from when she started, she's still disappointed in how far is left to go.

"I'm not sure if I should cry or do a happy dance," she told attendees at the Project Punch Card conference, which is held for students underrepresented in the investment industry.

The hedge fund industry in 2020 will get less diverse as well, as Murray is leaving Bridgewater for "the next chapter of her career" after more than a decade at Ray Dalio's $160 billion firm. Dalio transitioned out of the CEO job in 2011, and five people have served in the role since.

Murray told conference-goers that "I am definitely going to do something after Bridgewater," recounting how she "was getting itchy" at Thanksgiving thinking about her next move.

She didn't say what she planned to do next beyond the fact that she is currently in conversations, and "it's going to be with people I really like" on a topic she is passionate about.

To that extent, she is following her own advice for women looking to get into the investment industry. She told students who were thinking about their careers to figure out both what they want to do and what they don't want to do, and make sure to find firms that have leadership that inspires them.

"Who you do whatever you want to do with is more important" than what you do, she said. These are firms, she believes, that will help the gender imbalance in finance's upper echelon even out.

She laid out how to move up within a company, distinguishing between a mentor and a sponsor, the latter of which is someone senior to you that will take a chance on you in a new role. She said she had several sponsors that helped her become the controller at Morgan Stanley in her early 30s.

It made her the one of the few women at that level in all of finance, she said, something that people would assume she would take pride in. In actuality, that she was nearly alone at that level frustrated her - "I'm not proud of that, how can I change that?"

Murray warned students from underrepresented backgrounds about trying to go at it alone, even if there aren't many people who look like them at their company. She said the biggest mistake she made was when she thought she knew everything when she was in the controller role at Morgan Stanley.

"The biggest mistake I made was I didn't, early on, ask people for help," she said. She worked 20-hour days, and her family eventually had to intervene, telling her that she was working too much.

"I just made myself crazy. I didn't have the wisdom and common sense to say I don't know everything," she said.

"In life, you can't get an A on every test."

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