Natalie Westerbarkey at Fidelity found a small silver lining to pandemic restrictions. Image credit: Maison Moderne

Natalie Westerbarkey at Fidelity found a small silver lining to pandemic restrictions. Image credit: Maison Moderne

Natalie Westerbarkey explains how she stayed positive during the covid-19 lockdowns and teleworking period. At the same time, she is happy that physical conferences are slowly starting up again.

Westerbarkey is head of EU public policy at Fidelity International, a fund firm with $812.8bn in assets under management.

Aaron Grunwald: You wanted to talk about “making the most out of every situation”. What are you referring to?

: I was thinking about the last couple of years, actually, so the pandemic. We were all completely taken by surprise. It wasn’t our choice to be in the situation, it’s just simply where we landed.... I was very grateful and lucky that I continued my work because so many people lost their work or had to go into partial work.

In my role as head of EU public policy, what’s important is to have a network of people that knows each other well. To influence the outcome of policies, it is all based on trust. And I felt I was very lucky to already have established that network because I joined Fidelity over four years ago and I was in a similar role when I was based in London. So I could very much carry on performing my role in the last two years, because I already had established an internal as well as external network. But at the same time, of course, it was very challenging, because we all sat at home without any interaction.

I, however, had the opportunity to spend some time with my family in Germany, to work virtually from there. And that’s what I mean by making the most out of the situation. Before the pandemic, I typically traveled a lot. I think 2019 was one of the busiest business travel years I ever had.

So suddenly, I was at home. And yet, I tried to look at it positively because I thought instead of being completely alone, I’d rather spend some time with my family, who I don’t see very often because they live in Germany and I live in Luxembourg and I travel most of the time.

What was challenging about teleworking for you?

I think what was challenging was, again, that typically in my role I go to a lot of conferences, I meet a lot of people face to face. Often I don’t set up a full meeting [schedule], but at these events it is sort of the side conversations or the unplanned encounters and the opportunity to expand the network [that are valuable]. Because if you go to a conference or seminar, you meet other people that you didn’t know before. So the expansion of the network [and] this sort of coincidental getting to know more people, that was important in my role and was something that stopped, because, obviously, you have to know someone before you set up a video conference.

[This month] I’m going to a conference in Paris. And I realised that I’m looking forward to that, because that’s really what was missing, to meet people and to meet new people. This trust relationship is what’s really the foundation of everything. And I found it harder to build that trust relationship with new people over virtual communication.

How else did you use your “virtual” time?

Privately I tried to make the most out of the situation by simply trying to improve my French... it’s a language I adore and I learned at school. And I feel that it widens my horizon and [allows me to] speak to people that do completely different things in life than I do. That is very refreshing as well.

How did you improve your French?

I found an online course with the Alliance française in Brussels [where she often stays for business]. It’s an evening course. It’s a group course, so one meets people that operate in a complete different type of environment. [They don’t work] in financial services, but they do something totally different.

So now that the restrictions are being lifted, do you plan to travel as much as before, like you did in 2019?

I think I will travel, but not as much as before, for a couple of reasons. [The pandemic has given a boost to] ESG, so environmental, social, governance factors that we now factor into our investment process more when we invest in a company. We look at, what is the carbon footprint of that company, how do they treat their employees, are minimum social standards kept? And because of that, I think travel will be a bit reduced, generally and at Fidelity, to reduce carbon footprint.

So I don’t think I’ll be jetting around as before. But that’s fine, because now we’re all used to more virtual communication, especially across the pond. I’m sure we’ll still travel at some point to the United States and to Asia. But overall, [travel] activity will be less and it will be more going by train. I think it’s still important to travel. Because of, as I mentioned, building trust.

[Secondly] because the pandemic is still there. Meaning just because everything suddenly opens, it doesn’t mean that there is no risk of infection anymore. So I will try to stay prudent. But yes, I will go to some conferences, from time to time.

And will you keep going to your French class?

That’s my long term plan. French is a beautiful but not so easy language. I plan to keep [improving]. I think now I’ve managed to reach a level where I can have a kind of informal conversation. Even though I tried to learn some technical words on climate change, I actually do it more for my social life. It would be great to meet new friends that also are French speakers. And so I plan to continue my French journey, of course.

So, overall, what is your lesson learned? And what advice would you give to other people who maybe are facing a similar situation in terms of being forced to isolate for an extended period of time?

I’d say that the lesson learned is to not allow themselves to be in a bubble. Regardless of what happens, keep positive, make the most of every situation, even if it’s a situation that we’ve seen ourselves in, a surprise and involuntary. It’s always good to think about the positive side.

My mother actually always says ‘everything in life has the pro and con, a disadvantage and an advantage.’ There are always two sides of a coin. And I mean, it’s of course difficult here to find the positive side of this coin, but it’s ultimately a situation we couldn’t change. It is what it is. It’s our reality now and it’s tragic for many people who suffered loss and that’s really terrible. But at the same time, for oneself, we can try to always find the positive side, even if it’s not obvious at the outset.

I found a very interesting saying in the last year or two by an author, . He says that autonomy is the ability to make a space between stimulus and reaction... sometimes we find ourselves reacting to something immediately. But we are truly autonomous, we’re truly free, if we realise there was a stimulus before we react. I think it goes together with trying to make the most out of the situation, because he was a very well-known Austrian individual who was also in a terrible situation and I admired that he found this inner independence.