“In life, every once in a while, one person comes in, and you meet them, and they change who you are, what you’re all about, your character, and they impact you in a way that’s indelible,” said former MFS CEO Rob Manning. “And to me, Joan [Batchelder] was that person in my life.”
As a senior fixed-income investment professional at MFS, Joan Batchelder’s impact as both a leader and a mentor was profound in shaping the firm MFS is today. Batchelder’s legacy exemplifies wisdom, purpose, a collaborative spirit and the deep insight needed to think long term.
Before joining MFS in 1978, Batchelder’s journey in a male-dominated industry wasn’t easy. When she was a young woman working as a bond analyst for Keystone Investments in the 1960s, Batchelder had to be escorted through back entrances into business meetings in Boston men’s clubs. Once, she was completely barred from entering an analysts’ meeting in New York.1 The research director at her previous employer noted that the reason he hired her as their first woman stock analyst was simply because “Girls would be cheaper.”2
She never let the obstacles she faced in her career slow her down. If anything, they motivated her to push forward, even harder. She actively sought to undo the common biases that kept women from getting leadership positions in the financial industry. She observed that bonds actually “turned out to be a great business for women, because your results were quantifiable.”3
As the manager of MFS’ new high-yield bond fund, Massachusetts Financial High Income Trust, Batchelder kept her office door open for everyone — women employees, young recruits, colleagues and peers. Former Chief Investment Strategist James Swanson once said of her that “She was just smarter than anyone else in the room, and people wanted to know her opinion. … I think she did it through sheer force of her smarts and wanting to get the story right.”