CEOInterviews.AINYSE President Lynn Martin on AI, Trump’s Economy & DEI

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Katie Miller0:00

What keeps you up at night about our financial system?

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Lynn Martin0:02

There are times that I feel as though we don't move fast enough or we haven't moved fast enough. I'd say it's everything we're doing around tokenization, for example. The fact that money can move and settle instantaneously, that's a good thing. We probably should have done that many years ago.

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Katie Miller0:18

Where would you say as students are looking to go to college or not go to college? What would your recommendation be to someone who is, I would say, better words like a top recruiter for all these companies?

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Lynn Martin0:27

We're going to learn how to use AI to enhance what we do and continue to evolve. It's going to displace some jobs, but I think it's really important to upskill people so that they become AI literate, for lack of a better description.

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Katie Miller0:42

Do you find that our schools are preparing kids for the world ahead in terms of math, science, English, or do you think that they've kind of veered away from just what they should be teaching in classroom?

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Lynn Martin0:51

I think they had veered away from the core math, science, and even English curriculums. We left New York City during COVID because it became a challenging place to raise children.

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Katie Miller1:14

Hi everyone and welcome to this week's episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We're so excited to be in New York City today at the New York Stock Exchange with Lynn Martin. Thanks for joining us today. So glad to have you here.

We just came off the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, an incredibly historic place. How do you think the stock exchange has truly shaped the course of American history and left its imprint on the fabric of our society?

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Lynn Martin1:36

The way I think about NYSE is we are the plumbing that has really enabled America to achieve the greatness that it has. And when I say the plumbing, it is because of the financial markets and the uniqueness of our financial markets. The depth, the breadth, the liquidity that only occurs in our financial markets. That is the fuel oil that fuels that next great innovation. The innovators in America time and time again prove that they're able to get funding for that next great idea and turn it into those transformational technologies and services that we all relied on. We've been doing that for 233 years.

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Katie Miller2:25

What do you think are some of the traditions that have permeated beyond the New York Stock Exchange American culture as it relates to this historic building? As you walk in and you see the school kids outside and you see all the tour groups, right? It's such an American institution. How do you help preserve and protect something like that?

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Lynn Martin2:43

It's a great responsibility and one that I certainly don't take lightly. I think it all comes down to we're a symbol of freedom when you think about it. We're where this symbol of freedom in that freedom of investment, freedom of opinion, freedom of discourse. Even if you look at the market, someone's got a buy order, someone else has a sell order. Those are two completely different opinions. And we allow them to meet in the middle. And by meeting in the middle, that's how they form wealth. That's how they form the basis for what's going to plan for their retirement, send their kids to school, buy their first home, all of the great things that are part of the American dream.

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Katie Miller3:33

Many famous American corporations are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. So, all the blue chip companies you can possibly think of. And since Donald Trump has taken office, he's done and made it a priority of his to reshape corporate culture and how corporations have been behaving in the preceding four years that relates to wokeness and DEI in the workplace. How did the New York Stock Exchange handle those type of policies DEI and how have you chosen to change or stay the same since his election?

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Lynn Martin4:02

Yeah. So, since President Trump has taken office, the market's done incredibly well. Now, markets don't just go in one direction. Sometimes they go up, sometimes they go down, but if you look at the wealth that has been accumulated over the last 18 months of his tenure, I say 18 months because it was really election night that you started to see that bump in the market. I think if I take a step back, the way corporations have adapted to it for years prior, there were very prescriptive rules on diversity and inclusion and things of that nature. And I think you actually saw it really come to a head with some of the proposals that the SEC under the previous administration had put out around disclosure around what it means to be diverse. From our perspective, we've always taken the view that these are the greatest leaders of corporations that the world has ever known. They know how to run their business. It's not our place to say in order to make your business better or drive outsized returns, you need to have X number of whatever group on your management team, on your board, whatever the case may be. Now, coincidentally though, diverse opinions are good for companies, but every CEO should have the tools and the ability to shape their own journey and what diversity means to them. Should that be something like diversity of experience? Should it be something a diversity of where you've grown up? But that's up to a CEO. That's not for us to describe.

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Katie Miller5:56

In 2023, I saw that you guys hosted an event for equality for women. Do you think by hosting events that single out certain groups, it creates less equality by saying we're different?

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Lynn Martin6:07

So, I think that the worst thing you can do is just ring fence what diversity is. I actually think in the long term, it hinders the progress that women, for example, have made in the boardroom. We tend to be more focused on meritocracy as opposed to bureaucracy.

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Katie Miller6:30

You guys still have a group that I think it's called the board for diversity or some type of something launched in 2019 that was supposed to tell and help companies create such diversity. Where does that stand now?

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Lynn Martin6:43

So, we've actually pivoted it. It became such a popular service. It's called board advisory services. Initially it was focused on one specific area to really meet the needs that corporations were asking us for. When a company comes to us and asks us for I would like to enhance my boardroom using these different demographics, we tend to respond. Now if I look at our board advisory services, it's got more than a thousand candidates, men, women, variety of different backgrounds. And that's because we've had a continuous evolution on what our companies have requested for us.

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Katie Miller7:23

When companies though come to you and say, 'We're trying to hire these specific groups of people,' wouldn't you say it's in violation of the president's executive orders and that those therefore can be subject to EEOC complaints and EEOC investigations?

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Lynn Martin7:36

You know, we've actually had less of those types of requests. We've had more skill set requests than anything in the last couple of years. So I need a former CFO that has scaled a SaaS company or that has scaled an energy company and we'll say is there a specific type of background or even...

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Katie Miller7:58

Have you found that like the specific racial based requests or ethnic based requests have definitely decreased in the last I would say 18, 20 months?

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Lynn Martin8:07

I think the specific the demographic specific requests have decreased over the last year and a half, call it. And again it's back to skills base which is what it should always be. And by the way if you have a killer CFO that has scaled a SaaS company and that company is now worth half a trillion or a trillion dollars happens to be female that person should probably have a board seat but again that comes back to meritocracy and everything that someone has achieved in the past as opposed to just being a woman.

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Katie Miller8:42

Last fall, I interviewed Adena Friedman, the CEO of the NASDAQ. Why do you think it is that both stock exchanges are run by women?

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Lynn Martin8:50

I don't know. It's a good question. Perhaps it's that women are good at finding the middle ground and matching those buyers and sellers together.

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Katie Miller9:02

You studied computer science. You're one of the rare people who don't have a political science, anthropology, philosophy degree. How have you transformed a technical degree and I would say an actually skills-based degree into a real life business setting?

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Lynn Martin9:16

Yeah, it's interesting because when I graduated with my degree in comp sci, as you pointed out, I started as a coder, right? I very rapidly though learned that me talking to a machine is not my pinnacle of joy. I actually need to talk to people in addition to machines. I do like talking to machines, but I like talking to people as well. I always thought that I was going to go on for a business degree after I graduated and while I was working in my first job coding, I wound up getting a math degree, which is not exactly a business degree, but it's just the way my brain works. I tend to have a more quantitative brain as opposed to one that's focused more on the arts. Quantitative things just make more sense to me. So when I went on for my masters, it wound up getting finance as a concentration but approaching it from the purely technical perspective. And then I've kind of been in the right place, right time that the digital age really formed in my post-college years.

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Katie Miller10:27

Do you think kids graduating college today or choosing not to go to college, right? They say the new college is the kids who leave high school and build their own businesses. Do you think that master's degrees like the one you got are just as important today, especially in being hired into some of these corporations?

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Lynn Martin10:44

Yeah, it's something that I'm actually trying to think about as a mom too. Like what do I want my kids one day to study? I think there are certain parts of the arts, math is actually considered most times an art and not just technical, that teach critical thinking, critical reasoning. And I think those skill sets are going to continue to be incredibly important even in light of the fact that we're going to have artificial intelligence as part of our lives and agents as part of the way we operate.

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Katie Miller11:20

Will you be an early adopter of robots or a late adopter?

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Lynn Martin11:25

I think I'm going to be an early to mid adopter. Probably not the first person because I don't know what a robot's going to do to my house, my kids. But I will probably be an earlier to mid because I could use some organization in my house. And as a fellow mom, I'm sure you're thinking the same way. Like, here's the task list that's not getting done.

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Katie Miller11:54

When can you unload my dishwasher?

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Lynn Martin11:55

Exactly. Can you unload my dishwasher, clean up after dinner, make dinner?

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Katie Miller12:01

Yeah. Your dad was an electrical engineer. What age did you get into coding?

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Lynn Martin12:06

I got into coding in the... I started fiddling around with computers in the mid 80s. So I was about 10.

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Katie Miller12:14

Is that how you absorb information now as a leader of a company? When your subordinates or your employees come to you to present information, is it more qualitative in nature, quantitative in nature? How would you define how you receive information, how you expect it from others?

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Lynn Martin12:28

It's got to be quantitative in nature because I feel as if it's just qualitative, that's a spin. And I need data before I get a spin. Every time I've had a qualitative person just approach me with flowers and platitudes, I'm like, 'Okay, where's the data behind that?' And I will never represent something publicly unless it's data-based.

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Katie Miller12:53

So, you've been here for how many years at the company?

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Lynn Martin12:56

So, I've been in this role for four years, but I've had a 25 year career at different parts of the organization. Been through a lot of mergers.

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Katie Miller13:05

At what point in your career did you have children?

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Lynn Martin13:08

I had children when I was chief operating officer of a startup we were doing. So I'd say that was probably about 13 years into my career. But I was still very much climbing the corporate ladder.

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Katie Miller13:25

And I'm going to do some personal questions so please don't mind but how old were you when you had your kids?

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Lynn Martin13:29

My first was 36 and my second was 39. I met my husband when I was almost 30.

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Katie Miller13:39

How did you guys meet?

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Lynn Martin13:40

We met in a bar in the Hamptons. Such a boring story. I'd love to give you a great story around we solved a mathematical proof together, but we met the old-fashioned way.

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Katie Miller13:53

What does he do and how do you guys make it work raising kids while you have a pretty demanding career?

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Lynn Martin13:57

He's also in the financial services industry, but he has a far less demanding, less time-intensive job than I do, which is fortunate because and I always tell people that you got to find a good partner. Because he doesn't travel for his job and I spend a lot of time on the road.

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Katie Miller14:17

How old are your two sons, right?

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Lynn Martin14:19

Two sons. Yeah.

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Katie Miller14:20

How old are they now?

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Lynn Martin14:21

One is about to turn 14, which is an interesting age, and 11.

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Katie Miller14:28

And so do they... have you gotten them into coding or what are the primary skills that you're trying to teach them in your job where you come across a multitude of different businesses and see the skill sets that you're hiring? What are you teaching your son?

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Lynn Martin14:39

So I've tried to teach them coding. I've tried to get them into coding. They have been in every coding camp after school program possible and the coding bug has not bit either of them. I have them both doing math, and focusing on math. And my oldest in particular is quite good at math. My youngest is actually more of an actor. He's gotten really into performing and doing plays and things of that nature. So, he's been more on the communications side than anything else.

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Katie Miller15:12

Do you find that our schools are preparing kids for the world ahead in terms of math, science, English, or do you think that they've kind of veered away from just what they should be teaching in a classroom?

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Lynn Martin15:25

I think they had veered away from the core math, science, and even English curriculums. It's interesting because I've got two different kids, two different schools. One, my oldest's school is very much focused on sort of the math and science track but English has been behind and then my other one, English, social studies, you know, the more the liberal arts has been very much front of mind for them but the math curriculum is watered down. So I'm like, can I take all the good of this school and all the good of that school and kind of smash it together so that way they would get the well-rounded...

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Katie Miller16:05

And you're raising your kids in New York which has kind of been the ground zero for this woke education, woke school of thought where the teachers are proud to say that they're indoctrinating children or teaching the children other things that maybe the parents wouldn't want. How are you navigating that?

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Lynn Martin16:19

Yeah, my favorite story on this, which is not a great story, is so during COVID we were living, I was raising both kids in New York City and they were in the New York City public system and they were actually fortunate in that they both tested into quite a good school. We left New York City during COVID because it became a challenging place to raise children.

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Katie Miller16:47

Is this when gifted and talented kind of fell off?

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Lynn Martin16:49

Yeah. Yeah. We moved to a suburb just outside of the city. And my third grader, his first couple of days of school, came home. He was third grader at the time. And said, I said, 'How's school?' He's like, 'Oh, the kids are nice. You know, some of the stuff we're doing is pretty similar to what I was doing in the city.' He's like, 'But they stand up every morning and say this thing.' And I don't know what it is. And I said, my husband and I are like, 'What do you mean?' He's like, 'I don't know. We all stand up and we look at the flag and say something and then we sit down.' And I said, and my husband's like, 'The pledge of allegiance.' And he said, 'Oh, how does it go?' And my husband and I both started reciting it. And he said, 'Yeah, what is that?' So, he had never learned that in the New York City school system, but he learned that outside of New York City. And I just found that to be so instructive about where we had gone a bit wrong as a country that it doesn't matter what background you're from. It doesn't matter what religion you're from. It's we all live in America. We should be proud to be Americans.

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Katie Miller18:11

In the age of moving forward into AI and how the technology boom has really arrived again right in this country and you have a computer science degree. How has that benefited you and how you as a leader are looking at companies and you're looking at how you're going to use AI here?

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Lynn Martin18:29

Yeah, it's enabled me to go back to my coding roots in that I know the most important thing when you're coding or using technology is what you're putting into the system. In the case of AI, that's data. So where is the source of truth? And then when you're putting that data into a model, how do you protect the most sensitive data so that it doesn't wind up in the wrong hands? So I'd say in terms of our own implementation of AI, it's more responsible implementation of AI that make sure that data privacy is maintained while still getting the good results that you expect and also ensuring that it's the source of truth as opposed to another biased area.

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Katie Miller19:19

Which model do you think is going to be the best by the end of summer?

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Lynn Martin19:23

They're all moving so darn quickly. I don't know. I find that Grok has actually really progressed in a much quicker fashion than I normally would have expected it. I also...

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Katie Miller19:40

There's many different Polymarket lines on this right now. Which model is going to be best? So what says you?

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Lynn Martin19:46

I don't know. I don't know because there was just one that Jensen talked about yesterday as going to become the next version of Claude or Gemini or Grok or whatever. So, it just feels like there could be one that none of us have heard of that winds up taking the lead.

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Katie Miller20:10

You're not just running a business here. You're also a global ambassador. You have a lot of foreign leaders come through the doors.

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Lynn Martin20:15

Yes.

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Katie Miller20:16

Which country or ambassador has surprised you or have you taken a thing and you're like, 'Wow, I did not know that about that nation,' especially someone who's as well traveled and studied as you.

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Lynn Martin20:28

Yeah. In terms of the leaders that have come through recently, I mean, if I think about some of the most iconic bells we've done, we did a bell in... I'm going to date this one, but it actually meant a lot. We had President Zelensky ring the bell from the bunker right after Labor Day in 2022, right after doing a round table with a bunch of CEOs. It was a very different time, but it was the fact that a world leader would take the time to do that really put a mark. President Milei was a trip. That's probably a good way to put him. I mean, I really respect what he's doing and the way he's delivered on what he's delivered on for Argentina. Hosting him was a tremendous amount of fun. Not only because of the energy he brings, but because he was just so business focused. Even the president of South Korea that we hosted last year, it was very much a please come do business with us. We would love to welcome your business. So those world leaders that come in with more of the open mind on business are the ones that impress me the most.

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Katie Miller21:46

What are they normally most curious about about the United States?

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Lynn Martin21:49

A lot of times they're curious about how our capital markets have formed, what has influenced our capital markets and why they've become the envy of the world. Many times someone will say how do we replicate? It's like well we've been doing this for 233 years. It's really tough to replicate. But a lot of them also seek guidance. You tell them the moves you made more recently on regulation are allowing American businesses to further flourish. And some of the countries I hear that are imposing more regulation as opposed to less regulation on their countries.

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Katie Miller22:31

As we talk about AI, there's tons of headlines. There's no shortage about how AI is going to take all of our jobs and create doom and spiral for all of these college graduates, right? As you look at your kids and the future and you have these interactions with CEOs, what would your advice be to young people in terms of what should they be studying? Obviously you have a coding computer science degree which is so almost fortuitous for where... fortuitous but also the job that's also the job that AI is theoretically to replace. Replacing you could technically be an AI programmer I guess. But so where would you say as students are looking to go to college or not go to college what would your recommendation be as someone who is I would say better worse like a top recruiter for all these companies?

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Lynn Martin23:24

What I always... well first on the AI taking everyone's jobs, this is the next great technology evolution, revolution. 1950s, given that I was a coder, I remember people used to walk around with punch cards or I had learned that people walked around with punch cards and getting those moved to actually operate these mainframe computers. There was a guy doing that. That guy got a different job as technology advanced. This is going to be the same evolution. We're going to learn how to use AI to enhance what we do and continue to evolve. So, I don't know that it's going... it's going to displace some jobs, but I think it's really important to upskill people so that they become AI literate for lack of a better description.

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Katie Miller24:14

So you see at the working level a lot of these companies whether you look at Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, any of these companies right a lot of their engineers are not women. That it is just not something that women are intuitive at doing. Yet you've done it. Why would you say that it is a genetic difference that women are not destined to be engineers? And is that something that you think more women should go into or is there an alternate path as this new age is among us?

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Lynn Martin24:47

I think it's actually an opportunity. This technology age is an opportunity for women to become more comfortable with technology and what the technology jobs of the future are going to be because we're all going to be using technology. Technology and maths in general has been this big scary thing for women. And even when you think about how universities in the past had recruiting, they had recruited their students, they would tend to see a woman and say, 'Okay, got a great English program, art history.'

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Katie Miller25:21

Do you think it's genetic though that women inherently aren't wired to think the same way as a man in terms of sitting at a computer and needing maybe more social interaction?

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Lynn Martin25:29

I think that in the past, and I think it's gotten better, but I think in the past, the curriculum wasn't made interesting to a woman. It didn't match a female's natural interest. It more matched a male's interest. So, playing with robots, building cars, that's, you know, the more traditional things that a boy growing up, that's my boys played with. You know, they wanted to build the robot to beat another robot or they wanted to build a car to go faster or things of that nature.

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Katie Miller26:11

Yeah, my boys are driving cars and my daughter is sitting there playing dress up with her Barbies, right? But virtual. How to build a program to allow for fashion design or allow for a Barbie to interact with other Barbies. That's something that would have been much more interesting for your daughter. So I do think that the way the education, the extra education, not what's being taught in schools necessarily, but the clubs, things of that nature are more targeting female interests are going to enable more women to get into these.

Are you working with any of these companies to replace the coding that they currently have as their infrastructure? Much of our financial infrastructure is built on COBOL, especially as all these AI companies are moving to Python. And so how do you expect to replace what is aging code to come up to where we need it to be in order to protect our grid infrastructure, our security infrastructure and others?

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Lynn Martin27:05

Yeah.

That's an area that at least we at NYSE are seeing a tremendous amount of benefit from AI because you can't find the Cobol coders. You can't find a Fortran programmer. You can't find a Pascal programmer. But there is still that legacy code out there. How do you take a machine, for lack of a better description, with some oversight because the machine will make errors, and allow for a much speedier replacement of technical debt.

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Katie Miller27:50

What do you think is the greatest challenge facing companies in the next 5 to 10 years? I would say let's go five years.

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Lynn Martin27:57

Yeah, let's go five. Five years. I would say the biggest challenge is that they don't develop strong use cases for AI and instead they just deploy AI for the sake of deploying AI and don't see the expected results.

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Katie Miller28:13

Do you think it's much to do about nothing or do you think it is something the fact that the Pentagon wants to pull Anthropic out of their system for them pushing back on how the Pentagon intended to use it?

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Lynn Martin28:25

I think it's going to be an interesting debate as to how AI gets deployed for national security and infrastructure. I don't know where it will wind up but it's sparking an interesting debate. It also I think is sparking an interesting debate just on AI use cases and how companies wind up using AI and deploying AI. The other I would say I don't call it controversy among social media is you know use cases among kids and how they intend and use social media whether that be TikTok or Instagram.

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Katie Miller29:04

What do you do personally for your children?

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Lynn Martin29:05

Yeah, this is the big debate with my 14-year-old. First debate number one was when do you get the iPhone.

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Katie Miller29:13

And what's your determination on that?

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Lynn Martin29:15

So I wait till seventh grade and I had it locked down. My 11-year-old uses a watch to keep in touch with me. But the lockdown aspects of the phone is no social media. I think there's a responsible way to roll out social media. I think social media has a tremendous amount of benefits, but put into the hands of someone whose brain is still developing and still figuring out right and wrong and the power of certain tools such as our children, I think it's really important to go a little bit slower.

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Katie Miller29:54

Do you agree with Australia's ban on 16-year-olds not having social media and under?

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Lynn Martin30:00

Again, that comes back to what we were talking about earlier, like why 16? Why 15? Why 13? Why 18? I don't know what the right number is because every 16-year-old is going to have a different level of maturity. But I am a fan of delaying a little bit until you as a parent know that your kid is mature enough to be able to understand the power of social media. Power for good, power for bad.

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Katie Miller30:31

When a new founder comes here presumably and they're launching or having conversations, they're very excited about where they've gotten to. Is there anyone that's come in, we don't have to name names, I guess, but we can be less specific and you're just like they didn't treat other people the way you expected and you don't know how they got to where they were.

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Lynn Martin30:54

I think there are times that people come in with just an idea and they've not yet done the work to refine the strategy. A lot of times those companies haven't gone public yet though and I actually think that's a benefit of the private markets that those companies who haven't yet developed the maturity, the emotional intelligence to be a public company in addition to their strategy, they're allowed to stay private for a bit longer.

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Katie Miller31:22

What's the biggest misconception people have on how the markets actually work?

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Lynn Martin31:26

The biggest misconception that people have is that first that the exchange can influence a price of a stock. You really can't. It's that the exchange doesn't spend a tremendous amount of time focusing on technology. Technology is table stakes. And when you think about the amount of messaging that goes through this building alone, we process on peak days 1.2 trillion incoming order messages a day. You have to be thinking about your underlying technology, not just from an efficiency standpoint, but from a reliability and resiliency standpoint and a protection of the data coming through here.

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Katie Miller32:07

If you could teach every American one lesson about investing, what would it be?

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Lynn Martin32:10

Do it for the long term. Don't focus on the moves in the market in any one given day.

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Katie Miller32:18

Do you ever recommend a specific stock to people?

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Lynn Martin32:20

I don't. I tend to look at broad market indices.

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Katie Miller32:25

Do you ever ask AI which stocks you should be investing in and then do it?

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Lynn Martin32:30

No, but that's actually an area of opportunity I see for certain parts of AI and for certain models. The more retail-facing models for example, like I think a Grok or an OpenAI and some of their models, they could actually be a great enabler for the retail audiences to get smarter about the market.

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Katie Miller32:57

What keeps you up at night about our financial system?

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Lynn Martin32:59

There are times that I feel as though we don't move fast enough or we haven't moved fast enough. I'd say I changed the way I phrase that because I think in the last year and a half, you've seen the market starting to move to really use the technology that exists to address the inefficiencies. The blockchain technology, stablecoin, the digitization of certain items that will enable much more efficient market moves. Everything we're doing around tokenization, for example, the fact that money can move and settle instantaneously, that's a good thing. We probably should have done that many years ago.

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Katie Miller33:47

You've seen a lot of companies succeed from the moment they decide to go public and some struggle. What separates the ones that succeed from struggle?

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Lynn Martin33:55

The ones that succeed are the ones that have a durable strategy and are not trying to be everything to everyone.

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Katie Miller34:04

Can you tell right away?

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Lynn Martin34:06

I think you can tell pretty well during their testing the waters process and on the run to IPO.

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Katie Miller34:16

What's one technology that's transforming the way Wall Street works that people aren't thinking of today?

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Lynn Martin34:24

I think AI is transforming the way Wall Street works because it is putting more thought through analytics at the hands of the individual investor in a very rapid period of time. You're enabling a human to distill everything that has gone into a stock from a fundamental standpoint, recent earnings transcripts, if they've had an investor day, what the CEO has said publicly, you're doing that in a matter of seconds and minutes, which is enabling you, my parents, to make investment decisions very quickly. And I don't think we fully understand the power that that's having on the end investor.

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Katie Miller35:13

Do you think the SEC's recent proposal to remove quarterly earnings is a good or bad thing?

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Lynn Martin35:20

I think it is good in many cases. My one area where I just have a question mark is what is that going to mean for disclosures in the short to medium term for a company? Like will a company still put out a quarterly financial statement? I think that's going to be really dictated by their investors. But I think the premise that you want companies to focus on building and less time prepping for short-term dealing with regulatory burdens is a good thing as long as there's some permanence to it, too. I would hate to see something as transformational as this, provided there's the transparency, the financial transparency element still there. I would hate to see that get pulled back if there's any changes in administration in the future.

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Katie Miller36:18

What's a typical day for you like?

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Lynn Martin36:20

It is manic. And, you know, I always tell people I have a schedule and eight days out of 10, I don't follow the schedule because something pops up. It is an absolutely tremendous job and an honor to have this job, but it does mean you're pivoting all throughout the course of the day.

K

Katie Miller36:41

Are you working Saturdays and Sundays?

L

Lynn Martin36:42

Absolutely.

K

Katie Miller36:43

How do you manage that with two boys, 11 and 14? How are you doing it with two boys?

L

Lynn Martin36:49

While I'm watching a baseball game or a basketball game. You find the time to be very present with them. And as you know your kids don't want you present with them 16 hours a day every moment. A lot of time they want to play a game with a friend or they have a sports event. With two boys, there's a lot of sports in my house. So you're able to make it work.

K

Katie Miller37:25

What's your family non-negotiable that you guys say has to be done or what you guys do?

L

Lynn Martin37:30

We have to go on at least two vacations together as a family. Saturdays we have to go to church where actually both of my children soon to be are in Catholic school. So, we go to church every weekend as a family. We also don't allow phones at the dinner table, which is a small thing and it's becoming increasingly challenging. You'll see when you get there with your own. Having them put the phone away at the dinner table can be a bit of a challenge. By the way, it's a challenge as a parent, too. Like, we're the worst offenders. But you got to have a conversation with your kids. You got to be able to talk to them about stuff and more importantly to listen to what they're not saying, even if you're getting a grunt as an answer.

K

Katie Miller38:24

Do you find that it's been easier to connect with your kids and have that time since COVID has reshaped the workplace?

L

Lynn Martin38:30

COVID was a little bit of a blessing in that regard because the world did stop in that you didn't have the travel element. As they got older, I actually had the opportunity to bring them along if I'm traveling too. During the summer, for example, if they have to go on business trips in the summer, you can sort of make them part of the experience.

K

Katie Miller38:55

How has raising kids shaped how you're a leader here for other young parents? What kind of philosophies or rules have you put in place or changed to make it more amendable for young families?

L

Lynn Martin39:10

If someone says to me they want to work from home or leave early to go to their kids, whatever, fill in the blank, play, parent-teacher conference game, that's a non-negotiable in my mind. Like just go. Why are you even asking me?

K

Katie Miller39:30

Do you find that you're still elevating people who have young children and empowering them the same as you would if somebody didn't have a young child? I know it's discriminatory. Absolutely. So, I don't mean it like that, but you know, there is I would say especially someone who has young children, your brain is always in two places at once, right? Where you are and what they're doing. And I think it makes people a lot better, but it also takes a special leader to say, 'Hey, you can be the best parent and be the best worker while you're sitting there at the doctor appointment and unplug from 5:30 to 6:30 during dinner and bath as long as you're plugging back in between 8:30 and 11.' Have you found that that's the culture among a lot of young people now?

L

Lynn Martin40:11

Yeah, I think so. I think actually this generation, the generations behind me value that in a different way that the generation that I'm a part of really had it the other way around. And hopefully because of my generation we're enforcing that mindset in the young leaders. If I look at my own management team, some are married, some are not. Some have kids, some don't. All different ages. Some have grown kids, some have young kids.

K

Katie Miller40:38

Do you find the work ethic to be the same throughout generations or do you think young people tend to have a lesser work ethic?

L

Lynn Martin40:46

I think the challenge for a leader is finding the common work ethic and that comes into company culture. How you build your culture and finding the right work ethic and picking the people that really embody that work ethic.

K

Katie Miller41:03

What's the worst business decision you've ever made?

L

Lynn Martin41:09

Being too reactive. And I think it's something that women have the capacity to do initially, but then self-correct, being too reactive to a situation, being too emotional in a situation. When you start to think about it and you know that you do that, you learn how to take a beat and actually think about what the proper reaction could be. And that's something that really is due to experience.

K

Katie Miller41:44

Do you think anyone's treated you differently because you're a female leader?

L

Lynn Martin41:47

Absolutely. I mean, I've been in financial services and technology for now 28 years. So, absolutely.

K

Katie Miller41:58

Do you give a No, that's the difference. That's exactly what I was going to say. You learn to when you're 22 years old and someone does that to you, you react very differently than when you're in your late 40s and someone does it to you.

Do you think feminism has taught women that they need to be offended and they have to be upset that they're treated differently than a man versus just accepting is how you've just said it like it is what it is and I'm still going to be the best I can be and be better than you?

L

Lynn Martin42:25

I don't know if feminism has done that. I don't know what has really done that, but I think the narrative that exists in mainstream is really what has contributed to it. And I don't know if that's due to feminism or if it's due to people who are just opinionated that are on different forms of media. Be it linear, radio, whatever the case may be.

K

Katie Miller42:54

So, in every episode, we play a game of would you rather. Would you rather replace the opening bell with a giant gong or with a countdown clock like New Year's Eve?

L

Lynn Martin43:07

I would rather do it with a gong because I like to say the opening bell and the closing bell are celebrations of capitalism. And I feel like we should be ringing that real loud every single day.

K

Katie Miller43:27

Would you rather lose air conditioning on the trading floor on the hottest day of the summer or have a week-long outage of the NYSE's website?

L

Lynn Martin43:36

Website. I would rather have the website. Now, if you said trading infrastructure, I'll live without the air conditioning. But website is fine because I feel as though you could still get your message out through social.

K

Katie Miller43:53

Would you rather have AI manage your personal finances or let your 14-year-old manage them?

L

Lynn Martin43:59

I would rather have my 14-year-old manage them because my 14-year-old is an incredibly responsible human. I'm more and more impressed with him every day. Now, if it was my 11-year-old, not because of the age, I would probably rather have AI because he's the emotional one of the two.

K

Katie Miller44:19

Would you rather explain how the stock market works to a room full of fifth graders or to members of Congress?

L

Lynn Martin44:27

I've done both. Members of Congress.

K

Katie Miller44:33

Who's the worst member of Congress you've ever interacted with? They could be retired, so it doesn't matter.

L

Lynn Martin44:37

I don't know. I don't know.

K

Katie Miller44:40

Would you rather go back and experience the New York Stock Exchange on its first day in 1792 or be able to see what it looks like 200 years in the future?

L

Lynn Martin44:48

200 years in the future. And I really hope it has learned, continued to evolve and learn lessons during those 200 years. I'm expecting it will.

K

Katie Miller44:57

So, I asked you this a bit outside, but we're going to circle back. What was the most memorable person you've ever had ring the bell?

L

Lynn Martin45:04

The most, the easiest ones to obviously say are the administration bells. Those are the cheating. I know those are the cheating answers. I know you're going to hold me to task on those. The most memorable bell that I've ever done was the Zelensky bell really stuck in my brain. Because, and this has nothing to do with the Ukraine war, he was remote in his bunker and his people had traveled 23 hours through a secure passage out of the Ukraine. This was September 2022 when the world looked a lot different. And the reason why it was so memorable to me was the fact that people would travel 23 hours through secure passage which involved trains, unmarked cars, all of these different things to get to a location where they could then take a plane really spoke to how important the capital markets are and the awareness that our platform brings.

K

Katie Miller46:11

Who's the most awkward person who's ever rung the bell?

L

Lynn Martin46:15

Flavor Flav.

K

Katie Miller46:16

Really?

L

Lynn Martin46:18

It was a little... He was great. You know, I really enjoyed that bell. I really enjoyed that bell because it was with the women's water polo team. Yeah. When they had won the silver medal. And he was supporting women and female sports and all that, but he wound up using the gavel, it was the closing bell. You use the gavel. The gavel went flying into the audience because it fell out of his hand. So, it was interesting.

K

Katie Miller46:55

Who's never rung the bell? Who you wish would come to it?

L

Lynn Martin46:58

Oh, there's all sorts of people that I wish would ring this bell. I will go with safer options. I'd say Warren Buffett would be the one that I, well, he has rung the bell, but he hasn't rung the bell since I've been here. He has rung our bell, though, as Berkshire is one of our listed companies.

K

Katie Miller47:22

He should have done it on the day he retired, right?

L

Lynn Martin47:23

Yeah.

K

Katie Miller47:24

Did you try?

L

Lynn Martin47:25

Yeah.

K

Katie Miller47:27

What's the most chaotic trading day you've experienced?

L

Lynn Martin47:30

Last April, there were a few chaotic trading days. That was tariff days. The first liberation day was I think it was either a Wednesday or a Thursday. I can't remember when the actual presentation in the Rose Garden happened.

K

Katie Miller47:50

Beautiful day.

L

Lynn Martin47:51

Yeah. And the next I'd say four or five trading days were a bit chaotic. Actually, probably next seven trading days were a bit chaotic while the market was finding its footing.

K

Katie Miller48:02

Do you wish President Trump did more tariffs?

L

Lynn Martin48:06

You know what? It's worked out okay. The market has found its level. I mean, the Dow was just at 50,000. It's come off a bit, but you know, we'll get back there.

K

Katie Miller48:15

Do you think President Trump is to credit for how good the market's done in some of his policies, or do you think the market was always going to trend in that direction?

L

Lynn Martin48:22

I think the market has been strong. It's had really strong fundamentals, but I do think the market has in general liked some of the broad policies that have been implemented.

K

Katie Miller48:31

Where do you get your news?

L

Lynn Martin48:34

I get my news probably a lot from social. I spend a lot of time looking at social. I spend a lot of time on X. I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn too. I listen to podcasts as well. So it's a bit of everything. It really depends what type of news I'm looking for. Like there are some podcasts that are really quite technical that are market focused that I think are quite good.

K

Katie Miller48:58

What's your favorite podcast aside from yours?

L

Lynn Martin49:03

Thank you. I really enjoy the TVPN guys, because they're really technical. I enjoy All-In. I enjoy some of the mainstream media podcasts, too. It really depends on the topic.

K

Katie Miller49:17

Do you think there'll always be a place for CNBC on the trading floor?

L

Lynn Martin49:20

There will always be a place for CNBC on the trading floor.

K

Katie Miller49:24

What value or critical value I should say, do they provide?

L

Lynn Martin49:26

They do a great job on technical analysis and live technical analysis particularly breaking news. They can like today's a Fed day as I'm talking to you here today. They will have a really in-depth technical analysis with their experts when that comes out.

K

Katie Miller49:44

What's the first app you open in the morning?

L

Lynn Martin49:46

My email.

K

Katie Miller49:47

How many emails do you have unread when you wake up?

L

Lynn Martin49:49

A lot. Probably actually not as many as I used to. The job I had prior to this was a much more global role. I ran our global data and fixed income business. So in that job I think I had probably about 200 emails when I woke up. Now it's only about like 60 or 70.

K

Katie Miller50:10

How much do you sleep at night?

L

Lynn Martin50:12

I try to sleep seven hours. I like sleep.

K

Katie Miller50:15

So when do you wake up in the morning?

L

Lynn Martin50:17

I wake up just about six o'clock. A little bit before.

K

Katie Miller50:19

Do you go to the gym?

L

Lynn Martin50:20

I do.

K

Katie Miller50:21

What do you do?

L

Lynn Martin50:22

I'm a big fan of SoulCycle. I do SoulCycle twice a week.

K

Katie Miller50:27

SoulCycle went out of style.

L

Lynn Martin50:29

I'm an OG. Like I'm actually a very loyal person. So I'm not about trends. I've been going to SoulCycle since 2016.

K

Katie Miller50:38

Do you use the same skincare products you've always used?

L

Lynn Martin50:41

What are you using?

K

Katie Miller50:42

I moved from La Mer and I'm using La Prairie. Although I do sometimes use La Mer as well.

L

Lynn Martin50:48

Why'd you switch?

K

Katie Miller50:49

Your skin changes as you get older.

L

Lynn Martin50:54

I was going to say I thought you were like one's healthier than the other, you know.

K

Katie Miller50:57

No, your skin changes as you get older.

Have you gotten at all into this eating healthy clean movement, whole foods?

L

Lynn Martin51:05

Yeah, I actually have because I eat out a lot for work and I mentioned I try to go to spin twice a week. I also do weights which is really important for women. So that's been my New Year's resolution which is still working. Do weights twice a week. And additionally, I have a meal delivery plan that I get every week for breakfast and lunch. It's Sakara. It's vegan.

K

Katie Miller51:32

Do you cook for your kids?

L

Lynn Martin51:34

Yeah, I try to and then they complain about what I make.

K

Katie Miller51:38

What's the best thing you make?

L

Lynn Martin51:39

I can make a good red sauce. I have some Italian descent in me, so I can make a mean red sauce.

K

Katie Miller51:47

What's a conspiracy theory that you believe in?

L

Lynn Martin51:50

I think there are aliens.

K

Katie Miller51:52

Do you really?

L

Lynn Martin51:53

I do. I think there are...

K

Katie Miller51:54

Like here or outer space?

L

Lynn Martin51:56

I think there is life beyond this planet. And I think that they may be able to see what we do.

K

Katie Miller52:10

Are there UFOs?

L

Lynn Martin52:11

Perhaps.

K

Katie Miller52:12

Did we go to the moon?

L

Lynn Martin52:14

Of course.

K

Katie Miller52:14

Okay. I just Those typically tie together for people.

L

Lynn Martin52:17

Of course. And are we going to go to the moon again? Yes.

K

Katie Miller52:20

Has aliens ever visited the Earth?

L

Lynn Martin52:23

I don't know that.

K

Katie Miller52:24

Okay.

L

Lynn Martin52:25

I don't know. I do think there's some beings out there, though. I don't know what they are, what they look like.

K

Katie Miller52:30

We end the podcast on the same question. If you could host a dinner party with three people, dead or alive, who's at the table, and what are you eating?

L

Lynn Martin52:39

Okay. Three people, dead or alive. So, I'm gonna go with Alexander Hamilton. Thomas Edison and Grace Hopper.

K

Katie Miller52:53

You're like, who is Grace Hopper? A little, but what are you eating?

L

Lynn Martin52:57

We are eating a selection of New York City hole in the wall restaurants. So, there's a great taco stand.

K

Katie Miller53:08

Are we getting food poisoning?

L

Lynn Martin53:09

No. No. There's a great taco stand around the corner, for example, that I love. That would be one course. A place from Chinatown would be another course. I mean, New York City's got the best food. It's just got to know what holes in the walls to go to.

K

Katie Miller53:27

Thank you so much for doing this.

L

Lynn Martin53:28

Thank you. Thanks for having me.

K

Katie Miller53:30

Thanks for joining this episode of the Katie Miller podcast. We're live 6 PM every Tuesday nights every podcast. See you next week.

NYSE President Lynn Martin on AI, Trump’s Economy & DEI | KMP Ep.32

About Lynn Martin