The View from the Office.

I met up with Wendy Mock in Astoria at Aliada, a Greek restaurant. We shared the halloumi. I had the falafel. She had the Greek salad.

Wendy is head of content strategy at BNY Investments, the asset manager that is part of BNY (The Bank of New York), America’s oldest bank, started by Alexander Hamilton and world’s largest custodian with $50 trillion in assets.

She joined at the end of last year, after previously working at JPMorgan and UBS, where she spent a decade. She started out as a finance journalist with Reuters and Bloomberg.

This was my first View from the Office meeting in Queens and I loved how dynamic and cozy the neighborhood felt. Wendy moved here recently and was raving about the access to low-key great restaurants and other services.

The area has a nice mix of upscale restaurants sandwiched in between family lunch stops. She said there is an eclectic collection of taverns and karaoke bars, along with flower shops and hardware stores where the mom-and-pop owners know your name.

I said that she’d convinced me to sublet an apartment in Astoria for a month to check it out. Maybe it could be part of a plan to move to a new area every month. I’d start a podcast documenting it called Neighborhood Nomad.

I was sort of joking but also making a larger point that successful content creators create brands around the right mix of consistency and novelty.

We talked about how social media is becoming a bigger and bigger deal for financial firms and how there are huge opportunities but also challenges for large firms in navigating the landscape.

Part of the challenge is getting views out quickly within a strict compliance structure. Wall Street is a heavily regulated industry and publications typically go through a strenuous review process.

“The process is necessary and important, but at the same time, we are in an age where technology allows access to news in real time. Plus, the news cycle itself is moving faster. So there is an expectation for institutions to address market events faster too.”

Another challenge around social media in financial services is that it is relatively new. Firms are used to using advertising and PR to get out their message. Social media represents a relatively big change, particularly when it involves direct posting by the CEO or executives.

Wendy and her team’s focus is defining a content strategy and putting in place a structure for content creation and distribution that’s sustainable and scalable. She’s also building out her team and looking for talent.

If you want to connect with Wendy you can reach her via LinkedIn or DM me for a warm intro.