Title: Executive Director
Firm: UBS
Age: 36
Rena Connor, executive director at UBS, is a municipal bond veteran with 13 years of experience.
Since joining UBS in 2018, she has demonstrated leadership in her role as a top-producing salesperson and as an advocate and mentor for younger employees.
Rena is a municipal institutional salesperson at UBS who covers key accounts such as JPMorgan, Cumberland Advisors, Breckinridge Advisors, First Financial Bankshares and Liberty Mutual. She is one of the top three producing salespersons on the desk. She has also introduced new relationships to UBS, several of which she has grown into a top 25 distribution counterparty.
Rena's career in public finance has spanned various roles and locations. She joined the Capital Group Companies in 2007 as the sole trading assistant in its fixed-income business. In 2010, she relocated to Texas from California to join the municipal capital markets desk at BOK Financial in Dallas. She expanded her municipal expertise by joining the National Federation of Municipal Analysts and the Southern Municipal Finance Society.
She joined Women in Public Finance in 2011 and assisted in empowering young women in finance and education with her role on the scholarship committee for WPF's Dallas chapter. Her successes resulted in her promotion to vice president of institutional municipal sales in 2012, only two years after joining BOK.
After an eight-year career at BOK, she joined UBS. With access to an expanded platform, she quickly earned greater trust, confidence, and business opportunities with new and existing institutional clients at UBS.
Rena's personality and strong work ethic fostered a close partnership and rapport with her team on the desk. She was giving the nickname “Fire” by her current sales manager to show her ability to quickly generate spread and execute trade ideas. Rena was also recognized for her leadership at UBS when she was selected as a participant in the Leading the Future program in 2019.
In addition to her role on the desk, she has emerged as a strong leader at UBS with her participation in both employee networks and grassroots efforts. She has been a panelist for the firm’s Black History Month spotlight series, earnestly and passionately speaking as a woman of color in the municipal market. She has become a mentor to several dozen promising young UBS associates. Through this experience, Rena has developed a renewed understanding of the responsibility not only to serve her clients, but also to use her platform to elevate and assist younger people of color looking for guidance.
She has continued to expand her mentoring program to an ever-growing group of young associates across the firm and regularly invites her mentees as a plus one to firm and industry events. She is currently working with her mentees to collaborate with UBS’s formal diversity and inclusion efforts on an equity and retention program for young Black professionals. She conducts a weekly ZOOM call, “Real Solutions” every Thursday with her mentees.
In addition, Rena has been an active member of MOSAIC, the UBS internal organization that is focused on supporting, empowering and promoting multicultural employees. She was a founding participant in a "Cocktails and Conversation” series aimed at helping connect senior women from across the firm, and increase collaborations and referrals.
Recently, she has also expanded her focus outside of UBS by helping an Afro-Latino intern to successfully place into UBS’s highly competitive two-year otational program.
She is currently working on a collaboration with a non-profit based in Tulsa, Okla., to teach a master mentorship class to young women of color.
