Kara Lilly, investment strategist, Mawer Investment ManagementRachel Idzerda/The Globe and Mail
Kara Lilly is attracting attention in the investment world these days for a popular blog she co-writes called the Art of Boring. It refers, tongue partly in cheek, to the investing philosophy of her employer, Calgary-based Mawer Investment Management, and definitely not to its insightful observations, life lessons, reading tips and strong opinions on market-moving developments.
In fact, boring is about the last word I would use to describe the young dynamo in white who has arrived early for our lunch at Kasa Moto, a trendy Japanese restaurant on Yorkville Avenue in midtown Toronto.
Ms. Lilly, 30, has come prepared to discuss her work as an investment strategist and offer her pointed assessments of everything from China's market blunders to turmoil in the oil sector, the state of the bond market and whether Greece has a future in the euro zone.
But before we get to the nuts and bolts of her day job, I want to learn more about her passionate embrace of extreme sport and its role in shaping her remarkably disciplined approach to life and work, which she has also discussed in the blog.
Her latest extracurricular obsession is mountain biking. We're not talking here about a pleasant trail ride in the Foothills. Her idea of a fun time is a 24-hour endurance test with no rest breaks or easy stretches.
It all started when the transplanted easterner went snowkiting (because ordinary skiing just won't do) with an equally adventurous Calgary friend, Ken Corner, and mentioned that she was looking for a new challenge. Her first thought was a solo bicycle ride from Alberta to Mexico. But Mr. Corner suggested she might want to start with some local mountain biking before setting off on such a daunting journey.
She promptly signed up for her first 24-hour race, in Canmore, Alta., without a shred of previous experience and only three months to prepare. After a bit of practice on her new bicycle, she persuaded Mr. Corner and his cycling pals to let her join them on their annual trip to the mountain-biking mecca of Moab, Utah.
Moab is "not an easy introduction to the sport. It's rocky, it's steep, it's the real deal," says Mr. Corner, director of research and operations with Auspice Capital Advisors in Calgary. "She had a pretty hard time of it. I watched her go over the handlebars probably a dozen times. … There was a lot of blood and bruising. Most people would have stopped. But she just wouldn't give up."
Then, about five days before the Canmore event, she broke her elbow in a fall. But heck, the bone wasn't displaced and her arm was well taped, so she competed anyway, finishing fifth.
This year, she won, vaulting her to the gruelling world championship in California earlier this month, where she came first among women in her age group, despite an injured back.
She doesn't want me to make too much of her results or her bruises. "I race these races because of the woman they force me to become," she wrote in an e-mail just before the event. "That is what makes it all worthwhile to me: the testing of limits. I am still trying to find out where mine are."
To prepare for such rigours, she starts each day between 4 and 4:30 a.m., catches up on the news, downs a nutrient-loaded smoothie, gets in her morning training session and arrives at the office by 7:30 a.m. She devotes about 25 hours a week to cycling.
Between sips of jasmine tea, Ms. Lilly shares the simple credo of the solo endurance rider: "Never get off your bike. If you get off, your body will start to shut down. And once you get into that mode, it's impossible to mentally convince yourself to get back on the bike. It's the best resilience training that I've ever done."
Endurance and resilience are valuable traits in the investment business too, especially when, like Mawer, you're playing the long game. "It definitely helps with knowing your limits and understanding your own emotions. I find that cycling gives me additional discipline."
In what sounds like ideal advice for the buy-and-hold investing crowd, she adds: "We have limits to our ability to be disciplined in all situations. To increase the likelihood of being successful, it's better to set up a system in the first place so you're not tempted."
With the waiter hovering, we finally turn our attention to the extensive menu and start with a large bowl of edamame, followed by shared plates of excellent but pricey sushi rolls.
Ms. Lilly confesses to being a huge fan of Japanese cuisine and mentions that her parents met in a karate program. She also sports a tattoo of Mandarin characters on her left forearm that translate as "To be disciplined." No wonder some people think she is partly of Asian heritage, when her roots are largely British.
She credits female forebears across the pond for blazing the trail she is now following. A great-great-grandmother was an entrepreneur who operated her own pharmacy well before the First World War, when women were still struggling to obtain the vote. "I happen to come from a very long line of very strong-willed, independent women," she says.
Ms. Lilly was a self-described tomboy growing up in quiet Pickering, east of Toronto. Later, after enrolling in political science at the University of Toronto, she thought about becoming a foreign correspondent. But she soon switched to business studies, "because I found out I liked starting up things."
The ambitious and ever curious student (during our lunch, she asks almost as many questions as I do) co-founded a national conference for business students, directed a couple of university plays and did some work on startups. One full-time gig was at a fledgling outfit that customized customer-relationship software.
"She was always really driven," says Daniel Eskin, chief financial officer with BeautyNext.com and a former classmate of Ms. Lilly's. Even in their student days, she struck him as "super professional, with pretty deep insights."
Yet he's not surprised that she has chosen to work at a relatively small investment firm rather than one of the Wall Street or Bay Street heavyweights. He tells me to picture paddling a canoe into the middle of the ocean and trying to move an oil tanker with a toothpick. "That's kind of how she would have felt working at a really big company."
At smaller, non-hierarchical Mawer, which prizes innovative thinking, "she has more of an ability to practise her entrepreneurial passion," Mr. Eskin says.
She arrived in Calgary in 2009 as an "impressionable young business student" to take a job as an equity analyst. But typically she went beyond stock-picking to examine broader economic, political and philosophical issues.
"We look for some common qualities in all members of our research team, including a track record of excellence, intellectual curiosity and horsepower, and a passion for investing," Mawer chairman Jim Hall says. "Kara brought these qualities, plus a keen interest in wider macroeconomic, technological and political themes. It's in the broader thematic area that she's developed most."
About a year ago, that big-picture focus led to her becoming the firm's first strategist.
"We created the role … so that she could spend the bulk of her time on these activities, all of which have value for our firm and our clients," Mr. Hall says.
Ms. Lilly credits Mr. Hall's own extreme sports experience in the Marathon des Sables in 2012 – a seven-day, 250-kilometre footrace in the Sahara Desert – as a key inspiration for her endurance cycling.
So I ask Mr. Hall, who also mountain bikes and kick boxes, whether such limit-testing athletics are a job requirement at Mawer.
"No," he laughs. "But I do like to push people to think big and make it happen. I've learned that people usually sell themselves short in life and work. They're capable of way more than they think."
Based on what she has done so far, Ms. Lilly didn't need much of a nudge.
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Kara Lilly, investment strategist, Mawer Investment Management
Age: 30
Place of birth: Toronto
Education: Bachelor of business administration degree from University of Toronto; Chartered Financial Analyst.
Family: Grew up in a close-knit, hectic household with three stepsisters, a brother, lots of friends and a home daycare. Her partner, Michael Brimer, is also an endurance athlete. "I am there for all his Ironman [triathlon] events, while he stays up with me through all my 24-hour races."
Favourite pastime: Exploring, "whether that's on a mountain bike in the Rockies, a surfboard in Maui or trekking with gorillas in Rwanda."
Most inspirational reading: What I Have Lived For, Bertrand Russell's four-paragraph prologue to his autobiography. It "resonates deeply with me because Russell's three grand passions in life are also mine," referring to his quest for love and knowledge and his "unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind."
Charity of choice: Acumen, a non-profit global fund, which is "changing the way the world tackles poverty by investing in entrepreneurs whose businesses have a game-changing impact on the lives of the poor." She's so committed to this effort that she launched a Calgary chapter in 2012.
Music tastes: Eclectic. "On my iPod, you could find everything from the Foo Fighters to Jay Z, the Counting Crows, Bruce Springsteen, Marvin Gaye and Billy Joel."
Guilty pleasure: So You Think You Can Dance. "I grew up as a competitive dancer."
Favourite vacation: Anywhere with an ocean.
What people might be surprised to learn: "Even though patience is not usually a strength of mine, I seem to have an abundance of it when it comes to teaching children."