“Watching this team work through complex problems, figuring it out, and then figuring it out better: It’s expanded my world.”

– Jane Sadowsky

The daughter of a doctor and an educator, Jane Sadowsky grew up without a vision of what careers in business might look like. Her upbringing did, however, instill discipline, a sense of curiosity, and an outsider perspective that’s helpful to identifying trends and patterns.

With her fresh liberal arts degree in hand, Jane took a job as a bank loan officer. After observing that M&A looked a lot more interesting, she set out to become an M&A banker. She worked evenings to bring herself up to speed on what was required, achieving the expertise to join colleagues in starting an M&A boutique. “I love finance,” she says. “I love thinking about valuations, about what could be good for the economy. It was the creativity of ideas, knowing I was adding value.”

Attending The Wharton School, she discovered that those with liberal arts undergrad credentials were dismissively called “poets.” Jane continues to see her background as a unique advantage: “I’m a huge believer in liberal arts,” she says. “It helps me to this day, having a sense of how to bring together a whole lot of ‘factoids’ in a cohesive and persuasive manner. I can see patterns that others may not and can stress test them to see if they hold up.” Cofounder Kris Manos says, “Jane’s biggest asset is her ability to see around corners. I think that’s what she brought to her investment banking clients, too.”

Jane’s experience at Wharton was neither the first nor the last time she was cast as “other.” She spent a high school year in Japan as part of an exploratory exchange program. At Wharton, in addition to being cast as a poet, she was told that Wall Street didn’t want women, especially in M&A. “I wanted to do M&A,” she says, “and I had to forge my own path, because there weren’t women who could show me the way.”

Having paved her own way, though, Jane remains generous in sharing what she’s learned with others, in both formal and informal settings. “When I think about a career legacy,” she says, “the thing I’m most proud of is that people I’ve worked with want to work with me again.”

“I like looking under rocks, and the topics that interest me are often topics no one wants to talk about,” Jane says. She’s become knowledgeable about power and utilities, and also about a broad functional range including audit, governance, compensation, fairness and valuation, diversity, mentoring, and recruiting.

As a lifelong East Coast person, she’s found her curiosity exercised in many ways by the Eudokia team: “Getting to know the people and ecosystem of West Michigan, hearing about towns, working with the engineering team, seeing Kris’s leadership style: for me, being part of Eudokia has been one of the most profoundly interesting decisions of my life. I’m really seeing how different types of brains function to work through complex problems with grit, figuring it out, then figuring it out better. It’s expanded my world.”