Witad Awards 2020: Vendor Professional of the Year (Business Development)—Stephanie Sparvero, Bloomberg

“At heart, I’ve always been a frustrated engineer,” says Stephanie Sparvero, global head of BVAL (evaluated pricing) at Bloomberg and winner of the vendor professional of the year (business development) category in this year’s Women in Technology and Data Awards.

With the engineering degree from MIT that she secured in 1996, as well as her MBA from Columbia, Sparvero has gone on to become a “seasoned and bloodied veteran” of the financial markets, with experience on the sell side, the buy side, private equity, short-term startups and vendors alike. She joined the data giant nearly four years ago as BVAL COO before taking charge of the business in July 2019. The division has seen double-digit growth each year since she joined the firm.

Her path has been a winding one: Prior to the sub-prime mortgage meltdown of 2008, she ran portfolio management at buy-side shop C-Bass. In the following few years—which included stints at Barclays and Markit Group—she did an about-face. Rather than brainstorming great investment ideas and convincing investors to bite, she instead wanted to spend her time working closely with clients, strategizing with them and educating them on issues such as risk. Those are the parts of her job—which are some of her favorites—that are timelier than ever.

In the age of coronavirus, Sparvero and her team are finding opportunities to think critically, re-tool and optimize existing processes in the wake of heightened market volatility.

“I think we have a very exciting year ahead of us with some of the new products we’re developing, and really re-investing in the platform,” she says.

Sparvero is also intensely focused on continuing to build and empower a community of data and technology minded women across the industry. A founding member of Bloomberg’s Women in FinTech, she’s helped grow the industry group to more than 1,000 members since its inception in December 2017.

“What we’re able to do is really talk about issues on a professional level that intellectually challenge our members—things like artificial intelligence and STEM education. This is not just your run-of-the-mill, traditional female subject matter,” Sparvero says. “What we’re really doing is providing them [with] a platform to discuss these more advanced professional topics in a supportive environment.”

—RN