Witad Awards 2023: Risk professional of the year—Dharrini Bala Gadiyaram, Bloomberg

While Dharrini Bala Gadiyaram enjoyed the fast pace of the trading environment in her previous roles in trading and quantitative research at Lehman Brothers and Credit Suisse, she felt it was not one that necessarily lends itself to a lot of teamwork and innovation.

Since joining Bloomberg in 2014, Gadiyaram found that it was much easier to bring her “whole self” to work due to the nature of the business and its inclusivity. Barriers to innovation are low, too, which enables anyone to run with an idea as long as it has the right level of business value.

As global head of risk products at Bloomberg, Gadiyaram says the enterprise risk business supports entrepreneurial people. “If you have a great idea and the right collaborators, you can run with it from start to finish,” she says.

When she started out with the business, the team focused on market risk and counterparty risk. Since then, it has added credit risk, collateral management and initial margin support, and most recently climate risk. “There are always opportunities for us to explore new avenues, and that’s what fuels my passion for what we do within the business,” she says.

A technology Gadiyaram is passionate about is APIs, and she has focused on building a full suite of risk analytics that can be delivered via API. “This is something that especially for our larger clients is invaluable in making sure we can keep their experience as seamless as possible,” she says.

Throughout her career, Gadiyaram has benefited from mentors and managers. But in her previous experiences in the trading and quantitative research space, she noticed an absence of accessible female role models. So now at Bloomberg, she has made herself accessible as a mentor to other women in the industry. She is an active member of the Bloomberg Women’s Community (BWC), Bloomberg Women in Technology (BWIT), and Bloomberg Pan Asian Community. She also works with organizations such as Women in Derivatives (WIND). “What I like most about contributing to BWC, BPAC, BWIT and WIND, is that they have mentoring efforts. I’ve been paired with several women who are in the early stages of their careers. It’s a rewarding experience coaching them through multiple stages of their careers,” she says.

The next frontier for Gadiyaram and her team is climate risk. To this end, Bloomberg has invested in riskthinking.ai and is working with the organization to accelerate the availability of climate risk data and analytics and explore the use of advanced technology and risk modeling techniques.