Risk/Reward (2002)

Genres - Business, Culture & Society  |   Sub-Genres - Biography, Careers, Gender Issues, Workplace Issues  |   Run Time - 88 min.  |   Countries - United States  |   MPAA Rating - NR
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Synopsis by Josh Ralske

Risk/Reward, a documentary directed by Elizabeth Holder and Xan Parker, and executive produced by Peter Gilbert (Hoop Dreams), examines the lives of four women who work on Wall Street. Louise Jones was abandoned as a baby and grew up in a housing project on Staten Island. She talked her way into a job at the NYSE out of high school, and worked her way up the ladder at a furious pace, eventually becoming one of the few brokers on the floor of the NYSE, and running her own successful company. Carol Warner Wilke is an equities research analyst specializing in household products, and fighting to move up to the number one ranking in her field (from number two) while pregnant with her second child. Kimberley Euston is a foreign exchange sales trader. Originally from rural West Virginia, she now trades billions of dollars in international currency every day. Umber Ahmad is a Pakistani-American MBA student at Wharton. Over the course of the film, she works at an internship at Morgan Stanley, desperate to get a job offer before she graduates from school, and quickly learning just how demanding her chosen career path will be. The filmmakers interview other successful women in the finance industry about the special challenges faced by women in this overwhelmingly male-dominated world. The film traces the women's lives through personal turmoil and financial downturn, including the impact of the terrorist attack on September 11, 2001. Risk/Reward had its New York premiere at the 2003 Tribeca Film Festival.

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Keywords

Wall-Street, women, businessperson, career, challenge, corporate-ladder, life-choices, perseverance, prestige, stockbroker, success, trader, wealth, women's-issues