BL A C K
2021
Senior Vice President & Deputy General Counsel, Multifamily
LEADERS Worth Watching
TM
Education: JD, Yale Law School; AB magna cum laude, Harvard University; Clerkships: Associate Justice Stephen G. Breyer, U.S. Supreme Court; Hon. Guido Calabresi, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit Company Name: Fannie Mae Industry: Financial Services Company CEO: Hugh Frater Company Headquarters Location: Washington, DC Number of Employees: 7,500 Words you live by: “I do it because it’s hard. Because it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. And because it never ends. Every day presents me with a series of problems that I spend the rest of the day thinking about how I might solve—or at least chip away at. Next day same. And the day after that.” –Anthony Bourdain Who is your personal hero? My mother, Sueli Okata What book are you reading? Disrupt Yourself by Whitney Johnson What was your first job? China Closet, a store that sold tableware and kitchen and dining accessories Favorite charity: Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation Interests: Dancing (particularly samba), traveling, cooking Family: Married; mom to three boys, including a set of twin 11-year-olds
The Importance of Digging Deep I am passionate about problem solving—about mastering a subject with a view toward understanding the big picture and how the pieces fit together into the whole. And then, harnessing that understanding to frame the underlying challenge, identify the right questions, and find practical solutions. Following college, I worked in management consulting and learned to employ a strategic lens to examine the challenges facing a business and identify ways to reconfigure or transform the business to create value. I also learned that formulating the “best strategy” was not a matter of simply identifying the “right answer”; it required identifying the “right questions” to ask and developing a deeper understanding of the cultural and organizational dynamics at play, all of which are necessary to cultivate buy-in, communicate, and effectively execute
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2021 Fourth Quarter
the strategy at an interpersonal level. This, I believe, is the key to driving transformational change. After my stint in management consulting, I attended law school and later joined O’Melveny & Myers, the global law firm. There, I honed my skills as a deal lawyer, while using my strategic counseling background in the role of chief of staff to the firm’s then-chairman for four years. Early on, I met Warren Christopher, former Secretary of State, then senior partner at O’Melveny. I had the immense privilege of sitting alongside Chris (as he was known) through many firm meetings and functions. Each of those occasions was a treat, and I’d leave with at least one nugget of wisdom. And from Chris, there were many. Chief among them was a saying often attributed to Theodore Roosevelt, which Chris amplified with an additional two words at the end: “Nobody cares how much you know until they know that
you care . . . about them.” Chris’s advice resonates as clearly now as it did more than 15 years ago. His words have informed and influenced my outlook on building and maintaining relationships and problem solving. At its core, Chris made clear, doing both effectively hinges on consistently conveying a sense of genuine personal investment, which is achieved largely through observing, listening, and asking the right questions (rather than necessarily offering the answers). But that doesn’t mean that one no longer seeks to get to the right answer. Rather, in our relentless drive to tackle increasingly complex problems, the “right answer” is arrived at as part of a collaborative effort. Through give and take, we both validate and challenge each other’s assumptions and achieve greater understanding and better results and impact.
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AWARD
Maritza Okata
