The WFE's Women Leaders 2023 - Michelle Tran, President of TMX Datalinx, TMX Group

Name: Michelle Tran

Organization: TMX Group

Job Title: President, TMX Datalinx 

 

1. Brief description of nominee’s role/job

Michelle Tran is the president of TMX Datalinx, TMX Group’s information services business, which falls under our Global Solutions, Insights & Analytics division. Trading activity on the Toronto Stock Exchange, T SX Venture Exchange, TSX Alpha Exchange and Montreal Exchange generates a stream of real-time data reflecting orders and trades. TMX Datalinx packages these data sets with value-added content (e.g. dividends, earnings) from TMX’s clearing houses, listing business, and other data sets to create unique and high quality market data products which are delivered to clients around the world. The TMX Datalinx business unit is viewed as a critical enabler for the overall growth of TMX Group, generating over 20% of TMX’s revenue annually.

As president, Michelle is responsible for leading the strategy, development, and execution of the overall Datalinx business. Michelle and her team are responsible for the overall management and transformation of the Datalinx business, growing our revenues and providing valuable insights and crucial market data to advance the objectives of global retail and wealth money managers.

2. Short bio (career highlights, education, interests/hobbies):

Michelle joined TMX Group in 2001 (then TSE) as a relationship manager in the equities trading group, before taking on the first Sales position for TMX Datalinx two years later.

Since 2003, she has held increasingly senior roles, most recently serving as vice president, head of sales and services, TMX Datalinx, overseeing domestic and international sales of market data and data analytics solutions.

During Michelle’s tenure as vice president, she established strategic partnerships and was responsible for many significant product and sales milestones across market data, colocation and connectivity. She became interim president of Datalinx in May 2021 and full-time president in November 2021. This history with TMX and TMX Datalinx has given her a strong vested interest in the success of Datalinx. Michelle’s core values of client-centricity, trust and courage aligns that with TMX Group

Prior to joining TMX Group, she worked for Reuters Canada and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. Michelle has a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Toronto and is a CFA Charterholder.

Michelle enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband and two daughters. They love hiking, skiing, biking and swimming. Michelle also enjoys playing golf with colleagues and clients.

3. What were your professional highlights and challenges of 2022?

As a whole, 2022 was a significant year for the team as we executed our new strategy and developed the roadmap to build the right team, extend the core business, diversify into new product segments and enable new capabilities.

After taking on the role of president at TMX Datalinx in late 2021, I led the successful restructure of the Datalinx leadership team based on the new vision for the business. In order to execute on Datalinx’s objectives, I bifurcated the business and created new roles to lead our four key pillars: sales, product, operations and technology. The success of this re-structure and the appointment of the new leadership team led Datalinx to double our growth in just one year.

The talent at Datalinx is critical to our success. It is a privilege for me to represent this team; a workforce of individuals who are passionate about the industry and constantly striving to improve client experience. Under my leadership, my team’s dedication to our clients fostered an exciting year of growth and enabled us to take significant steps forward in expanding and enhancing the content we provide:

We made a strategic investment in ETFLogicly and launched TMX LOGICLY to help bring ETF advisors and investors greater transparency and efficient access to valuable insights and tools. Through these tools, wealth advisors can better screen and compare products for their clients, analyze a fund's risk and exposure, ESG factors, liquidity, income, and returns, based on its component stocks, and satisfy client compliance requirements.

We acquired Boston-based Wall Street Horizon, a leading provider of global corporate event data. This move extends our global reach and services the evolving needs of our clients across the marketplace, connecting investors to the information they need to gain a competitive investment edge and manage market risk.

Later in the year we began working on a strategic investment in VettaFi Holdings LLC, a U.S.-based privately owned data, analytics, indexing, digital distribution, and thought leadership company. VettaFi cultivates an industry-leading, data-driven platform, built to empower and educate the modern financial advisor, asset manager and institutional investor. VettaFi is a dynamic and growing index, ETF data and related digital distribution business, and we look forward to working together to explore ways to combine TMX Datalinx's data sets and capabilities with VettaFi's comprehensive services and expertise to further enhance our offerings.

In 2022 we launched TMX’s ESG Data Hub. We used an innovative approach of partnering with ESG specialists to create a hub of ESG data sets for Canadian and global securities.

In 2022 we also grew Datalinx’s annual revenue to over $200 million Canadian dollars for the first time in the company’s history by launching several new products and signing new Canadian and international clients. This was all achieved despite adverse macroeconomic conditions and increased competition.

4. What and who inspires/has inspired you to achieve your professional success?

I am inspired most by my mother and grandmother, two resilient immigrant women who sacrificed so much to come to Canada and create a better life for their family. Through their example, they taught me the value of a strong work ethic and instilled a strong moral compass that has motivated me to act with courage, and lead with empathy. Today, I’m proud to say my daughters are also a source of inspiration; I strive to show them that women can be strong leaders and support them in achieving their dreams.

5. What advice do you have for other women who aspire to be in leadership positions? 

As leaders we need to create working environments that promote engagement and happiness, which ultimately drives increased performance. Leading with empathy promotes an environment of this nature. As such, I would encourage other women who aspire to be in leadership positions to develop and demonstrate empathy by asking questions about your employees' challenges and actively listening to their responses. It is also important to engage authentically while also expressing your concerns. The understanding that I have gained from these discussions has enabled me to take action, implement meaningful change, and create trusting relationships with the team I have the privilege of leading today.