The WFE's Women Leaders 2025 - Emily Spurling, Senior Vice President, Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes, Nasdaq

Name:  Emily Spurling

Job title:  Senior Vice President, Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes

Organisation: Nasdaq

1. Brief description of nominee’s role and job.

Emily Spurling is Senior Vice President (SVP) and Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes. She is responsible for driving the strategic direction and growth of the Nasdaq Global Indexes business, leading her team of more than 200 people to expand the business’ capabilities to service clients around the world.

The Nasdaq Global Indexes business creates innovative, market-leading, transparent indexes which serve as the basis of many investable financial products around the world. Nasdaq Global Indexes creates product strategies that generate alpha for investors by giving them access and exposure to innovative investment themes and approaches.

Nasdaq Global Indexes is one of the fastest-growing businesses at Nasdaq, with more than $600 million in revenue.

Emily is the first woman at Nasdaq to hold the position of Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes.

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

Throughout her 10-year career at Nasdaq, Emily has served in a number of senior roles and is nearing her two-year anniversary as SVP and Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes. In this role, she sets the strategic direction and growth of the business leading her team and expanding the business’ capabilities to service clients across the globe. Prior to leading the Nasdaq Global Indexes business, she was responsible for Strategy, Finance and Operations for Nasdaq’s Data, Index and Analytics businesses, and throughout her Nasdaq tenure, she has worked in various roles in Corporate Strategy.

Emily helped develop the strategic direction to bring together the Data, Index and Analytics businesses and she led the evaluation and integration of three major acquisitions which enabled these businesses to empower investors with more robust insights to inform their investment decisions.

Emily also serves on the Executive Advisory Council for Nasdaq’s WIN (Women In Nasdaq) Employee Resource Group, which has more than 1,800 members globally and aims to empower, uplift and shape future female leaders within the company. In addition to mentoring several employees directly, she also curates content for the more than 300 women in her division, which includes timely articles and external speakers that surface engaging and sometimes difficult topics that affect women. She is also actively engaged in her division’s Global Client Engagement Network, where she helps Nasdaq employees upskill their client engagement expertise to foster deeper relationships.

Emily is a board member of the Index Industry Association (IIA), a not-for-profit organisation serving the fast-growing global community of index providers. She’s also an active member of Women in ETFs, a global non-profit organisation that brings together women and men in chapters based in major financial centres to further women’s careers by leveraging collective skill and ambition, and the Forté Foundation, which aims to launch women into fulfilling, significant careers through access to business education, professional development and a community of successful women.

Prior to joining Nasdaq, Emily started her career in investment banking at J.P. Morgan, and then held several roles in private equity and impact investing. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and History from Duke University and a Master of Business Administration in Finance and Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Emily is a fan of maintaining an active lifestyle by running and participating in races in the summer and skiing in the winter (required as a working mother of three boys!), striving to make an impact by contributing to various local non-profit organisations, and inspirational quotes. One of her favourite quotes is: “To watch people push themselves further than they think they can, it’s a beautiful thing. It’s really human,” by Abby Wambach.

She also always enjoys spending quality time with her husband and three sons.

3. What were your professional highlights and challenges of 2024?

2024 marked Emily’s second year leading the Nasdaq Global Indexes business, which saw growth in several areas:

• As of September 30, 2024, the Index business saw strong performance for the year, driven by continued globalisation, innovation and expansion efforts:

• Total revenue growth for the Global Indexes business has increased 26% year-over-year.
• Assets Under Management (AUM) in products tracking Nasdaq-branded indexes increased 46% year-over-year.

• The Nasdaq-100 Index® (NDX®) ecosystem, which serves as the basis of many investable financial products around the world to offer investors exposure to the top 100 non-financial companies listed on Nasdaq, and represents the most innovative and growth-oriented companies in the modern economy, saw strong performance:

• There were 86 exchange-traded products (ETPs) trading on 18 exchanges, along with more than 100 non-ETPs (inclusive of mutual funds, annuities, futures, options, and other structured vehicles) tracking the performance of the Nasdaq-100 Index® worldwide, with about $510 billion in ETP AUM as of November 30, 2024.
• The NDX® was up 29.4% YTD as of December 11, 2024.

• Nasdaq Global Indexes continues to extend into growth areas beyond the NDX®, with more than 75% of 2024 new product launches falling outside of direct Nasdaq-100® exposure.
• Nasdaq Global Indexes was recognised as Index Provider of the Year by ETF.com and as 2024 Best Index Provider by SRP (Structured Retail Products).

4. Tell us about a few of your key achievements throughout your career?

Becoming the Head of Nasdaq Global Indexes was an opportunity that Emily embraced fully. Taking on a role managing a business segment versus having responsibility over investment evaluation, diligence and execution, was a directional change, but one that fully aligned with the financial and portfolio management skillset developed over years of investment analysis, integration and management. The Index business is responsible for analysing investment patterns and emerging mega trends to create innovative, relevant indexes that asset manager and issuer partners can launch products to track against. Further to this, the index business is a partnership business whereby it is aligned with clients’ objectives for growth and the business provides the content, distribution and marketing support for clients to reach investors and grow the AUM in their products. Having a great team, listening first, and executing on a well-developed strategy are three key elements of success to scale the business for the future.

Emily also previously spent a year living and working in Cambodia driving investing initiatives, which helped local entrepreneurs support and grow their businesses in the local market. Emily learned a great deal being immersed in Cambodian culture, while also making positive impacts on the community. Engaging with local business leaders and understanding the demands and areas of need in a different culture helped Emily formulate a collaborative approach to success. No one individual can be the expert in all areas.

5. What and who inspires, and has inspired, you to achieve your professional success?

Throughout her career, Emily has been inspired and mentored by many leaders who paved the way for women in finance and leadership.

For the last 10 years, Adena Friedman, Chair and CEO at Nasdaq, has been someone Emily has admired since she joined the company. Adena’s vision for Nasdaq and the way she has been able to propel the business into a leading financial technology company has been remarkable. Emily also says Adena is one of the key reasons she has stayed with Nasdaq for so long – she learns from her every day and is proud to be working under her leadership.

6. How have you overcome setbacks, and what advice would you give to others dealing with setbacks?

Always ask questions. Engaging, asking questions and investigating are keys to success for every leader and certainly in the investment management industry. You cannot know all the answers and if you want to make the right investment decision or want to do what is necessary for your clients, you have to ask questions. The more questions you ask, the more information you gather, which is increasingly a benefit over time in solving problems and providing insightful solutions to the team and for clients. One of her personal mottos is: “Say yes with confidence and figure it out later.” To quote Eleanor Roosevelt, “Be confident, not certain.”

The importance of asking questions lies in both a lesson for oneself and encouraging this with those who work with you. The risks and issues will never be shared if others do not feel empowered to be a part of the conversation and this can be detrimental to a business. Create the openness and transparency that you and the business need to succeed.

7. What advice do you have for other women who aspire to be in leadership positions? What is the biggest takeaway you want to leave with the reader?

Bring who you are to the workplace. This is a true authentic leadership approach. Part of being a woman in leadership is being a woman and embracing that as part of how you approach your work and your colleagues. Being a woman is a superpower. To quote Eleanor Roosevelt again here: “To handle yourself, use your head. To handle others, use your heart.”

Emily also sees change as an opportunity, and embracing change helps guide your career and your impact you can have on others. A successful strategy is one that can pivot and navigate change and achieve an even better outcome for the team and for clients. To quote Steve Jobs: "Innovation is the ability to see change as an opportunity, not a threat,” and innovation is at the heart of the Nasdaq Global Indexes business.