When Andrea Remyn Stone first moved to London, working in Canary Wharf, the industry was going through a digital transformation. On her desk, she used Reuters Terminal to trade international converts and used Bloomberg Terminal to trade convertible bonds.
At that time, she says, “I never thought in a million years I would end up as the chief strategy officer of Bloomberg and the CEO of Refinitiv. You never really know where life’s gonna go.”
Remyn Stone, now CEO of Zema Global, is back in London visiting the data service provider’s new office a short walk from London Bridge. But there was no guarantee that she would be where she is now.
“If you had asked my younger self 30 years ago if I would have ended up where I am now, you would have received a definitive no,” she explains. A little over 30 years ago, Remyn Stone was determined to become a professional ballerina — a dream crushed when the US government cut the National Endowment for the Arts.
“It was gutting. I had a great deal of sorrow because I’d been so passionate about this, it was very hard to change my sense of identity and who I was,” she says. “I was young, I was 18, and my parents had been desperate for me to go to college and in retrospect, they were 100 per cent right. As a ballerina, you retire by the time you’re 40, but at the age of 16 or 18, that seems really old. You can’t think that far.”
The daughter of a Dutch father and American mother, Remyn Stone explains that she was always interested in global cultures and this was reflected in her studies. Beginning her political science degree amid the collapse of the USSR, the emergence of globalism and a shifting balance of powers, Remyn Stone wanted to make sense of the world — one she felt she hadn’t been able to find herself in.
“I never really felt fully American living in the US. When I would come over to Europe, I never felt European. I was always stuck in between worlds. I’ve never really felt like I fit in anywhere,” she says.
Remyn Stone then decided to switch to an art history major which, she adds with a laugh, “annoyed my parents like you would not believe.”
But, with an entrepreneurial spirit that would later define her career, she partnered with a successful teacher in North Carolina to run a ballet school for 400 students to help pay her way through college. She then graduated from university in three years, but was wary of the post-graduate programmes at financial institutions open to her. Again, she did not know where she was going to fit in in her career.
She remembers: “I looked at myself and said, ‘You’re a woman who was a ballet dancer who studied art history. What are you going to do in an investment bank?’”
Win, win, win
Remyn Stone began her career as an entry-level management consultant and did competitive benchmarking, but did not feel herself. “I quickly realised I felt inauthentic giving recommendations at the ripe old age of 21 or 22 to people in their 40s and 50s,” she explains. “In a rush of early 20’s irrationality, I wanted to move to New York City and I wanted to do something more creative, but I wanted to be commercial. I went into an advertising agency.”
In this role, Remyn Stone learnt something key about herself: “I loved winning and I loved winning new business.”
Her fervent competitiveness and success led to a phone call from the CEO of K2 Digital, one of her firm’s direct competitors. “She asked me to join her,” Remyn Stone remembers. “Things were great, and then the world crashed. The dot-com crash happened. The company I was working for was de-listed from the NASDAQ small cap exchange and it went bankrupt, so we all got to go home with just our fancy Aeron chairs.
“I had another existential moment. Another moment where I asked what I learnt from this. I loved working with technology and I love the power of data. But I knew I had a big blind spot. I didn’t understand finance. I didn’t understand the capital markets. I didn’t understand how to run a company’s finances.”
To fill that gap, Remyn Stone went back to college and did an MBA in finance at the Wharton School. But, the dot-com crash and 9/11 had left the job market scarce. “50 per cent of my class at Wharton was unemployed when I graduated. There were no venture capitalists hiring, there were no technology companies hiring, there were no investment banks hiring. Nobody. I did not know what to do,” Remyn Stone explains.
She then went to work as a trader, which brought with it a new way of life. “I would start my day by getting on the subway with just me and the construction workers. I would be dressed in my suit and maybe they looked at me like I was crazy,” she laughs. “People who I lived by in this typical New York City brownstone would see me go in at six o’clock in one suit, and they’d see me come out at one o’clock in the morning in another suit. They must have been like: ‘Are you Superman or something?’”
Another career switch saw her becoming an equity research analyst, but then, she says, “I had my third existential crisis.
“I realised all of this knowledge of building these advertising and internet businesses was useless as an equity research analyst. I had made more money before business school than I made coming out of business school. I had all this debt. I didn’t want to be a trader. I didn’t want to be an investment banker. I didn’t want to be an equity research analyst. What am I going to do?”
Embracing ambiguity
Remyn Stone joined McGraw Hill, now S&P Global, to make the most of her fields of knowledge. “It had a financial services division and I had invested all this money in learning financial services. And it had a media business and I knew media from my pre-business school background,” she explains. “I got promoted to executive director within six months. I always tell people, bet on yourself. If you believe in yourself, work hard, are focused and listen to other people, you will prevail.”
Remyn Stone had hit the ground running and, after three promotions in five years, she says, “I got a phone call out of the blue from a friend who said, Bloomberg is investing in growth during the downturn. I had to take that phone call.”
She became Bloomberg’s chief strategy officer, but what did that role entail? “It was the most ill-defined job you could possibly imagine,” she replies. “I like ambiguity. I find ambiguity to be an opportunity. You have the opportunity to shape and navigate and chart a path. I find it energising.”
In her time at Bloomberg, Remyn Stone oversaw the company doubling the number of staff, a US$3 billion increase in revenue, 13 acquisitions and several partnerships. Most notably, she was responsible for the multi-billion dollar carve out of Barclays’ Index business
Despite this, Remyn Stone wanted more. Trying her hand at private equity, she was part of a group that bought Dealogic, becoming the firm’s chief strategy officer. After just under four years, they would then sell the company to ION, where she continued to work.
“I had my first child at the age of 42 and after three weeks, I went straight back to work to do deals. I didn’t love that, but it was the right thing to do at the time,” she says.
“But with my second child, I went in and I said, ‘I’m resigning. I’m done. I’m gonna take some time off.’
“The response I got was, ‘Please, no, don’t go. You can live wherever you want.’ So we moved to Denver, Colorado, and took a little bit of time off for my second daughter.”
Her time at ION would eventually come to an end when she was asked if she was interested in becoming CEO of Refinitiv.
“Halfway through my negotiation with them, it was announced that Refinitiv was going to be sold to LSEG in the biggest merger integration Europe had seen in a decade,” she says with intensity.
“I had to be a part of this. I moved to London in December of 2019 with an 18-month-old, a three-year-old, two dogs — including a 140-pound mastiff — and a cat, and crammed all this stuff into a little house in Hampstead, and started this job.”
It was a difficult job, made harder by the Covid-19 pandemic and the impact of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but, she says, “I had this huge sense of conviction and purpose to turn around US$6 billion of revenue that had been in decline for a decade. I just had this conviction that I knew it could be done.”
A stint at Civica was followed by a return to the US to become CEO of Zema Global where her unwavering conviction continues to drive her. “Zema Global is and will be the absolute leader in delivering the best insight in commodity and energy markets as effectively as possible globally. We plan to grow from 50 to 200 million in five years. Even when times get tough, I will use my conviction as my North Star,” she insists.
Lessons in leadership
“I usually ask people an interview question, which is, in five years from now, what would you be proud of from what we’ve done together in this job? I learn a lot from that question, because usually people are trying to fulfill an ambition or relieve an anxiety,” she explains.
“I was really bad at maths. My ambition was to be the best internet and publishing analyst because of my anxiety to prove to myself at something that I was super nervous about.”
So, what in five years from now, would Remyn Stone be proud of in this job?
“I cannot wait to see what my team is capable of doing and what it can achieve,” she says. “I am very inspired to create an industry platform that eases the burden of the data complexity that has been symptomatic of commodities for as long as we’ve known. I want to help companies that are engaged in energy, commodities, as well as the financial services firms, make decisions that keeps energy affordable for people, avoids disasters and helps us prove the economic case and the value of cleaner energy.
“That is what I will be proud of in five years. That gives me purpose. It is, hopefully, what inspires the people here at Zema Global as well.”
Remyn Stone likens her leadership role to that of an orchestra’s conductor. “Change comes from the collective effort. The orchestra conductor doesn’t play every instrument. They generate beautiful music by knowing the strengths of the various players,” she says. “My job is to surround myself with people who are better and smarter than me. I need to align them, inspire, help navigate the uncertainty, to help make decisions, to chart the path.”
A flawless product requires a collective effort, Remyn Stone stresses before offering an analogy her 18-year-old self would have appreciated.
“In a ballet performance it looks like the ballerina is effortless. But it is grueling, painful, sweaty work and it’s not just one person. There’s a whole court of people doing the lights, cleaning and producing the performance,” she explains, before adding finally.
“Tens of thousands of people make lots of micro-decisions and if we’re helping them to make the world a better place, then I can explain to my kids this is how I’m contributing.”
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Matthew Cheung
Image: Zema Global 
