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Engineering a new career path: Sally Cheung’s journey into responsible investment
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Tom Parker |
From mechanical engineering to responsible investment, Sally Cheung’s career took an unexpected turn. She talks to us about her journey, shaping ESG practices, engaging pension fund members, and the curiosity that led to her recognition as a LAPF Investments Awards Rising Star
As anyone who has gone to university will tell you, the career you imagined for yourself at the start can look very different by the time you leave. For Sally Cheung, that shift came not through uncertainty, but through experience.
Arriving at Lancaster University in 2017, Sally was convinced her future lay in mechanical engineering.
“I did my master’s degree in mechanical engineering, mainly because I liked the creativity and I really enjoyed maths, so it felt like a natural route for me to go into,” she said.
It appeared to be a good fit. However, it was only once she experienced the industry first-hand that her perspective began to change.
“After doing a couple of internships and work experience in the field, I felt like the pace of the engineering industry was quite slow”, she explained. “It was also quite tedious work; they want to make sure each stage of a project is extremely thorough.”
After learning the reality of what the role entailed, she began looking for alternative career in mathematics. That search led her to the university’s Women in Finance Society, where she was first introduced to the world of investment.
“That was where I was like ‘oh, this sounds interesting’,” she said. “It feels like the pace that I’d like, and is always shifting and changing – and it was something I was more drawn to than engineering.”
This, in turn, saw her apply for upReach – a social mobility programme designed to support students from lower-income backgrounds into careers in finance, and made a career in investment feel attainable.
She said: “I got loads of insights from different parts of the industry, like consultants, asset managers and asset owners. I also had a mentor, and I got to do work experience at HSBC – and that’s when I felt like, ‘yes, this is the area I want to go into’.”
As her interest in investment deepened, Sally became increasingly drawn to how financial decisions could account for social and environmental factors – an interest she formalised by studying for the CFA ESG Investing Certificate and would soon lead her to apply for a responsible investment (RI) role at the West Midlands Pension Fund.
Starting from scratch
At the time Sally joined, the RI function is still in its early stages. The team was small, and much of the initial work centred on understanding how existing investment processes operated before attempting to embed RI principles within them.
She explained: “At the time we didn’t have any RI objectives and what wanted to achieve, so we had to develop that and then look at how we integrate that into our existing investment processes.”
Joining the newly formed team as a recent graduate was not without its challenges, with Sally admitting that – initially – she found the environment intimidating, particularly given the seniority of many of her colleagues.
“At the very beginning, I was really scared to speak to people,” she reflected. “A lot of the people in my team were senior members of the organisation, and I always thought that if I had a simple question, they wouldn’t have time to answer it.
“But quite quickly, I realised that people are willing to speak to you. Everyone is just human, after all, and everyone in this organisation is really nice and willing to give the time to help you. It’s that culture and dynamic that allows you to raise challenges and identify opportunities to develop.”
This supportive culture proved crucial as the team began the gradual task of embedding responsible investment practices across the fund – with member engagement identified as an early priority.
As part of this, Sally worked closely with a colleague to develop a survey aimed at undertaking members’ awareness of, and attitudes towards, responsible investment.
She explained: “We asked members things like: what type of communications have you heard from us? Do you know what responsible investment is? And what are your values and views on the investment topics we are exploring?
“What we found was that no one really understood what responsible investment was, and no one had heard any communications from the investment team.”
Off the back of this, the team started to develop a customer engagement plan focused on RI – utilising things the fund was already doing with members such as engagement forums, webinars and road shows.
She added: “So we weren’t trying to reinvent the wheel in terms of how we communicate, but it was just adding our presence to those existing channels and really trying to raise awareness and understanding of what RI was.”
Trial and error
Translating responsible investment into something meaningful for members proved to be an evolving process. The team quickly realised clarity and accessibility were key.
“RI is quite complicated, and it’s very easy for us as professionals to revert to jargon that members aren’t going to understanding,” Sally said. “Trying to understand what we do and then convey that in very simple language is something we’ve had to develop over time.
“We don’t want to overload them with information, but we want to make sure we give the key information while being engaging and interactive with it.
“So we use case studies now to demonstrate how our principles and practices happen, and what impact it has. And that’s really resonated with members, so they understand it and that’s having some form of impact.”
Alongside improving how information is delivered, the team has placed equal emphasis on listening – particularly during face-to-face engagement with members. She explained: “We don’t want to be the type of pension scheme that doesn’t listen to its members.
“They have every right to challenge the work we do, and if it’s logical and reasonable then it’s feedback we take on board, and if it isn’t then it’s an awareness and understanding piece that we need to work on.”
As for how they structure the meetings, it’s unsurprising to learn that it very much dependent on the format in use. “Webinars are a lot more content heavy, and there’s definitely less interaction,” Sally explained.
“It’s just a case of trying to make that content as engaging as possible by adding those snippets of case studies and real-life examples to bring that process to life.”
When it comes to the face-to-face workshop and forum work, it gives her the chance to do what she says is the most rewarding part of her job – speaking to members.
She said: “We’re in quite a unique position where we can see the day-to-day investment activities, but we can also go out and speak to members and portray the good work that our investment managers and partners are doing.
“And usually, you can get quite nervous about some of them raising something quite controversial – but I’ve had instances where those members are very respectful and thoughtful.
“They ask the right questions; they’re really engaged and pleased with the work we do, and at the end of the day that’s our client and that’s who we’re doing this job for.”
Thriving in a collaborative work environment
By 2025, Sally had begun to take on significantly more responsibility within the organisation – both within the responsible investment function and beyond it.
That expansion of responsibility includes co-leading the fund’s internal investment committee. Despite the significance of the role, Sally said West Midlands’ way of working means it never feels as daunting as it might as there’s lots of support from senior members to grow.
She explained: “We operate in a flat structure. We’ve got two assistant directors in our team and we work closely with them both, so it doesn’t feel like they are directors in a way, it just feels like they’re a part of our team.
“So I guess when I took over shared responsibility for the organisation of the internal investment committee, it doesn’t feel like a high-pressure responsibility.”
This structure has helped foster a genuinely collaborative work culture – one in which junior team members are encouraged not only to contribute, but also to challenge ideas, propose solutions and, where possible, help implement them.
And this was evident from the start of Sally’s time at the fund. She explained: “In the early days I was just learning how we operated in our work and, as a result, I saw the areas that we could improve upon, the problems that we had, and what solutions that we could have used to solve them.
“These ideas were then integrated as part of our priorities for the year and areas of work that we wanted to build upon, and that’s how we’ve managed to build our processes and approach quite quickly.”
Looking back on her time at the fund, Sally says the opportunity to help shape processes and priorities came as a welcome – and unexpected – aspect of the role.
She explained: “With responsible investment, it’s a whole area that’s still growing, and people are still trying to develop new methodologies to assess different types of ESG risks. Nature is one that is up and coming and is one that people are still trying to grapple with and understand.
“Another area we are looking at developing, and one that resonates with members, is human rights. It is an area that has come to the spotlight particularly due to geopolitical tensions.
“So the work that we do is always ever evolving, there’s always so much we need to do, and not enough time to do it all, but that’s equally what makes it exciting and it’s the reason why I wanted to change industries in the first place.”
When asked what advice she would give to those looking to enter the industry for the first time, Sally is clear that curiosity is essential.
She explained: “I think the number one thing is to just be curious, because there’s so much stuff for everyone in this industry if you’re not curious about it and don’t show any interest in it, it’s very hard to stay in this industry.
“And when you are curious, you ask the right questions, and challenge existing ideas.”
