During her 22-year career at Morgan Stanley, Carla Harris executed a host of high-profile initial public offerings, all the while still finding time to pursue her other career, as a gospel singer, and to serve on numerous boards. Now, Harris, Managing Director in the Strategic Client Group at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, is embarking on a new, ambitious mission as head of the recently launched Emerging Managers Platform at Morgan Stanley Investment Management.

Harris got the bug to go into investment banking during an internship she had while she was an undergraduate at Harvard University. After graduating from Harvard Business School, she joined Morgan Stanley in the Mergers & Acquisitions department. She then headed the equity capital markets effort for the Consumer and Retail industries and was responsible for Equity Private Placements. For more than a decade, she was a senior member of the Equity Syndicate desk, where she was responsible for a series of major IPOS for the likes of UPS, Martha Stewart Living Ominimedia and Ariba. She also arranged such deals as the $3.2 billion common stock transaction for Immunex Corporation, one of the largest biotechnology follow-on offerings in U.S. history.

Recently, however, Harris moved to different efforts within Morgan Stanley Investment Management, heading up an ambitious new venture called the Emerging Managers Platform. It focuses on developing a platform allowing Morgan Stanley to source women and minority-owned asset managers--known as emerging managers—and then to partner with them, with the goal of helping to accelerate their growth. “This is an opportunity to start with virtually a blank sheet of paper,” she says. “It gives me the chance to do something that’s never been done before and that will be meaningful to the firm and to the marketplace.”

Harris also frequently shares her expertise and insights with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney Financial Advisors and their clients. For example, she recently led a roundtable discussion hosted by the Firm’s Los Angeles Metro Region’s Financial Advisors, and also spoke at similar events in Washington DC, San Francisco and Miami, focusing on her recently released book, Expect To Win, and on her career as a woman on Wall Street and her strategies for maximizing success and leveraging partnerships in the current economic environment.

A long history of giving back

In fact, giving back is something Harris has done since starting out in the industry. When she was just a first-year associate, she joined the board of the Food Bank for NYC. Since then, she has joined many other boards, including the Executive Leadership Council, Sponsors for Educational Opportunity, A Better Chance, the Apollo Theater Foundation and Mt. Sinai Hospital. “I know I’m sitting on someone else’s shoulders,” she says “It’s my responsibility to do that for others.”

None of these involvements have deterred Harris from her other great love—her work as a gospel singer, which she has done since the age of nine. With her typical gusto, Harris has performed at two sold-out concerts at Carnegie Hall and is now part of the Mark Howell Singers. She also sings about three times a month with the gospel choir at her church. Her first CD, Carla’s First Christmas, was a bestseller on Amazon.com and in record stores. She recently released a second CD, Joy Is Waiting.

A long list of organizations have recognized Harris for her various accomplishments. She’s won a dizzying number of awards, from the Women of Power Award from the National Urban League and the Bill and Camille Cosby Award given by the Associated Black Charities to the Frederick Douglass Award from the New York Urban League and the Bert King Award from the Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association.

For Harris, working in the financial services industry has been a perfect match for her tenacity, work ethic and diverse array of talents. “It gives you an amazing variety of options because it’s so dynamic,” she says. “You don’t get stale. And at an early age you find yourself with a lot of responsibility. The smarter you are, the better you do.”

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©2010 Morgan Stanley Smith Barney LLC. Member SIPC.