Since leaving DB, I have participated in many conferences and swish events that other financial institutions have held for their women's groups.

Of course the female experience is different from those of our male peers - just like every woman's story is different from their fellow females.

The smartest and most successful people I know are the people who are constantly evolving, always learning. It does not end with school.

From Warren Buffett to Jamie Dimon to Paul Tudor Jones, no one has cracked the code and put a critical mass of top women in the C-Suite or near it.

I suppose the book I really remember loving as a child was one called 'The Outsiders' by S.E. Hinton, about a gang of kids from the wrong side of the tracks in Sixties Oklahoma. I grew up in the Eighties in Nottinghamshire, but this tale of troubled, but essentially good, kids - or 'greasers' - was something I completely connected with.

When I was a child I wanted to be a vet. I'd come home with ""lost"" kittens and dogs. My mother would tell me to put them back.

The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.

Like family, we are tied to each other. This is what all good musicians understand.