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06/01/2016 08:30 AMMost people, when they retire, are ready to slow down, relax, and add fun activities to their days that they’d never had time to pursue before. And for about four to six months, after retiring from her job as the State of Connecticut’s chief investment officer, Lee Ann Palladino sampled that life. Though thrilled to reclaim the two-hour daily commute she’d endured for 10 years, she found she missed the daily challenges of her work life. So in the fall of 2015, she realized she wasn’t ready to quit that world yet.
Serendipity led her to start looking for a new financial leadership position near her Old Saybrook home just as the Town of Old Saybrook’s former finance director Lisa Carver’s illness took a sharp turn for the worse. The town needed an interim finance director to support Carver as her health deteriorated, and Lee Ann was eager to take on the role. So starting in November 2015, Lee Ann started work as the town’s interim finance director. With Carver’s untimely death in February, Lee Ann took on sole responsibility as interim finance director overseeing the town’s finances and budget.
After a long career in banking, finance, and investment management—and along the way, having earned the designations of chartered financial analyst and chartered alternative investment analyst—Lee Ann felt prepared and excited to tackle the daily challenges of her new job—and now, she can walk to work.
“I like the idea of working in public service, that the work I do can help make lives better for people,” says Lee Ann of her new job and her 10 years working for the State of Connecticut in the Office of the Treasurer. “I consider myself a behind-the-scenes operator, taking care of business and letting others have the limelight.”
She remembers first learning to love working with numbers while still in elementary school.
“I remember my father telling me in 4th grade that I couldn’t do anything without numbers. He said you could figure out any problem if you just use numbers,” she recalled—and she believed him.
Lee Ann’s first job in banking and investment management was at New England Savings Bank in New London. Living in Montville at the time with her husband and two children, one just two months of age and the other four years old, life was good, until tragedy struck when her husband died suddenly and she was a young widow with two very young children.
“Out of adversity can come really good things,” Lee Ann recalls, who has since remarried. “What was very surprising at the time to me was the outpouring of support from the bank and the community of Montville where we lived. I think that experience is what directed me toward public service jobs where my contributions could help individual people and make their lives better in the long run.”
At that bank, she managed the treasury function until the bank went out of business in the early 1990s and she moved on to take a job with Constitution State Corporate Credit Union, a banker’s bank.
“I like the challenge of managing things and I like to build things. From strategic design to implementation, I built a broker-dealer as a subsidiary of the banker’s bank and built an investment advisory firm,” says Lee Ann.
It was in 2005 that Lee Ann first joined the Office of the State of Connecticut Treasurer Denise Nappier.
“For the first year I managed the Short-Term Investment Fund where municipalities park their cash. For the last eight years, I worked in managing the State of Connecticut retirement plans and trust funds. And for the final four years there, I served as the state’s chief investment officer,” says Lee Ann. “I appreciate [Nappier] giving me that opportunity to manage $30 billion as CIO.
“It was a very interesting time to be managing the pension portfolio during the Great Recession,” she says.
She finally decided to retire in June 2015 after spending 10 years working for the State in the Treasurer’s office. Now free to do what she wanted, she took the summer off and went to Europe.
“Deep down, though, I knew I wanted to do something more,” she says.
Through her husband, she met First Selectman Carl Fortuna and learned from him that Carver had asked him to find someone to whom she could transition the job. By November 2015, Lee Ann was ready to re-enter the work world.
“The pulse of an organization is in finance because you see the ebbs and flow of the business,” she says.
“I was worried about coming in to the town right at budget time but in the end, it gave me a full overview of the town, its departments, and its business. Lisa [Carver] was very organized and I feel indebted to her. The systems and procedures were in place so she gave me an easy road map to follow.
“Throughout my life, my two biggest obligations were my family and my career. I had little time for anything else,” says Lee Ann.
At the last Board of Selectmen meeting, Lee Ann was appointed permanent town finance director, losing the interim title she’d held for six months.
Of her new job with the town, she says, “I am very passionate and I want my job to make a difference. This job helps me be connected to the community.”
Since moving to Old Saybrook in 2013, Lee Ann and her husband Mike have started building connections to their new home and the shoreline communities. She now serves on the Board of Governors of the Black Hall Club in Old Lyme, plays golf when she can, and for the past three years had been doing power yoga at the Saybrook Inn and Spa, an exercise she’s found has reduced her stress while building strength.
“Old Saybrook is charming. There’s a lot of community spirit here. It’s my home now,” says Lee Ann.