Philadelphia Treasurer Nancy Winkler is the 2013 recipient of the Freda Johnson Award for Trailblazing Women in Public Finance. She will receive the award from the Northeast Women in Public Finance at The Bond Buyer’s Deal of the Year Awards Dinner in Manhattan on December 5th.
Winkler is being recognized for her accomplishments both in the public sector today, as well as in her earlier career at Public Financial Management, which she joined in 1982 and helped grow into the nation’s largest municipal advisory firm.
For Philadelphia, Winkler oversees all aspects of its debt programs, as well as borrowing activity for city agencies, including the Philadelphia Gas Works and Airport. She also manages the investment of $2.0 billion in various operating and reserve funds, and is disbursement agent for all payments from the city treasury. Winkler has launched an aggressive investor-relations program for the city and Standard & Poor’s has raised the city’s ratings twice on her watch. In her career at PFM, Winkler represented a wide variety of municipal issuers, and opened the firm’s first New York City office.
Beyond her professional accomplishments, the NEWPF members who selected Winkler noted that she has also been a leader in the industry and the community, serving as a member of the Government Finance Officers Association’s Committee on Debt and Capital Markets, as well as the Women in Public Finance. She also informally mentored numerous women in their career development and specifically advocating for public finance as an attractive and rewarding career choice.
In addition to Winkler, NEWPF announced that it would present a posthumous Freda Johnson Award to Muriel Siebert, a founding partner of Siebert Brandford Shank, the nation’s largest minority / woman-owned municipal-bond underwriter. Siebert, who died in August, was the first woman to purchase a seat on the New York Stock Exchange and also served the public sector as New York State’s Superintendent of Banks. As part of that role, she served on the boards of several state municipal issuers, including the Urban Development Corporation, and the State of New York Mortgage Agency.
