Like most equity investors, Laura Aguirre, CFA, spends time on a typical day researching, coordinating with analysts, picking and trading stocks, and assisting clients. But that’s where many of the similarities end.

This 31-year-old senior financial advisor does all of those things while also caring for her five-year-old and two-year-old sons from her home office above the bustling and stylish streets of Buenos Aires, the cosmopolitan city where she has lived for most of her life.

With its considerable cultural diversity, beautiful European-style architecture, vibrant music and tango dancing scenes, and eclectic food and wine traditions, Buenos Aires is the perfect setting for those adept at combining very different elements of their lives into a unique harmony.

As Aguirre spends the morning hunting for promising emerging market stocks and taking calls from clients, she also hunts for hidden socks and fields questions from her curious five-year-old son.
 
“While I try to balance my professional career and being able to mother at home well, it’s like having two jobs,” Aguirre says as the sounds of her children playing momentarily distract her. “You have to be a very dynamic, organized, and active person to do both things well,” she adds.

There probably aren’t many out there who relish the thought of juggling the duties of raising two small children with managing investment funds on a daily basis. To be successful with such a full schedule, Aguirre had to master the art of seizing the day.

“For a mother, the scarcest resource is time. You have to give enough time for each kid, enough time for your job, enough time for your husband,” she explains.

Even though Aguirre is a thriving multitasker, striking this challenging balance in order to invest more meaningful time with her family was actually the successful culmination of several years of hard work and the desire to be both a caring mother and a successful professional.

However, it wasn’t until she decided to specialize in the investment profession that she really found out what it means to make the most of each day.

An accountant by training, Aguirre learned about the CFA Program from a coworker while helping to manage the investment of cash reserves for a diversified industrial company. She enrolled after recognizing the immediate applicability of the exam curriculum in her work.

“I found out the best way to specialize was the CFA exam since it gave me flexibility to study in my spare time and not have to go to courses,” she says. “I was free to organize my time to study on nights or weekends. Plus, I found that the readings and the technical tools that the exams gave us were updated and very practical.”

Aguirre passed Levels I and II on her first attempts while working full time and caring for her first son. The Level III exam, however, proved more challenging, and she failed to pass it the first time through.

“I wasn’t really in my best state,” Aguirre laughs, explaining that having a newborn child who cries all night doesn’t make for the most ideal study environment.

“I was forced to get strictly organized in order to maximize the use of my scarce time,” she says. That meant not waiting to have an entire afternoon to study but, rather, using any spare 15 minutes she had to prepare for her second attempt. She also took advantage of the support of her husband.

“He really helped me out on weekends, and he had a lot of patience when I had to study at night because usually I studied from 9 to 12 o’clock in the evening,” she gratefully acknowledges. “[He] put the kids to bed, and if one of them woke up, he gave them the bottle.”

Ultimately, it was all of this hard teamwork toward earning the charter and her time-management abilities that gave Aguirre the ability to successfully compete for her current position with boutique investment firm AGM Finanzas. “The [CFA] charter allowed me to find a new job, with freedom to work from home and more time flexibility.”

“On one [hand], it gave me self-esteem and self-trust to be able to negotiate an agreement with whatever employer I chose, and on the other hand, it gave me some prestige in the investment profession, especially being a young woman with two kids.”

Having the CFA charter demonstrated a commitment to hard work, which gave AGM Finanzas the confidence to trust Aguirre’s ability to manage her time well enough to work in the equity division from home.

“The [CFA Program’s] ethical commitment is very important when you have this flexibility and this responsibility,” she says. “I’m the first person to have this [work] schedule, so it was like a tryout, and it’s working really well.”

This trust in her abilities has clearly paid off in many ways, not only for Aguirre but also for her firm. “Having a CFA charterholder gives prestige to an employer, especially when offering services to clients,” she says.

Looking ahead to her future, Aguirre’s plans are simple enough for now: maintaining the balance of all of her growing investments—whether they’re her professional skills, the portfolios she manages, or her children’s futures.

And even though Aguirre is an expert at maximizing the use of her time, she also knows how to relax and enjoy the results of her hard work. For her, that means spending time with friends and family and, most important, watching her very active children grow up.

“I love to be surrounded by my loved ones, especially my children, who have given me the greatest happiness,” she says. “For some years, I had been hoping to find a job that would allow me to make a balance between motherhood and my professional career.”

Now that she has, she can play chess with her five year old, watch him learn soccer and rugby, see her two-year-old son’s attempts at singing and dancing, and enjoy the city’s nightlife and shopping—all while keeping a rigorous work schedule.

And that’s when she isn’t going to Uruguay’s beaches, visiting Patagonia’s ski resorts, or riding horses on her family farm.