Lauren Rich Fine `77 Featured in Plain Dealer

Lauren Rich Fine, a 1977 graduate and Hawken parent, is a top financial analyst for the newspaper industry. Her work and her choice to live in Cleveland were featured on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer`s business section. Read the article, written by Janet Cho, below. Bullish on Cleveland Two New York career women find work-family balance here Monday, March 20, 2006 Janet H. Cho, Plain Dealer Reporter Merrill Lynch & Co.`s Lauren Rich Fine [`77]is widely considered one of America`s top analysts for the the newspaper industry. Ivy Zelman of Credit Suisse Securities LLC is one of the top-rated analysts for home-building and building products. Though both have New York-based phone numbers, secretaries and research associates, they work out of offices in Northeast Ohio. And they`re unapologetically bullish on Cleveland. Zelman and Fine shocked their New York friends when they pulled up stakes and moved to Ohio, but neither regrets the decision. Each is a mother of three children still at home and relishes the career-family balance that living in Northeast Ohio makes possible. \"If I were in New York, it would be much more difficult to do what I do,\" Zelman said as she sat in her Beachwood office, surrounded by family snapshots. Fine agrees with that assessment, adding that if she were still in New York, \"I couldn`t be the kind of mom that I wanted to be.\" Zelman, 39, moved here nearly six years ago to be closer to her husband`s family. \"When I was pregnant with my first, my husband said someday he wanted to raise his children in Cleveland,\" she said. A 212 career with a 216 lifestyle Credit Suisse not only green-lighted her request, but it also set her up in spacious quarters in a Beachwood office park only minutes from her home and her daughter Zoey`s school. \"I have a 212 (area code) number that rings in Cleveland,\" Zelman said. \"I thought, `Wow, this is kind of cool.`\" Covering 22 publicly traded companies in the home-building, building products and home furnishings industries requires more than simply listening in on their quarterly conference calls. When Zelman is researching Sherwin-Williams Co., for example, she talks to customers, competitors and the companies that make the components that go into its paint. \"We service clients that are managing money, pension funds, mutual funds, insurance companies, hedge funds,\" she said. Plus, \"Cleveland has, relative to most cities, a really affordable housing market,\" she said. And she should know. Forbes magazine has for three years ranked her the No. 1 analyst covering home-building, building-products and furniture companies, beating out 3,000 other analysts on Wall Street. Both Zelman and Fine believe they`re much more productive here than they would be in New York. Fine said she would waste much more time traveling between appointments, waiting for the subway, hailing taxis and sitting in traffic. Working from Cleveland \"just takes out a lot of the down time,\" she said. Plus, \"there isn`t the office chatter and interruptions that come with being in a large office,\" Zelman said. Clearly, they must be doing something right. In the Wall Street Journal`s latest annual ranking of \"Master Stock Pickers,\" Fine and Zelman each were ranked fifth in the nation - Fine for advertising and publishing and Zelman for home construction. Not that they don`t enjoy getting back to the big city. I`m probably in New York at least once or twice a month, and I like it, because I get to stay in nice hotels, and there`s a car service to drive me around,\" Zelman said. A New York City salary also goes a lot further here. Pursuing priorities in career, family Living in Cleveland means Zelman`s husband David, a retired part-time investor, gets to bring the chil