Mother of five juggles family and work as head of global fund house Franklin Resources

Jenny Johnson is a divorced mother of five children but that hasn’t prevented her from successfully juggling family and business as the first female president in the 70-year history of Franklin Resources, the holding company of US investment firm Franklin Templeton.

Behind her success, she credits the firm’s supportive policies which allowed her to lead a diversified management team, and she also paid tribute to the achievements of her own mother.

“I have five children aged between 16 to 26. But my mother had seven children while she went back and graduated from Stanford medical school in California. She is a great role model for me as I saw somebody who can balance being a great mother with someone pursuing her goals,” Johnson said in an exclusive interview with the South China Morning Post during a visit in Hong Kong.

Set up by Johnson’s grandfather Rupert Johnson in 1947, the fund house was named after Benjamin Franklin, one of the founding fathers of the US. The company is best known to Hong Kong investors for its star fund manager Mark Mobius, executive chairman of Templeton Emerging Markets Group which started investing in emerging markets in the 1980s.

Johnson joined the firm in 1988 and has worked in several departments from administration to investment. She joined the senior leadership team in 1995, has been co-president since October 2015 and was named president in December 2016.

The company manages over US$744.7 billion in assets for customers worldwide.