POWER PLAYERS: 92-year-old just became one of America’s richest self-made women — she’s worth $700 million
Joan Payden is one of America’s richest self-made women. At age 92, she’s also one of the oldest.
Payden is the CEO of Payden & Rygel, a Los Angeles-based money management firm she founded in 1983 after quitting her job and emptying her 401(k), according to Forbes. Today, the firm manages more than $161 billion in assets and nearly 240 employees across multiple offices, according to its website.
Payden’s assets have grown with the firm: As majority owner, she boasts an estimated net worth of roughly $700 million and is a “newcomer” on Forbes’ recently published 2024 list of America’s Richest Self-Made Women.
Payden’s path to success spanned multiple decades. After majoring in math and physics at Trinity College in Washington, D.C., Payden became one of just a handful of women engineers at a New Jersey-based company building oil refineries in the 1950s, only to fall victim to a mass layoff after three years, according to Forbes.
Disappointed, she regrouped — looking to the financial sector to put her math background to use, and landing a junior associate role at Merrill Lynch. “I was hired at a 25% discount because I didn’t know the difference between a bond and stock,” Payden told the Los…