What a Woman Managing $1 Billion Taught Me About Wealth: Meet Jun Bei Liu

By Molly Benjamin, Founder of Ladies Finance Club

Listen to the full podcast here.

If you’ve ever looked at the sharemarket and thought, “That’s for other people, not for me,” this episode of Get Rich might just change your mind.

Because today, I’m chatting with a woman who manages over $1 billion in other people’s money. Yes, that’s a billion with a B.

Her name is Jun Bei Liu. She’s one of Australia’s leading voices in finance and fund management, she arrived in Australia from Shanghai at 16 speaking very little English, and she now runs a billion-dollar Australian shares fund while raising two kids and owning her style, her story, and her power.

In this episode, she breaks down what fund managers actually do, how everyday women can start investing with confidence, what’s really happening in the Australian market, and how she balances motherhood and career without losing herself in the process. This blog is your recap.

From Two Rooms in Sydney to Billion-Dollar Fund Manager

Jun’s story doesn’t start in a fancy office in the CBD. It starts in a poor neighbourhood in Shanghai, and then in Sydney, where she and her mum rented just the downstairs two rooms of a house from an Italian woman who grew her own tomatoes and made pasta sauce in the garden.

Her mum worked three jobs. Their big treat was KFC.

Money wasn’t abstract. It was survival, choices, and hard work. And in the background, her dad was “punting” on the Chinese sharemarket in the 90s, literally drawing price charts by hand on taped-together lined paper that snaked through the house.

That early exposure to markets planted a seed. Finance and fund management weren’t mysterious things only rich men did, they were part of everyday life.

Fast-forward, and Jun is in Australia, learning English, studying business, and working as an analyst. She falls in love with the process of researching companies, it feels like treasure hunting but she doesn’t want to stop at recommending ideas. She wants to run money.

So she makes one of the key mindset shifts we talk about a lot at Ladies Finance Club: she asks for what she wants before it’s offered.

She tells her boss she wants to manage a portfolio, and in her spare time she builds a “paper” global fund, researching stocks and testing her ideas. When a real opportunity appears, a struggling fund whose manager has just left,  she doesn’t wait to be tapped on the shoulder.

She puts her hand up.

She takes over the fund at around $300 million, meets with the clients who stayed, and says:

“Give me a go. I won’t let you down.”

That same fund now sits at over $1 billion under management.

This is what women in finance can look like: bold, prepared, relational, and quietly determined.

So… What Is a Fund Manager, Really?

If the phrase “fund manager” sounds intimidating, Jun explains it simply.

A fund manager:

• Takes money from investors – everyday people, super funds, institutions
• Invests that money into a portfolio of shares or other assets
• Tries to grow it over time, while managing risk

In Jun’s case, she runs an Australian shares fund and is judged against the ASX 200. If her portfolio does better than the index, her active investing approach is adding value. If it does worse, she hasn’t earned her keep.

Her job involves:

• Reading company reports and market news
• Meeting management teams
• Visiting sites
• Watching how the Australian market is responding to global events
• Making buy, hold and sell decisions day in, day out
  

In other words, she lives and breathes finance, fund management and investing, so her clients don’t have to.

Why Women Make Brilliant Investors

I loved this part of the conversation.

Jun is crystal clear: women are naturally excellent investors.

Research on women in finance backs this up, female investors and female fund managers often perform as well as, if not better than, men over the long term.

Why?

Because many women tend to be:

• more pragmatic
• less driven by ego
• more willing to change their view when the facts change
• more focused on long-term outcomes than short-term bragging rights

Where some investors get stuck in “I’m right, the market is wrong,” Jun notices that women are often more open to adapting, which is essential in active investing.

She also believes motherhood has made her a better investor. Negotiating with kids, juggling demands, staying calm when everything changes, those are the same muscles good investors use in volatile markets.

Her takeaway: you don’t have to “think like a man” to be good with money. Your existing strengths; intuition, pragmatism, patience are assets in investing.

What We Can Steal From a Billion-Dollar Mindset

So what principles guide someone managing a billion dollars, and how can we apply them on a smaller scale?

1. Start investing as early as you can

Jun is obsessed (in a good way) with the power of compounding.

Money left in cash for decades is an opportunity cost. Money invested – sensibly and over the long term – has a chance to grow, double, and double again.

Her quiet piece of financial advice here: if your goals are long term, at least consider getting part of your money out of the savings account and into investments that have growth potential.

2. Diversification is non-negotiable

You don’t have to bet everything on one exciting stock.

Most investors are better off diversifying:

• across different companies
• across sectors
• sometimes across countries
• with some mix of growth assets (shares) and more conservative ones (bonds, cash)
  

This is where passive investing (index funds and broad ETFs) and active investing (managed funds and active ETFs) can both play a role. You can blend them based on your goals and risk tolerance, ideally with proper financial advice rather than guesswork.

3. Understand what you own

If you do buy individual shares, Jun’s rules are refreshingly simple:

• Know what the company does
• Know why customers want what it sells
• Look for a track record, are revenues and profits growing?
  Compare it to similar companies so you’re not wildly overpaying just because it’s trendy

This is where her world of professional finance and fund management overlaps with ours: it’s less about being clever, more about being curious and disciplined.

4. Be careful with “hot” ideas

Jun’s warning sign?

If everyone is talking about a stock or sector, and it’s all over the news, it may already be very expensive.

That doesn’t mean it’s automatically a bad investment. But it does mean your downside risk might be higher. If perfection is priced in, even a small disappointment can hit hard.

Her mindset: don’t chase hype. Focus on quality, value and your strategy, not the noise.

Active vs Passive vs Active ETFs – Where Do They Fit?

Our community loves asking about active investing vs passive investing, so I dug into it with Jun.

Here’s the plain-English summary:

• Passive investing (index funds & index ETFs)
  You track the market. No one is hand-picking shares, you simply follow an index (like the ASX 200). You get the market return (up and down), at low cost.
• Active investing (traditional managed funds)
  A professional like Jun designs and manages a portfolio with the goal of beating the index. You usually invest via an application form, often with a higher minimum.
• Active ETFs
  This is where it gets interesting. Active ETFs are listed on the sharemarket like normal ETFs but are run by an active manager behind the scenes. You can buy them through your usual broker with smaller amounts, but you’re still accessing professional fund management rather than a simple index.

Again, none of this is personal financial advice, but understanding the tools on the shelf is the first step to choosing what might suit you.

The Australian Market: Big Picture

Markets change all the time, but Jun’s bigger-picture comments about the Australian market are useful:

• The Australian sharemarket isn’t as stretched as some parts of the US
• Many Aussie companies have solid fundamentals
• Interest rate moves matter, but they’re only one piece of the puzzle

Her view lines up with what we teach inside Ladies Finance Club:

Focus on time in the market, not trying to perfectly time the market.

If you wait forever for the “perfect” moment to invest, you might never start

Motherhood, Career Balance and Doing It Your Way

One of my favourite parts of this conversation was about motherhood and career balance.

I’m pregnant, Jun runs a huge fund, and I wanted the real talk: how do you do both without burning out?

Her answer was simple but powerful.

She doesn’t split her life into separate boxes labelled “career” and “family”. It’s all part of one picture. Sometimes she’s on an analyst call in the car on the way to weekend sport. Her kids hear the conversations. They know what she does. They’re curious about investing and ask questions about brands they love.

Instead of hiding her ambition from her children, she lets them see it. Instead of squeezing herself into an old-school 8–6 office model, she designs work around energy, creativity and impact – meetings with management, site visits, real-world conversations, not just staring at a screen.

Her message to other women is clear:

• You don’t have to choose either a big finance career or a family
• You are allowed to pursue both, and your kids can grow up seeing what’s possible

That’s a mindset shift a lot of us need: rather than asking “What do I have to give up?”, ask “What support and structure do I need so I don’t disappear in the process?”

Being Unapologetically You in Finance

Early in her career, Jun tried to play the part. She’d walk into boardrooms full of men and consciously lower her voice, tone herself down, and try to fit the mould of what a “serious” person in finance and fund management was supposed to look and sound like.

Over time, she realised that wasn’t sustainable, and it wasn’t necessary.

Now she shows up the same way everywhere: on TV, on stage, at home, in client meetings. Feminine, warm, ambitious, smart. She doesn’t see her personality as a problem to be fixed, but a strength to lean into.

For women watching her from the outside, that’s quietly revolutionary.

You don’t need to drop the pink blazer, soften your opinions, or pretend you don’t care about money. You can be fully yourself and be excellent at what you do.

What I Hope You Take From This Conversation

Spending time with a woman who manages $1 billion didn’t make investing feel more out of reach. It made it feel more human.

Here’s what I hope you take away:

• The world of finance, fund management and investing is not off-limits to you
• As a woman, you likely already have many traits that make for a strong investor
• You don’t have to choose between motherhood and career balance
• You can blend passive investing (index funds) with active investing (managers and active ETFs) in a way that suits your goals
• You’re allowed to seek out proper financial advice and build your money team

If this episode nudges you to open your first investing account, review your super, or finally send that email to a financial adviser, please tell me. I want to cheer you on.

Need financial advice? Check out a range of our experts who can help you! 

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