REECE TOMLINSON
The Unmasking
of a Dealmaker
In an industry built on numbers, the real advantage turned out to be authenticity.
BY JACKELYN GILL
Managing Editor, WXN Media
Reece Tomlinson steps out of her heels and into a pair of cowboy boots.
She’s at a ranch in the middle of nowhere outside Calgary. It's cold, there are seven more wardrobe changes to go, and each one means new makeup, too. The cowboys on set keep staring. There are nine hours left.
The photoshoot is harder than she expected—this, coming from someone who regularly advises on multi-million-dollar transactions as founder of RWT Capital.
“These are things that are a just a bit intimidating,” she says. “Not that they’re massive things, but you start to see that the next version of you needs to be willing to do things that the current version wouldn’t do.”
This version of Reece is going to be seen. Boldly. Even if that wasn't originally part of the plan.
Because being invisible? “It's something that I refuse to get used to,” she says. “I'm not going to stop. I’m going to keep pushing through, because I know that it resonates.”
From the Outside In
There was, of course, a past version of Reece. Many of them.
The version who worked in specialty equipment in oil and gas. The version who founded construction companies, some that succeeded and some that did not. The version who followed an opportunity to start her own medical device company in the UK. The version who returned to school to earn her CPA simply because she loved corporate finance.
Then there's the version who turned a side-gig helping entrepreneurs buy and sell their businesses into a mid-market M&A advisory firm.
That version was more performance than truth. “It was just a façade of being extremely confident, extremely stoic, like I had all the answers, like nothing would phase me,” she says. “I really was trying to almost posture myself to feel like I needed approval from those men to be seen and taken seriously.”
She built the archetype from the only models of power she'd ever seen in boardrooms—masculine, overtly so. But underneath it, she was someone else entirely.
“I'm not dumbing down who I am for anyone."
“I’m very empathetic, almost to a fault. I’m emotional,” she says. “I felt a disconnect internally. I wanted to say one thing, but I said something else, because I felt like that was the level we needed.”
The performance worked. That was the problem.
The better she got at it, the further she drifted from herself. She was seen by everyone yet seen by no one. "You don't end up surrounding yourself with people who admire and respect you for who you are," she says.
More importantly, she wasn't happy. She wasn't leading in a way that worked for her or the people counting on her. Integrity was the one thing she valued above all else, and it had gone missing.
Then she dropped her guard.
From the Inside Out
For Reece, becoming visible meant more than stepping in front of a camera, though that was certainly a part of it. At least from a business-building perspective.
It meant being unapologetically feminine in a heavily male-dominated industry with mainly all-male clients.
Not everyone was receptive. It ranged from comments about how she dressed to clients dropping her as a partner. And when it’s about who you are over what you do, it cuts to the core. “Once you do let that guard down and it comes out, when you do get criticism, it's easier for that criticism to feel sharper,” she says.
But there was a flip side. And it proved something she hadn't expected: the same visibility that made her a target also made her more effective.
"I was under this impression, up until recently, that investment banking is all numbers," she says. "The reality is, it's much more complex psychologically than people think. People's identity is wrapped up in it."
It's why, when she once sat in a room with two parties yelling at each other over a deal that looked dead, she didn't see anger.
"What I knew was both parties were hurt and just scared," she says.
She didn't push the numbers. She gave everyone in the room space to be heard. Three weeks later, the deal closed. It worked because she showed up as herself, not as the version of a dealmaker she thought the room wanted.
That's her femininity working as leverage, not liability. Most of WT's clients are exactly the kind of people the industry has always centered: Type A, highly successful, mostly men. Reece has found that her own energy works as a kind of counterweight in the room. "That yin and yang of energy is actually really valuable," she says. "It allows them to lower their guard a little, too."
“I want those female leaders out there, and female entrepreneurs, to know that there's a voice that's in the room that sees things the way that they see them as well.”
It's a dynamic she's built into RWT itself. Roughly half the firm's team is women, a ratio she calls "unheard of" in her industry.
For every person who's taken issue with her approach, more have seen themselves in it. "I've had multiple people and women reach out saying, you're very inspirational,'" she says. "It's helped me really believe that I can do certain things."
Fully Seen
Her photoshoots may have started as a business move. But they set the next version of Reece in motion, a version that wants more women to lead alongside her in the same rooms she’s in.
Because she knows what it’s like to be reduced to a token woman on a panel, or the person who fetches coffee for a client, or one of the ten women in a room of 500 men.
“It's really evolved into much more of a personal goal of breaking down barriers and going as far as I can,” she says. “I want those female leaders out there, and female entrepreneurs, to know that there's a voice that's in the room that sees things the way that they see them as well.”
The best way for her to break those barriers? To be in those rooms performing at the highest level she possibly can. Even if that room is actually a ranch in the middle of nowhere, and the performance is a photoshoot.
Because “I’m not dumbing down who I am for anyone,” she says. She’s finally fully visible, as herself.