In her formative years, Wall Street executive Carla Harris achieved what others said she could not. She defied their expectations, establishing a path all her own. NY1's Budd Mishkin filed this One on 1 profile.

When you talk to Carla Harris, you are actually talking to many Carla Harrises.

“So any time I walk into a new situation today, I bring Carla Harris, the investment banker, Carla Harris, the investment manager, Carla Harris, the prayer warrior, Carla Harris, the singer, Carla Harris, the writer, Carla Harris the speaker, Carla Harris, the golfer, Carla Harris, the football fan. I’ll bring all those Carlas to the table," she says to a crowd in a video on TakeTheLeadWomen.com.

Carla Harris could be described as a rainmaker, attracting business for Morgan Stanley from individuals, companies and financial institutions.

Harris is routinely included in lists citing the most powerful women and African Americans on Wall Street.

In 2013, President Obama appointed her as the chairperson of the National Women’s Business Council.

Harris is a dynamic and effective public speaker.

"The last thing you want to be thought of as a woman on Wall Street is not tough. So after I got that feedback I said, ‘OK, I know what I'll do.’ For 90 days, I decided I would walk tough, talk tough, eat tough," Harris says.

At events big and small she invokes Carla's pearls—pieces of advice outlined in her books “Expect to Win” and “Strategize to Win,” spreading her gospel to those beyond the world of Wall Street.

"So I began to practice. I want to get paid," Harris says.

Speaking of gospel, Harris sings in the choir at St. Charles Borromeo Church in Harlem.

She's released three CDs, and produced and performed sold out benefit concerts for the St. Charles School at Carnegie Hall.

Early on, she was afraid that she would not be taken seriously if she mentioned her singing in business meetings. No longer.

"Who you are authentically—that’s your competitive advantage. because no one can be you the way you can be you. And you would be surprised how many clients would actually find interest in the fact that I was also a singer. And that would create a point of conversation that was different than the conversation that they would have with someone else," she says.

Harris has taken some of  the money raised from her Carnegie Hall concerts, plus her own donations, and created a math and science program at St. Charles.

"Yes, you need to have a good mastery of English and be able to write but you need to also understand how to use analytical and quantitative skills. I understood from some of the parents in St. Charles that if the kids were having a challenge anywhere once they got to high school, it was in science and math," she says.

Harris talks about it in terms of "value added," words straight from her Wall Street world.

One of her proudest moments came in 1999, when Harris and her colleagues oversaw the $5.5 billion initial public offering for UPS—at the time the largest IPO in history.

She says in these instances, her facility for public speaking, telling a story, plays an important role.

"It wasn't just about the company’s performance, but it was about how the CEOs and the management team could tell the story in a compelling way to create the illusion of scarcity—and create the, ‘I must have this stock now,’" Harris explains.

The ethics of Wall Street have been called into question, especially since the 2008 financial crisis, but Harris maintains that her religious values and business values have never conflicted.

"I can look you in the eye and tell you I have never had that kind of crisis at all during my time on Wall Street, and it's funny because people think that being a spiritual person and being a person on Wall Street is mutually exclusive, but it is not at all. In fact, who I am as a person of faith has certainly fueled who I am as a professional on Wall Street," she says.

So much of who Carla Harris is can be traced back to growing up in Jacksonville.

She got the bug for performing at a grade school talent show.

"One of the guys who I'm still close to in my class kept kicking my desk and saying, ‘You're always singing. Why don't you get up there and sing?’ So there I was, nine years old, ‘Fathers are pleading. Mothers are all alone. Mothers are praying, send their sons back home,’" Harris recalls.

Carla Harris says her parents ran a “no-excuses” home.

“‘You're smart. You're supposed to do well and supposed to get A's,’" Harris says. "She would say to me, ‘Listen, the world's not fair, so if you want to get an A, go for the A+. That way if you get shaved, you still have your A.’"

At her Catholic high school, Bishop Kenney, which now houses the Carla Harris Performing Arts Center, Harris was surrounded by other highly motivated students.

"The person to my left was talking about Harvard, the person to my right was talking about Princeton, the guy sitting behind me was talking about University of Pennsylvania," Harris says.

Her high school guidance counselor advised her not to apply to colleges in the Ivy League, though.

"’It's really hard. It's really hard. You'll be disappointed. Don't worry about that. Apply to the Florida schools.’ Being the obedient person I am, I applied to Florida schools, but I also applied to every Ivy League school I wanted to apply to and I got in to them all," she says.

Harris enrolled at Harvard.

As a freshman, she was struggling with one concept in her economics class at a time when she had to declare a major. Her economics teaching assistant offered a piece of advice.

"'Whatever you do, don't declare economics because you can't think.’ Because he was so frustrated in trying to teach me whatever the concept was. Well, Budd, I will tell you that I am negatively motivated so when you tell me I can't do something, I’m all over it like a bad smell. So when it was time to declare, I went straight to the freshman dean's office and I declared economics as one of my majors," she says.

These formative decisions started Harris on a path that brought her to a college internship program designed to connect Wall Street with, as Harris puts it, "talented kids of color."

"That was the summer that changed the trajectory of my life," she says.

When Harris joined Morgan Stanley in 1987, not many of her colleagues looked like her, and if anyone put up any obstacles in front of her because she was a black woman, she says she was too naive to notice.

"I didn’t say, ‘Oh that person is difficult, because I am who I am and I look the way I look.’ I would say, ‘That person is difficult. Let me figure out how I work this relationship.’ Now, maybe later, when I was more savvy and more mature, I can look back and say, 'That was a bad dude,'" Harris recalls.

Harris says there have been changes since 1987, and many of the people she's mentored through the years have moved up through the ranks.

"Probably the single most motivating factor for people coming through the pipeline is to see somebody who looks like them in positions that they aspire to. That is the thing that says, ‘OK, OK. I can do it. I can do it,’" she says.

Harris is married. She has no children but is the proud godmother of eight.

Her schedule is more than busy, working for Morgan Stanley, singing in church and Carnegie Hall, speaking around New York and the country.

Harris is certainly an accomplished woman, but there are more dreams to realize.

"Musically, I want a Grammy before I hang up my musical cleats," she says. "I want to get unprecedented success at Morgan Stanley. I want to make the New York Times best seller list as an author. So there are still things that I want to attain that are big things, so I don’t think I’ve had that real 'aha' yet.”