As finance executives face a range of challenges in the current environment, they must avoid becoming defensive and instead serve as leaders in the search for solutions, says Ann Marie Petach, CFO and senior managing director at asset management firm BlackRock.

The hurdles currently confronting finance executives include the sustained volatility in financial markets, historically low interest rates, demographic changes, uncertainty about the outcome of the debt crisis in Europe, regulatory changes in response to the financial crisis and risk management challenges, Petach told finance executives attending the Alexander Hamilton Best Practices Summit in New York City.

Investors and the public at large, including the Occupy Wall Street protestors only blocks away from the conference site in lower Manhattan, are justifiably upset about the impact of the financial crisis on their retirement savings and other investments. “The public is not happy,” Petach says. “They expect change.” Finance executives must accept the inevitability of change rather than trying to prevent it, she adds