Publications

- August 1, 2015: Vol. 2, Number 8

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Going for Impact: Lisette Cooper has built Athena Capital on the wave of investors committed to values-based investing

by Mike Consol

One of the turning points in Lisette Cooper’s life was the evening Robert Rubin flew into Cambridge for a cocktail party with Harvard Business School students. Cooper recalls walking up to the former Treasury Secretary for the Clinton administration and partner at Goldman Sachs, to ask him what someone like she could do on Wall Street.

Rubin looked around the room and said: “See all these people? They all want to be investment bankers. Don’t do that. You want to do something like fixed-income trading or research, or go into derivatives or capital markets. It doesn’t matter what firm you join, just get on to Wall Street and take it from there.”

Cooper took what she calls “the best piece of advice I ever received,” joined Merrill Lynch after graduating from Harvard and spent five years there as a senior strategist analyzing, designing and marketing securities to money managers, banks and pension funds such as Bank of America and California Public Employees

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