Stephanie Cohen: zigzag steps to the top on Wall Street

The day earlier than Stephanie Cohen — one in every of Goldman Sachs’s most senior executives — speaks to the Monetary Instances, her boss, David Solomon, hangs a “on the market” signal over a part of the enterprise she runs.

“For my complete profession, I’ve embraced challenges and targeted on the impression of a enterprise relatively than an arbitrary notion of its measurement,” the top of Goldman’s Platform Options enterprise says, referring to Solomon’s an­nouncement that the financial institution was exploring “strategic alternate options” for a few of her division.

Platform Options, residence to Goldman’s bank card, transaction banking and fintech companies, was born of a want to wean Goldman off the unstable buying and selling and funding banking revenues it’s best recognized for.

She is within the eye of the storm now, as Goldman tries to persuade Wall Avenue it could get its mojo again

However the diversification play has misplaced $3bn up to now three years, making it an apparent goal for refinement when Solomon unveiled his plans for Goldman’s subsequent period on the 154-year-old financial institution’s second-ever investor day.

Cohen — a bubbly 45-year-old who wears trainers and tilts again on her chair throughout an interview as if she is about to bounce proper out of it — was appointed to guide Platform Options final 12 months. That places her within the eye of the storm now, as Goldman tries to persuade Wall Avenue it could get its mojo again.

It’s an unlikely scenario for the Chicago native. Plan A was to be a determine skater, Plan B was to affix a financial institution on the way in which to turning into a lawyer. As a substitute, she has hopped round virtually each nook of Goldman — and repeatedly taken on roles that not less than a few of her mentors suggested her in opposition to.

Cohen’s route into banking was Goldman’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) group in New York, the place she began as an analyst in 1999. She recollects how she conformed to the gown code of her male friends by likelihood, as a result of she most popular muted colors anyway. And, whereas it was extra standard then to be a lone feminine voice on a name, that was not at all times a nasty consequence. “In the event you have been doing a superb job, you have been memorable,” she says.

She started to consider making associate at Goldman because the profession equal of her one-time dream of skating on the Olympics.

Her first large profession pivot was 9 years in (see ‘milestone dates’, beneath), when a job got here up within the division that scrutinises bankers dealing with potential authorized and moral points with their offers. Cohen consulted the advisers that she calls her personal “board of administrators”, asking them whether or not she ought to go away a client-facing job. She discovered they have been break up 50/50.

“I did what I counsel a lot of individuals to do, which is get all the data you’ll be able to probably get, [and] write out the professionals and cons,” she says. “After which . . . for a few days in a row, the minute you get up within the morning, [ask yourself] what’s your first thought on whether or not or not it’s best to do it?”

Cohen determined to take the job, and returned to M&A a 12 months later, as a managing director. By 2015, she headed the worldwide monetary sponsor M&A bunch. Then, in 2017, “fortunately” working that enterprise, she modified course once more when she was requested to grow to be chief technique officer.

At the moment, the financial institution was battling falling and unstable revenues from its conventional companies. “That was one other occasion the place a bunch of individuals advised me . . . ‘no, no, no’,” Cohen says. However she took the job anyway, not less than partially as a result of she was allowed a clean sheet to outline the function. She additionally set a time restrict of two-and-a-half years.

“I didn’t say sure on a regular basis,” she says, reflecting on her profession choices. “It’s a must to imagine you will have a skillset that’s going to be transferable [to that job] . . . and that you just’re going to take pleasure in it. It’s onerous to be nice at issues that you just don’t take pleasure in.”

That’s the reason she argues that individuals ought to frequently ask themselves whether or not they just like the job, or are studying one thing new: “In the event you resolve to be right here, and resolve to do what you’re doing, you personal it.”

‘Which one in every of us goes to give up?’ . . . ‘Why is one in every of us going to give up?’

In her personal case, she says, “I made a decision to be at Goldman Sachs many, many, many occasions.”

Cohen credit Goldman’s early feminine companions, together with Alison Mass and Gwen Libstag, as blazing the path for girls like her, and says she has felt “very accountable” for serving to different ladies to advance. In technique, she says, “we made it clear that range was a strategic crucial” that needs to be talked about “in the identical room as income and market share and progress”.

After her stint as chief technique officer, she turned co-head of Goldman’s client and wealth enterprise, a fast-growing space that was central to plans to diversify Goldman’s streams of income.

She was a managing director when her son was born in 2012, and a associate when she had her daughter, who’s now six. When she and her husband deliberate to have kids, he requested: “Which one in every of us goes to give up?” Cohen’s reply was: “Why is one in every of us going to give up?”

Her husband’s query was one many individuals ask with regards to households and work, she says.

“Folks are likely to proactively resolve for an issue that’s not truly there,” she argues. She persuaded her husband that they might each hold their careers. He has since left Goldman to run his personal fund.

Cohen is pragmatic concerning the dynamics of mixing profession and household life. She has not finished her personal laundry “since I used to be an analyst”. And she or he doesn’t have “probably the most thrilling social life”, prioritising athletic weekends along with her youngsters over evenings at fancy eating places. When she helps out at their colleges, it’s when the kids are additionally concerned.

“One factor somebody advised me, which I assumed was superior recommendation, was that if you go away the home within the morning, your youngsters don’t really feel unhealthy about it — you’re feeling unhealthy about it,” she says.