Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Glossier’s new CEO leaves a big impression, Nebraska’s volleyball match breaks a record, and Samara Cohen took an unusual route to her senior BlackRock job. Have a fabulous Friday; The Broadsheet will return Tuesday, after the Labor Day weekend.
– All the world’s a stage. In the early 1990s, Samara Cohen was a theater major at the University of Pennsylvania. Never one for the stage, she spent her summers working for regional theater companies backstage in production, direction, and design.
Today, she’s chief investment officer for BlackRock’s $5.9 trillion ETF and index investments platform. That’s not a trajectory that many would imagine—but Cohen says there’s more of a path than most would expect.
As a college student, she double majored in economics alongside her theater degree. Still, she spent her summers working in theater, not pursuing banking internships. At the Williamstown Theatre Festival, she realized that what she liked most about those summers wasn’t the theater itself, but working together with people to put on a production. “I didn’t want to be the least creative person in a creative field,” she remembers.
She followed the lead of some classmates and sent her resume to BlackRock. When she arrived on the trading floor, it reminded her of her theater experience. “I felt the energy and excitement, and it reminded me of being part of tech week,” she says. “I thought, ‘I can do this.'”
The 30th anniversary of Cohen’s first day at BlackRock was this past July. She remembers eating Special K for breakfast and getting ready in business attire, unable to follow the men’s lead and take off her jacket in the office since she wore a tank top underneath. “I thought that at any moment someone would find out I was actually a theater major and didn’t belong there,” she says.
Cohen spent four years at BlackRock before leaving for business school, heading to Goldman Sachs, and returning to BlackRock in 2015. She was on maternity leave at Goldman when the 2008 financial crisis hit, and the uncertainty of that experience led her to reevaluate what she could do to make markets more resilient and transparent.
Cohen’s role today doesn’t allow much time for Broadway. Her role overseeing several asset classes includes the Asia-Pacific markets, so she gets up at 4:30 a.m. Unless she fits in a Sunday matinee, she’s unlikely to make it through a show awake.
But she says her college experience is still valuable. “Ninety-five percent of directing is casting,” she says. “And that’s not just about theater—that’s about leadership. Ninety-five percent of leadership is putting the right person in the right job.”
Emma Hinchliffe
[email protected]
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Coins2Day’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Renouncing retail. Walgreens CEO Roz Brewer has stepped down as the the company makes a push to become a health care provider rather than a retail and drug store. The Walmart and Starbucks veteran began leading Walgreens in 2021. Brewer was one of two Black female CEOs in the Coins2Day 500. CNBC
- Glossier's new face. It’s been a little over a year since Glossier founder and longtime CEO Emily Weiss stepped down. New CEO Kyle Leahy, who scored a massive partnership with Sephora, is steering the company into its next chapter. Wall Street Journal
- Audience spike. A college volleyball match between Nebraska and Omaha has set the world record for the largest crowd to attend a women’s sporting event ever. The face-off brought just over 92,000 fans to Memorial Stadium in Nebraska, beating out the previous record achieved by a soccer match last year. ESPN
- Billionaires buy back. Kylie Jenner and Kim Kardashian are reportedly in talks to buy back shares of the companies they individually sold to beauty giant Coty Inc. In 2020. Jenner reportedly wants to reclaim the 51% stake in Kylie Cosmetics she previously sold to Coty in a deal worth $1.2 billion, and Kim is in talks to repurchase 20% of SKKN, a skin care line, that she sold for $200 million three years ago. Forbes
- Onboarding. The Hong Kong stock exchange has been pushing to put more women in the boardrooms of China’s biggest companies, and the addition of female directors at powerhouses like Meituan, a food delivery company, show that momentum is gaining. A number of other Chinese giants have promised to add more women directors soon, making the stock exchange’s goal of 1,300 additions by 2025 possible. Bloomberg
- I think I've seen this film before. Taylor Swift's Eras Tour will be shown in a two-hour and 45-minute concert film at AMC Theatres in North America this fall. The film complies with SAG-AFTRA strike guidelines, and the news gave AMC's stock a bump, displaying Swift's economic power yet again. MarketWatch
MOVERS AND SHAKERS: The Muse and Fairygodboss hired Heather Tenuto as chief executive officer; Kathryn Minshew is stepping down. Podimo Germany appointed Alexandra Löwenstein to lead its content team. WSP named Shalonda A. Baldwin as transportation business line leader for northern California.
ON MY RADAR
Do cocktail glasses have a gender? For some men, clearly New York Times
A policy that supports America’s breastfeeding moms came into effect 11 years ago. It’s still not applied Coins2Day
Hi-tech fabrics are changing what women wear to work Bloomberg
PARTING WORDS
"Here, women’s basketball comes first."
—Moolah Kicks founder Natalie White on her startup and its mission to make basketball shoes specifically designed for women, not just smaller sizes of men's lines.
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