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.'”
Samara Cohen, BlackRock chief investment officer for ETF and index investments, was a college theater major. Courtesy of BlackRock 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 Fortune’s newsletter for and about the world’s most powerful women. Today’s edition was curated by Joseph Abrams. Subscribe here.
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