July 3, 2024 • 48 mins
Join me on this week's insightful episode of the podcast as we dive deep into the world of finance and leadership with the remarkable Samara Cohen, Chief Investment Officer of ETF and Index Investments at BlackRock. Managing over $6.6 trillion of assets, Samara offers a wealth of insights from her remarkable near three-decade career at the forefront of finance, highlighting the profound impact of mentorship and the interplay between resilience and success.
Samara shares her journey through the worlds of finance, economics, and theater—a blend that has uniquely shaped her approach to leadership and problem-solving.
From her challenging early days on Wall Street to her pivotal roles at Goldman Sachs and her strategic return to BlackRock, Samara offers us a behind-the-scenes look at her professional growth and the decisions that have marked her career.
We dive deep into the evolution of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), discussing how they make investing accessible to everyone and the exciting role of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of finance.
Samara also tackles the tough subject of work-life balance, reflecting on her own experiences in high-pressure jobs and sharing invaluable advice for young women who aspire to rise in the ranks of finance amidst rapid technological changes.
Join us to gain insights into overcoming self-doubt, the importance of placing the right people in the right roles, and how continuous learning can drive success in the ever-shifting landscape of finance.
#Finance #Leadership #Investment #BlackRock #GoldmanSachs #ETF #Innovation #CareerDevelopment #OperationalExcellence #BusinessInsights #MythOfTheOvernightSuccess #TheJonSchultzPodcast #NewEpisode #Podcast
Samara On Socials:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samara-epstein-cohen-9a661b76/
Instagram: samaraeco
X: @Samaraepcohen
YouTube: @blackrock
Jon on Socials:
IG: @streetschultz
FB: Jon Schultz
LinkedIn: jonschultz1
www.jonschultz.com
Samara shares her journey through the worlds of finance, economics, and theater—a blend that has uniquely shaped her approach to leadership and problem-solving.
From her challenging early days on Wall Street to her pivotal roles at Goldman Sachs and her strategic return to BlackRock, Samara offers us a behind-the-scenes look at her professional growth and the decisions that have marked her career.
We dive deep into the evolution of Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), discussing how they make investing accessible to everyone and the exciting role of artificial intelligence in shaping the future of finance.
Samara also tackles the tough subject of work-life balance, reflecting on her own experiences in high-pressure jobs and sharing invaluable advice for young women who aspire to rise in the ranks of finance amidst rapid technological changes.
Join us to gain insights into overcoming self-doubt, the importance of placing the right people in the right roles, and how continuous learning can drive success in the ever-shifting landscape of finance.
#Finance #Leadership #Investment #BlackRock #GoldmanSachs #ETF #Innovation #CareerDevelopment #OperationalExcellence #BusinessInsights #MythOfTheOvernightSuccess #TheJonSchultzPodcast #NewEpisode #Podcast
Samara On Socials:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samara-epstein-cohen-9a661b76/
Instagram: samaraeco
X: @Samaraepcohen
YouTube: @blackrock
Jon on Socials:
IG: @streetschultz
FB: Jon Schultz
LinkedIn: jonschultz1
www.jonschultz.com
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
So welcome to the John Schultz Podcast. We have an amazing guest today,
very excited as I always am.I just love learning from new people and
experiences, and that's why I lovethis podcast. But her name is Samara
Cohen. She's the chief investment Officerof ETF and index investments at Blackrock.
(00:21):
Crazy to say this, ten trilliondollars of assets Blackrock has, which is
tremendous, but she leads a teamresponsible for over six point six trillion of
them index investments, including portfolio management, trading, product development. That seems
like a lot of responsibility. It'sa crazy number. What I love.
(00:45):
I'm going to say next is youknow you've had a nearly thirty year career
at Blackrock. When I was firstdoing this podcast, it was supposed to
be the thirty the thirty year overnightsuccess. I changed it to the myth
of overnight success. But as weall know, it takes a long time
to do what we do. Youhave a very unique background blending finance,
(01:07):
economics and theater. I'm from atheater family, so I just love the
theater thing. My daughter's actually tryingto do that for a living, very
hard, but she keeps trying,and you sit on the Global Market Executive
Committee, which you know sort ofgives you a front row to market trends
and investor needs. And you've beenan unbelievable driving force behind black rocks etf
(01:32):
innovation, sustainable investing solutions, improvingmarket structure and transparency, which obviously I
know is very important to you.So welcome to the podcast. Thank you
so much for having me. Thatwas quite a wind up. I hope
I deliver. I am sure youwill. You've done it for thirty years,
So why I gotta say I lovethe myth of overnight success. My
(01:55):
career is definitely a story of careersbeing marathons and not sprints. There you
go, right, And you knowwhat I also love about every guest is
the most exciting things that they talkabout when they talk to me, or
what went wrong and how they gotout of it or what wasn't going exactly
the right way and how they dealtwith it, and that was like their
(02:15):
most proud moments. But what wedo we start way back. So my
first question to you would be howwould your parents describe you? My parents
would say that I am driven,passionate, funny and a NonStop worrier.
(02:35):
I think all of those things atthe same time. Wow. So I
think we have a little bit ofthe worrier in my family too. It's
funny when I try to change themeaning of that word, because worried just
has a sort of bad connotation toit, where it's more like alert,
(02:57):
right, Like I'm always alert forwhat's moving and changing, And I think
as an entrepreneur or running anything,you have to be that, right.
So, knowing that, you knowyou grow up with a certain set of
people around you, you know,you get those traits usually from our families.
How would you say your father's careerinfluenced you? You know, because
(03:20):
I know what my father did toinfluence me. How did he have an
impact on you? Well, bothof my parents' trajectories definitely influenced me,
as did their relationship. Meaning so, my father was a pediatric neurosurgeon,
so literally a brain surgeon who savedchildren's lives. He was a rock star
(03:43):
in the field of pediatric neurosurgery.And I grew up I remember especially for
some reason, I have such avivid memory. We're New Yorkers. I
have a vivid memory of going toYankee games with him and having people stop
him at the game and recogniz himand say, you're doctor Fred Epstein.
You saved you know, so andso my neighbors, you know, daughter,
(04:06):
and my father passed away sadly ofmelanoma seventeen years ago. I was
pregnant with my son, Fred,who's named after him. But to this
day sometimes people will find me onFacebook or Instagram and just say, you
know, your father saved my lifewhen I was, you know, four
(04:27):
or five years old or whatever.So my father set a very high bar
for having impact in the world.But you know, to the point you
made, John about people always learningfrom their mistakes one of the things he
spoke about often. In addition tospeaking about his field of expertise, which
was brain surgery, he also talkedabout learning disabilities and the fact that he
(04:51):
had a really hard time in schoolin learning how to read when he was
a child, and that first teachgreat teachers and not so great teachers made
all the difference in his life,and second, when it came to his
career in neurosurgery, his defining momentscame from not being scared of being laughed
(05:15):
at or making mistakes, and hebelieved that children should be treated differently than
adults when it came to operating onbrain or spinal cord tumors, because it
didn't mean as much to a kidto just prolong their life by a few
years. He wanted a kid tobe mobile and to have long lives,
and so he wanted to apply verydifferent techniques, and he was really People
(05:39):
said it'll never work. He wasmade fun of, and he tried lots
of different things, and he hasa whole you know, he had a
whole speech on experiments that he didnot, you know, on animals,
not on people. But ultimately hecame up with pioneering the use of lasers
and treating brainstem and spinal cord tumorsthat had previous been considered inoperable. So
(06:01):
there are literally thousands and thousands ofpeople who lived and walked because of these
techniques. But he attributed his resiliencein developing these techniques to being resilient,
being able to recover from getting thingswrong, and believing that he could do
it. So that set a lotof both a high standard and making an
(06:25):
impact on the world, but alsothe importance of resilience and muscling through your
mistakes. Plus, you know,it makes you proud, right because like
when you're seeing other people come upto I know when people come up to
my family or my father or mymother. Unfortunately has passed too, but
I feel it inside me. It'sfunny. My wife's father was a sort
(06:51):
of famous pediatrician in Philadelphia, soI got the same thing. When we
were at restaurants, people would comeup. They loved him so much,
and he took such good care ofhis patients, and it felt good to
see how much he was loved andrespected. How about your mom, did
you get a different sort of feelfrom her experience? Yes, So look
(07:12):
with my mom, I am theoldest of five kids, and my parents
had children basically throughout eighteen years.So I'm the oldest. My youngest brother,
Ben is eighteen years younger than me. Wow, my mom, you
know they had five kids. Ithink part of what helped my father in
his field, which was taking careof kids who were very sick, was
(07:33):
kind of coming home to a householdof you know, lots of healthy kids,
and so we had a lot ofkids and so, but he had
tremendously demanding hours, and so mymother was the CEO of our house,
and I think that that meant acouple of things to me. First,
looking back on it, I thinkshe really made huge efforts to preserve the
(07:59):
time that I had with my dadbecause he was so busy, so she
kind of was always the bad guyso that he got to come in and
be the hero because he just neverhad as much time with us. And
so looking back on it, II realized and I've kind of apologized to
her for uh, for the dynamicbecause now that I'm also the mother of
a of a teen girl, Isaid to her, I'm I'm, you
(08:22):
know, sorry for all the youknow, being a teen girl basically growing
up and giving you a hard timebecause I realized now that I'm a parent,
you know, not only were youuh like uh, you know,
you are the bad guy for twopeople, and and so that's that's something
that I realize now. The otherthing is that as as supportive and passionate
(08:45):
as my mother was in supporting whatmy father did, she really wanted me
to have a uh whatever job Iwanted and the biggest job I wanted.
And she was very very uh youknow she was. I remember she used
to send me clippings of the weddingsection in the New York Times, like
some people's mothers would send them this, like you should be getting married.
(09:07):
She was sending me it and circling, you know, things saying, you
know, these women aren't getting marrieduntil their thirties. You've got time,
no go out there, you goto business school, you know, throw
yourself into your job. And soshe definitely really championed me having whatever job
I want. Now, I willsay, my father, you know,
(09:28):
kind of set a high standard Idid at one point. I remember before,
you know, maybe when I wasin business school, have a little
bit of a crisis of confidence andsaying like, how do I like,
I want to make as big apositive impact on the world as you have,
and you've been saving children's lives,So is it okay for me to
(09:48):
want to be in markets or investments? Is that a cop out? And
he was awesome about it, theyboth were, you know, he said,
you need to find the thing thatyou know gets that you can be
the most successful about, that you'repassionate about, and you can make a
difference doing anything in the world.On top of which you can, if
you're financially able, support a lotof good causes and make just as big
(10:11):
a difference, you know, inthe world as I did. So,
so that was the message they bothgave me. Yeah, and it's funny.
It's like, you know, measuringup it's not an easy thing to
have to deal with, and evengoing into what your parents are is not
always an easy thing to deal with, no matter how good you get.
Right, It's like that imposter syndromecomes and creeps in from all of us
(10:33):
for everything that we do. ButI I love it. I feel like
I grew up in the same typeof atmosphere my mom. I mean,
she was my rock, so Ialways felt like she's the one tapping me
on my shoulder whenever I feel like, oh my god, can I do
this or can I not do this? To this day not being here,
(10:56):
So I think that's exciting, allright. So obviously, you know,
when you're younger, you get hobbies, you know, things that you are
passionate about. Let's talk about theaterbecause I feel theater and everything about it
is something that will help people's businesscareers because everything's about presenting, communicating,
(11:22):
learning how to listen, knowing whento step in and step out. You
know, I know we have lines, but you still got to deliver them
properly. What got you into theaterand how does how is? How did
that help you as a younger person? Right, It's almost like a team
sport because both my daughters were init as well. Yeah, that's perfectly
(11:43):
said. Theater was my version oflearning who I was as part of a
team and importantly as a leader ofa team. And I was passionate about
it. It was way more thana hobby for me. I went to
college believing that AI was going tomajor in theater and b after college,
I wanted to, you know,change the world through the medium of theater.
And what that meant to me backthen was I felt that and I
(12:07):
was. I wasn't interested in filmor I was really interested in live theater
and kind of the impact storytelling couldhave on a community. I was never
really an actor, although you makegreat points like, no matter what you're
doing in theater, as a theatermajor, you have to take acting classes,
and you have to learn how toimprov and how to play off other
people and just how to you know, keep from being blown off the stage.
(12:30):
In my case, because I wasnever like a naturally gifted actor.
But what I was really passionate,passionate about was the backstage stuff. Was
the production. The more complicated,the better I did stage management, directing,
lighting design, costume design. AndI really loved all of those things,
both the energy of how you puttogether a show and then the creativity
(12:56):
of kind of the orchestral piece ofbringing all the different parts together and what
would ultimately be an experience for anaudience. And I think through that I
learned how to work hard. AndI always tell people, I think college
is a lot about like finding yourwork ethic and how you work and what
you do matters less Like when Ilook at up, you know, people's
(13:18):
resumes coming out of college, Iwant to see that they've shown really hard
work at anything. So I hadto work really hard, and then I
had opportunities to lead, and Ilearned in those opportunities, both positively and
negatively, what worked in different Iremember once probably my first experience with being
(13:39):
told I was a micro manager whenI was directing. You know, you
do in the couple of days beforeyou opened, you'd have copious notes for
the actors and a director that thebiggest thing that you have to do is
slowly like understand that the actors aregoing to do that show without you.
And there's a big kind of ceremonialmoment before a show opens with a director
(14:01):
kind of hands their book over tothe stage manager, who from that moment
on kind of calls the show.And it was really hard for me in
those first moments when I was incharge of everything, to be able to
step away from the minute she andtrust that the team had it and at
that point it was their job torun with. You know, I'm so
glad you pointed out the behind thestage things because no matter what we're doing
(14:28):
and what industry or profession, allthe components of running anything comes together.
Right the theater, entertainment, itall has the same components as finance and
business. So my question to you, now, knowing that it's still such
an opposite thing like finance and theater, how did you get any interest in
(14:52):
the finance side. Sure, so, yes, yes, it is an
opposite thing. But I will tellyou exactly what happened. So I actually
while I worked for Blackrock, youknow, thirty years ago. It was
my first job out of college.I actually was gone for eighteen years before
(15:13):
I came back to Blackrock. Soafter four years of Blackrock, I decided
to go to business school. AndI decided to go to business school for
two reasons. Number one, becauseI was a theater major and I still
like I really didn't know what Iwas doing when I sent my resume out,
so I thought maybe I could bea little bit more thoughtful around my
job search. And I was reallyinterested in just seeing what was out there,
(15:35):
and so I wanted to go toa business school that had students from
around the world in all different typesof industries. And I liked school,
and so I just liked the ideaof having a graduate degree, and so
I went to business school. Andthen I thought perhaps I could better marry
my theater and finance interests in away that used both. And so I
(15:58):
spent a lot of my friend You'rea business goal interviewing with big theater companies
to be kind of an administrative roles. And I had a realization, which
was that I did not want tobe the non creative person in a creative
field. I was not interested inarts administration. And sometimes it's just as
important to uncover the thing that youdon't want to do as it is like
(16:19):
the thing that you do want todo, and so that happened, and
then Goldman Sachs was actually trying toget more women to apply to their markets
business, the sales and trading business, which is the institutional trading floor.
And they went through the resume,the Harvard Business Goal resume book and actually
(16:41):
reached out to me because they sawblack Rock on my resume and they said,
how come you're not applying to oursecurities division, our our sales and
trading division. And honestly, thewhole idea of that was very intimidating to
me. But they invited me tocome and visit the trading floor. And
this is where the theater thing comesback on, because a trading floor,
(17:02):
especially at that time, like they'redefinitely many more men than women, and
normally that might have, you know, just intimidated me, or it would
have been harder for me to setmyself on it. But just the energy,
the atmosphere, the way people wereworking with each other, like it
felt very much like tech week ofa show. And so I thought,
(17:23):
I can do that, like Ican be in that environment and I would
really enjoy it. And so thatpiece of myself it was the how I
worked and how I worked best,and what sort of energy I liked to
be around, like directly led tomy feeling confident, kind of throwing my
hat in the ring for a summerassociate job at Goldman Sacks. So you
(17:45):
went to Goldman and how many yearswere you there? Sixteen? I was
there for sixteen years. That's incredible. What would you say knowing that you
felt comfortable in that role? Right, Like, we're good at what we
practice at and we have innate talentsthat were gifted, right, we don't
know where they come from, butthey're there. What were the challenges you
(18:07):
had being at a firm like that? I mean high paced pressure, you
know, you know from what Ihear very very you know, strong work
ethic and almost as if you don'thave your young life except at work.
What were the challenges you had withthat? Well, look, all of
those things are true, and Iget these days. I have a group
(18:32):
of friends we were just talking theother day about how we hate the term
work life balance, which women getasked about way more than men, which
is interesting because in my experience,both men and women have the same kind
of desires to live a full youknow, exciting, happy life, whatever
that looks like to them. ButI look back on those times and yes,
(18:55):
I spent a lot of time working, but I'm proud of it,
and I enjoyed it, and youknow, for what it's worth. I
did meet my husband Adam at Goldman. We weren't in the same business,
but but we met. We wereon different floors, but you know,
we did. We did meet atGoldman and and and you know, we
spend a lot of time there.So I don't know that I view that
(19:18):
as a challenge the way somebody looking, you know, at me and how
I worked might say, well,that was, you know, not how
I'd want to live my life.Like I think it's okay, especially in
those earlier years, to spend alot of time working. I liked being
the first person who'd get into thedesk. It took me longer, by
the way, to like, lookat what was happening in the markets,
(19:38):
read the things that I wanted toread, you know, get up to
speed and be able to start theday where I did. And I and
I could do that. I didn'treally have anything else that I had to
worry about. Now, later on, when I had my kids, I
was at Goldman when I had bothkids, Fred, my son, he's
seventeen now, and then my daughterEileen was born to your later in two
(20:00):
thousand and eight, in the middleof the Example crisis. I know,
I have a great photos of youknow, being you know, in the
delivery room with like the financial timeson my belly that you know, my
anyway memorable moments. But but II, you know, having young children,
(20:21):
to be honest, maternity leave wasreally hard. Maternity leap was hard.
And I don't think women sometimes talkabout that enough because you're so used
to feeling like you're at the topof your game and you're you know,
super competent, and then all ofa sudden you're home and you have this
this baby, and you have noidea what you're doing, and you feel
completely like incompetent. And I rememberthe moment that my husband, you know,
(20:45):
was was you know, showered andshaving, and I said, where
are you going? So after Fredwas born and he said, it's been
two weeks, I'm going back towork, and I was like, don't
leave me. And so then thingschanged, right like coming back I had
maternity leave, but I knew thatI wanted to go back to work.
And actually, it's funny. Itused to drive Adam crazy when I was
(21:07):
pregnant because people would always say tome, I'm Samara. When I was
pregnant with the first are you goingto go back to work after the baby's
born? And I would say yes, yes I am. What about you,
Adam, are you going to goback to work when our baby's born?
And then Adam would say, Dude, I get it, it's a
sexist question, but do you haveto do that every time? And I
(21:27):
was like, yes, yes Ido so, so going back to work
and having toddlers like you have tofigure that out. And I think in
a way it helped me that Iwas a little bit more senior. I
was actually promoted to managing director,like while I was on maternity leave with
my second daughter, And so Ithink that's when you just have to figure
(21:48):
out what you need and talk aboutit and talk about you know, what
works for you. So if youwant to, you know, do something
with your or you have to goto an appointment. I think for me
the game changer was learning to betransparent about it and making it a negotiation,
(22:10):
like yes, I can have thisdone when do you need it done
by If you need it done soonerthan I'm ready to do it, let
me suggest this path. But beinga master at that I think is important
in a place as intense as Goldman. But I can tell you you asked
me at the beginning of this conversationhow my parents would describe me, and
I can tell you whether I wasat Goldman or whether I was in theater.
(22:33):
Wherever I was, they would havedescribed me as intense. Like I
thrive in intensity. So for mepersonally, it's less about dealing with the
intensity of my environment and just makingsure I am continuously assessing where do I
want to be spending my time andmaking that happen totally. Yeah, I
think when you said work life balance, I almost think it should be called
(22:56):
work life priorities. Yes, Iwas just saying the same thing, or
priorities balance or something, because it'slike they first of all, there is
no such thing as an exact balance, right, I mean we're constantly,
you know, rejiggering that, andlike priorities changed too, so like why
are we trying to put it insome box? It's not even a real
(23:18):
box. So I think we shouldhave a new bumper sticker called work like
priorities, yeah, or even likepriorities balance, because I guess part of
what gets me is not just yes, there's no thing is balance. It's
all about prioritization. But also there'ssomething about this notion that work exists outside
of life that doesn't land with me. My career, my work has been
(23:42):
part of my life, a partof my life I enjoy, and I
think that's fine. I don't thinkyou need to view work as extracurricular to
real life. And I think thingslike you know, I have a friend
Annie McKee, who wrote an incrediblebook called How to Be Happy Work,
and the subtitles is the power ofpurpose, hope and friendships. But one
(24:06):
of the things she says is yourwork friends are real, and having those
relationships with people you care about atwork is important to being happy at work.
So again, all under this notionof you don't, you know,
start living hopefully, you don't startliving only when you leave the office.
I agree, And you know whenyou say that with you know, from
COVID till now, with just thiswhole what is work? Yeah? How
(24:30):
do we work? Days in?Days out? Creating culture has changed dramatically.
You know, part of what Ifeel is the younger generation may be
missing out on a really great experience. I guess we'll all figure it out
still over the next five years.But you know, it's ever changing.
(24:52):
So question, You're sixteen years ina place. I've not heard many people
go back to a pl place theywere before. It's like, I'm in
real estate, right, Like whenwe buy a building, you know,
sometimes you have a chance to buyit back, and we did it once
and it didn't work out so well. Right, So, like you know,
we always say, like, nevergo back to where you were if
(25:14):
you don't have to. What droveyou to actually make that change? Yeah,
a few things, but just soyou know, I am not the
only boomerang at Blackrock. So theBlackrock boomerang is an actual thing. It
happens. But and it was funnywhen I when I went back to Blackrock,
a lot of my friends and familythought, oh, well, at
(25:36):
least you'll be familiar with it.And you have to realize Blackrock had changed
quite a bit between ninety seven whenI left in twenty fifteen when I came
back. I'm employee number one thirtyfour at Blackrock, it was a small
firm. I remember, you knowhow much we celebrated when we hit one
hundred billion in assets, and itwas really a fixing come portfolio management firm.
(25:59):
Yeah, and it became global,it became multi asset, multi strategy,
and today we have twenty thousand people. So actually in twenty fifteen it
did feel like a different firm.But the reason I came back was really
about those post financial crisis years.So I mentioned my daughter, Eileen was
born in two thousand and eight,and I had spent most of my Goldman
(26:23):
career in the derivatives market, andif you recall, in those post crisis
years, everybody was blaming the derivativesmarket for everything. And I learned then
this joke about the bar fight,which is, you know, if you're
in a bar fight, you don'thit the person who started the fight,
You hit the person you always wantedto hit. Like that was true of
(26:47):
derivatives in that time, and thatwas very frustrating for me because I felt
really proud of the work that Ihad done in, you know, largely
in the interest rate derivatives market overthe course of my career. On the
other hand, I did feel likeas much as I felt and feel strongly
that that derivatives did not cause thefinancial crisis, that markets could be a
(27:10):
lot more resilient, accessible and transparent. And at that point I really started
to develop a much sharper sense ofmy own professional purpose. You know,
if I were going to stay infinance, Like, what did I want
that to be about? And Iwanted it to be about bringing resiliency and
access to markets. And so thatreally sent me on a you know,
(27:33):
a slight pivot just even at Goldman. I ended up doing a lot of
work at Goldman Zachs as market structurewas changing quickly in those kind of post
global financial crisis years, the Gtwenty nations, you know, met and
made a bunch of agreements around OTCmarket reform, and I really became a
(27:56):
kind of a spokesperson and thought leaderat the firm and in the industry around
how to progress those changes. Andthat led me actually to testifying to Congress
in uh really about uh CFTC derivativesreform and the implications to US competitiveness and
(28:18):
and it. And through that Ireconnected with Barbara Novic, who was a
Blackrock founder. She had been amentor of mine. Uh, you know,
when I was at Blackrock and andwe just started talking about the future
of markets, and and I sharedwith her and she had heard me speak
a lot about how how markets coulduh really modernize and and and become more
(28:42):
accessible to more people. And shesaid, tomorrow, there's somebody that I
want you to meet. Here.His name's Mark Weaveman. He runs our
ETF business. And I know thatyou love working at Goldman, but just
you know, as a mentor andsomebody who's known you for a long time,
you guys will just enjoy in theconversation. So you should talk to
each other. Now, this istwenty fourteen, John, So like,
(29:03):
I'm googling what is an ETF,because in twenty fourteen, if you're a
bond market person or a drug person, like you have no idea what ETF
is. Now in twenty twenty fouryou can't have a credible conversation really about
public markets or even crypto markets thesedays without knowing what an ETF is.
But that kind of shows the progressof the past ten years. And that
(29:27):
actually was Mark's whole thesis. Hebelieved that ETFs were part of the equation,
kind of part of the technology disruptionso to speak, that would bring
more people into the markets, helpmake a broader range of investment strategies accessible,
and bring transparency to parts of themarkets, especially the bond market that
(29:51):
hadn't had it before. And thatvision really really hooked me. So that's
what brought me back. But what'sso cool, Like I'm seventy episodes in
now, so like I actually cansee trends. I can see like in
all different professions, it was alwaysthat person, that mentor that gave that
(30:12):
little push where it wasn't always likeeveryone thinks that you know, you get
to this place and it's this bigplan, and it's always someone else giving
us a nudge somehow and being openfor it. Right. I mean I
know you you were thinking about it, like, yeah, I do want
to make a change, But youcould easily stayed there for another five years,
(30:33):
been happy, got more successful,but you had this mentor that you
trusted, Which is why I think, like relationships in life are just so
important and are so meaningful when welook back to see like how they have
guided us to where we actually endup. So I think that's amazing.
Uh, And here you are thereand it's a different company. You know
(30:56):
thousands and thousands of people. Nowyou manage an exorbitant amount of money in
number and volume. How do youapproach leadership that works with so many people
and so many things, that inso many moving parts like daily How do
(31:18):
you approach that? You know,what's your thoughts on culture, what brings
it all together so you can actuallysleep at night for real. I am
a student of leadership truly. Ithink I've learned a lot over the last
ten years that I've been back atBlackrock. I expect to continue learning a
lot over the next ten years.Some of the principles that I think my
(31:44):
leadership is rooted in go back towhat we talked about in theater, and
you ask the question, how doyou lead a lot of people? How
do you lead at scale? Thenumber one answer to that is you make
sure the right people are in theright jobs. And I spend a lot
of my time doing that. Thetheater of saying for that is casting is
(32:04):
ninety five percent of directing, andI think casting is ninety five percent of
leadership anywhere, putting the right peoplein the right job and the right leaders
in the right job. So atBlackrock, we talk often about what makes
an effective people manager. That's notnecessarily the same thing as another quality we
talk about, which is a leaderwho grows leaders. So I aspire to
(32:29):
be a leader who grows leaders andin order to lead at scale, that's
the only way to do it isto put other leaders in high impact seats
where they can do their very bestwork. So that's principal number one.
Principal number two for me also relatesto theater as a director, and that's
(32:52):
the importance. And you mentioned thisa little earlier, the dynamics of an
ensemble cast and how people need tofeel a lot of trust in their leadership
group to do their best work.Because what you really want from a high
performance leadership team, especially one thatyou are charging with innovation and elevating standards
(33:16):
and helping people go into parts ofthe market where they haven't been before.
You're asking people to take risk.You want them to do it in the
most thoughtful way possible, and youwant them to feel supported when they do
it. And I think putting peoplein situations where they feel like they can
do their best work and they're goingto have cover from their peers and from
(33:37):
their manager if they make a mistakelike those are the same principles around creating
ensemble casts. And one of thethings I've learned, particularly over the past
five years, i'd say, isthat just as much as a person can
learn a lot about improving their peoplemanagement or their leadership, there's a lot
of intentionality you can bring to teamsat work in terms of how they show
(34:01):
up in a room together. Andwe've had some outside uh you know,
leaders and coaches come in to talkto us about that sort of intentionality in
putting together teams, and that's beenreally helpful in terms of being able to
do this at scale. Yeah,it's uh, it's it's I think you
(34:23):
just answered the question perfectly because it'slike any good team, it's the casting,
right, It's the directing, it'sit's I love how you associate that
with it, and I think youknow it doesn't get any easier as you
get more people. Right. Soanother question, which is I'm going to
(34:45):
veer off a little here, soyou know, you've been recognized as Baron's
most influential Women in US and twentytwo I think in finance. You know,
I have two daughters, you know, So what advice would you give
young women and aspiring to reach leadershiproles in finance, right that are up
(35:05):
and coming and it's changing, right, we got we got all sorts of
technology changes happening. What would whatadvice would you give? Well the advice
my mother gave to me, whichis find the thing that you're passionate about,
which, of course, like mydaughter probably doesn't really know and your
daughters probably don't know either, Soit means like, really dive into the
things that interest you, uncover thosepassions, like those are the things that
(35:30):
are going to make you want towork the hardest. And then the next
thing that I think is so importantis especially if that thing turns out to
be you know, in my case, finance, or being on a trading
floor where there's a lot of peoplewho don't really look like you, knowing
(35:52):
that that can work to your advantagebeing the one that stands out that you
had a different background. I hada theater background. There's no question a
differenterentiated me in the interview process.It differentiated me and how I showed up
on the floor. It actually workedto my advantage, but it does kind
of and it did contribute to myalways wondering I remember, you know,
(36:13):
sometimes I wish I could go backin time to my first day of work
Blackrock self and just give her ahug and say you belong, Like it
wasn't a mistake that they gave youthis job, because secretly, like I
did, kind of think it wasa mistake, and maybe they thought it
was going to be interesting let's seehow the theater major like actually does here.
But you know, they were reallygoing to be laughing at me.
(36:34):
I was so nervous. And evenwhen I was an associate and at Goldman's
as at the beginning on the tradingfloor, I was so nervous. I
usually couldn't even eat the first halfof the day. I was really scared
just of you know, of Idon't even know what looking back on it,
but just because I felt I didn'treally belong. And so that's the
thing I would try, Like,if you were interested and excited about what
(36:59):
you're doing, you belong at thattable. And I think those are the
two things, like kind of pursuingthe interests and then just like underwriting that
that's what you should be doing.Those those were really important things for me.
I think what you just said shouldbe a clip that every college graduate
should listen to before they go andtry to get their internship or their first
(37:22):
job, because I say the samething. It's like, we all want
you to succeed, like we're lookingfor you. You know, you belong
and you got to feel that,right and like you got through that feeling
of not feeling it to forcing yourselfto feel it. And not everybody you
know will have that courage, buthearing it from you, I hope gives
(37:44):
people a lot more courage. SoI think it's tremendous. All right,
So let's talk a little ETFs,the word and the thing you had to
look up in twenty fourteen. Andit's crazy how dominant this has has become
with all the new technology and evenlike bitcoin and what's going on with this
(38:07):
new ATF. Give me, giveme your view into you know, what's
happening. You know where you seethis all going. It probably isn't its
infancy at this point in my mind. It makes it so much more transparent
and easy to understand, you know, even with Bitcoin, Like I didn't
want to deal with the wallet R. I mean, I'm like I'm going
(38:28):
back to It's just I don't havethe time to think about it or worry
about it. So what's your thoughtson the ETF business and whull and wherever
you'd like to dive into. Solook, ETFs, which stand for exchange
traded funds, are a market accesstechnology that has over the course of really
it's a thirty year history in theUnited States that we have had ETFs,
(38:51):
and generally that's how long ETFs havebeen around. They have disrupted all types
of markets and asset classes. Isto help more investors participate in them.
So and actually an important precursor toETFs, which is about you know,
thirty five years old, are indexfunds. So let's just talk for a
(39:13):
second first about what index funds are. Because importantly, when I call ETFs
a disruptive technology, so was indexing. And it's interesting that indexing in the
portfolio management context, meaning managing indexfunds, wasn't even possible until the first
commercial microchips were introduced because you neededso much compute power to actually take an
(39:38):
index, which is really just afinancial calculation and turn it into a investible
portfolio of stocks. And you know, now we need to do we do
you know, millions of millions andmillions of calculations to enable the management of
(39:59):
indexed portfolio that we do. Sothat was stage one. ETFs basically create
a way to access an entire portfolioof stocks through one one purchase of one
stock on an exchange, and ETFis an exchange traded stock that gives you
access to an entire portfolio of stocksor of bonds. Now fixed income ETFs,
(40:24):
ETFs that wrap bond portfolios have beenaround for around twenty two years and
in the United States to your point, Bitcoin ETFs have now been trading for
about six months. So it's acontinuous trajectory of providing access to more parts
(40:44):
of the market in a way thatanybody can do it. Anybody can buy
it. And what was so importantabout indexation, that's also important about ets
and this is kind of the foundationalconcept. You just didn't need that much
money to get port folio diversification.You can buy one share of an ETF
(41:05):
and get access to a diversified portfolioof thousands of stocks or bonds. And
thirty years ago that sort of diversificationyou needed to be a much more sophisticated
investor with a lot more money tomanage. So the thing that's exciting about
ETFs is that lets individuals, youknow, save for retirement, save for
(41:25):
their kids college education, save forbuying a house, whatever the financial outcomes
that they want. That was alot harder to invest for in the absence
of indexation and ETFs if you hadif you had less money with so many
though coming up, Like, youknow, how like at the beginning of
(41:46):
something, you sort of can seea clear path of how to understand it,
but then it gets bigger and biggerand bigger. You know, how
do you see as a customer seeingthrough all that. I mean, every
day it's like there's a new one. It's a whole new concept or concept
to your concept there. What's youradvice on that for people to sort of
(42:07):
see through the noise? Yeah,I think that's an awesome question, and
right now that question is much biggerthan et apps. Like the good news
for the individual consumer or investor isthat more information is available to you than
ever before in history. And thebad news is like more information is information
(42:28):
is available than ever before, andit can be really hard to aggregate and
consume and make sense of that information. So it's interesting I'm participating in a
conversation tomorrow on the implications of AIto markets. But really what they're getting
at are is gen AI and youknow, the implications of generative AI to
(42:51):
markets, And I'm an AI optimist. I mean, there's absolutely best practices
and guardrails, but what AI canbring to India visual investors in terms of
consuming, aggregating and organizing all ofthat information to understand what they need to
is really positive. But I thinkthat aggregation of information and the use of
(43:15):
the information that's available to us isprobably the next most important thing to happen
in markets now that we actually haveyou know, I mentioned that what's been
so important over the past twenty yearshas been the evolution of transparency and putting
the data out there for people,ets or just another form of market data.
Now the challenge is using it.So I have a question with AI
(43:38):
and with the abilities we're already seeing, and you know, there's going to
be many use cases applied to it, I think we're very very very early.
We don't realize what it actually willcompletely be yet. But when I
was first in real estate and Iwant to start my own brokerage company,
there was a technology that enabled meto have market data to not have to
(44:00):
be like the Cushman wait Field,the Jones langlessal that had millions and millions
of dollars for research like it democratizedit. So just met John Schultz with
this software could have all the marketdata I needed and almost have. It
wasn't AI then, it was justa software system. Do you see like
(44:20):
almost AI disrupting companies in a waywhere like I may have my research department
being AI and not needing all theseother services that are provided today in the
finance world. Look, there's noquestion that AI democratizes access to information.
I think the question is, sowhat like what are you doing with the
(44:44):
information? What do you need theinformation for? And you know who,
like what are the services that canbe provided in an AI enabled world?
So I think the question is like, you know, where do you job
want to spend your time and wherewould you prefer to kind of you know,
(45:05):
consume and trust the research of otherpeople. Now, when we use
a gen AI internally a black rocka big difference to how we use it.
That's different than when I use chatGPT is if I ask we have
something, we'd call you know,we use a co pilot internally, if
I ask Copilot a question and itgives me a bunch of answers. It
attributes each of them, and Ithink that's really important. Like when I
(45:28):
ask chat GPT, there's no attribution, and so I don't really have a
way to check my source material.I think, as you said, it's
early, and there's a whole trajectory, but I think the ability for people
to do their own research in amuch more effective way and get too much
kind of quicker outcomes that's pretty exciting. Like you can, you know,
(45:49):
if I think about I told youwhen I got that first call about,
you know, meeting Mark Weedman andI had to google what is an ETF,
I could have prepared myself for thosefirst conversations with much more ease at
the tools then that I do today. I you know, I think it's
gonna it's gonna enable people to beable to start companies that could never start
before with less money and you knowmore I think ability. But we'll see,
(46:16):
you know, you know, it'sit's early, but I think it's
very exciting. It's and it's alsoyou know, scary at the same time,
because you just don't know where itall goes and what you know,
I know a lot of people thatthey asked me, like, you know,
what do I need to know that'sgoing to not help me with my
job today to you know, formy future job. And I I just
(46:37):
hope there's more training and information onhow people can feel how they can get
involved, just like you're doing withETF. So yeah, no, I
think you're spot on. That's whyI mean, I hope for my kids,
and I've thought about this as myson is going to college next year,
how are they using AI in theclassroom so the kids can get used
to, you know, used tousing it? I think are Head of
(46:59):
it Engineering says something that I findthat I find so helpful, just in
terms of first principles and what JENAIdoes and what it is is that the
only programming language you will need isEnglish. Because what JENAI does, this
changes how we interact with code andwith computers, and we can do it
(47:21):
using English. We can communicate tothe computer in English and we can here
back in English, and so youdon't need to learn code. And so
you know, for my kids,how are they learning how to do that
so that they can use the toolsin their lives. I think the education
piece is spot on. I loveit. Well, we're going to say,
I mean, I'm an entrepreneur.I love when things change. I
(47:45):
feel when things change, just likeyou went through in twenty fourteen. It
creates this new equal playing field forway more people to get involved if they
want to right and build things thatbecome larger than you could ever imagine,
which you're sitting in the middle ofright now. I just want to say
how much I appreciate you coming onand spending this time. You know people
(48:07):
are gonna love this and thank youvery much. Likewise, thanks so much
for having me and I really enjoyedthe conversation. Thank you, Hi John
Schultz here, Thank you so muchfor tuning into this week's episode. Would
really appreciate it. If you wouldlike comment, subscribe, and share with
your friends. Looking forward to beingwith you soon.
So welcome to the John Schultz Podcast. We have an amazing guest today,
very excited as I always am.I just love learning from new people and
experiences, and that's why I lovethis podcast. But her name is Samara
Cohen. She's the chief investment Officerof ETF and index investments at Blackrock.
(00:21):
Crazy to say this, ten trilliondollars of assets Blackrock has, which is
tremendous, but she leads a teamresponsible for over six point six trillion of
them index investments, including portfolio management, trading, product development. That seems
like a lot of responsibility. It'sa crazy number. What I love.
(00:45):
I'm going to say next is youknow you've had a nearly thirty year career
at Blackrock. When I was firstdoing this podcast, it was supposed to
be the thirty the thirty year overnightsuccess. I changed it to the myth
of overnight success. But as weall know, it takes a long time
to do what we do. Youhave a very unique background blending finance,
(01:07):
economics and theater. I'm from atheater family, so I just love the
theater thing. My daughter's actually tryingto do that for a living, very
hard, but she keeps trying,and you sit on the Global Market Executive
Committee, which you know sort ofgives you a front row to market trends
and investor needs. And you've beenan unbelievable driving force behind black rocks etf
(01:32):
innovation, sustainable investing solutions, improvingmarket structure and transparency, which obviously I
know is very important to you.So welcome to the podcast. Thank you
so much for having me. Thatwas quite a wind up. I hope
I deliver. I am sure youwill. You've done it for thirty years,
So why I gotta say I lovethe myth of overnight success. My
(01:55):
career is definitely a story of careersbeing marathons and not sprints. There you
go, right, And you knowwhat I also love about every guest is
the most exciting things that they talkabout when they talk to me, or
what went wrong and how they gotout of it or what wasn't going exactly
the right way and how they dealtwith it, and that was like their
(02:15):
most proud moments. But what wedo we start way back. So my
first question to you would be howwould your parents describe you? My parents
would say that I am driven,passionate, funny and a NonStop worrier.
(02:35):
I think all of those things atthe same time. Wow. So I
think we have a little bit ofthe worrier in my family too. It's
funny when I try to change themeaning of that word, because worried just
has a sort of bad connotation toit, where it's more like alert,
(02:57):
right, Like I'm always alert forwhat's moving and changing, And I think
as an entrepreneur or running anything,you have to be that, right.
So, knowing that, you knowyou grow up with a certain set of
people around you, you know,you get those traits usually from our families.
How would you say your father's careerinfluenced you? You know, because
(03:20):
I know what my father did toinfluence me. How did he have an
impact on you? Well, bothof my parents' trajectories definitely influenced me,
as did their relationship. Meaning so, my father was a pediatric neurosurgeon,
so literally a brain surgeon who savedchildren's lives. He was a rock star
(03:43):
in the field of pediatric neurosurgery.And I grew up I remember especially for
some reason, I have such avivid memory. We're New Yorkers. I
have a vivid memory of going toYankee games with him and having people stop
him at the game and recogniz himand say, you're doctor Fred Epstein.
You saved you know, so andso my neighbors, you know, daughter,
(04:06):
and my father passed away sadly ofmelanoma seventeen years ago. I was
pregnant with my son, Fred,who's named after him. But to this
day sometimes people will find me onFacebook or Instagram and just say, you
know, your father saved my lifewhen I was, you know, four
(04:27):
or five years old or whatever.So my father set a very high bar
for having impact in the world.But you know, to the point you
made, John about people always learningfrom their mistakes one of the things he
spoke about often. In addition tospeaking about his field of expertise, which
was brain surgery, he also talkedabout learning disabilities and the fact that he
(04:51):
had a really hard time in schoolin learning how to read when he was
a child, and that first teachgreat teachers and not so great teachers made
all the difference in his life,and second, when it came to his
career in neurosurgery, his defining momentscame from not being scared of being laughed
(05:15):
at or making mistakes, and hebelieved that children should be treated differently than
adults when it came to operating onbrain or spinal cord tumors, because it
didn't mean as much to a kidto just prolong their life by a few
years. He wanted a kid tobe mobile and to have long lives,
and so he wanted to apply verydifferent techniques, and he was really People
(05:39):
said it'll never work. He wasmade fun of, and he tried lots
of different things, and he hasa whole you know, he had a
whole speech on experiments that he didnot, you know, on animals,
not on people. But ultimately hecame up with pioneering the use of lasers
and treating brainstem and spinal cord tumorsthat had previous been considered inoperable. So
(06:01):
there are literally thousands and thousands ofpeople who lived and walked because of these
techniques. But he attributed his resiliencein developing these techniques to being resilient,
being able to recover from getting thingswrong, and believing that he could do
it. So that set a lotof both a high standard and making an
(06:25):
impact on the world, but alsothe importance of resilience and muscling through your
mistakes. Plus, you know,it makes you proud, right because like
when you're seeing other people come upto I know when people come up to
my family or my father or mymother. Unfortunately has passed too, but
I feel it inside me. It'sfunny. My wife's father was a sort
(06:51):
of famous pediatrician in Philadelphia, soI got the same thing. When we
were at restaurants, people would comeup. They loved him so much,
and he took such good care ofhis patients, and it felt good to
see how much he was loved andrespected. How about your mom, did
you get a different sort of feelfrom her experience? Yes, So look
(07:12):
with my mom, I am theoldest of five kids, and my parents
had children basically throughout eighteen years.So I'm the oldest. My youngest brother,
Ben is eighteen years younger than me. Wow, my mom, you
know they had five kids. Ithink part of what helped my father in
his field, which was taking careof kids who were very sick, was
(07:33):
kind of coming home to a householdof you know, lots of healthy kids,
and so we had a lot ofkids and so, but he had
tremendously demanding hours, and so mymother was the CEO of our house,
and I think that that meant acouple of things to me. First,
looking back on it, I thinkshe really made huge efforts to preserve the
(07:59):
time that I had with my dadbecause he was so busy, so she
kind of was always the bad guyso that he got to come in and
be the hero because he just neverhad as much time with us. And
so looking back on it, II realized and I've kind of apologized to
her for uh, for the dynamicbecause now that I'm also the mother of
a of a teen girl, Isaid to her, I'm I'm, you
(08:22):
know, sorry for all the youknow, being a teen girl basically growing
up and giving you a hard timebecause I realized now that I'm a parent,
you know, not only were youuh like uh, you know,
you are the bad guy for twopeople, and and so that's that's something
that I realize now. The otherthing is that as as supportive and passionate
(08:45):
as my mother was in supporting whatmy father did, she really wanted me
to have a uh whatever job Iwanted and the biggest job I wanted.
And she was very very uh youknow she was. I remember she used
to send me clippings of the weddingsection in the New York Times, like
some people's mothers would send them this, like you should be getting married.
(09:07):
She was sending me it and circling, you know, things saying, you
know, these women aren't getting marrieduntil their thirties. You've got time,
no go out there, you goto business school, you know, throw
yourself into your job. And soshe definitely really championed me having whatever job
I want. Now, I willsay, my father, you know,
(09:28):
kind of set a high standard Idid at one point. I remember before,
you know, maybe when I wasin business school, have a little
bit of a crisis of confidence andsaying like, how do I like,
I want to make as big apositive impact on the world as you have,
and you've been saving children's lives,So is it okay for me to
(09:48):
want to be in markets or investments? Is that a cop out? And
he was awesome about it, theyboth were, you know, he said,
you need to find the thing thatyou know gets that you can be
the most successful about, that you'repassionate about, and you can make a
difference doing anything in the world.On top of which you can, if
you're financially able, support a lotof good causes and make just as big
(10:11):
a difference, you know, inthe world as I did. So,
so that was the message they bothgave me. Yeah, and it's funny.
It's like, you know, measuringup it's not an easy thing to
have to deal with, and evengoing into what your parents are is not
always an easy thing to deal with, no matter how good you get.
Right, It's like that imposter syndromecomes and creeps in from all of us
(10:33):
for everything that we do. ButI I love it. I feel like
I grew up in the same typeof atmosphere my mom. I mean,
she was my rock, so Ialways felt like she's the one tapping me
on my shoulder whenever I feel like, oh my god, can I do
this or can I not do this? To this day not being here,
(10:56):
So I think that's exciting, allright. So obviously, you know,
when you're younger, you get hobbies, you know, things that you are
passionate about. Let's talk about theaterbecause I feel theater and everything about it
is something that will help people's businesscareers because everything's about presenting, communicating,
(11:22):
learning how to listen, knowing whento step in and step out. You
know, I know we have lines, but you still got to deliver them
properly. What got you into theaterand how does how is? How did
that help you as a younger person? Right, It's almost like a team
sport because both my daughters were init as well. Yeah, that's perfectly
(11:43):
said. Theater was my version oflearning who I was as part of a
team and importantly as a leader ofa team. And I was passionate about
it. It was way more thana hobby for me. I went to
college believing that AI was going tomajor in theater and b after college,
I wanted to, you know,change the world through the medium of theater.
And what that meant to me backthen was I felt that and I
(12:07):
was. I wasn't interested in filmor I was really interested in live theater
and kind of the impact storytelling couldhave on a community. I was never
really an actor, although you makegreat points like, no matter what you're
doing in theater, as a theatermajor, you have to take acting classes,
and you have to learn how toimprov and how to play off other
people and just how to you know, keep from being blown off the stage.
(12:30):
In my case, because I wasnever like a naturally gifted actor.
But what I was really passionate,passionate about was the backstage stuff. Was
the production. The more complicated,the better I did stage management, directing,
lighting design, costume design. AndI really loved all of those things,
both the energy of how you puttogether a show and then the creativity
(12:56):
of kind of the orchestral piece ofbringing all the different parts together and what
would ultimately be an experience for anaudience. And I think through that I
learned how to work hard. AndI always tell people, I think college
is a lot about like finding yourwork ethic and how you work and what
you do matters less Like when Ilook at up, you know, people's
(13:18):
resumes coming out of college, Iwant to see that they've shown really hard
work at anything. So I hadto work really hard, and then I
had opportunities to lead, and Ilearned in those opportunities, both positively and
negatively, what worked in different Iremember once probably my first experience with being
(13:39):
told I was a micro manager whenI was directing. You know, you
do in the couple of days beforeyou opened, you'd have copious notes for
the actors and a director that thebiggest thing that you have to do is
slowly like understand that the actors aregoing to do that show without you.
And there's a big kind of ceremonialmoment before a show opens with a director
(14:01):
kind of hands their book over tothe stage manager, who from that moment
on kind of calls the show.And it was really hard for me in
those first moments when I was incharge of everything, to be able to
step away from the minute she andtrust that the team had it and at
that point it was their job torun with. You know, I'm so
glad you pointed out the behind thestage things because no matter what we're doing
(14:28):
and what industry or profession, allthe components of running anything comes together.
Right the theater, entertainment, itall has the same components as finance and
business. So my question to you, now, knowing that it's still such
an opposite thing like finance and theater, how did you get any interest in
(14:52):
the finance side. Sure, so, yes, yes, it is an
opposite thing. But I will tellyou exactly what happened. So I actually
while I worked for Blackrock, youknow, thirty years ago. It was
my first job out of college.I actually was gone for eighteen years before
(15:13):
I came back to Blackrock. Soafter four years of Blackrock, I decided
to go to business school. AndI decided to go to business school for
two reasons. Number one, becauseI was a theater major and I still
like I really didn't know what Iwas doing when I sent my resume out,
so I thought maybe I could bea little bit more thoughtful around my
job search. And I was reallyinterested in just seeing what was out there,
(15:35):
and so I wanted to go toa business school that had students from
around the world in all different typesof industries. And I liked school,
and so I just liked the ideaof having a graduate degree, and so
I went to business school. Andthen I thought perhaps I could better marry
my theater and finance interests in away that used both. And so I
(15:58):
spent a lot of my friend You'rea business goal interviewing with big theater companies
to be kind of an administrative roles. And I had a realization, which
was that I did not want tobe the non creative person in a creative
field. I was not interested inarts administration. And sometimes it's just as
important to uncover the thing that youdon't want to do as it is like
(16:19):
the thing that you do want todo, and so that happened, and
then Goldman Sachs was actually trying toget more women to apply to their markets
business, the sales and trading business, which is the institutional trading floor.
And they went through the resume,the Harvard Business Goal resume book and actually
(16:41):
reached out to me because they sawblack Rock on my resume and they said,
how come you're not applying to oursecurities division, our our sales and
trading division. And honestly, thewhole idea of that was very intimidating to
me. But they invited me tocome and visit the trading floor. And
this is where the theater thing comesback on, because a trading floor,
(17:02):
especially at that time, like they'redefinitely many more men than women, and
normally that might have, you know, just intimidated me, or it would
have been harder for me to setmyself on it. But just the energy,
the atmosphere, the way people wereworking with each other, like it
felt very much like tech week ofa show. And so I thought,
(17:23):
I can do that, like Ican be in that environment and I would
really enjoy it. And so thatpiece of myself it was the how I
worked and how I worked best,and what sort of energy I liked to
be around, like directly led tomy feeling confident, kind of throwing my
hat in the ring for a summerassociate job at Goldman Sacks. So you
(17:45):
went to Goldman and how many yearswere you there? Sixteen? I was
there for sixteen years. That's incredible. What would you say knowing that you
felt comfortable in that role? Right, Like, we're good at what we
practice at and we have innate talentsthat were gifted, right, we don't
know where they come from, butthey're there. What were the challenges you
(18:07):
had being at a firm like that? I mean high paced pressure, you
know, you know from what Ihear very very you know, strong work
ethic and almost as if you don'thave your young life except at work.
What were the challenges you had withthat? Well, look, all of
those things are true, and Iget these days. I have a group
(18:32):
of friends we were just talking theother day about how we hate the term
work life balance, which women getasked about way more than men, which
is interesting because in my experience,both men and women have the same kind
of desires to live a full youknow, exciting, happy life, whatever
that looks like to them. ButI look back on those times and yes,
(18:55):
I spent a lot of time working, but I'm proud of it,
and I enjoyed it, and youknow, for what it's worth. I
did meet my husband Adam at Goldman. We weren't in the same business,
but but we met. We wereon different floors, but you know,
we did. We did meet atGoldman and and and you know, we
spend a lot of time there.So I don't know that I view that
(19:18):
as a challenge the way somebody looking, you know, at me and how
I worked might say, well,that was, you know, not how
I'd want to live my life.Like I think it's okay, especially in
those earlier years, to spend alot of time working. I liked being
the first person who'd get into thedesk. It took me longer, by
the way, to like, lookat what was happening in the markets,
(19:38):
read the things that I wanted toread, you know, get up to
speed and be able to start theday where I did. And I and
I could do that. I didn'treally have anything else that I had to
worry about. Now, later on, when I had my kids, I
was at Goldman when I had bothkids, Fred, my son, he's
seventeen now, and then my daughterEileen was born to your later in two
(20:00):
thousand and eight, in the middleof the Example crisis. I know,
I have a great photos of youknow, being you know, in the
delivery room with like the financial timeson my belly that you know, my
anyway memorable moments. But but II, you know, having young children,
(20:21):
to be honest, maternity leave wasreally hard. Maternity leap was hard.
And I don't think women sometimes talkabout that enough because you're so used
to feeling like you're at the topof your game and you're you know,
super competent, and then all ofa sudden you're home and you have this
this baby, and you have noidea what you're doing, and you feel
completely like incompetent. And I rememberthe moment that my husband, you know,
(20:45):
was was you know, showered andshaving, and I said, where
are you going? So after Fredwas born and he said, it's been
two weeks, I'm going back towork, and I was like, don't
leave me. And so then thingschanged, right like coming back I had
maternity leave, but I knew thatI wanted to go back to work.
And actually, it's funny. Itused to drive Adam crazy when I was
(21:07):
pregnant because people would always say tome, I'm Samara. When I was
pregnant with the first are you goingto go back to work after the baby's
born? And I would say yes, yes I am. What about you,
Adam, are you going to goback to work when our baby's born?
And then Adam would say, Dude, I get it, it's a
sexist question, but do you haveto do that every time? And I
(21:27):
was like, yes, yes Ido so, so going back to work
and having toddlers like you have tofigure that out. And I think in
a way it helped me that Iwas a little bit more senior. I
was actually promoted to managing director,like while I was on maternity leave with
my second daughter, And so Ithink that's when you just have to figure
(21:48):
out what you need and talk aboutit and talk about you know, what
works for you. So if youwant to, you know, do something
with your or you have to goto an appointment. I think for me
the game changer was learning to betransparent about it and making it a negotiation,
(22:10):
like yes, I can have thisdone when do you need it done
by If you need it done soonerthan I'm ready to do it, let
me suggest this path. But beinga master at that I think is important
in a place as intense as Goldman. But I can tell you you asked
me at the beginning of this conversationhow my parents would describe me, and
I can tell you whether I wasat Goldman or whether I was in theater.
(22:33):
Wherever I was, they would havedescribed me as intense. Like I
thrive in intensity. So for mepersonally, it's less about dealing with the
intensity of my environment and just makingsure I am continuously assessing where do I
want to be spending my time andmaking that happen totally. Yeah, I
think when you said work life balance, I almost think it should be called
(22:56):
work life priorities. Yes, Iwas just saying the same thing, or
priorities balance or something, because it'slike they first of all, there is
no such thing as an exact balance, right, I mean we're constantly,
you know, rejiggering that, andlike priorities changed too, so like why
are we trying to put it insome box? It's not even a real
(23:18):
box. So I think we shouldhave a new bumper sticker called work like
priorities, yeah, or even likepriorities balance, because I guess part of
what gets me is not just yes, there's no thing is balance. It's
all about prioritization. But also there'ssomething about this notion that work exists outside
of life that doesn't land with me. My career, my work has been
(23:42):
part of my life, a partof my life I enjoy, and I
think that's fine. I don't thinkyou need to view work as extracurricular to
real life. And I think thingslike you know, I have a friend
Annie McKee, who wrote an incrediblebook called How to Be Happy Work,
and the subtitles is the power ofpurpose, hope and friendships. But one
(24:06):
of the things she says is yourwork friends are real, and having those
relationships with people you care about atwork is important to being happy at work.
So again, all under this notionof you don't, you know,
start living hopefully, you don't startliving only when you leave the office.
I agree, And you know whenyou say that with you know, from
COVID till now, with just thiswhole what is work? Yeah? How
(24:30):
do we work? Days in?Days out? Creating culture has changed dramatically.
You know, part of what Ifeel is the younger generation may be
missing out on a really great experience. I guess we'll all figure it out
still over the next five years.But you know, it's ever changing.
(24:52):
So question, You're sixteen years ina place. I've not heard many people
go back to a pl place theywere before. It's like, I'm in
real estate, right, Like whenwe buy a building, you know,
sometimes you have a chance to buyit back, and we did it once
and it didn't work out so well. Right, So, like you know,
we always say, like, nevergo back to where you were if
(25:14):
you don't have to. What droveyou to actually make that change? Yeah,
a few things, but just soyou know, I am not the
only boomerang at Blackrock. So theBlackrock boomerang is an actual thing. It
happens. But and it was funnywhen I when I went back to Blackrock,
a lot of my friends and familythought, oh, well, at
(25:36):
least you'll be familiar with it.And you have to realize Blackrock had changed
quite a bit between ninety seven whenI left in twenty fifteen when I came
back. I'm employee number one thirtyfour at Blackrock, it was a small
firm. I remember, you knowhow much we celebrated when we hit one
hundred billion in assets, and itwas really a fixing come portfolio management firm.
(25:59):
Yeah, and it became global,it became multi asset, multi strategy,
and today we have twenty thousand people. So actually in twenty fifteen it
did feel like a different firm.But the reason I came back was really
about those post financial crisis years.So I mentioned my daughter, Eileen was
born in two thousand and eight,and I had spent most of my Goldman
(26:23):
career in the derivatives market, andif you recall, in those post crisis
years, everybody was blaming the derivativesmarket for everything. And I learned then
this joke about the bar fight,which is, you know, if you're
in a bar fight, you don'thit the person who started the fight,
You hit the person you always wantedto hit. Like that was true of
(26:47):
derivatives in that time, and thatwas very frustrating for me because I felt
really proud of the work that Ihad done in, you know, largely
in the interest rate derivatives market overthe course of my career. On the
other hand, I did feel likeas much as I felt and feel strongly
that that derivatives did not cause thefinancial crisis, that markets could be a
(27:10):
lot more resilient, accessible and transparent. And at that point I really started
to develop a much sharper sense ofmy own professional purpose. You know,
if I were going to stay infinance, Like, what did I want
that to be about? And Iwanted it to be about bringing resiliency and
access to markets. And so thatreally sent me on a you know,
(27:33):
a slight pivot just even at Goldman. I ended up doing a lot of
work at Goldman Zachs as market structurewas changing quickly in those kind of post
global financial crisis years, the Gtwenty nations, you know, met and
made a bunch of agreements around OTCmarket reform, and I really became a
(27:56):
kind of a spokesperson and thought leaderat the firm and in the industry around
how to progress those changes. Andthat led me actually to testifying to Congress
in uh really about uh CFTC derivativesreform and the implications to US competitiveness and
(28:18):
and it. And through that Ireconnected with Barbara Novic, who was a
Blackrock founder. She had been amentor of mine. Uh, you know,
when I was at Blackrock and andwe just started talking about the future
of markets, and and I sharedwith her and she had heard me speak
a lot about how how markets coulduh really modernize and and and become more
(28:42):
accessible to more people. And shesaid, tomorrow, there's somebody that I
want you to meet. Here.His name's Mark Weaveman. He runs our
ETF business. And I know thatyou love working at Goldman, but just
you know, as a mentor andsomebody who's known you for a long time,
you guys will just enjoy in theconversation. So you should talk to
each other. Now, this istwenty fourteen, John, So like,
(29:03):
I'm googling what is an ETF,because in twenty fourteen, if you're a
bond market person or a drug person, like you have no idea what ETF
is. Now in twenty twenty fouryou can't have a credible conversation really about
public markets or even crypto markets thesedays without knowing what an ETF is.
But that kind of shows the progressof the past ten years. And that
(29:27):
actually was Mark's whole thesis. Hebelieved that ETFs were part of the equation,
kind of part of the technology disruptionso to speak, that would bring
more people into the markets, helpmake a broader range of investment strategies accessible,
and bring transparency to parts of themarkets, especially the bond market that
(29:51):
hadn't had it before. And thatvision really really hooked me. So that's
what brought me back. But what'sso cool, Like I'm seventy episodes in
now, so like I actually cansee trends. I can see like in
all different professions, it was alwaysthat person, that mentor that gave that
(30:12):
little push where it wasn't always likeeveryone thinks that you know, you get
to this place and it's this bigplan, and it's always someone else giving
us a nudge somehow and being openfor it. Right. I mean I
know you you were thinking about it, like, yeah, I do want
to make a change, But youcould easily stayed there for another five years,
(30:33):
been happy, got more successful,but you had this mentor that you
trusted, Which is why I think, like relationships in life are just so
important and are so meaningful when welook back to see like how they have
guided us to where we actually endup. So I think that's amazing.
Uh, And here you are thereand it's a different company. You know
(30:56):
thousands and thousands of people. Nowyou manage an exorbitant amount of money in
number and volume. How do youapproach leadership that works with so many people
and so many things, that inso many moving parts like daily How do
(31:18):
you approach that? You know,what's your thoughts on culture, what brings
it all together so you can actuallysleep at night for real. I am
a student of leadership truly. Ithink I've learned a lot over the last
ten years that I've been back atBlackrock. I expect to continue learning a
lot over the next ten years.Some of the principles that I think my
(31:44):
leadership is rooted in go back towhat we talked about in theater, and
you ask the question, how doyou lead a lot of people? How
do you lead at scale? Thenumber one answer to that is you make
sure the right people are in theright jobs. And I spend a lot
of my time doing that. Thetheater of saying for that is casting is
(32:04):
ninety five percent of directing, andI think casting is ninety five percent of
leadership anywhere, putting the right peoplein the right job and the right leaders
in the right job. So atBlackrock, we talk often about what makes
an effective people manager. That's notnecessarily the same thing as another quality we
talk about, which is a leaderwho grows leaders. So I aspire to
(32:29):
be a leader who grows leaders andin order to lead at scale, that's
the only way to do it isto put other leaders in high impact seats
where they can do their very bestwork. So that's principal number one.
Principal number two for me also relatesto theater as a director, and that's
(32:52):
the importance. And you mentioned thisa little earlier, the dynamics of an
ensemble cast and how people need tofeel a lot of trust in their leadership
group to do their best work.Because what you really want from a high
performance leadership team, especially one thatyou are charging with innovation and elevating standards
(33:16):
and helping people go into parts ofthe market where they haven't been before.
You're asking people to take risk.You want them to do it in the
most thoughtful way possible, and youwant them to feel supported when they do
it. And I think putting peoplein situations where they feel like they can
do their best work and they're goingto have cover from their peers and from
(33:37):
their manager if they make a mistakelike those are the same principles around creating
ensemble casts. And one of thethings I've learned, particularly over the past
five years, i'd say, isthat just as much as a person can
learn a lot about improving their peoplemanagement or their leadership, there's a lot
of intentionality you can bring to teamsat work in terms of how they show
(34:01):
up in a room together. Andwe've had some outside uh you know,
leaders and coaches come in to talkto us about that sort of intentionality in
putting together teams, and that's beenreally helpful in terms of being able to
do this at scale. Yeah,it's uh, it's it's I think you
(34:23):
just answered the question perfectly because it'slike any good team, it's the casting,
right, It's the directing, it'sit's I love how you associate that
with it, and I think youknow it doesn't get any easier as you
get more people. Right. Soanother question, which is I'm going to
(34:45):
veer off a little here, soyou know, you've been recognized as Baron's
most influential Women in US and twentytwo I think in finance. You know,
I have two daughters, you know, So what advice would you give
young women and aspiring to reach leadershiproles in finance, right that are up
(35:05):
and coming and it's changing, right, we got we got all sorts of
technology changes happening. What would whatadvice would you give? Well the advice
my mother gave to me, whichis find the thing that you're passionate about,
which, of course, like mydaughter probably doesn't really know and your
daughters probably don't know either, Soit means like, really dive into the
things that interest you, uncover thosepassions, like those are the things that
(35:30):
are going to make you want towork the hardest. And then the next
thing that I think is so importantis especially if that thing turns out to
be you know, in my case, finance, or being on a trading
floor where there's a lot of peoplewho don't really look like you, knowing
(35:52):
that that can work to your advantagebeing the one that stands out that you
had a different background. I hada theater background. There's no question a
differenterentiated me in the interview process.It differentiated me and how I showed up
on the floor. It actually workedto my advantage, but it does kind
of and it did contribute to myalways wondering I remember, you know,
(36:13):
sometimes I wish I could go backin time to my first day of work
Blackrock self and just give her ahug and say you belong, Like it
wasn't a mistake that they gave youthis job, because secretly, like I
did, kind of think it wasa mistake, and maybe they thought it
was going to be interesting let's seehow the theater major like actually does here.
But you know, they were reallygoing to be laughing at me.
(36:34):
I was so nervous. And evenwhen I was an associate and at Goldman's
as at the beginning on the tradingfloor, I was so nervous. I
usually couldn't even eat the first halfof the day. I was really scared
just of you know, of Idon't even know what looking back on it,
but just because I felt I didn'treally belong. And so that's the
thing I would try, Like,if you were interested and excited about what
(36:59):
you're doing, you belong at thattable. And I think those are the
two things, like kind of pursuingthe interests and then just like underwriting that
that's what you should be doing.Those those were really important things for me.
I think what you just said shouldbe a clip that every college graduate
should listen to before they go andtry to get their internship or their first
(37:22):
job, because I say the samething. It's like, we all want
you to succeed, like we're lookingfor you. You know, you belong
and you got to feel that,right and like you got through that feeling
of not feeling it to forcing yourselfto feel it. And not everybody you
know will have that courage, buthearing it from you, I hope gives
(37:44):
people a lot more courage. SoI think it's tremendous. All right,
So let's talk a little ETFs,the word and the thing you had to
look up in twenty fourteen. Andit's crazy how dominant this has has become
with all the new technology and evenlike bitcoin and what's going on with this
(38:07):
new ATF. Give me, giveme your view into you know, what's
happening. You know where you seethis all going. It probably isn't its
infancy at this point in my mind. It makes it so much more transparent
and easy to understand, you know, even with Bitcoin, Like I didn't
want to deal with the wallet R. I mean, I'm like I'm going
(38:28):
back to It's just I don't havethe time to think about it or worry
about it. So what's your thoughtson the ETF business and whull and wherever
you'd like to dive into. Solook, ETFs, which stand for exchange
traded funds, are a market accesstechnology that has over the course of really
it's a thirty year history in theUnited States that we have had ETFs,
(38:51):
and generally that's how long ETFs havebeen around. They have disrupted all types
of markets and asset classes. Isto help more investors participate in them.
So and actually an important precursor toETFs, which is about you know,
thirty five years old, are indexfunds. So let's just talk for a
(39:13):
second first about what index funds are. Because importantly, when I call ETFs
a disruptive technology, so was indexing. And it's interesting that indexing in the
portfolio management context, meaning managing indexfunds, wasn't even possible until the first
commercial microchips were introduced because you neededso much compute power to actually take an
(39:38):
index, which is really just afinancial calculation and turn it into a investible
portfolio of stocks. And you know, now we need to do we do
you know, millions of millions andmillions of calculations to enable the management of
(39:59):
indexed portfolio that we do. Sothat was stage one. ETFs basically create
a way to access an entire portfolioof stocks through one one purchase of one
stock on an exchange, and ETFis an exchange traded stock that gives you
access to an entire portfolio of stocksor of bonds. Now fixed income ETFs,
(40:24):
ETFs that wrap bond portfolios have beenaround for around twenty two years and
in the United States to your point, Bitcoin ETFs have now been trading for
about six months. So it's acontinuous trajectory of providing access to more parts
(40:44):
of the market in a way thatanybody can do it. Anybody can buy
it. And what was so importantabout indexation, that's also important about ets
and this is kind of the foundationalconcept. You just didn't need that much
money to get port folio diversification.You can buy one share of an ETF
(41:05):
and get access to a diversified portfolioof thousands of stocks or bonds. And
thirty years ago that sort of diversificationyou needed to be a much more sophisticated
investor with a lot more money tomanage. So the thing that's exciting about
ETFs is that lets individuals, youknow, save for retirement, save for
(41:25):
their kids college education, save forbuying a house, whatever the financial outcomes
that they want. That was alot harder to invest for in the absence
of indexation and ETFs if you hadif you had less money with so many
though coming up, Like, youknow, how like at the beginning of
(41:46):
something, you sort of can seea clear path of how to understand it,
but then it gets bigger and biggerand bigger. You know, how
do you see as a customer seeingthrough all that. I mean, every
day it's like there's a new one. It's a whole new concept or concept
to your concept there. What's youradvice on that for people to sort of
(42:07):
see through the noise? Yeah,I think that's an awesome question, and
right now that question is much biggerthan et apps. Like the good news
for the individual consumer or investor isthat more information is available to you than
ever before in history. And thebad news is like more information is information
(42:28):
is available than ever before, andit can be really hard to aggregate and
consume and make sense of that information. So it's interesting I'm participating in a
conversation tomorrow on the implications of AIto markets. But really what they're getting
at are is gen AI and youknow, the implications of generative AI to
(42:51):
markets, And I'm an AI optimist. I mean, there's absolutely best practices
and guardrails, but what AI canbring to India visual investors in terms of
consuming, aggregating and organizing all ofthat information to understand what they need to
is really positive. But I thinkthat aggregation of information and the use of
(43:15):
the information that's available to us isprobably the next most important thing to happen
in markets now that we actually haveyou know, I mentioned that what's been
so important over the past twenty yearshas been the evolution of transparency and putting
the data out there for people,ets or just another form of market data.
Now the challenge is using it.So I have a question with AI
(43:38):
and with the abilities we're already seeing, and you know, there's going to
be many use cases applied to it, I think we're very very very early.
We don't realize what it actually willcompletely be yet. But when I
was first in real estate and Iwant to start my own brokerage company,
there was a technology that enabled meto have market data to not have to
(44:00):
be like the Cushman wait Field,the Jones langlessal that had millions and millions
of dollars for research like it democratizedit. So just met John Schultz with
this software could have all the marketdata I needed and almost have. It
wasn't AI then, it was justa software system. Do you see like
(44:20):
almost AI disrupting companies in a waywhere like I may have my research department
being AI and not needing all theseother services that are provided today in the
finance world. Look, there's noquestion that AI democratizes access to information.
I think the question is, sowhat like what are you doing with the
(44:44):
information? What do you need theinformation for? And you know who,
like what are the services that canbe provided in an AI enabled world?
So I think the question is like, you know, where do you job
want to spend your time and wherewould you prefer to kind of you know,
(45:05):
consume and trust the research of otherpeople. Now, when we use
a gen AI internally a black rocka big difference to how we use it.
That's different than when I use chatGPT is if I ask we have
something, we'd call you know,we use a co pilot internally, if
I ask Copilot a question and itgives me a bunch of answers. It
attributes each of them, and Ithink that's really important. Like when I
(45:28):
ask chat GPT, there's no attribution, and so I don't really have a
way to check my source material.I think, as you said, it's
early, and there's a whole trajectory, but I think the ability for people
to do their own research in amuch more effective way and get too much
kind of quicker outcomes that's pretty exciting. Like you can, you know,
(45:49):
if I think about I told youwhen I got that first call about,
you know, meeting Mark Weedman andI had to google what is an ETF,
I could have prepared myself for thosefirst conversations with much more ease at
the tools then that I do today. I you know, I think it's
gonna it's gonna enable people to beable to start companies that could never start
before with less money and you knowmore I think ability. But we'll see,
(46:16):
you know, you know, it'sit's early, but I think it's
very exciting. It's and it's alsoyou know, scary at the same time,
because you just don't know where itall goes and what you know,
I know a lot of people thatthey asked me, like, you know,
what do I need to know that'sgoing to not help me with my
job today to you know, formy future job. And I I just
(46:37):
hope there's more training and information onhow people can feel how they can get
involved, just like you're doing withETF. So yeah, no, I
think you're spot on. That's whyI mean, I hope for my kids,
and I've thought about this as myson is going to college next year,
how are they using AI in theclassroom so the kids can get used
to, you know, used tousing it? I think are Head of
(46:59):
it Engineering says something that I findthat I find so helpful, just in
terms of first principles and what JENAIdoes and what it is is that the
only programming language you will need isEnglish. Because what JENAI does, this
changes how we interact with code andwith computers, and we can do it
(47:21):
using English. We can communicate tothe computer in English and we can here
back in English, and so youdon't need to learn code. And so
you know, for my kids,how are they learning how to do that
so that they can use the toolsin their lives. I think the education
piece is spot on. I loveit. Well, we're going to say,
I mean, I'm an entrepreneur.I love when things change. I
(47:45):
feel when things change, just likeyou went through in twenty fourteen. It
creates this new equal playing field forway more people to get involved if they
want to right and build things thatbecome larger than you could ever imagine,
which you're sitting in the middle ofright now. I just want to say
how much I appreciate you coming onand spending this time. You know people
(48:07):
are gonna love this and thank youvery much. Likewise, thanks so much
for having me and I really enjoyedthe conversation. Thank you, Hi John
Schultz here, Thank you so muchfor tuning into this week's episode. Would
really appreciate it. If you wouldlike comment, subscribe, and share with
your friends. Looking forward to beingwith you soon.
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