Sandy Urie is Chairman Emeritus at Cambridge Associates, a role she has held since 2016, when she retired as Chairman and CEO, having held the CEO role since 2001, and capping an over 30 year career at the firm. Her current focuses include sustainability and impact investing and she has held multiple board and investment committee roles. Currently she sits on the boards of the Stanford Management Company, Social Finance US, Crane Institute for Sustainability (parent organization of The Intentional Endowment Network – IEN), and Plymouth Rock Insurance Company.

A profound discussion with one of my first sources of career inspiration – tracing a shift from academia to investment consulting, the roles of investment committees and the new challenges of sustainable investing.

As we bring our third series and second full year of podcasting to a close we have assembled a library of over 170 diverse role models in this series.  As the macro backdrop churns these dynamic personalities are our touchstones, our human constants, through the market noise.  

In Series 5 of 2022 we hear from leaders from large institutions, a charity, a sovereign wealth fund, as well as a strategist at a global asset manager, a purveyor of inclusive capital, a partner at a consulting firm who successfully came back as a “returner”, a financial journalist and an ex navy aviator.

Darren Johnson is Chief Operating Officer in Listed Equities and Executive Director at Impax Asset Management, where he is responsible for Global Operations, including Portfolio Services, Technology, Change/Project Management and Client Onboarding. He previously worked in a series of accounting and operations roles. Our conversation starts with his upbringing in South London and why he was born with a “silver spoon in his mouth”. We talk about the unlikely role model that emerged for him even at a very young age and how that character sowed the seeds for a career in the corporate world.

An inspiring discussion of how humble beginnings were the silver spoon needed to build a career and inspire change and impact.

Sinead Faughnan has worked as a financial advisor with UBS for the past 17 years. She is focused in particular on inter-generational wealth transfer. We start by discussing Sinead’s rich Irish roots, her parents were originally from County Kerry and she herself was born in Ireland and moved to the US when she was three years old. She discusses her upbringing in Yonkers and the values that her parents’ work ethic instilled in her.