Sarah Samuels, CFA, CAIA, Founder
Sarah is an investor with 20 years of experience investing trillions of dollars of institutional capital across private equity, venture capital, hedge funds and equity/credit investments. From starting her investment career as an administrative assistant and working her way to partner, Sarah has held positions as a quantitative portfolio manager, as Deputy Chief Investment Officer for a $100 billion state pension fund, and as Managing Director investing a college endowment. Today Sarah oversees the investment of $1.6 trillion of assets. Sarah has been recognized for her contributions to the investment industry with many awards, including Most Influential Women in Institutional Investing, Advisor of the Year, Most Wanted Investment Allocator, University Endowment Rising Star, Hedge Fund Rising Star, Forty Under Forty, and Women of FIRE. Sarah is passionate about improving diversity in the investment industry through investing with diverse-led investment strategies, personally providing angel investing with diverse founders, mentoring underrepresented groups, and nonprofit work with Girls Who Invest, Private Equity Women Investor Network and CFA Society Boston. She holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designations, earned an MBA in Finance at Boston University and received a BA in German and Business from the University of New Hampshire. Sarah resides in Reading Massachusetts with her daughters Holland and London and her husband Frank Butterworth.
Ashlee Lazzari, Chief Marketing Officer
Ashlee has 19 years of marketing and communications experience in the investment management industry. She is spreading the message of 30 Seconds of Bravery and Braving Our Savings! This includes print media, broadcast media, social media and graphic design. In her day job, Ashlee serves as Director of Marketing & Communications at NEPC, an investment consulting firm advising over $1.5 trillion in assets. At NEPC Ashlee oversees the firm’s brand and digital marketing strategy and public relations efforts. Prior to joining NEPC, Ashlee was the Head of Marketing at Arrowstreet Capital, L.P, where she oversaw the marketing, RFP and client relationship specialist teams. During her time at Arrowstreet, Ashlee was responsible for rebranding, building and maintaining all marketing collateral, creating efficiencies with marketing automation and client reporting, as well as handling external communications. Earlier in her career, Ashlee held various business development and marketing positions at Lee Munder Capital Group, and Amundi Pioneer Investments. Ashlee received a B.A. in Public Relations from Quinnipiac University.