In this episode, ARK Invest Founder, CEO and CIO Cathie Wood discusses her investment focus on innovation, the importance of building a diverse team, and why having great mentors has been key to her success.
On the development of her team: “We have a diverse group of people – a very young group of people, mostly because they have one foot in the new world. Their education gave them the opportunity to experiment with CRISPR-Cas9. You’re not going to find that in the traditional analyst space out there. So, we have engineers, computer scientists, and mathematicians, so, quantitatively oriented as well. And we’ve broken out their responsibilities, not by sector or industry, but by innovation platform… So, our set up is very different from other research departments… The diversity of the team, I do consider that part of our secret sauce. Just different points of view, all of them very hungry and energetic and enthusiastic, and really wanting to be a part of changing the existing world order.”
On navigating through the beginning stages of her career: “Well, I’ve had incredible mentors. I don’t think you can do it without mentors… I think beyond that though, because of how I started in the industry – I started with economics. So big picture, I needed perspective. And I was willing in order to become an equity analyst at Jennison Associates to buy into ideas that nobody wanted. I think that’s a big part of success generally.
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