Katherine Hensel

Katherine Hensel is a retired hedge fund manager, institutional investor, and financial services industry executive. As a Managing Director at Lehman Brothers, she gained international prominence as the youngest ever functional Chief Investment Officer of a major Wall Street firm. After helming Lehman Brothers’ Financial Institutions Group to an industry-best performance through the early 1990s credit crisis and recovery, Ms. Hensel became the storied bank’s top strategist, co-head of the investment policy committee and one of its most recognizable leaders in the press through the 1994 spin-off from American Express and successful IPO. Ms. Hensel was a commercial banks analyst at Lehman from 1987 to 1993 during which time she was ranked number one on Greenwich and Institutional Investor surveys. Later in the decade, Ms. Hensel, as Director of Research, helped lead Chancellor Capital Management ($80 billion AUM) through a pair of disruptive mergers before striking out on her own in 1999. She and her partner built Sage Asset Management from scratch to more than $1 billion in assets under management within five years. Ms. Hensel outperformed the S&P over her tenure, while taking less than half of the market risk. She successfully piloted Sage Asset Management through the 2008 Global Financial Crisis—effectively maneuvering the firm to rally into 2009. She formally retired as Managing Partner in 2010, continuing as a Senior Advisor until 2015, while also managing a private family office and providing strategic thought partnership to alternative asset management CEOs. Ms. Hensel is an active member of the National Association of Corporate Directors, a member of the Investor Advisory Committee of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the New York Society of Securities Analysts and the Financial Women's Association. As an award-winning analyst and institutional investor, Ms. Hensel covered a range of sectors on both the growth and value side, including consumer, industrial, financial, selected sub-sectors of healthcare, and others. She began her career in the Energy practices of Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette, PaineWebber and Lehman Brothers. Ms. Hensel earned an AB in Geological Sciences (1981) and an MBA (1985), both from Harvard University. Areas of interest: investment management and capital markets, corporate governance - shareholder engagement and activism, securities analysis, corporate finance, leadership and career development.