At Work at Goldman Sachs: Lizzie, Vice President, Global Investment Research
Tell us about your journey at the firm. I have a slightly unusual path – I studied Spanish and Portuguese at university, and it wasn’t until my year abroad in Spain that I became exposed to finance. In my free time, I’d started listening to podcasts on various subjects, one of which was a finance podcast where researchers would pitch different stocks every week. Learning new finance terms was almost like learning a new language – and little did I know I'd stumbled across my dream career, which eventually led me to Goldman Sachs. I’ve worked in Global Investment Research (GIR) as an Equity Research Analyst for my whole career – starting out in London in the Telecom sector in 2016 before moving to New York six years ago where I mostly helped cover the Telecommunications, Cable and Media sector and was lucky enough to have a fantastic manager who taught me to be obsessive about the details. That approach was crucial in building out my own coverage in the US Leisure sector – I started with the regional theme park stocks which are relatively small, and I made it my mission to care more about those stocks more than anyone else. That becomes harder as the stocks get bigger but it's a mission I strive to accomplish every day as I’ve moved on to cover Lodging, Cruise, Rental Cars and hopefully more soon. What are some of your main responsibilities and goals in your current position? What we try to do is create models that predict what each company’s earnings results will be, taking into account a variety of factors including the macro environment, industry trends and company-specific idiosyncratic factors. The goal is to create differentiated, analytical research that will help our clients to build their portfolios and make investment decisions, and we’re constantly engaging with these clients to share insights.