Elinor Hoover
Vice Chairman of Capital Markets Origination and Global Co-Head of Financial Strategies and Solutions, Citigroup
A Yale music major who trained at Julliard, Elinor Hoover once dreamed she would "set the world on fire with my piano playing." Instead, she's rocking boardrooms.
Last year, Hoover's team at Citigroup struck a chord with a starkly written warning to corporate clients. "Shareholder activism has morphed from an occasional threat facing corporate management and boards to a sweeping trend," read the widely covered report.
Hoover is a co-head of Citi's global financial strategy and solutions group, which analyzes trends in corporate governance. "The kind of topic that drives so many facets of shaping how companies need to organize themselves today, we will do a deep dive and write about those," she says.
The 25-year banking veteran is also vice chairman of capital markets origination at Citi. She joined the bank in 2011 after more than a decade at Morgan Stanley.
Music remains a big part of her life and career. She serves on the board of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center and is an advisory director at the Bloomingdale School of Music in New York. And her passion has given her an opportunity to mentor young investment bankers. Last year, after giving a talk at Yale, she was approached by several music majors who were interested in finance careers.
"A couple of them afterwards stayed back there just happened to be a piano and played beautiful, different pieces for me," she says. They decided to start a "Musicians on Wall Street" group.
This summer, Hoover hosted a small cocktail party for the Yale pianists, some of whom are now analysts at Citi. They all played for each other and agreed to meet up again.
Hoover hopes Musicians on Wall Street keeps growing. "There are lots of talented musicians in the financial services community," she says.
