I recently went one-on-one with Sarah Keohane Williamson, CEO of FCLTGlobal. Sarah is the author of the new book The CEO’s Guide to the Investment Galaxy: Navigating Markets to Build Great Companies.
Adam: Thanks again for taking the time to share your advice. First things first, though, I am sure readers would love to learn more about you. How did you get here? What experiences, failures, setbacks, or challenges have been most instrumental to your growth?
Sarah: My path has mostly been a classic “Wall Street” career, which I think has been crucial to understanding the investment ecosystem from an insider perspective. After studying Economics, I started as an M&A investment banker at Goldman Sachs. After business school, I worked at McKinsey & Company for five years before spending more than 2 decades at Wellington Management, where I became a Partner and Director of Alternative Investments. Throughout my career, I have also served on multiple investment committees of schools, universities, and other non-profits. Each of these experiences taught me aspects of how capital flows and how decisions get made from various angles.
The most instrumental experience was seeing firsthand how institutional investors think and operate. It gave me deep insight into the motivations, constraints, and decision-making processes that drive investment behavior. That experience played a big role in my decision to help found FCLTGlobal as CEO in 2016.
One of the biggest challenges and learning opportunities has been witnessing the disconnect between brilliant business operators and the forces driving their valuations. I’ve seen exceptional CEOs become frustrated and confused by market reactions that seemed completely detached from their company’s actual performance. This disconnect inspired much of what I’ve written about in the book. The investment community operates with entirely different incentives and timeframes than the business community.
More recently, I’ve also had the opportunity to see this dynamic play out from the other side, serving on public company boards, including Evercore and EXL. Being in boardrooms has provided firsthand insight into how external pressures can derail even the most thoughtful long-term strategies. These experiences reinforced my belief that understanding your investor base is just as critical as understanding your customers or competitors.
Adam: In your experience, what are the key steps to growing and scaling your business?
Sarah: In my view, the key step is understanding that your investors are not necessarily on your team, and leveraging that knowledge to help your business grow. Just as you wouldn’t treat all customers the same way, you shouldn’t treat all investors the same way. Many shareholders have objectives that may be completely misaligned with what’s best for your company’s long-term health.
Taking that step starts with clearly articulating your long-term vision and consistently communicating your strategic priorities. You need to understand the different parts of what I call the “investment galaxy”—asset managers, control investors, asset owners, standard setters, intermediaries, and commentators—because each operates with different motivations and constraints.
Second, actively engage with investors whose time horizons and investment philosophies align with your company’s objectives. Some investors may profit more from volatility than stability, others may have directives that require selling regardless of your performance, and some may be using your stock as a hedge in trading strategies that have nothing to do with your fundamentals.
Finally, learn to distinguish between true partners and investors who only seek quick exits. This requires understanding not just who owns your equity, but why they own it and what would cause them to sell.
Adam: What do you believe are the defining qualities of an effective leader?
Sarah: Above all, effective leaders of businesses also need to be excellent communicators who can translate their vision and strategy across very different audiences, from employees and customers to pension funds and hedge funds, each with their own languages, priorities, and decision-making frameworks. Great leaders can put themselves in the other person’s shoes and craft their message accordingly.
In today’s environment, a good leader must be able to manage multiple stakeholders with diverse and sometimes conflicting interests: customers, employees, shareholders, and broader society. They must also possess the ability to stay focused on long-term value creation even when facing short-term market pressures. This requires understanding that you’re not just managing a stock ticker; you’re leading a company that employs people and provides goods and services to customers. This perspective demands both strategic thinking and the fortitude to make decisions that may be unpopular in the short term.
Adam: How can leaders and aspiring leaders take their leadership skills to the next level?
Sarah: In terms of leaders who build successful businesses, the most important development area is often understanding the ecosystem of capital that funds it. Leaders often spend their time explaining their business, rather than thinking about how to get capital – the jet fuel – they need for their journey. This means learning about the different types of investors, their mandates, their performance metrics, and their decision-making processes. When you understand why a pension fund behaves differently from a hedge fund, or why index funds have different constraints than active managers, you can develop more effective strategies for getting the capital you need.
The best leaders also see beyond their own company and develop the ability to see how their company fits into broader economic and social systems. The most effective leaders I’ve encountered understand that their success depends not just on quarterly results, but on building sustainable competitive advantages that create value for a broad range of stakeholders over time.
Another crucial skill is learning to communicate effectively across different time horizons. You need to be able to explain how your quarterly actions support your annual goals, how your annual goals advance your five-year strategy, and how your five-year strategy positions you for decades out. There’s nothing wrong with focusing on the quarter if it is a milestone on the long-term journey; the problem arises when the quarter is a distraction from that long-term goal.
Adam: What are your three best tips applicable to entrepreneurs, executives, and civic leaders?
Sarah: First, think about the relationships that are critical to your success at each stage of your journey, and put yourself in their shoes. The most successful leaders cultivate strong relationships with customers, employees, suppliers, regulators, and community leaders. These relationships become invaluable during times of market volatility or other pressures, providing support and validation for your long-term strategy. When you have different groups of people who understand and believe in your vision, you’re less vulnerable to the whims of short-term-oriented capital and can make decisions from a position of strength rather than defensiveness.
Second, reclaim the narrative and reshape your investor mix for long-term growth. While you can’t choose who owns your shares in public markets, you can absolutely influence the kind of investors you attract. Shape your investor relations and strategic messaging to appeal to “patient” capital. Being clear about your strategy and timeline and understanding how it fits with the strategies and timelines of various types of investors will help you make a good match.
Third, never assume the future will be like the past. Disruptive forces like AI, geopolitics, or decarbonization are part of the future and cannot be avoided. These trends are reshaping how investors think about value and risk. Leaders who understand this and adapt their strategies accordingly will be better positioned to build resilient businesses.
Adam: What is your best advice on building, leading, and managing teams?
Sarah: Great teams have great missions. Whether that is delivering a product or pursuing a charitable purpose, or protecting their country, a great team knows why it is doing what it is doing.
This is especially important when market pressures might push toward short-term decisions that conflict with that long-term mission. When team members understand and support the reasoning – the why – they become better decision-makers.
Also, invest in developing your team’s external perspective and market awareness. For a CEO, that could mean encouraging key team members to attend investor conferences, read analyst reports, and understand how your industry and company are perceived by the investment community. This doesn’t mean becoming obsessed with stock price movements, but rather building organizational awareness of investor perceptions and how your work translates into market value.
Adam: What do you hope readers take away from your new book?
Sarah: My primary hope is that CEOs, board members, and business leaders will use this knowledge to build stronger companies that can withstand short-term pressures while creating long-term value. Understanding your investors’ motivations and constraints is just as important as understanding your customers or competitors. When you know why certain investors behave the way they do, you can develop more effective strategies for engagement and avoid being surprised or thrown off course by their reactions.
I also want to demystify the investment community for those who may feel overwhelmed by its complexity. Business leaders, policymakers, journalists, and many others assume the investment world works in certain ways that are often quaint – the investment world of 50 years ago. Today’s “investment galaxy” may seem overwhelmingly complex with lots of jargon to keep people confused, but there are patterns and logic to how different participants behave. Once you understand these patterns, you can navigate more confidently and make better strategic decisions about everything from capital allocation to communication strategy to policy making.
Finally, I hope the book helps leaders understand that focusing on long-term value creation is both good for society and good for business. Companies that attract patient capital tend to outperform over time because they can make investments in innovation, talent, and market development that their competitors won’t. And societies that focus on the long term grow stronger by educating their people, innovating, and adapting to an uncertain future.
Adam: What is the single best piece of advice you have ever received?
Sarah: Someone once told me to solve more problems than I cause. I’ve always loved that advice because it’s not “don’t cause problems” – it’s important to raise tough issues and mix things up when necessary – but it’s also not “just be a critic.” If there’s a problem, whether I caused it or not, I’d like to solve it.
Adam: Is there anything else you would like to share?
Sarah: Long-term investing in public and private markets really matters, even in a world increasingly dominated by algorithmic trading and passive investing. It matters to startups that want to turn an idea into a reality. It matters to companies that want to thrive in public markets and need patient capital to execute multi-year strategies. It matters to savers and beneficiaries who depend on long-term growth to fund their retirements and financial goals. It matters to the communities where these companies operate, create jobs, and drive innovation. While the mechanics of trading may be increasingly automated, the underlying need for capital to flow toward productive, growing businesses remains fundamental.
