Lisa joined FT Alphaville in September 2011 after a tour of duty through the guts of the financial industry, having worked as an analyst at a bank and for a financial data company.
Before the poor decision-making began, she enjoyed science and maths A-Levels and managed a full year as an engineering student at uni. It started to go downhill when she switched to economics, for which she was awarded a first class honours degree by the University of Durham. She’s been frustrated with people who don’t behave as rational agents ever since.
From there, Lisa travelled to the Netherlands, embarking on an inordinately long MPhil programme in Economic & Financial Research at Maastricht University. In a colossal failure of time management, she also learned Dutch even though everyone there speaks English. Wat jammer.
Upon graduation, it was off to a front office role at a Bank of America in New York City just in time for the financial system to collapse and all the deals in the pipeline to get shelved. It was, however, the biggest analyst class they’d ever had, so she got to make a lot of new (soon-to-be completely depressed) friends!
Two years and a CFA level later, she had had quite enough of not structuring anything and it was off to financial data company Markit in London. Lisa worked as a credit analyst and got to play with databases a lot which made her very happy, but not quite as happy as writing for Alphaville does!
In addition to reporting, Lisa also does a lot of behind the scenes work around the website and organises stuff, which is probably suitable for someone once described by a close friend as being about as spontaneous as a space shuttle launch.
When she’s not obsessing over details, reading finance-type things, or writing, Lisa enjoys hiking, folk music, comedy, science-y things, and has an obsession with good coffee that borders on freakish.
She also would prefer that you didn’t know she’s American, having grown up in Oregon.
Lisa has “subscribe” switched on for Facebook, so click here if you want photos of coffee and general ridiculousness showing up in your stream.
