Through her active involvement in investment strategy and relationship management for client portfolios, Lisette Cooper helped establish Athena Capital Advisors as one of the leaders in the field of impact investing. Founded in 1993, Athena Capital Advisors was acquired by Franklin Templeton’s Fiduciary Trust International in early January 2020, marking the company’s first acquisition in 18 years.
Outside of her role within Fiduciary Trust International, Cooper also led one of last year’s most memorable shareholder initiatives, in which she took on Facebook. Cooper asked fellow Facebook shareholders if the steady increase in online child exploitation posed a risk to their investment in the social media titan. Cooper advised shareholders to back her proposal directing Facebook’s board to assess the risks of additional privacy tools, such as end-to-end encryption, which effectively bars law enforcement from reading private messages. While Facebook advised investors to reject the proposal, Cooper’s resolution was backed by an estimated 43 percent of non-management-owned shares.
