Val Harper manages the Stamford office and is a senior consultant in the firm’s Asset Management Practice. She also leads the firm’s risk management specialty across financial services. Val’s search work focuses on senior leadership and includes CEOs, CIOs, asset class heads, portfolio managers, analysts, and compliance executives.
Before joining Spencer Stuart in 1997, Val was the chief investment officer for the State of Oklahoma. While there, she ran a $1.9 billion portfolio of fixed income investments for the general revenue fund, the state’s largest source of non-tax revenue.
Val began her career in investment banking as an analyst at Morgan, Stanley & Co. While in business school, she worked at Merrill Lynch on the syndicate desk. Val subsequently spent eight years at Goldman, Sachs. She began in the equities division, marketing research and private placements to traditional institutional investors and hedge funds. Val later joined Goldman Sachs Asset Management shortly after it was formed. At GSAM, she sold equity and fixed income products to pension fund consultants and plan sponsors.
Val has a B.A., summa cum laude, from Georgetown University, where she was valedictorian of her class. She earned her M.B.A. with honors from Harvard.