Shannon Sagawe

Shannon Sagawe is a veteran private banker with a passion for innovation and innovators across all sectors. She made it her mission to help clients achieve their true goals, including those that are non-financially related. 

Shannon Sagawe married her deep knowledge of private banking with a passion for working with successful entrepreneurs; helping them manage, grow and preserve the wealth they have worked so hard to create. She recently started her own podcast “Shot Caller” hoping that her voice and fortunate status as an educated woman can help lift up those who come after and are all around her.

Shannon Sagawe’s path to banking and the venture capital world started with an LA investment bank, working on new issues. Shannon Sagawe was then recruited by Solomon Smith Barney into their investment management program, ultimately focusing on discretionary portfolio management. Living in the Pacific Northwest during the late 1990’s, Shannon Sagawe developed a passion for innovation and the venture capitalists funding them, in turn nurturing a like minded entrepreneurial clientele.

In 2001, Shannon Sagawe was transferred to London to help start the London Citigroup Smith Barney office bringing a deep knowledge of our third-party discretionary mandate program. 

Shannon Sagawe spent the next 7 years managing assets for HNW, Ultra HNW and institutions. 

In 2008 Shannon Sagawe was recruited by Advanced Equities to join their newly opened London office, raising late stage venture funds for portfolio companies backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most successful venture capitalists. 

Fulfilling her passion for venture capital and in-spite of the economic tsunami circling, she managed to fund several cutting edge companies in the high and clean tech industries. (Amyris-AMRS, Bloom Energy, Luxtera, Fisker Automotive) 

Shannon Sagawe is a mother of three, a fierce animal lover, protector and advocate for all beings who may not always be able to fight for themselves. Shannon Sagawe hopes to use her voice and fortunate status as an educated woman to help lift up those who come after and are all around her.

Shannon Sagawe is a veteran private banker with a passion for innovation and innovators across all sectors. 

Her vision can be found in a recent interview conducted by Dinis Guarda. In that interview, she said the following about gender leadership and opportunities, Environmental investment overview, America and Asia and Shot Caller: 

Gender leadership and opportunities 

"In America, as a woman I feel you have a better chance to become important and to grow as a woman than in other parts of the world. It doesn’t really matter if you are a woman, a man or your cultural background because they are very business oriented and all statistics show that the more diversity and more equally a company is, the better they perform. In the UK, it is similar as it is in America. Women are still a minority in the financial industry, especially at the top layers of management. Citiesabc is a good way to bring together investors, governments and businesses to actually drive innovation and push the right buttons to make something different. The financial industry is slowly changing to a more sustainable and investment for good where all players involved get benefited, including the lower levels.” 

Environmental investment overview 

"Even though this concept has been there for a while, it was very lax ten years ago, there were only some guidelines like “do not invest on firearms, chemicals, etc” but it was a few years ago when investment managers from firms really started to try to make a difference and take ESG to the next level and build their portfolios around this idea. One of those assets where many investment firms are heavily investing (kind of an investment activism) is in palm oil but doing so at a global level is complicated. 

Because, in my experience, not all companies around the world are that responsible. In the case of palm oil, for example, there are investments coming from for example China that don’t care about sustainability and provide better deals for farmers. The problem in America is that there is a fourth power, which is the lobbies which means that there are corporates that have the power to raise presidents or topple governments. This is kind of a vulnerability in the American democracy. 

The corporate world in America is so powerful and so adaptable that they are able to transition from one sector to another. For example, the main investors behind alternative meat are actually the main meat producers. Corporates care very little about ethics when there are business to make. This is important to highlight because people should be more educated and they should know more about how the corporate world works and nothing is exactly what it seems.”

America and Asia 

“Is Asia going to take over financially and economically America? Definitely Asia is growing really fast. When I was working in finance in America they were looking to Asia as the next big thing. One of the things they did better and faster than in the West is in the Fintech space. Many new startups and fintech companies joined efforts and provided e-commerce, payments and other financial services in one offering. Amazon and Facebook are now trying to catch up but they are coming a bit late.” 

Shot Caller 

“Inspirational podcast for giving advice to champion women. Interviews with entrepreneurs, young people, etc. The other part of the project is to provide financial aid and advice to women through education and tips to empower women in their financial independence. We are working on courses to do that. There are statistics that say that women abdicate their long-term investment plans to men. That is because of our cultural background and the way education is provided. I want to address that, I want women to control their financial world and be independent in their financial decisions. 

Good investment decisions can make a huge difference in wealth of a person. And this is problematic because despite what we can guess, millennial women are actually worse than other generations in giving up their financial long term plans. We need to check the companies we are investing in to make sure that they are responsible and operate sustainably and leverage equality too. Doing that research before investing is really important and powerful to move towards a more equal world.”