The best way to predict the future is to create it. Once upon a time in America, a person, upon completing their education, chose a profession and employer, and pretty much stayed with it for the rest of their life. No longer. Today, a career is a series of ups and downs, and comebacks.
Diana Taylor has charted her own career and life in the private sector and in public service. Abraham Lincoln remarked that “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Ms. Taylor has done just that, and will share with us her experiences that the people who get on in the world are those who get up and look at the circumstances they want, and if they can’t find them, make them. There are costs and risks to a program of action, but they are far less than the long range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.
Ms. Taylor joined Wolfensohn Fund Management L.P., a strategic consulting and investment firm, in 2007, prior to which she served as New York State Superintendent of Banks and chairwoman of the New York State Banking Board. Before her government service, she worked in the private sector as vice president for KeySpan Energy and as an investment banker with Smith Barney, Lehman Brothers and Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette. Ms. Taylor serves on the boards of Citigroup, Brookfield Asset Management and Sotheby's. She also serves on several charitable boards. She chairs the boards of ACCION International, Hudson River Park Trust, New York Women’s Foundation and the YMCA of Greater New York. Other board memberships include Dartmouth College, the Mailman School of Public Health and the International Women's Health Coalition. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York. She earned her BA from Dartmouth College, her MBA from the Columbia School of Business, and her MPH from the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia.
