Cynthia Chen

I started my career working for a market research firm, helping large companies like KPMG, Shell, Pepsi and McDonald's craft their customer messaging. After about 4 years in NYC working on larger projects, I went to France for graduate school and got a job in banking. I've been in finance ever since. Mainly merchant/investment bank type of work - fundraising, M&A, corporate finance advisory and for the past 10 years, have worked with many different stages of companies in all types of industries.

I'm very good at reading business plans, teasers, presentations and all things that investors or prospective shareholders see (10 years will unfortunately do that to you). I ask a lot of questions and don't take market conditions for granted. As a result, I've been pretty good with sales pitches too - and the large NYC clients aside - have also been able to land sales contracts for tech start-ups. While I've since built a network, I've also done my fair share of cold calls, cold emails, cold meetings and for some reason find particular joy in crafting the right first impression 30-second elevator pitch.

I've also done quite a bit of writing at the B2B level, interfacing with CEOs and Boards on legal or strategic M&A issues, discussing due diligence or contracts with legal teams, contributed to articles, press releases and marketing materials (though not credited) and in a perfect world, would love to continue some of the sketch comedy and limerick-composition I did 15 years ago.

I believe in honesty, clarity, doing what's best for the customer - and the customer's customer - and also having a sense of humor about things (I was in banking - life's too short).

I currently have one flexible part-time gig and have capacity to add another.