Randolph Cohen's biography
- Harvard Business School finance and entrepreneurship professor
- Researcher on investment performance, alpha generation, and market behavior
- Co-founder and advisor of multiple investment management firms
Randy Cohen is a Harvard Business School finance professor, investor, and entrepreneur whose work focuses on investment performance, market behavior, artificial intelligence, and the forces shaping long-term economic outcomes.
Randy serves as the MBA Class of 1975 Senior Lecturer of Entrepreneurial Management at Harvard Business School, where he teaches finance and entrepreneurship and advises dozens of startup founders each year. He has previously served as Associate Professor at Harvard Business School and Visiting Associate Professor at MIT Sloan. Alongside his academic career, he has helped launch and grow multiple investment management businesses.
Drawing on decades of research and practical experience, Randy helps audiences understand how markets react to news, why many investment strategies fail, and what separates genuine performance from luck. His work explores institutional investing, manager selection, risk management, ESG investing, cryptocurrency, and the growing influence of artificial intelligence on markets and business strategy.
Whether analyzing current market conditions, assessing the investment implications of emerging technologies, or examining the geopolitical and demographic trends shaping the future economy, Randy combines rigorous data analysis with clear, independent thinking. His sessions equip audiences with practical frameworks for evaluating investment opportunities, navigating uncertainty, and making more informed decisions in rapidly changing markets.
Book Randy to bring rigorous financial thinking and real-world market insight to discussions on investing, innovation, and the future economy.
Randolph's showreel and videos
Topics, sessions and talks
Building A Great Investment Portfolio
Randy Cohen challenges conventional thinking about investment performance and portfolio construction. Drawing on decades of academic research and practical investment experience, he explores why most managers fail to outperform over time, how investors can distinguish skill from luck, and what characteristics truly drive long-term returns. Combining rigorous analysis with accessible examples, Randy provides a framework for evaluating opportunities, managing risk, and building stronger portfolios in increasingly competitive markets.
AI, Economy, And The Markets
Randy Cohen examines one of the most important questions facing investors today: how much of the market's recent performance can genuinely be attributed to artificial intelligence. Combining financial analysis with a deep understanding of technological disruption, he explores AI's influence on valuations, productivity, competition, and future growth. Randy cuts through headlines and speculation to assess what AI may mean for businesses, investors, and the broader economy in the years ahead.
Randy Cohen explores five major forces that could reshape economies, industries, and societies over the coming decades. Covering issues including authoritarianism, demographic decline, China relations, artificial intelligence, and environmental challenges, he examines both the risks and opportunities these trends present. Drawing on economic reasoning, market insight, and historical perspective, Randy helps audiences think more clearly about uncertainty, long-term planning, and the strategic decisions required to prepare for an evolving world.
Randy Cohen offers a fresh perspective on one of the most debated issues in modern investing. Using economist Albert Hirschman's framework of exit, voice, and loyalty, he examines whether divestment can meaningfully influence corporate behavior and why shareholder engagement may be a more effective tool for change. Blending financial logic with practical examples, Randy challenges common assumptions about ESG investing and explores how investors can create influence while pursuing financial objectives.
Dangerous Vision: Thriving Blind In A Sighted World
In this inspiring and humorous talk, Harvard Business School finance and entrepreneurship professor Randy Cohen tells how going blind opened new vistas for him, as it led him to develop a course for startup businesses at HBS that has created hundreds of student-run companies, including many that grew into billion-dollar unicorns. Blindness was once a career-killer for almost everyone, but it's a new world in which amazing technology, along with the power of human kindness, makes the impossible possible.
Why we recommend booking Randolph
Randy's research identified the crucial flaws in how most institutions select and evaluate fund managers, then built that insight into courses at Harvard and MIT attended by thousands of finance professionals. That track record of translating rigorous market research into usable investment frameworks is what sets him apart as a speaker.
