The Fiduciary Trust International board of directors voted unanimously at its March 11 meeting to appoint vice chairman Lisette Cooper as its newest member, the company announced today in a news release.

Cooper became vice chairman of Fiduciary Trust following its acquisition earlier this month of Athena Capital Advisors LLC, the Lincoln, Mass.-based firm she founded in 1993. Athena Capital’s suburban Boston headquarters give Fiduciary Trust a strong regional presence in the New England market, expanding its national footprint.

Prior to Fiduciary Trust's purchase of Athena Capital, Cooper served as her firm’s managing partner and chief investment officer. As leader of her firm’s investment committee, she and her team developed an endowment investing approach to building diversified portfolios for a variety of clients including high-net-worth individuals and their families. 

Cooper's firm also specialized in risk management, quantitative investment management, outsourced chief investment officer services and family-office support. And they've been involved in the socially responsible investing space since 2005.

Prior to Athena Capital, Cooper was manager of consulting services for Barra Inc., now MSCI Barra, where she and her team specialized in modeling risk and developing investment solutions for institutional investors. She also worked as a senior strategist at Merrill Lynch, where she analyzed, designed and marketed innovative securities to institutional investors. She holds the chartered financial analyst designation.

Cooper received a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University and a PhD from Harvard University, where she served as an expert-in-residence at the Harvard Innovation Lab from 2015 to 2017.

Fiduciary Trust International is a New York City-based global wealth manager and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Franklin Templeton.