Samara Cohen

Samara Cohen, Managing Director, is the Chief Investment Officer of ETF and Index Investments (EII). In this capacity, she leads the teams responsible for delivering the market quality and investment integrity of BlackRock's index funds and iShares ETFs.

Samara's teams are encompassed of portfolio engineers, risk managers, platform architects, market structure developers and product operating model designers. Who seek to lead boldly in the modernization of the indexing industry and ETF markets to help more and more people achieve financial well-being.

Samara is a member of the ETF and Index Investments Management Committee, the firm's Vote Issues Advisory Committee, Global Operating Committee, and Global Executive Committee-Investment Subcommittee. She is a Senior Advocate for the Black Professional's Network.

Samara first joined BlackRock in 1993 as an analyst in the Institutional Client Business group. Prior to rejoining BlackRock in 2015, she was a Managing Director in the Securities Division of Goldman Sachs. She served as Chief Operating Officer of Fixed Income, Currencies and Commodities (FICC) Americas Sales and led the Global Market Transition team which developed and delivered solutions to clients in an evolving market structure and changing regulatory environment. Previously, Samara worked in Interest Rate Products at Goldman Sachs where she was responsible for developing strategies in interest rate and derivative markets for a broad range of institutional clients, including banks, insurance companies, asset managers and hedge funds.

Samara earned a BS Econ in Finance from the Wharton School and a BA in Theatre Arts from the College of Arts and Sciences of the University of Pennsylvania. She earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.