Lauren Taylor Wolfe – The Modern Activist Toolkit

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (0:00)
This episode is sponsored by Canalyst. Canalyst is the leading destination for public company data and analysis.
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Hello and welcome everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy and this is Invest Like the Best. This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, methods, stories, and of strategies that will help you better invest both your time and your money. You can learn more and stay up to date at investorfieldguide.com.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:21)
Patrick O'Shaughnessy is the CEO of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. All opinions expressed by Patrick and podcast guests are solely their own opinions and do not reflect the opinion of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions.
Clients of O'Shaughnessy Asset Management may maintain positions and the securities discussed in this podcast.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (1:46)
My guest this week is Lauren Taylor Wolfe. Lauren is the co-founder and managing partner of Impactive Capital. Prior to founding Impactive, she spent 10 years at Blue Harbour Group, a $3 billion activist investment firm.
Our conversation is on the modernization of the Activist Investor Playbook, how investors engage with companies to make them better and improve long-term outcomes. We discussed the entire activist toolkit, focusing on what has changed the most in recent years. I'm also very excited to announce a new initiative. After years of building, operating and investing in software, we are launching Positive Sum, a new early stage equity investing firm. You can read a bit more at positivesumadvisors.com. Now, please enjoy my conversation with Lauren Taylor Wolfe.
So Lauren, if you can believe it, it's been probably several years now since we had lunch in New York City and talked about doing this for the first time. And finally, here we are. All these years later, I'm so excited to have you. Welcome.

**Lauren Taylor Wolfe** (2:41)
I know it's great to be here and sorry to be so slow in the uptake.

**Patrick O'Shaughnessy** (2:45)
It just means we've got more to talk about from everything you've learned the last few years. So I've been really looking forward to it. I thought a neat way to begin would be to provide everyone listening with a thumbnail sketch of your background.
The style of investing you pursue in public markets is really different and interesting from a lot of the guests that I've had on looking forward to exploring all aspects of that. So maybe begin by just giving us a brief background for how you got to Impactive Capital.

**Lauren Taylor Wolfe** (3:09)
Sure. And thank you for having me. So I graduated Cornell University and it was around the.com era. And I went immediately to did my business undergrad and I wrote a thesis on online selling and online transacting. And so I went right into sort of.com consulting for me. It was McKinsey, me, DeCetre people, and they started Diamond Technology. Realized pretty fast all my clients were the large investment banks. And I realized pretty fast that consulting wasn't for me. And I was really interested in investing and I quickly switched. As I was getting ready to do my MBA, I switched to a family office. And the gentleman, he was managing his own money. As I was getting ready to go back to business school, I was challenging him on some of his technology investments. And he said, let me give you your street smarts MBA. And so I thought this was the business I'd want to pursue after business school. So I jumped on board and it was three of us managing his assets. And it was a ton of fun and I cut my teeth and learned a ton. At the same time, I did my MBA at Wharton. And then after Sire Capital, I was there from 2003 to 2007 And we did everything from small cap, public market and micro cap investing. We did pipes into public companies, invested in private companies, manager selection. We did a ton of SPACs in the first incarnation of SPACs. But I went to something more institutional. So I completed my MBA at Wharton and then I joined a firm called Blue Harbor.