The 2015 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Jennifer Bloom

Jennifer Bloom doesn’t shy away from a challenge. When her immediate boss left soon after Bloom joined BTIG’s capital introduction unit in 2009, the newly appointed vice president joined forces with a colleague at the financial services firm’s New York headquarters to run the team. Bloom, 31, is now managing director of capital introduction. In addition to working closely with some 200 local investors that allocate to hedge funds, she’s the point person for all of BTIG’s New York–based hedge fund clients. She works mainly withemerging hedge fund managers, helping them establish their first relationships with institutional investors and find capital. When Bloom was growing up in Boca Raton, Florida, her stockbroker dad encouraged her to read theWall Street Journalevery day. But she rebelled, earning a BA in American studies with a concentration in art history from Yale University in 2006. It wasn’t until she took an accounting course in her senior year at Yale that Bloom, who had studied advanced physics and calculus in high school, discovered how much she missed using the quantitative side of her brain. She began her career inreal estateinvestment banking at Merrill Lynch & Co. and moved to Credit Suisse Group’s private equity fundraising division, where she worked in product management before BTIG hired her. A jazz and swing a cappella singer in her college days, she enjoys taking clients to the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan. Bloom volunteers with the Henry Street Settlement, a New York nonprofit that provides low-income families with job placement and other social services, and chairs its Young Collectors Committee, helping to organize the annual art show fundraiser.