Lisa Cooper is Founder and CEO of Figure 8 Investment Strategies, a Boise-based investment advisory firm dedicated to sustainable, responsible, and impact investing. With 25+ years of leadership at the intersection of investing and social impact, Lisa is a deep believer in the power of business to influence social change. She is also co-founder of Global Talent, a nonprofit program enabling skilled refugees and immigrants to reclaim professional careers in the US. Lisa has served on multiple local and national non-profit boards, holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, and is a Certified Financial Planner and Chartered Financial Analyst. Figure 8 operates as a Certified B Corporation, is independent and employee-owned, and provides financial planning, advice, and investment management to values-aligned clients across the U.S.

I’m often asked about the origin of our name “Figure 8”. I spent my formative years as a competitive figure skater, so the name’s related to my personal story and also to the work we do at our firm. When you skate a figure 8, the goal is to try draw two perfectly aligned circles with your blade, and then repeat that by tracing your original imprint multiple times. It’s a wonderfully iterative process—a sort of ongoing quest to get it just right. And, the imagery of the two equal intersecting circles in the 8 signify connectedness and balance, concepts central to our work on multiple fronts: the balance between the financial and the social, between the local and the global, between the high net worth clients who’ve been our traditional base and the newer “early stage” investors we also seek to serve.