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Forbes
21-04-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Why Betterment CEO Sarah Levy Isn't Afraid Of Market Volatility
Sarah Levy in Betterment's New York City headquarters. In a small meeting room in digital investment advising firm Betterment's office in Manhattan, chief executive Sarah Levy seems relaxed in a hoodie and sneakers. Just outside the room, a wall-mounted television plays a news broadcast covering the ongoing market volatility as a result of President Donald Trump's new tariff policies. Two months earlier, Betterment had just acquired the automated business of Ellevest, a robo-advisor focused on women's wealth. It was the fourth and the latest in a string of acquisitions the company had made since Levy assumed her role in 2020. Adding Ellevest to Betterment's coffers boosted its customer count by nearly 80,000 customers, adding more than $2 billion to its assets under management. Then the market lost more than $6 trillion in the first week of April. Despite the uncertainty playing out on the television outside the meeting room, Levy remains steadfast in her plans. 'I would be more than happy to continue to consolidate in the industry,' Levy says. In other words: There is an estimated $643 billion digital advice market, and Betterment is primed to snap up the fintechs that can help the firm take on Wall Street Goliaths. So far, her buying strategy has paid off: Betterment has more than doubled its assets under management from $22 billion to $56 billion under Levy's leadership, and has grown from 300 employees to nearly 550 employees. The fintech company has been profitable for two years and surpassed $200 million in revenue in 2024. Aside from the incumbents like Vanguard, Schwab and Fidelity, Betterment is one of the biggest of the digitally native firms. Wealthfront, which has more than $35 billion AUM by comparison (and another $45 billion across other accounts), reached profitability last year and recorded nearly $200 million in revenue. For all the recent growth, Levy didn't seem like an obvious choice when she was appointed to her role by Betterment founder Jon Stein nearly five years ago. She was coming off of more than 20 years at media conglomerate Paramount Global (then Viacom), where she was chief operating officer at Nickelodeon for more than a decade before taking on the same role at Viacom Media Networks. Levy, who was listed on the 2022 Forbes 50 Over 50, had spent the better part of her career merging Viacom's cable brands into a single platform – but when Viacom and CBS merged in December 2019, she said it felt like a 'rinse and repeat' of her prior work. It felt like a good time to move on. Stein, Betterment's then-CEO who founded the company in 2008, was looking for someone with experience in launching and growing plans to help manage the business, a CRO or perhaps a COO. A game of telephone got Stein all the way to Allison Mnookin, a Harvard Business School lecturer who'd been friends with Levy in college. ''I have this crazy idea,'' Mnookin recalls telling one of Stein's board members. 'You're gonna think I'm nuts, because Sarah's not from the industry… but she's got the smarts to be strategic and the curiosity to learn new things.' Shortly thereafter, Stein met Levy; he remembers feeling an 'instant rapport' with Levy. 'As I got to know her, I became confident she could not only do any job, but she could do my job,' Stein said in an email to Forbes. He wondered if it was time to pass the torch – he had a young family, he wasn't sure if he wanted to be Betterment CEO forever, and he 'was out of ideas of what more to do' as CEO. For her part, Levy hadn't heard of Betterment before she met Stein, and she knew she didn't have experience in the investing industry. Still, the opportunity to grow a retail business into a wealth platform was too exciting to pass up. 'I thought this idea of expanding access to great financial advice was a really exciting idea, but in my mind, it was a brand that was unknown,' Levy said. 'So I thought, here's a great opportunity to build a brand that has great values and an incredible mission.' Her appointment gave some in the investing industry pause, Morningstar analyst Drew Carter said, because her executive experience had not been in investing. 'Investing is a trust business,' Carter said, pointing out that it's been a bit of a longer road for Betterment as they try to reach customers beyond those who are okay with an advisor that's digital-only. Carter said that the company has, under Levy's tenure, worked to improve its transparency with clients on its investment approach. Since taking the helm at the digital investment advisor, Levy has expanded the business beyond its robo-advisor roots. She's 'over the term robo,' she says, because 'it puts the wrong idea in people's minds about the services we provide.' Levy has spent time tweaking Betterment's products, too: Since 2020, Betterment has added the option of accessing human advice where needed and expanded its business-to-business services such as solo 401(k)s and mutual funds. It also replaced its expensive and convoluted cryptocurrency offerings with a more focused and cheaper crypto ETF last year. Levy's peers on Wall Street have been measured in their public statements about the market's tariff-induced swings, though the word 'uncertainty' has been a favored term in April earnings calls. Levy herself acknowledges that her customers are smarting from the whiplash, but she also says that her approach to business strategy is the same as advice to customers – 'by having a balanced portfolio, you weather the storm.' The company has positioned itself to reap different revenue streams from its products in retail, B2B, and tax savings tools. Automated tax-loss harvesting for individual investors—selling losing assets to offset other investing gains to lower taxes—kicks in during an unstable market, Levy says, making up most of the tremendous amount of trading volume the company has seen just this month alone. The platform has so far recorded $3 billion worth of trading in April, a threefold increase of its typical monthly volume. Betterment is now gearing up to introduce some new products and features, including a self-directed investing offering that will let customers buy single stocks at their discretion, Levy says—something that could increase the company's competitiveness with brokerages and other trading platforms, like Vanguard and Robinhood. Despite having never worked directly together, Mnookin credits Levy's leadership so far in the fast-changing markets to her curiosity, a quality of Levy's that she's seen since college. 'There's friends that you love, and they're good people, but you'd never want to work with them,' Mnookin told Forbes. '[Levy] was always one of those who I absolutely would bet a business I cared about on her.'
Forbes
18-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
This AI Founder Is The World's Youngest Self-Made Female Billionaire. Plus: The Surprising Fact That Boosts Women's Competitive Spirit
This is this week's ForbesWomen newsletter, which every Thursday brings news about the world's top female entrepreneurs, leaders and investors straight to your inbox. Click here to get on the newsletter list! In 1941, Indian artist Amrita Sher-Gil died, mysteriously, at the age of 28. An accomplished painter who helped pioneer modern Indian art, Sher-Gil has been mostly lost to history. But she serves as the inspiration for a new novel from Alka Joshi, the bestselling author of the Henna Artist trilogy and someone you may recognize from her time on the Forbes 50 Over 50 list. 'I got a B.A. in art history and I'd never heard of this woman before,' Joshi said in an interview about her new book, Six Days in Bombay, with me and Mika Brzezinski for Morning Joe earlier this week. 'I think if she'd lived beyond the age of 28, we *would* know who she is.' Joshi and I continued talking after the cameras stopped rolling and she told me that she wants the ForbesWomen audience, in particular, to understand that Sher-Gil 'was a woman who was so convinced of her own value, that she didn't care what other people thought' She had 'something to say about the empowerment of women in the south of India who do not get a chance to make their own decisions in life. And she conveyed all of that through her art.' Six Days in Bombay is a fictional take on Sher-Gil's life, but like most of Joshi's work, the book contains very real themes of female independence and financial power. 'It's always intentional on my part to say that if a woman makes a decision—good, bad, whatever we feel about it— we have to think about the decision she made for herself' and why she made that decision, Joshi said of how she considers depicting her female characters and their choices. When I told her that it felt like a lot of the women in her books are seeking financial independence, Joshi said this, too, is intentional. 'If we want financial independence for ourselves, we have to support other women who are trying to also obtain their own financial independence,' Joshi said, noting that these efforts are equally important in fiction and in real life. 'It's not just about us. We have to support the entire network of women who are trying to create that life for themselves.' Cheers to that! P.S.: Speaking of the 50 Over 50: Don't forget that nominations for the 2025 U.S. 50 Over 50 list are now open! Head to this link here to tell us about a woman you think should be on this year's list. Full nominations criteria are on that page but the two most important bits to remember: We're looking for people who were born in 1974 or earlier, and we're looking for women who have never been on the list before, because we don't allow repeats! Jamel Toppin for Forbes Lucy Guo is one of just six self-made female billionaires on the planet under the age of 40. She's also the only one who's made the bulk of her fortune from a company she left years ago. Guo cofounded artificial intelligence firm Scale AI in 2016; after leaving the company in 2018, she astutely held on to most of her stake while pursuing her next startup. Guo still owns an estimated stake of just under 5% of Scale AI worth nearly $1.2 billion. Add in her other assets—including her holding in her second startup, Passes—and she's worth $1.25 billion, Forbes estimates. 'I don't really think about it much, it's a bit wild. Too bad it's all on paper haha,' says Guo via text in response to her new billionaire status. Getty Images Speaking of new books, billionaire philanthropist Melinda French Gates is out with a new memoir that shares previously untold stories that she hopes will provide guidance for others on how to make the most of life's transitions. French Gates spoke with ForbesWomen contributor Marianne Schnall about what she wants people to learn from this memoir. This week we released the 2025 Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe list, a collection of founders and game-changers who are building the future while navigating a global trade war, a live war in Ukraine, and the whiplash of generative AI ripping up rules of work, creativity, and capitalism in real time. Europe's U30 Class of 2025 includes actors like Ella Purnell, social entrepreneur Lisa Oberaigner and healthcare founder Felicia von Reden; check out the full list here! Elon Musk has long claimed civilization will collapse unless we raise the birth rate. Meanwhile, his 'DOGE' group is slashing billions in funding for pregnant and nursing mothers and their children. It suspended more than $27 million in grants to women's health centers, laid off federal workers running programs for expecting mothers on Medicaid, and cancelled $1.6 million in funding for maternal and postpartum care at the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, GA. Read the full Forbes analysis here. When Commissioner Cathy Engelbert called Paige Bueckers' name with the first overall pick in the 2025 WNBA Draft earlier this week, there wasn't a surprised face in the room. The announcement came on the heels of Bueckers' winning the NCAA tournament less than two weeks ago, making her the first player since Breanna Stewart in 2016 to go No. 1 and win the national championship in the same year. 1. If you aspire to small business ownership, skip the MBA. That degree will cost you $300,000 or more, counting lost earnings. Worth it, if you want to climb the corporate ladder. Not so much, if you're looking to buy or build most small businesses. Here's why. 2. Talk about the gender gap and boost a friend's competitive spirit. Despite being just as qualified as their male counterparts, women are significantly less likely to compete at work—whether that means applying for executive roles, asking for promotions, or negotiating higher pay. The result is a persistent gender competition gap that keeps women from advancing at the same rate as men. However, new research reveals that simply informing women of this gender gap boosts their willingness to compete. 3. Learn to navigate loss in the workplace. We don't often talk about grief in professional spaces, but we should. Whether you're managing a team or building a business, your ability to sit with hard emotions, tolerate ambiguity, and stay grounded in uncertainty is the exact skill set you need to lead with empathy, clarity, and integrity. A likely sign of today's uncertain times, a TikTok trend #probablyneededahug currently making the rounds is actually based on endocrine science showing that physical hugs lead to an increase in the so-called 'cuddle hormone.' Which of these 'happiness' hormones is most associated with warm, social feelings?
