 Profile
To its students and graduates, the MIT is affectionately known as the “Institute”, a very demanding and yet immensely rewarding university, where students “drink” knowledge from a “fire hose” and its graduates are top engineers, famous scientists but most of all leaders in their respective fields. Christiana Stamoulis is one of them. She came to MIT from Greece in the late eighties, where there were still far less female than male students in the Institute. Several years later, having earned three degrees from MIT, including a Bachelor of Science in Economics and Master of Science in Business Administration from the MIT Sloan School of Management, and having worked for several years as a management consultant at top firms, Ms. Stamoulis was ready for a new challenge: to become an investment banker on Wall Street.
“I like challenges” she exclaims. “MIT is a wonderful but very challenging place, and so is Wall Street; but I was well prepared”. Christiana Stamoulis joined Goldman Sachs & Co in 2000, where she became quickly involved in industry defining M&A transactions. She attributes her success partly to her unique education: “My MIT education and years of experience in management consulting have been critical in succeeding in this industry. My quantitative academic training, strategic thinking and ability to look at M&A transactions from the perspective of a game theorist, have had a very profound impact on my success as an investment banker.”
Christiana Stamoulis is credited with the execution of a number of industry defining M&A and corporate finance transactions, including, among others, Amgen's $16bn acquisition of Immunex, Biogen's $14bn merger-of-equals with IDEC Pharmaceuticals, Abraxis Bioscience's $7.5bn merger with parent company American Pharmaceutical Partners, Shire's $2bn acquisition of Transkaryotic Therapies, and Bristol-Myers Squibb's $4 billion sale of its ConvaTec business unit to Nordic Capital and Avista Capital. One of only a few women in senior management positions in the entire Investment Banking Industry, Christiana Stamoulis has consistently stood out among her peers as a leader in her field. She also serves as a role model for many young women in the field and has been active in recruiting talented women, often from MIT, for positions in investment banking. When asked about some of the fun parts of her MIT life that she misses in her fast-pace, and very demanding professional life, she becomes nostalgic: “I miss rowing in the Charles river in the early morning. I miss the serenity of that experience. I cannot do this in New York and not with the demanding job that I have. But I cannot complain: I like challenges”.
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