Draft:Sloane Ortel

Sloane Ortel is an American investment manager and transgender woman. She founded Invest Vegan in 2021 and serves as portfolio manager of the firm's Ethical Growth strategy. She was previously a Content Manager at CFA Institute.

Early life and education

Ortel was born in Manhattan to Charles Ortel and Clarissa Bushman, both investment professionals and ivy league MBAs. Her mother is the eldest daughter of Latter-Day Saint scholars Richard and Claudia Bushman, who have been significant influences in Sloane's life. She has written that her first contact with markets came from her parents, who were "both enterprising in their careers and open with their experiences" as she was growing up.

She has one younger sister. Assigned male at birth, she attended all-boys St. Bernard's School as well as Salisbury School before moving to New York City for her first full-time position at Oppenheimer & Co. After Oppenheimer, she attended The College of Idaho before moving back to New York City and completing her college degree at Fordham University.

Career

Before Coming Out

Sloane joined the staff at CFA Institute while still in her sophomore year of college, and authored regular articles intended to help organization's members integrate new skills and adapt to the changing investment climate. Among other duties, she taught regular writing seminars for CFA Institute members around the world, co-authored the CFA Institute Investment Idea Generation Guide (As William C.G. Ortel II), and spoke about the evolving field of ESG Investing at the US Mission to the United Nations.

Coming Out as a Transgender Woman

After coming out in 2017, Sloane's gender transition was profiled in an Institutional Investor cover story and later discussed in a peer reviewed article about the nature of LGBTQ identity on wall street.

In an update to the original Institutional Investor article, she observed that her gender transition had likely come at the cost of reduced career opportunities: "I’ve been included in searches for various jobs and gotten tossed out for reasons I perceived to be questionable. I think there is a degree to which people are uncomfortable or tend to assume that I’m not a financial professional. Walking through the world, people assume I’m like an art teacher or something. I have some work to do to sort of make it seem like I can still play at the same level I was playing at."

Free Money with Sloane and Ashby

Sloane began co-hosting Free Money with Sloane and Ashby in 2019 alongside Stanford University's Ashby Monk.

Invest Vegan

Ortel observed that her firm's name is "intended as a two-word mission statement." The firm's strategies seek to invest in companies that avoid preventable harm to living things while making meaningful contributions to a better world for all.

Observing that "humans are animals too," Ortel advocates for an expansive definition of veganism in her firm's investment strategies, for instance removing companies that "enable and deepen surveillance capitalism through consumer tracking, privacy erosion and related operations" as well as organizations that produce meat, dairy, and eggs.

She has also shared that she hopes to provide an investment option that satisfies the objections of many younger investors who don't trust capitalism and don't invest at all as a result. Invest Vegan's investment minimum of $1 is intended to eliminate barriers to saving and investing for those who have historically been excluded from the investment world.

Advisorships and Memberships

Sloane serves on the board of directors of ESG integration consultancy Responsible Alpha and Environmental Nonprofit Let's Own This. She is also an adviser to Colorful Capital, the LGBTQ+ venture capital firm.

Personal Life

Ortel lives and works in Provo, Utah.