Who is Olivia Coffey? A private equity executive who combines corporate success and Olympic ambitions | Trending

Speaking to Bloomberg News from Erba in northern Italy, where American rowers trained before traveling to Paris earlier this month, Coffey, 35, explained how she built a career in the alternative asset management industry while pursuing her dreams on the water.

After graduating from Harvard in 2011, Coffey was recruited by One Equity Partners in a back-office role. Her parents trained with the firm’s founder, Dick Cashin. He and her father Cal rowed for the U.S. at the 1976 Montreal Olympics (the elder Coffey won silver in the pairs event.)

Early in her career, Coffey missed out on selection for the London 2012 Olympics and was a reserve for the 2016 Rio Games. She worked in the company’s research and valuation team and rowed while pursuing her MBA at the University of Cambridge, graduating in 2018.

That year, after winning the world championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, Coffey resumed her work at One Equity Partners and aimed for a spot on the Olympic team. That effort paid off with a spot on the women’s eight, where she finished fourth at the Covid-postponed Tokyo Games.

‘Rowed to Paris’

“It was a very bad feeling to walk away without achieving my ultimate goal,” she said. “I was ready to quit rowing but I found my life was not in balance, I felt like something was missing,” Coffey said. (Also read: On Nita Ambani’s remark about India’s Olympics, Congresswoman warns of ‘colossal disaster’)

She resumed training at the gym in the basement of her office, took CrossFit classes and began working out with a group of people who communicated through a WhatsApp chat aptly named “Row to Paris.”

Coffey, who lives between Princeton, New Jersey, Manhattan’s Upper West Side and Watkins Glen in upstate New York, and spent this past winter in Sarasota, Florida, does 14 to 15 training sessions a week.

Every morning, she wakes up at 5:30 a.m. and rows for about two hours on the water, covering 12 to 19 miles. In the afternoon, she spends about 90 minutes doing another cardio or cross-training activity, such as running or biking (sometimes in Central Park), rowing, or weightlifting. (Related: Paris Olympics Draw Outrage Over ‘Hypersexualizing, Blasphemous’ Drag Act Involving Child)

“I usually run 150 miles a week, or 25 to 30 miles a day,” says Coffey, who rarely drinks alcohol while training. “I eat a lot of carbs, like cookies and sugary drinks, which aren’t good for me in the long run,” she says.

“If I’m not training, I’m either recovering or working,” adds Coffey, who aims to be asleep by 10 p.m.

As part of her work at One Equity Partners, Coffey serves on the board of directors of Dragonfly Financial Technologies, a digital banking platform, and is a board observer at Montgomery Transport, a trucking company, and at staffing firm Prime Time Healthcare.

Thanks to One Equity Partners’ flexibility, Coffey was able to schedule her work around her training. “I’m grateful, the firm couldn’t have been more supportive,” she said. “I feel really fortunate to have understanding deal teams and colleagues who can work around my schedule.”

Because of her rowing commitments, Coffey isn’t subject to what she describes as a classic 80-hour workweek. “I work as much as I can within the constraints of training,” explains Coffey, who typically reports to work at 9:30 or 10 a.m. each morning. In the fall, when she was training hard for the team trials in March, she averaged 40-hour weeks. In the run-up to Paris, that number has been halved to about 20 hours, as she focuses on portfolio management and chooses not to start new businesses.

Olympians everywhere

The U.S. Olympic Committee provides rowers with a stipend of $1,000 to $2,000 a month, in addition to health insurance. Many athletes supplement that amount with full-time jobs, says Coffey, whose typical workday can range from creating a financial model in Microsoft Excel to presenting to the board.

In her role, she deals with everything from starting up and conducting due diligence to working out the terms of a credit agreement. She particularly enjoys meeting founders.

“I know what it’s like to be super passionate and how much sacrifice and perseverance it takes to put everything you have into something,” Coffey said. “They love what they do.”

She is supported in Paris by her family, including her husband, Michael Blomquist, a managing director at renewable-energy finance broker Open Energy Group, who has made blue “Go Liv!” tops for her cheerleaders. Blomquist understands Coffey’s drive all too well: he left Morgan Stanley to focus on qualifying for the U.S. Olympic team for London 2012.

Also attending will be Jamie Koven, a partner at One Equity Partners, co-chair of the National Rowing Foundation and a former Olympic rower himself, having competed in the 1996 and 2000 Olympic Games in Atlanta and Sydney, respectively.

Koven and Cashin aren’t the only colleagues to have competed in the Olympics. Senior advisor Fritz Hobbs, partners Charlie Cole, Matthew Hughes, Ante Kusurin and associate Jack Lopas all rowed in previous Summer Olympics, and principal Mario Ancic is a former professional tennis player who won a bronze medal at the 2004 Athens Games.