Gary Cohn

Gary Cohn was born to an Eastern European Jewish family, the son of Victor and Ellen Cohn, and was raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio. His father was an electrician who later became a real estate developer. Cohn was diagnosed with dyslexia at a young age, and attended four schools by the time he reached sixth grade. His childhood experiences with dyslexia were a featured case study in the book David and Goliath by Canadian journalist Malcolm Gladwell. Cohn studied at Gilmour Academy for high school and graduated in 1979.

Cohn received a Bachelor of Science degree with a major in business administration from American University in 1982.

Cohn started his career at the U.S. Steel home products division in Cleveland, Ohio. After a few months, he left U.S. Steel and became an options dealer in the New York Mercantile Exchange. He taught himself the basics of options by reading about it in the days between meeting the hiring manager and joining the New York Mercantile Exchange.

Cohn was hired by Goldman Sachs in 1990 and became a partner at the firm in 1994. In 1996, he was named head of the commodities department, and in 2002, he was named the head of the Fixed Income, Currency and Commodities (FICC) division. In 2003, he was named co-head of Equities, and in January 2004, Cohn was named the co-head of global securities businesses. He became president and Co-Chief Operating Officer, and director in June 2006. While at Goldman Sachs, Cohn was also a member of the firm's board of directors and Chairman of the Firmwide Client and Business Standards Committee.

In 2010, Cohn testified to Congress on Goldman Sachs' role in the 2008 financial crisis. He testified: "During the two years of the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs lost $1.2 billion in its residential mortgage-related business. We did not 'bet against our clients', and the numbers underscore this fact."

On January 5, 2021, Cohn was appointed Vice Chairman of IBM's board of directors.

Cohn is married to Lisa Pevaroff-Cohn. They have three daughters, and reside in New York City.

Memberships

Cohn is active in various charitable causes related to education and healthcare. He is a member of the Board of Trustees of NYU Langone Health and on the Board of Overseers of the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

In 2010, the Hospital for Joint Diseases at NYU Langone Medical Center named Cohn the chairman of the HJD Advisory Board. Cohn has been a trustee of American University and Gilmour Academy.

Cohn and his wife are founding board members of the New York University Child Study Center. The couple funded the Pevaroff Cohn Professorship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at the New York University School of Medicine in 1999. He financed the Gary D. Cohn Endowed Goldman Sachs Chair in Finance and the Gary D. Cohn Scholarship both at American University, his alma mater. In 2015 Cohn financed the Gary D. Cohn and Brother Robert LaVelle Endowed Scholarship in honor of Brother Robert LaVelle, who was retiring after 35 years as head of Gilmour Academy, where Cohn attended high school.

In 2009, the Hillel International building at Kent State University was named the Cohn Jewish Student Center in recognition of a gift from Cohn and his wife. It is the first Hillel building built on a state university campus.

Cohn has been a supporter of Reviving Baseball in Inner Cities, and has supported the nonprofit youth development organization Harlem RBI (now called DREAM) since 2011. At that time, Harlem RBI was given the chance to build its own charter school. Mark Teixeira of the New York Yankees and Harlem RBI director Rich Berlin asked Cohn to help them raise the capital they needed to build the school. On June 17, 2013, Cohn was honored at the annual "Bids for Kids" gala in order to raise funds for Harlem RBI. He said in an interview that Harlem RBI is a project "very near and dear to my heart". In 2015, Cohn won $360,000 for Harlem RBI as winner of Bloomberg's Brackets for a Cause competition.