Laura (Abramson) Winningham
College of Agriculture & Life Sciences
Tell us about what you're doing with your life
My career began as an investment banker, followed by launching a family office and a technology & media telecoms hedge fund. I loved all these roles--but decided to take time off to raise my twins, Avery and Spencer, which coincided quite conveniently with a relocation to Hong Kong for my husband Steve's career. Living in Asia opened up a whole new world for our family. We explored endlessly for 4 glorious years, learned so much, and made lifelong friends. We then moved to London where I made a significant professional pivot and launched a non-profit, City Harvest, rescuing surplus food and delivering to 400 charities serving meals to vulnerable people. It has rescued 60 million meals so far and I was recognised by King Charles for this work. To help others make similar impact, I now provide strategy consulting to scale up organisations with impact deeply embedded in their models.
What was your favorite class at Cornell, or the one you found most useful?
City Harvest benefited from my ag school background as I obtained surplus from food businesses and farms to distribute to people facing hunger. One class I found most useful in my investing career was Commodity Futures which featured a mock portfolio competition. It taught the art of analysing real-time information, processing many unpredictable variables to make good decisions. It introduced the excitement of investing too--each morning we ran to check the weather in Florida as it affected our orange juice futures! On a less practical basis I loved Astronomy and my family love to watch out for the Perseid Meteor showers.
Which Cornell classmates do you keep in touch with?
The very best part of going to Cornell was meeting my very best friends within minutes of arriving on campus. While we are spread out geographically, I'm proud to say that 40 years later not a day goes by when we don't communicate on our WhatsApp group. It literally makes every day better. So big shout out to Linda Edelman, Laura Davidson, Myra Karasik, and Meg Angleberger.
What does being a Cornell alumnus mean to you?
Being a Cornell alum is something I'm enormously proud of and truly believe that none of my endeavours or achievements would have been possible without this opportunity. From the second I arrived at Cornell Summer during high school I recognised it would be life changing to be a Cornellian. The business program in the ag school gave me the tools I needed for Wall Street and beyond. Although I subsequently received an MBA from Stanford, the tools I learned at Cornell were the foundation that made it all happen.
