Alison Davis

Alison Davis is co-founder of Fifth Era. She is a global strategist, finance professional, public company board director and active investor in growth companies. She is currently a director of Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), Fiserv (FISV), Unisys (UIS) and Ooma (OOMA), and is chair of the advisory board for BlockChain Capital. She is a former director of, City National Bank (CYC), Diamond Foods (DMND), First Data Corporation (FDC), Xoom (XOOM), and many private companies and was the Chairman of LECG (XPRT) until its sale in 2011. She has chaired audit, compensation, and governance committees and is a frequent speaker on corporate governance. Alison was previously the managing partner of Belvedere Capital, a private equity firm focused on investing in US banks and financial services firms. Prior to this, Alison was the Chief Financial Officer of Barclays Global Investors (now BlackRock), the world’s largest institutional investment firm with more than $1.5 trillion of assets under management. Earlier in her career, Alison spent 14 years as a strategy consultant and advisor to Fortune 500 CEOs, boards and executive teams with McKinsey & Company,and as a practice leader with A.T. Kearney where she built and led the global Financial Services Practice.

Alison is also the co-author of the best selling books Build Your Fortune in the Fifth Era: How to Prosper in an Age of Unprecedented Innovation & Corporate Innovation in the Fifth Era: Lessons from Alphabet/Google, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Microsoft

Alison is active in the community supporting non-profits and social enterprises as a board director, fundraiser and volunteer. She has been frequently named a “Most Influential Women in Business” by the San Francisco Business Times. She received a B.A. Honors and a Master’s in Economics from Cambridge University in England, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business after completing the first-year at Harvard. She was born in Sheffield, UK, is now a dual US/UK citizen and lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her husband, Matthew C. Le Merle, and their five children.

3 words to describe Nature?

Vast, magical, glorious

3 things Nature taught you?

To breathe

To be delighted

To be in awe

3 most treasured Nature spots?

Any grassy spot where I can sit or lie in the sun and let the earth hold me

A secret bench on Ring Mountain Tiburon from which to view the Bay and coastline and Marin townships

From a canoe in the middle of Lake Tahoe

When you look at the ocean, it makes you feel...?

Calm

When you see a forest, it makes you feel...?

Alive

When you see a volcano, it makes you feel...?

Curious

When you see a sunrise or sunset, it makes you feel...?

Blessed, happy

When you hear thunder, it makes you feel...?

Exhilarated and powerful

When you hear the wind howling, it makes you feel...?

Energized, bold

Are you an Ocean, Mountain, Forest, or Desert person?

Ocean or Mountain

On a scale of 1 to 10, how important is Nature to your well-being?

7

Share with us a childhood nature memory?

Rambling in the Yorkshire Moors and Derbyshire Dales with my grandfather and often getting delightfully lost