7 Rising Stars who took Wall Street by storm after starting their careers in sports, science, and engineering

Become an Insider and start reading now. Have an account? . This fall, Business Insider announced its 2025 class of Rising Stars of Wall Street. Seven stood out for pursuing unique paths, including sports, science, and field research. They used those early experiences to rise inside firms like JPMorgan, Goldman, and Moelis. Most people imagine Wall Street careers beginning in familiar ways: internships at major banks, economics coursework, and early exposure to markets. But some of the young professionals on Business Insider's 2025 Rising Stars of Wall Street list started out somewhere entirely different, long before entering finance. One hoped to be a professional football player. Another was a collegiate golf champion with a goal of playing on all seven continents. A third conducted anthropology fieldwork in Sierra Leone. And another began in a chemistry lab before deciding research wasn't the right fit. We're looking back at this year's cohort , focusing on those whose formative professional years were spent far from trading floors and deal teams. Today, this group has gone on to find success across a spectrum of industry niches from investment banking and private equity to hedge funds and quantitative investing. Below, we're showcasing seven Rising Stars who switched careers, and how those beginnings helped steer their professional climb at firms like BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and more. Their backgrounds are organized alphabetically by their last name. The sports lifer underwriting NBA deals Lamar Cardinez, Blue Owl Before he ever worked in finance, Cardinez thought he'd play professional football. When that didn't happen, he found a way to remain close to the action - interning at Madison Square Garden, joining the 2014 Super Bowl host committee, and completing the NFL's rotational program across media, business development, and strategy. He thought he'd stay there and ascend the ranks. But he decided on a different path that seemed to align more with his interests: finance. After earning his MBA and working in investment banking, he joined Blue Owl's HomeCourt Partners, a fund established with the NBA to buy minority stakes in teams. Cardinez has since worked on multiple franchise deals, including the Phoenix Suns' $4 billion sale and a 2024 transaction involving the Minnesota Timberwolves. The Oxford anthropology researcher turned C-suite gatekeeper Catherine Kress, BlackRock Kress' path to high finance began in academic research, studying anthropology and psychology at Notre Dame and conducting fieldwork in Sierra Leone before pursuing graduate work on Angola's energy sector at the University of Oxford. She later worked at political research and consultancy firm, Eurasia Group, training investors to integrate geopolitical risk into decision-making. Kress came to BlackRock first as an advisor to Tom Donilon, the former US national security advisor, a post she called a "dream job." She helped Donilon elevate the firm's geopolitics function into a permanent part of the BlackRock Investment Institute. But she didn't stop there. This year, Kress was named the chief of staff to Larry Fink, the firm's powerful CEO. She told Business Insider that this new job was...

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