Ariel Babcock

Ariel Babcock is the head of investment stewardship in the asset management division at Fidelity Investments. Fidelity Investments is a leading provider of investment management, retirement planning, portfolio guidance, brokerage, benefits outsourcing, and other financial products and services to institutions, financial intermediaries, and individuals.

In this role, Ms. Babcock oversees Fidelity’s overall stewardship strategy, including leading the engagement work across Asset Management, acting as a key investment team point of contact for all corporate governance related topics, and developing thematic research and thought leadership that contributes to Fidelity’s sustainable investing, stewardship and engagement activities. In this capacity she also coordinates with the Investment Proxy Research team to ensure consistent and unified messaging across voting and issuer engagements.

Prior to assuming her current responsibilities, Ms. Babcock was Managing Director, Head of Research at FCLTGlobal (Focusing Capital on the Long Term), a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to develop actionable research and practical solutions to help better focus capital on the long term to support a sustainable and prosperous economy. Her research focused on the levers that drive behaviors in capital markets – including governance, engagement, incentives and metrics – with a particular emphasis on how effective process and strategy can shift investment and capital allocation behavior to improve longer-term outcomes and returns. In recognition of her research on remaking the investor-corporate dialog, the National Investor Relations Institute (NIRI), the largest professional investor relations association in the world, included Ms. Babcock as part of its 2019 inaugural class of its “40 Under 40” program that recognizes those who “have made noticeable contributions to their companies, communities, the IR profession, and to NIRI”.

Ms. Babcock has been in the investments industry since 2004 having started her career as a trader and research analyst at a long-short financial sector focused hedge fund. She moved on to serving as portfolio manager for value and equity income focused mutual funds at both American Independence Financial Services and Calamos Investments. More recently she worked with clean energy company Tecogen Inc. as Director of Investor Relations and Corporate Communications following the firm’s IPO on Nasdaq.