Vincent Shen
You can call me Vincent :)
Vincent Shen (沈司琦) is a distinguished financier, philanthropist, and systems-change leader who bridges Wall Street expertise with global impact initiatives. Beginning his career at Merrill Lynch in the 1990s, he joined the elite Young Bankers for Local Affluent Markets program and, within just a few years, grew client assets from USD 250,000 to over USD 4 billion. His rapid success earned him recognition as one of Merrill Lynch’s top three bankers worldwide and promotion to one of the youngest Managing Directors in the firm’s history, honored in the firm’s global “Circle of Champions.”
He was later recruited directly by James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley, to cover the firm’s most important clients in Asia, where he led landmark M&A, private equity, IPO, and asset management transactions. His leadership delivered transformative outcomes, including Taiwan’s first listed health group, multi-billion-dollar market valuations, and private equity funds achieving returns above 200% IRR.
Today, Vincent serves as Senior Research Scholar at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) and as a sponsor of SIPA’s Sustainable Investing Research Initiative (SIRI), where he advances research on sustainable finance, catalytic capital, and blended finance structures for system-level impact. In parallel, he is Chairman of the SZU CHI Angel Private Equity Fund and the Systems Impact Multi-Family Office (SIMFO), mobilizing capital for life sciences, ageing intelligence, AI infrastructure, and longevity innovation in partnership with Oxford University Innovation and Newcastle University’s National Innovation Centre for Ageing.
As a board director of the Taiwan Innovation Centre for Ageing (TICA) and the Buddhist Tzu Chi Foundation, Vincent promotes a “systems impact” approach that integrates philanthropy, blended finance, and cultural storytelling. He is also a key partner of the Origination Foundationand the Hope for Life on Our Planet initiative, working with Nobel laureates, global leaders, and next-generation changemakers to inspire long-term collective action.
Guided by the principles of benevolence (仁) and wisdom (慧), Vincent Shen continues to shape a global movement for regenerative systems, values-based investing, and intergenerational hope.