Introducing Wall Street's Rising Stars of Equity Research age 35 and under

At 30, McDermott has already made a name for himself and is a regular on industry lists of the top performing analysts. McDermott differs from his peers in that he has insight from multiple angles of his business from his stint as an energy trader and analyst for energy utility ConEdison before moving to Morgan Stanley at the associate level.

In just four years at Morgan Stanley, he’s moved through a Vice President role and is currently an Executive Director. McDermott is the Head Natural Gas and Power Strategist and an analyst on the Power, Utilities and Clean Energy team. He is the first or second analyst on 40 stocks in the energy sector.

McDermott’s work ethic comes from his passion for clean energy, which was inspired by his family trips to pristine upstate New York when he was a child. McDermott is committed to improving the environment and has championed socially responsible investing at Morgan Stanley during his time there.

—By Seth Archer

During her time studying mathematics at Columbia University, Stephanie Davis never even thought about going into finance. The math world, after all, was degree upon degree, leading to an eventual mathematician job or professorship. After a summer internship with Lehman Brothers and a year spent doing investment banking for a boutique M&A firm, however, she was inspired to apply online to a JPMorgan job posting that would seal her eventual Wall Street career path.

The New Jersey native began her tenure as an associate on the bank’s Institutional Investor-ranked payments, processors and IT services team for six years before being promoted to senior analyst covering Healthcare IT where she was recognized by II as a rising star. Eventually, Citigroup phoned her desk line at JPMorgan to offer her a job she couldn’t refuse.

Davis joined Citi in October of this year and is quickly preparing to launch coverage of Healthcare IT stocks soon for the bank.

Chethan Mallela joined Barclays straight out of John Hopkins University with a bachelors degree in Applied Mathematics and Statistics. After starting on the Paper, Forestry & Packaging industry team as an equity research analyst, Mallela quickly worked his way up the ranks, becoming an Assistant Vice President on the Packaged Foods Industry team, where he was selected as a rising star by Institutional Investor.

Today, Mallela is a Vice President on the US Retail Softlines team where he covers eight industry stocks, including Ralph Lauren, Michael Kors, and Gap.

Fatima Boolani was born in the Middle East to an investment banker father who travelled frequently, allowing her to spend time in Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Pakistan, the US, and elsewhere before heading to Ivey Business School at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and then to Paris’ prestigious HEC School of Management.

After graduating, Boolani began her Wall Street career as an investment banker for Merrill Lynch and Thomas Weisel Partners, where she got her first taste of the software space. Boolani joined UBS as an analyst in 2014 from Jefferies, where today she focuses on seven cybersecurity stocks as part of the bank’s software team.

Tyler Van Buren’s passion for science began in high school, when he secured an internship with the United States Department of Agriculture’s virology lab in Maryland. There, he worked alongside government researchers to discover a previously unknown plant virus.

Eventually, Van Buren made the cross-country trip back to his birthplace to study biotech at the University of California, San Diego, graduating five years later with Bachelors and Masters degrees in biology. After school, he joined Amylin Pharmaceuticals, also in California, as a consultant.

Van Buren’s first job on Wall Street was as a founding employee and biotech analyst for LifeScie Advisors, a New York-based equity research shop in New York, in 2010. There, he began coverage on biopharma names, many of which he would take with his coverage to Cowen three years later.

After nearly five years covering nine biopharma names for Cowen, Van Buren has made the jump to Piper Jaffray, where he will be starting as a principal and senior biotech analyst in January.

Born in London, Jonathan Raviv’s education took him from Miami to Washington D.C. via Johns Hopkins University, where he earned a BA and Masters in International Relations. He had hopes of working in diplomacy for the US State Department or Department of Defense.

Upon graduation, Raviv secured an internship with Lehman Brothers’ equity capital markets division just before the financial crisis and ended up with a full-time position at Barclays when the UK bank bought the US operations of the failed investment bank.

Raviv later decided to take time off to study Arabic in Egypt and comedy classes in New York City, before joining the consulting firm William Cohen Group in Washington D.C. He returned to Wall Street in 2010 when he noticed a Citi job posting online. He launched coverage of eight aerospace & defense stocks for the bank in July of that year, and today covers 15 as a Senior Analyst and Vice President at the bank.

Julien Dumoulin-Smith joined UBS straight out of Columbia University in 2007 with a singular goal: to cover utilities. He would go on to cover the sector for over ten years for UBS, where he carved out a name for himself covering the entrenched, carbon-fueled world, as well as newer and cleaner technologies poised to rock the industry. He picked up multiple Institutional Investor rankings along the way.

Smith made the jump to Bank of America Merrill Lynch in August of this year. Today, he and his new team cover a total of 47 stocks, spanning from coal providers to nuclear, wind, solar, and natural gas.

Novid Rassouli’s career in finance started at William O’Neil’s Investors Business Daily in Los Angeles. After a year at IBD and four at another firm, LD Micro, Rassouli realized that to get to the top, he would need to be in New York.

Rassouli’s first gig in New York came as an equity analyst for Sidoti & Company where he learned to be self-sufficient in his research, without a large backbone of resources that might be available to an analyst at a larger firm. He first began covering the industrials space as an oilfield services associate at Dahlman Rose & Company in 2012.

When Dahlman was acquired by Cowen in 2013, Rassouli transitioned to an associate role covering metals and mining, eventually working his way up to lead the team in February 2017. Today he covers 15 stocks in the space for Cowen, while also staying on top of any underlying commodities news in the absence of a pure commodities desk at the firm.

Matthew O’Neill, a graduate of Johns Hopkins University, got his start in Wall Street research covering apparel, footwear and sporting goods retailers for Citi before joining Bear Stearns to cover the fast-casual and quick-service restaurant industry. The firm would, of course, fail during the financial crisis that hit in 2008, before being bought out by JPMorgan.

After leaving the embattled firm, O’Neill joined CLSA Americas, which was at the time a subsidiary of Credit Agricole, where he first began covering the payments and processing sector. He eventually joined Autonomous Research in October 2014 as the fourth member of the firm's payments team. Today, he covers 14 stocks spanning payroll providers, to banking core services companies, and payments startups like Square.

O’Neill also serves as an advisor for The Hunt, a style website that tracks products seen on sites like Tumblr, Pinterest and Instagram.

Simeon Siegel’s first Wall Street assignment as an equity research intern was to sit in a Fifth Avenue Abercrombie & Fitch store during December’s holiday rush. Siegel was hooked. After his internship with the Telsey Advisory Group, he landed a full-time role at Goldman Sachs researching retail stocks.

Eventually, he would go on to cover retail stocks for Janney Capital Markets and JPMorgan, still fueled by that first exciting trip to Fifth Avenue. He worked his way up to Vice President at the bank before being poached by Nomura Securities to lead coverage on 24 companies.

Siegel holds a bachelors in economics and philosophy from Columbia University. He notes that retail has always been in his blood after growing up in the land of shopping malls in northern New Jersey.

Kennan holds a PhD in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of California Los Angeles where he also performed post-doctoral oncology research. Soon after receiving his degree, he joined Los Angeles billionaire Dr. Gary Michelson’s Found Animals Foundation, where he vetted biotechnologies for investment from the charity’s prize and grant arm.

MacKay was eventually poached by Citi, where he began his Wall Street career covering small and mid-cap biotechnology stocks. After two years at Citi, he moved to Credit Suisse to serve as a director while covering the same space. A year later, he made the move to RBC Capital Markets.

At RBC, MacKay is the cohead of biotechnology equity research and a lead analyst covering 18 stocks, with a focus on oncology and hematology. Kennan holds a bachelors degree in biochemistry from Colorado College, where he was active on the swim team and Sigma Chi fraternity.

Vincent Chen knew he didn’t want to be a practicing physician, but that didn’t stop him from completing his MD at Harvard Medical School while also studying for his CFA certification. Instead of a residency, Chen went to work for McKinsey & Company as an engagement manager, where he interacted with pharmaceutical executives as well as drug research and development scientists.

After five years of consulting, Chen made the jump to Bernstein, where he uses his scientific prowess to power models of seven small- and mid-cap biotechnology stocks. His interests lie in gene therapy and RNA therapeutics, two quickly advancing areas of treatment and research.

Jessica Fye had no intention of a Wall Street career as she began her degree in Business Economics at Brown University in her home state of Rhode Island. However, getting involved in the school’s investment club would quickly change that.

After graduating, Fye began her career at a small asset manager before realizing her passion for sell-side equity research. She began to interview with research shops, eventually landing a gig covering pharmaceutical companies for Bank of America Securities in 2006, leaving just before the Merrill Lynch merger in 2008.

Fye and a senior analyst both moved to JPMorgan that year, and she continued to cover the major and specialty pharmaceuticals sector for six years. She made the jump to small- and mid-cap biotechnology stocks in October 2014, where she today follows 23 equities in total.

Melissa Franchi found her passion for the business world in college. After graduating from Emory, Franchi worked at Deloitte as a consultant on the strategy and operations team.

Franchi started at Morgan Stanley as an intern in 2009, and has since worked her way to her current position of Executive Director covering small- and mid-cap security and software companies, where she covers 12 names.

—By Seth Archer

Michael Webber began his Wall Street career as a product analyst for Legg Mason after graduating from the University of Virginia. His first taste of the shipping industry — despite being raised near the mid-Atlantic shores — wouldn’t come until 2007, when he began as an equity research associate at Wachovia (which was acquired by Wells Fargo in 2008).

Two years later, in 2009, Webber made the jump to Deutsche Bank where he began covering global transportation and shipping as an associate analyst. Finally, in 2010, he returned to Wells Fargo to serve as senior analyst for the sector, leading covering on 34 stocks with a team of three associates.

Dane Leone began his Wall Street career as a research analyst with AllianceBernstein's portfolio management team in 2005, where he assisted on a roughly $8 billion portfolio for the firm. After four years with Bernstein, he made the jump to Macquarie’s healthcare research group in 2011, where he was working with colleagues often double his age.

Leone joined BTIG in July 2014, where he today serves as a managing director and senior biotech analyst covering 12 stocks. He holds a bachelor’s degree in financial analysts from the University at Albany.

Note: Leone turned 36 in December.