As an investment manager in the volatile world of international finance, Steven Bloom knows how critical it is to be able to assess risk and make high-stakes decisions. That’s part of the reason he supports the University of Michigan Risk Science Center, which uses risk assessment to address human exposure to potential health hazards.
Bloom, who earned a master’s of public health at Michigan in 1981, began his career in public health working for the Natural Resources Defense Council. He was lured away after a few years when four friends offered him an opportunity to join them trading options in Chicago.
At the time, Bloom had virtually no knowledge of the financial world. “I literally didn’t know a stock from a bond,” he says. “But I did know statistics, picked up in large part from my public health studies at the University of Michigan. I felt I was able to essentially teach myself what I needed to know.”
That early venture became Susquehanna Partners, which rapidly grew into an international proprietary trading firm. The young man who didn’t know a stock from a bond would go on to manage and direct billions of dollars in equity and foreign exchange derivatives, hedge funds, and more.
“The skills I acquired in the School of Public Health…really helped me in all my professional ventures,” Bloom says. “Decision-making, quantitative analysis, speaking skills—it was an intellectual and a practical education.”
He has played an important role with his support for the nascent UM Risk Science Center. “Steven Bloom has really gotten our fellowship program off the ground,” says UMRSC acting director Martin Philbert. “This last year, for the first time, we were able to fund two students for summer research.” Preparations for continued summer-research grants are underway.
Bloom strongly supports the role of risk assessment in public health and public policy. “Much of what I have done in the investment field was based upon taking advantage of biases that people bring to decision-making in the investment world,” he says. “I think that understanding behavioral and decision-making biases is really valuable, and it’s not adequately taught.” Strategic thinking plays into his reasons for supporting Michigan.
“I think in the big picture it is important and effective to philanthropically support education because you get leverage on your gifts —there is a great multiplier effect.”
It’s personal, too, of course. “I was fortunate enough to get a partial scholarship to attend the University of Michigan,” Bloom says. “I know that people who choose to attend the School of Public Health are not there for financial reasons.”
Bloom, who now lives in Armonk, New York, has warm memories of his years in Ann Arbor, where he and his wife lived for several years. Both their sons are now attending Michigan themselves—the oldest is a junior, the youngest entered as a freshman last fall. “I said to both of them: ‘This is one of the greatest universities in the world—there are great minds on the faculty and there’s world-class research going on—so take advantage of it!”
He expects the Risk Science Center will continue that tradition of world-class research and communication, with its focus on the important scientific issues that result from human exposure to health hazards. “I think it’s very important work they’re doing,” says Bloom. “It will help both the policymakers, and the general population, to lead better and more productive lives.”