Gen Zer quits Goldman Sachs after clash over Investment Baker social media side hustle
A Goldman Sachs employee who built a social media following as the “Investment Baker” says repeated scrutiny from the firm’s compliance department helped push her to leave Wall Street last year and pursue baking full time.Allison Sheehan, 27, told Fortune that Goldman compliance officials took issue with her use of the word “investment” in her social media handles and instructed her to remove posts documenting her life as a baker while working as a wealth manager.At the time, Sheehan, who spent four years at Goldman beginning in 2021, was waking up at 5 a.m.to make elaborate cakes before heading to work and sharing the process online.The side hustle was gaining traction.
She told Fortune she had landed clients including Goop, Valentino, LoveShackFancy, Brooke Shields and Gigi Hadid.“I did not think that anything was wrong with what I was doing,” Sheehan told the magazine.She said coworkers embraced her baking venture.“They loved it, always asking, ‘Allison, what did you make this morning? Show us! Are you gonna bring one in?'” she said.According to Fortune, Sheehan initially complied with the firm’s request and removed her content.She later restored the posts because she wanted to demonstrate her entrepreneurial track record while applying to Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management.The compliance team contacted her again several months later, according to the report.After that second confrontation, Sheehan decided to leave Goldman and focus on growing her business.“I got fed up by denying like 90% of my orders while I was sitting at my desk at work, doing some dumb estate planning that I didn’t care about,” Sheehan told Fortune.“I just wanted to be baking.”Sheehan’s path to entrepreneurship began while she was a student at Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business in Dallas.What started as a small operation selling cakes to sorority sisters for about $100 apiece quickly expanded beyond campus.Despit...