How soccer and ballet taught top Goldman and KKR execs to bounce back after rejection

• Lizzie Reed of Goldman Sachs and Alisa Wood of KKR hold top roles at two powerful Wall Street firms.
• Both say their early training — in competitive sports and performing arts — helped shape their careers.
• Reed draws on lessons from the soccer field; Wood from her training as a professional ballerina.

Lizzie Reed learned to lead on a soccer field. Alisa Wood learned to endure on a ballet stage. Today, those early lessons remain central to how these two top finance executives navigate their careers on Wall Street.

Reed leads Goldman Sachs' US equity syndicate, the team that has priced more than half of global IPOs in recent years. Wood is a partner at private-equity giant KKR, where she serves as co-chief executive officer of KKR Private Equity Conglomerate, overseeing one of flagship businesses for the $686 billion asset manager.

In a recent conversation with Business Insider, both shared how the lessons they learned from sports and performing have helped them navigate high-pressure careers in finance.

Before studying political science at Columbia University, Wood trained as a professional ballerina, where she learned to overcome the sting of rejection.

As a ballerina, "you were told no a hundred times," she recalled, adding: "You were told that you were never going to be good enough and you had to get better and you had to work harder."

She added: "Each one of those times where someone said no — it was almost a challenge. The harder it was, the better it was going to be in the end."

Wood carried that mentality with her when she set her sights on Wall Street. She sent a blind CV and a pitch book to KKR. Though initially rejected by co-founder Henry Kravis, another partner at the firm invited her in for a meeting, opening the door to her illustrious KKR career.

Ballet also taught Wood that success depends on strong preparation and mastery of your craft. "By the time you get on the stage, you should never think about it," she said. By that point, "it was muscle memory."

"I thought I was going to go into government and help change the world," she said. But the reality of looming student loans pushed her toward investment banking instead, where the salary potential seemed more lucrative. Resilience, she explained, carried her through each pivot.

The power of resilience in a grueling field

Reed's lessons in resilience came on a soccer pitch at Notre Dame.

"I always knew I wanted to be a leader," she said. "When I played soccer in college — I would miss a shot, I'd miss a pass, I would get the ball stolen from me. But that doesn't mean that you can't learn from it, pivot from it and kind of grow through it."

That willingness to recover quickly, rather than dwell on mistakes, became the foundation of her career. "You have to kind of be resilient through it," Reed said.

During an internship at Goldman in 2006, she wrote that her goal was to become a managing director — then crossed out the title and decided to aim higher, writing in the word "partner." She reached that goal in 2022, entering the echelon of the bank's most senior leaders outside the C-suite.

Nearly two decades in, resilience remains critical for Reed. "I don't think it hurts less," Reed explained. "I think the recovery time is faster."

If she could give her younger self advice, Reed said she would try to enjoy the moment more. "I probably would think in the very beginning of your career to think less — probably just to be very present."

She continued: "You're there for a reason. You worked hard to earn your place."