Steven Schonfeld is an American billionaire businessman and the founder of Schonfeld Strategic Advisors (SSA). Born in 1958, he earned a B.A. in Business Administration from Emory University in 1981.

Schonfeld’s path to the billionaire ranks is a quintessential story of Wall Street risk-taking. In 1988, he founded his firm with just $400,000 that he had earned working as a stockbroker, initially focusing on short-term proprietary trading.

• Core Company: Schonfeld Strategic Advisors.
• Education: Alumnus of Emory University.
• Origins: Self-made billionaire who built a family office into a global hedge fund heavyweight.

Steven Schonfeld’s career is defined by his ability to pivot through multiple financial cycles. His firm became a leader in algorithmic trading in 2006, identifying early that computer-driven strategies would outpace traditional human trading.

In 2015, he made a transformative decision to open his family office to outside capital, restructuring it into a multi-strategy hedge fund. Under the leadership of CEO Ryan Tolkin, Schonfeld grew to manage over $13.8 billion in assets by 2023, with more than 1,000 employees globally. Today, the firm operates as a premier multi-manager platform with a heavy presence in Asia and the U.S..

• Strategic Achievement: Built one of the world's most successful quantitative and multi-strategy platforms.
• Investment Style: Known for backing high-intensity 'pods' of portfolio managers across quantitative and fundamental equity.