Managing Director and Co-Head of Equities
Barclays Investment Bank
TC grad Todd Sandoz is a superstar. The son of a beloved ACPS teacher, Sandy Sandoz, Todd went from being our 1989 Staci C.L. Bradley Scholarship recipient to an SFA scholarship creator and donor. His English teacher, Patrick Welsh, wrote of him in his letter of recommendation to the SFA, “Here then is a rare young man – scholar, blue chip athlete, and a genuine delight. He is a sure bet to excel in college and whatever career he chooses.” Not only is Mr. Sandoz in the midst of a stellar career in the securities industry, he is also a most generous donor to the SFA. He has never forgotten the importance of spending his formative teen years at T.C. Williams High School, so he created and funds the Class of 1989 Scholarships.
Todd credits his time at T.C. Williams with giving him a unique foundation in academics and an appreciation for cultural and economic diversity. He says of his time in high school, “Looking back on my time at TC, the caliber of teachers that I had, the broad curriculum, and diverse nature of the student body shaped my perspectives. TC was an outstanding high school experience.” Todd especially fondly remembers his crew coach Ed Cannon, American Civ teachers Ms. Darren and Ms. Hand, Mr. Welsh (English), Larry Trice, his physics teacher Dr. Patel, the legend that is Mr. Kokonis (mathematics), and Mr. Kaplan (chemistry). Todd feels that his teachers and the academic offering at TC prepared him well for his college career.
Todd studied economics at Yale University and received his B.A. in 1993. He loved taking advantage of the broad range of classes at Yale, immersing himself in the study of subjects such as Mandarin, history, African American Art and art history as well as economics, where he studied with Yale Endowment CIO and economics professor, David Swensen. Todd considers himself fortunate to have landed a job at Citadel, a hedge fund based in Chicago, right out of college, at a formative time in the development the hedge fund industry. The experience provided him with an intense and comprehensive introduction to the financial industry.
Todd had never before been to Asia when his next job with Credit Suisse took him to Hong Kong for nine years. He reveled in the excitement of living for the first time in a foreign culture and took advantage of that time to travel extensively in North Asia, Greater China and South East Asia. He recalls the memories of being there for the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, and the Asian financial crisis in 1998, the SARS epidemic, as well as the financial boom accompanied with the dotcom era and the wave of Chinese privatizations in the early 2000s. Todd’s work often took him to Japan and it was there that he met his wife, Nobue. He and his wife had two sons, David and Jack, while living in Hong Kong. Todd feels that period gave him a deeper appreciation for different Asian cultures and mindsets.
Todd and his family relocated to New York at the end of 2005, where he continued to work for Credit Suisse. While there he delved into equity share trading and he was involved in the early days of electronic trading. In 2011, Todd and his wife relocated their family to London where he moved into the Fixed Income department with responsibilities for global foreign exchange and short-term rates. Todd and his wife chose to send their boys to English Prep schools to fully immerse them in life in England. He was delighted to watch his boys learn to play English football, rugby, cricket, and participate fully in school life. During school breaks the family travelled to many destinations in the UK (including the Olympic events in Glasgow), Continental Europe, Turkey, and Greece.
2015 saw Todd and his family move back to New York. Unfortunately, Todd soon suffered a significant health issue. Looking back, he feels both lucky and unlucky to have had this health problem. He says, “It changed my worldview. In the early part of my career there were no boundaries, I was constantly busy. I now make the effort to consciously prioritize what’s important and focus on being present in the moment.”
Todd joined Barclays Investment Bank in 2018 and is currently a Managing Director and Co-Head of Equities. In his free time, he loves attending his sons’ sporting events, and he is an avid practitioner of martial arts. Todd currently trains in Brazilian Jujitsu, is a black belt in Aikido and has practiced boxing, and kick boxing. He is also an avid outdoorsman, enjoying fishing, skiing, hiking, and bird hunting. Todd is involved with the Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he is on the board of Columbia’s recently established Climate School. While working with Columbia in 2016, he advocated for and sponsored projects where Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory scientists experimented with changing the way they stored, analyzed, and modeled earth science and climate data using cloud capabilities and parallel computing. Todd sought to bring advanced approaches in data science that were being used in financial markets to help scientists with the challenge of dealing with the vast amounts of data being gathered by their instruments, with the goal of developing much more accurate and complete climate models. He is also on the Advisory Council for the Yale School of Forestry and has sponsored a similar data science project to analyze El Niño and La Niña modeling at Yale.
On an annual basis, Todd generously provides five four-year scholarships through the Scholarship Fund. In his ideal world, all academically motivated TC kids would have the funding to be able complete a four-year college education. He passionately believes that higher education opportunities are critical to equity, transformational with regards to economic opportunities for families, and help to enable individuals to be in a position to fully contribute to society. Over the years Todd has funded scholarships for an astounding 70 students throughout their college years! He is incredibly thankful to be able to work with the Scholarship Fund on this shared ambition. He is focused on helping kids get to college and hopes maybe he can inspire others to do what they can to help kids’ college dreams come true.
