Karen Strauss Cook, 61, Trader Who Helped Women on Wall Street, Dies

Karen Strauss Cook, a trailblazing trader at Goldman Sachs who went on to help other working mothers find part-time jobs in finance, died on Wednesday in New York. She was 61.

The cause was progressive supranuclear palsy, her husband, Everett R. Cook II, said. Ms. Cook had received a diagnosis of the neurodegenerative disease in 2008.

The first woman to work as a trader in Goldman’s equities division, Ms. Cook used her experience on Wall Street to co-found an executive search firm, AlternaTrak, that helped women pursue a career while raising a family. She also mentored young women through the organization 100 Women in Hedge Funds, which is scheduled to honor her next month.

Ms. Cook was a 23-year-old floor clerk at the New York Stock Exchange when she ducked into the lobby of Goldman, resume in hand, one rainy day in 1975, she wrote years later. Fixed commissions on stock trading had just been eliminated, and Ms. Cook sensed the institutional equities business would take off.

After arguing with the receptionist, who tried to refer her to the human resources department, Ms. Cook caught the attention of Robert E. Rubin, a partner at the firm at the time, who was walking nearby. Mr. Rubin interviewed Ms. Cook on the spot, and she was hired two weeks later, she wrote in an essay in the 2006 book “More Than 85 Broads.”

“In those days it was a complicated role to have, being the first woman trader. She handled it very, very well. She was effective and gracious,” Mr. Rubin, who went on to lead Goldman before becoming Treasury secretary, told Bloomberg News.

In a statement on Monday, Goldman said it was “thankful to have been a part of her pioneering and influential life.”

By 1987, with two young sons, Ms. Cook resigned from Goldman soon before the market crash that October. She felt guilt “that I was not giving as much to the firm and also not having enough time with my kids,” she told The Associated Press in 1990.

She spent two years having conversations with young women who, like her, had left successful careers on Wall Street because they were unable to balance work with family. “They had opted out, and most of them couldn’t figure out how or even whether to opt back in,” she wrote in the 2006 essay.

So Ms. Cook and a friend from college, Suzanne Rinfret Moore, who left a job at J.P. Morgan Securities, founded AlternaTrak, which the A.P. described as a “sophisticated Kelly Girl service for Harvard M.B.A.’s, takeover lawyers and corporate accountants.”

One client was none other than Goldman, which hired Ms. Cook as a consultant to help it retain people like her, Ms. Cook wrote.

But the demands of running a start-up presented a fresh problem for Ms. Cook. She sold her stake in the company to her partner and focused her time on parenting and work with philanthropic organizations.

She returned to finance, however, in 1995, working for the hedge fund Steinhardt Partners. When the founder, Michael Steinhardt, decided to return investors’ money, Ms. Cook stayed on and rose to become chief investment officer of Steinhardt Management. She retired from the industry in 2008.

Karen Strauss Cook was born April 7, 1952, in Yonkers to Anthony J. Strauss and Marion Hanney Strauss. She graduated from Wheaton College in 1974 with a degree in philosophy, and she received an M.B.A. from New York University in 1979 after attending class at night while working at Goldman.

In June, 100 Women in Hedge Funds announced that it would honor her with its United States industry leadership award. That award will be presented by Mr. Steinhardt on Nov. 13.

Ms. Cook is survived by her husband and their two sons, Everett R. Cook III and Conor W. Cook.