Allison Light

Allison wholeheartedly believes in the massive potential and world-changing impact that her partners can bring about. Armed with a unique ability to frame complex problems and flatten learning curves, she takes a pragmatic approach to the work, allowing her to remove noise and effect immediate change for her companies. Allison has partnered with dozens of companies across a wide-range of industries and in various stages in their growth. 

Originally from the Bay Area, Allison has extensive experience working on globally distributed teams and has lived across the U.S., Europe, and Southeast Asia. She graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University with a B.A. in cultural anthropology and earned an M.B.A. from Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Prior to West, she spent several years as a fellow of the Malaysia Blue Ocean Strategy Institute, working closely with the Malaysian government on initiatives to stoke entrepreneurship in the country, and leading a team responsible for the productization of Blue Ocean Strategy. She began her career as an analyst at Goldman Sachs and Co. in New York in both Asset-Backed Security and Hedge Fund & Private Equity industry groups. Answering a call to enter creative services, Allison went on to gain expertise in interactive production, pedagogical design, project management, business model design, and strategy. Her global background and mix of right and left brain thinking are ever-present in her work.

Allison loves podcasts and audio fiction, and also serves as the head of finance for Mermaid Palace, an art collective. In her spare time, she’s a serious home chef, does decent botanical illustration, speaks Italian moderately well, plays the cello poorly, and is the worst roller skater in San Francisco, where she lives.