RoAnn Costin
Founder and President
Wilderness Point Investments
RoAnn Costin is the founder and president of Wilderness Point Investments. Founded in
2005, Wilderness Point Investments is a private equity company that focuses on investing
in early-and expansion-stage consumer nondurable product and retailing companies.
Ms. Costin has invested in and sits on the boards of directors of companies including
Lululemon Athletica, Olly Shoes, and Gear Six Technologies.
Ms. Costin began her business career in 1981 working for State Street Research and
Management Co., then one of the nation’s largest and oldest investment management
companies. She was the first woman investment analyst, portfolio manager, and
partner at the firm. In 1989, Ms. Costin joined the Putnam Companies, where she was
a member of the Quality Growth group with joint account responsibility for equity
portfolios of assets over $1.5 billion and where she co-managed the U.S. equity portion
of the Putnam International Fund. In 1992, she founded and was president of Reservoir
Capital Management, a firm specializing in quality growth equities investments.
Prior to her career in business, Ms. Costin worked in government at the federal level in the
office of Congressman Michael J. Harrington and at the local level for the city of Boston.
She also took part in the formative years of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard
University working as the executive associate to the dean of the school, Graham T. Allison.
Ms. Costin received an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1981 and
a BA in government, cum laude, from Harvard University in 1974. An All-American in
swimming and crew, Ms. Costin was a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers’ Visiting
Committee on Athletics and was elected a member of the Harvard Varsity Club Hall
of Fame in 1995.
Involved in the community, Ms. Costin currently serves on the boards of the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Radcliffe Institute in Cambridge, and Codman
Academy, a charter school in Boston. She also served on the boards of Toys “R” Us from
1996 to 2005 and the Paul Taylor Dance Company in New York from 2000 to 2008.
Ms. Costin resides with her husband, Jim Bailey, and their four sons in Cambridge,
Massachusetts.