Goldman Sachs spotlights Thelma Golden on preserving Black culture

Goldman Sachs used a Talks at GS conversation with Thelma Golden to put its community and culture agenda in front of employees and clients. The June 22 program, titled Thelma Golden on Preserving Black Culture and the New Era of the Studio Museum in Harlem, paired Golden, the Ford Foundation director and chief curator of the Studio Museum in Harlem, with Asahi Pompey, Goldman’s global head of the Office of Corporate Engagement and chair of the Urban Investment Group.

The format matters inside Goldman because Talks at GS is not built as a narrow banking forum. The firm presents the series as a place for conversations with pioneering business and cultural leaders about leadership, strategy, and how business and the economy are changing. In this case, the discussion centered on the Studio Museum’s 14-year effort to build a new state-of-the-art home and on how the museum thinks about preserving Black culture through art, scholarship, and public dialogue.

For Goldman employees, the event was a reminder that the firm’s culture is not defined only by deal flow, bonus cycles, or the pressure of 80-hour weeks. Pompey’s role puts her at the center of how Goldman shows up in neighborhoods and cultural institutions, and the conversation signaled that internal belonging at the firm is linked to external engagement. That is relevant to recruiting, retention, employee resource groups, and community teams, because it shows the firm elevating civic participation as part of the Goldman identity, not as a side project.

Goldman says Pompey’s Office of Corporate Engagement and Urban Investment Group have collectively deployed more than $27 billion in community development investing and philanthropic giving. The Office of Corporate Engagement has deployed over $3.5 billion since 2008, while the Urban Investment Group has invested more than $24 billion in communities nationwide, helped build or preserve 211,000 majority-affordable housing units, and provided $2.8 billion in financing to support more than 40,000 small businesses.

The Studio Museum context gives the conversation additional weight. Founded in 1968 by a diverse group of artists, activists, philanthropists, and Harlem residents, the museum first opened on the second floor of a Fifth Avenue building in Harlem and has long described itself as the nexus for artists of African descent locally, nationally, and internationally. Its new seven-floor, 82,000-square-foot building, designed by Adjaye Associates with Cooper Robertson as executive architect, was announced on August 5, 2025 for public opening on Saturday, November 15, 2025. Goldman’s choice to spotlight that story shows how the firm is using high-profile cultural conversations to define what community and culture mean inside the franchise.