In an investment world often driven by herd mentality, one veteran strategist is making the case for asking harder questions. Maryann Selfe, founder of Calabar Capital and a seasoned institutional finance professional, has launched a new speaking initiative called “Beyond the Consensus” — a perspective aimed squarely at the assumptions that quietly shape how markets price risk and reward.
Based in Zurich, Switzerland, Selfe brings more than two decades of experience from the upper echelons of private banking and asset management. Her résumé includes senior investment and client advisory roles at Credit Suisse and later UBS, where she personally advised on $700 million in client assets under advisory mandates and oversaw investment risk across portfolios exceeding $100 billion. Those numbers alone make clear she is not a theorist: she has lived through the cycles, the bubbles, and the moments when consensus thinking proved most dangerous.
“Beyond the Consensus,” she explains, is not about dismissing conventional wisdom wholesale. Instead, it probes how investment judgment is shaped not just by what portfolios contain, but by the underlying beliefs that drive allocation decisions. Selfe argues that familiar asset classes and widely accepted market narratives can subtly distort perceptions of both risk and opportunity. Too often, she warns, these narratives obscure developments driven by scientific breakthroughs, demographic shifts, and changing patterns of wealth ownership.
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Selfe’s approach is grounded in evidence and disciplined analysis. She encourages audiences to distinguish durable structural change from compelling but fleeting stories, and to assess emerging opportunities through the lens of portfolio fit and valuation. The goal is to help investors see what established frameworks may be missing — without abandoning the rigor that institutional investing demands.
Her book, The Billion Dollar Blindspot: Why Women’s Health Is the Investment Opportunity of Our Time, puts this philosophy into practice. It examines how gaps in research, data, and conventional investment frameworks have left significant market needs in women’s health under-recognised, and explores what it would take to turn those gaps into investable propositions.
That work feeds directly into Selfe’s Precision Premium investment framework and her ongoing activities at Calabar Capital. She is also connected with FemmeHealth Alliance, an independent Swiss nonprofit dedicated to advancing women’s health. Taken together, these initiatives show how her investment perspective bridges institutional discipline with emerging themes in healthcare and broader markets.
Selfe’s views have been featured in outlets including Institutional Investor, Financial Times Professional Wealth Management, Fast Company, and WealthBriefing, and she has also been quoted in Forbes.
Through keynotes, moderated conversations, and institutional briefings, Selfe is now bringing “Beyond the Consensus” to audiences looking for a more thoughtful discussion of investment judgment, market change, and overlooked opportunities. Organisers can explore speaking topics and submit enquiries at https://maryannselfe.com.
Why it matters: In an era when markets can be driven as much by narrative as by fundamentals, questioning consensus is itself a competitive advantage. Selfe’s message — rooted in hard data and decades of institutional experience — offers a timely reminder that the biggest investment opportunities often lie just beyond what everyone already agrees on. For anyone managing capital or making allocation decisions, that is a perspective worth hearing.
