Cathie Wood

As of December, 2022, Wood's flagship fund, Ark Innovation, had lagged behind the S&P 500 for five years, dropping in value by more than 80% from last year's peak.

As of March 2021, two funds run by Wood were on the list of the 10 largest female-run funds by total net assets.

As of 31 December 2021, Cathie Wood's ARK'S ETFs came in fifth place among Morningstar’s list of top 10 wealth-destroying funds compiled by portfolio strategist Amy C. Arnott, and ranked just below investment vehicles from Credit Suisse, ALPS, Kraneshares, and Barclay.

Wood was selected for the inaugural 2021 Forbes 50 Over 50; made up of entrepreneurs, leaders, scientists and creators who are over the age of 50.

Wood was named the best stock picker of 2020 by Bloomberg News editor-in-chief emeritus Matthew A. Winkler.

Wood is a devout Christian. During the 2020 election, she warned that Joe Biden's plan of taxation and regulation would stifle innovation. Wood also has a large following on Reddit.

Wood lives in Wilton, Connecticut. She was divorced from Robert Wood, who died in 2018. She has three children: Caitlin, Caroline, and Robert.

In 2018, she donated funds to her high school to start the Duddy Innovation Institute, which encourages girls to study disruptive innovation.

In 2014, after her idea for actively managed exchange-traded funds based on disruptive innovation was deemed too risky by AllianceBernstein, Wood left the company and founded Ark Invest. The company is named after the Ark of the Covenant; Wood was reading the One-Year Bible at the time. ARK's first four ETFs were seeded with capital from Bill Hwang of Archegos Capital.

In 2001, she joined AllianceBernstein as chief investment officer of global thematic strategies, where she worked for 12 years, managing $5 billion. She was criticized for performing worse than the overall market during the financial crisis of 2007–2008.

In 1998, along with Lulu C. Wang, Wood co-founded Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund based in New York City.

In 1977, via her mentor Arthur Laffer, Wood got a job as an assistant economist at Capital Group, where she worked for three years. In 1980, she moved to New York City to take a job at Jennison Associates as chief economist, analyst, portfolio manager and managing director. She worked there for 18 years. In the early 1980s, she debated Henry Kaufman on why she believed interest rates had peaked.

Wood was born in Los Angeles, the eldest child of immigrants from Ireland. Wood's father served in the Irish Army and the United States Air Force as a radar systems engineer. In 1974, Wood graduated from Notre Dame Academy in Los Angeles, an all-girls Catholic high school. In 1981, Wood graduated summa cum laude from the University of Southern California, with a Bachelor of Science degree in finance and economics. One of Wood's professors was economist Arthur Laffer, who became Wood's mentor.

Catherine Duddy Wood (born November 26, 1955) is an American investor and the founder, CEO and CIO of Ark Invest, an investment management firm.