Ed Cohen received his BA from Amherst College. He received his law degree from the University of Virginia in 1967.

Ed was an associate at Davis Polk, a New York law firm, for two years and became General Counsel at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette (DLJ) at the age of 26. .

Ed served as President and CEO of the New York State Urban Development Corporation (UDC) from 1975 to 1977 (at age 33 to 35) during the time of the New York City fiscal crisis and helped UDC survive.

In 1977 he became a partner at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm. In 1980 he established General Atlantic Partners (GAP), a venture capital firm, for Charles Feeney (the founder of Atlantic Philanthropies). He served as Managing Partner from 1980 to 1992, and from 1992 to 1995 he served as Chairman.

Ed also served as President and Chairman of Manhattan Theatre Club between 1980 and 1992, co-Chairman of The MacDowell Colony from 1987 to 1992, Chairman of City Year, the largest Americorps program which President Clinton used as the model for Americorps from 1993 to 1995.

With his partners from GAP, Ed founded The Echoing Green Foundation in late 1987. This foundation made key initial grants to City Year, Teach for America, Share Our Strength and provided over 300 fellowships to young people to start their own not-for-profit organizations to solve a social problem. Ed was a founding board member of New Leaders for New Schools which now trains 100 principals a year in New York City, Chicago and five other cities. He created Four Times Foundation which for seven years provided economic development grants to Native Americans on reservations. He also initiated Dartmouth Medical School’s efforts to promote the effective functioning of the medical school in Pristina, Kosovo after the war in Kosovo .

Ed has been painting since 1990. His first show was in the not for profit space, TRANS, in January 2005. Since then Ed has had several shows at Jeannie Freilich Contemporary in New York City as well as a show at Artgate Gallery in New York in June 2008 and an exhibition in Korea with AKA Gallery in 2009. His most recent shows were in September 2009 at Winston Wachter Gallery in New York and Seattle.

He was Shown here at the Louisa Gould Gallery in 2010.

Works are still Available.