When a mutual friend suggested that Gillian Romaine Tett meet Henrik Jones in November 2021 to discuss environmental and social investing and get his advice on a family health issue she was dealing with, Ms. Tett agreed on one condition.

“I said I’ll meet him as long as he knows it’s not a date,” she said. At the time, Ms. Tett was “resolutely single,” so she thought of the “most undate-y” meet-up possible. “I told him to come over on Sunday at 9 a.m. for a walk,” she said.

She brought her golden retriever, Charlie, and planned to go on one of the shorter of her preferred routes around Randall’s Island Park, which was near her Manhattan apartment. “Halfway through, I diverted to turn it into a long walk,” she said. “I’d realized he was amazing.”

Mr. Jones was also charmed. “The first walk, I was in a complete daze,” he said. “It ended up being a couple of hours.”

Ms. Tett, 57, is the provost of King’s College, Cambridge, in England. She is also a columnist and member of the editorial board of the Financial Times, which she joined in 1993 as a foreign correspondent for the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

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