Chrissie co-leads MPowered Capital, bringing over 20 years of investing experience to the role. As a former Senior Portfolio Manager of Private Equity at Exelon Corporation and Head of Exelon’s Women & Minority Manager Program, Chrissie brings a unique set of qualifications to MPowered. While at Exelon, Chrissie sourced, diligenced, and committed over $1.8 billion to 46 funds and 31managers across venture capital, growth equity, buyout and distressed funds globally. Prior to Exelon, Chrissie was Vice President at middle-market buyout firm Sterling Partners.

Chrissie received her B.A. from Georgetown University and her MBA from The University of Chicago – Booth School of Business. In partnership with Women’s Association of Venture and Equity (WAVE), Chrissie launched the annual Career Forum to help female students access job opportunities in finance as well as the annual Women’s Golf Outing to provide women with a peer networking opportunity while learning to play golf. Chrissie recently co-led the launch of a new non-profit organization, COLAB Connects, to enable these two events to scale even further. Additionally, Chrissie is a member of Private Equity Women’s Investor Network (PEWin).

June Kim serves as deputy chief investment officer for capital markets and joined CalPERS in 2025. June works closely with CalPERS’ chief investment officer and managing investment directors to lead decision making across the portfolio.

She has three decades of investing experience, most recently as senior investment director of total fund management at the California State Teachers’ Retirement System (CalSTRS).

At CalSTRS, June oversaw asset allocation, balance sheet management, and investment risk across the fund, which was valued at $374.3 billion as of Aug. 31, 2025. Prior to that, June served as the investment director of global equity at CalSTRS for 10 years.

Before joining CalSTRS, June served as head of equities for the Los Angeles County Employees Retirement Association. She also served as an investment officer for the City of Los Angeles. June worked in the private sector before joining public service, with experience at Northern Trust Global Investments, Citibank, Barclays Global Investors, and Wilshire Associates.

She graduated with a degree in business economics from UCLA and is a 2019 Finance Leaders Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.

Ashwin Thapar is a senior vice president of D. E. Shaw & Co., L.P., Head of Multi-Asset Class Investing for D. E. Shaw Investment Management, L.L.C. (“DESIM”), and a member of DESIM’s Investment Committee. In that capacity, Mr. Thapar jointly oversees the research and portfolio management activities DESIM conducts for its benchmark-relative equity and multi-asset class investment strategies. Prior to joining DESIM in 2023, he spent over 14 years at AQR Capital Management, LLC, where he last served as a principal on its macro strategies team. Mr. Thapar’s co-authored research on currency hedging, tail risk hedging, and deep value and risk premia investing has been published in the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Investment Management, and Journal of Systematic Investing. He was a joint recipient of the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award for Outstanding Article in 2022 and a Special Distinction Award as a finalist for the Harry M. Markowitz Award in 2021. Mr. Thapar is a summa cum laude graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, where he received a B.S. in economics with a concentration in finance from The Wharton School and a B.A. in mathematics from the College of Arts & Sciences.

Alfred Lin is a Partner at Sequoia Capital, working with founders from idea to IPO and beyond. He partners with companies across various industries, including consumer marketplaces, fintech, robotics, and healthcare. He sits on the boards of Airbnb, DoorDash, Citadel Securities, Clay, Cobot, Formation Bio, Found, Houzz, Kalshi, Nominal, Zipline, and more.

Before joining Sequoia in 2010, Alfred served as Chairman & COO of Zappos.com (AMZN), VP of Finance & Business Development of Tellme Networks (MSFT), and VP of Finance of LinkExchange (MSFT). Alfred also co-founded Venture Frogs, LLC, and invested in companies such as Ask Jeeves (IACI), MongoMusic (MSFT), and OpenTable (PCLN).

Alfred has a B.A. in Applied Mathematics from Harvard and an M.S. in Statistics from Stanford. He also writes a weekly column about company-building frameworks and principles that have helped founders stay on the Outlier’s Path.

Saira is Chief Investment Officer (CIO) and a member of the Executive Management Team. She leads a business with more than $1 trillion in assets under management across equities, global fixed income, infrastructure, EIC, municipal bonds, multi-asset strategies, private placements, global product, public real assets and C-PACE lending, along with driving weekly market and investment insights and delivering client asset allocation views from across the firm’s investment teams.

Saira also leads Nuveen’s Global Investment Committee (GIC), bringing together the firm’s most senior investment leaders to deliver actionable portfolio allocation ideas for our clients and authoring a weekly market commentary.

Since joining the firm in 2003, Saira has held a variety of positions. Prior to being named CIO, she was head of global equities portfolio management and head of global equities research. Previously, Saira was with JP Morgan Asset Management, where her roles included small cap growth portfolio manager.

Saira holds the CFA designation and graduated with a B.S. in Economics from California Polytechnic State University and an M.S. in Finance from the University of Wisconsin. She frequently appears on financial news networks such as CNBC, CNN, and Bloomberg. Saira was included in Forbes prestigious 50 over 50 list in 2025, was recognized as one of Pensions & Investments “Most Influential Women in Institutional Investing” in 2023 and has been profiled in Kiplinger’s and Barron’s, which ranked her among the top 100 most influential women in U.S. finance for seven years in a row from 2020-2026. Since 2022 she has been named as one of LinkedIn “Top Voices in Finance”.

Amy Chen serves as the Smithsonian Institution’s first Chief Investment Officer, appointed in 2006 to establish and lead the Office of Investments. She oversees the strategy and management of the Institution’s $3.0 billion endowment, delivering sustained long term performance that strengthens the Smithsonian’s ability to advance its mission for generations to come.

Before joining the Smithsonian, Amy was central in developing the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s investment portfolio, joining in 1998 as its portfolio manager and helping build the program from inception. Her leadership and impact across the investment community have been widely recognized, including with the prestigious 2025 AAAIM Trailblazer Award.

Amy chairs American University’s Investment Committee and serves on the Henry Luce Foundation’s Investment Committee. She is an honorary trustee of Oberlin College, where she co chaired the Investment Committee and served on the Board of Trustees. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sandor Hau is a Managing Partner of Charlesbank Capital Partners and President of Charlesbank Credit, where he oversees the firm’s credit platform and investment strategy. He joined Charlesbank in 2016 from Nomura Securities, where he was a Managing Director and Head of Corporate Credit and Special Situations. Previously, he was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, leading Credit Investing and Private Equity within the Principal Strategies Group.

He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and is actively involved in the Korean American community as co-chairman of The Korea Finance Society and a board member of The Korea Society.

Sandor holds a BS in Economics from the Wharton School and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Sandy Li (www.sandyliexec.com) began her career as an investment banker for Morgan Stanley in London, Hong Kong, and Houston across Financial Institutions Capital Markets, General Industrials Corporate Finance, and Energy Mergers and Acquisitions. After nearly a decade in executive search, she launched her own executive coaching and recruiting practice in 2014. She recruits and coaches Board and C-Suite level talent across investment management, financial services, global corporations, consulting, venture capital and social impact investing. Over her career she has personally coached over 40,000 executives globally. Sandy Li graduated summa cum laude from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She has coached faculty at Columbia Business School and Stanford University and has been a guest presenter for Harvard, Stanford, Wharton, Brown, Columbia, Dartmouth, Duke, MIT, Northwestern, NYU, UCLA, and USC.

Rex is currently the Chief Investment Officer at Oregon State Treasury. In this role, he oversees the management of nearly $150 billion in assets for the State, across twenty portfolios. These portfolios range from a short-term cash management program to longer duration portfolios such as the State’s Public Employee Retirement Fund and university endowments. Prior to being named CIO, Rex served on the Oregon Investment Council after being appointed by Governor Kate Brown. Rex has over 30 years of investment experienced, starting as a derivatives trader then moving to the allocator side.

Dipesh serves as the Executive Director and Chief Investment Officer of the Illinois State Board of Investment (ISBI). He oversees over $38 billion in assets between the defined benefit and defined contribution plans on behalf of more than 186,000 beneficiaries. In his leadership position, Dipesh is responsible for overseeing all investment matters, managing and executing ISBI’s investment policies, and assisting the Trustees in the strategic direction of ISBI. ISBI won the American Investment Council’s top ranking in private equity performance among public pension plans nationally four years in a row and continues to achieve top performance with strong allocations to minority- and woman-owned managers, currently at a high watermark of 51% of the portfolio. Dipesh previously served as ISBI’s Deputy Executive Director and General Counsel.

Sumit Rajpal is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GrowthCurve Capital. Prior to founding GrowthCurve, Sumit had a 20-year career at Goldman Sachs, where he was most recently the Global Co-Head of the Merchant Banking Division (MBD) and the Global Co-Head of the Corporate Equity investing businesses. Sumit also served as the Co-CIO of Goldman Sachs’s flagship private equity funds, including West Street Capital Partners VII. Prior to that, he was head of Goldman Sachs MBD’s global Financial and Information Services investing business and also led the initial build-out of Goldman Sachs’s digital consumer platform, Marcus by Goldman Sachs. He was named partner in 2010.

After he retired from Goldman Sachs in early 2020, Sumit served as a Senior Policy Advisor to the SEC Chairman on market areas impacted by COVID-19, including co-authoring a report on US Credit Market inter-connectedness.

Sumit earned a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Bombay, India, a postgraduate Management Accountant Certification (Grad. CWA), and a postgraduate in Business Administration from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, India.

Eunice McHugh is the Director of Private Credit at San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (“SFERS”). She is responsible for the buildout and management of SFERS’ Private Credit portfolio, which she has grown to a ~9% allocation today. Eunice is also responsible for the leadership and management of SFERS’ Private Credit Team. She has led SFERS’ Private Credit efforts (initially as part of the Fixed Income portfolio) since she joined SFERS in early 2013. Before her current role, Eunice led and managed SFERS’ Public Fixed Income portfolio. Prior to that, she worked at Morgan Stanley and Lehman Brothers.

Paul Chai, CFA, CAIA, is the Vice President of Investments & Chief Investment Officer at the Kansas State University Foundation, managing $1.4 billion of investable assets for the university. Chai joined the Foundation in 2018 as Director of Investments after 11 years as a senior investment partner at Grandway Asset Management. Earlier in his career, Chai had worked at Pratt & Whitney and TSMC in various engineering and consulting roles. Chai was born and raised in Taiwan, graduated from MIT in mechanical engineering, and has an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University Tepper School of Business. Chai was selected to the Leadership Kansas Class of 2022 and serves on the board of Allocator Collective.

Johnny Wu is Founder and CEO of xETFs, an ETF firm focused on bringing Wall Street strategies to everyday investors. Johnny is a Wall Street veteran having worked on both the buy side and sell side over 25 years. Johnny earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics – Mathematics from Columbia College and his Masters of Business Administration in Finance from Columbia Business School. Johnny helped to start AAAIM’s Lunar New Year Gala and leads AAAIM’s NYC Chapter.

David is a Managing Director and has over 19 years of experience in alternative investments. He is responsible for overseeing various investment programs and focuses on portfolio construction and manager selection, providing customized investment recommendations and regular portfolio updates.

Prior to joining Aksia in 2018, David was a Senior Manager Research Analyst at Man FRM, focused on sourcing and evaluating alternatives strategies, as well as active portfolio management. Prior to Man FRM, David was a Vice President within the Institutional Sales and Trading business at HSBC, and before that he worked at Morgan Stanley, where he covered institutional clients across the hedge fund, asset management, and sovereign wealth fund universe, with a focus on fixed income and foreign exchange.

David graduated from Princeton University with a BA in Economics and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

In 2023, David was recognized as a Knowledge Broker by Chief Investment Officer. In 2024, David was named Institutional Consultant of the Year by Institutional Investor.

Kirk Sims heads TRS’ Emerging Manager Program. Since being established in 2005, TRS has committed $5.9 billion to one of the largest programs of its kind. An additional $4.6 billion has been invested directly with EM Program graduates. Each graduate was selected as a result of consistent outperformance among a group of more than 218 EM managers.

Sims joined the Teacher Retirement System of Texas on March 1, 2019. Before joining Texas Teachers, he was a Senior Investment Officer for the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois. Sims had oversight and management responsibility of TRS’s Emerging Manager Program, a $750 million evergreen pool of capital designed to identify and invest in emerging investment managers across all asset classes.

Prior, Sims worked at Prudential Retirement where he was responsible for a manager of manager’s retirement platform as well as an open architecture investment platform. He also has a background in asset management and has held various positions with both large and small asset managers.

Sims is a CFA charter holder and holds a Masters in Business Administration from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He received a Bachelor of Business Administration from Howard University in Washington, DC.

Brenda Chia is the Chief of Capital Development at Paladin Capital Group, a premier venture and growth-stage investor in cybersecurity, AI, and emerging technologies. A member of the firm’s Management Team since 2012, she drives capital formation and cultivates high-impact relationships with institutional investors, investment platforms, and leading family offices worldwide, spanning deal sourcing, co-investments, and exits.

Prior to Paladin, Brenda built an international career developing and executing strategy, marketing, and operational initiatives for global financial services firms. She held senior roles at The Boston Consulting Group and Accenture across Singapore, London, Wellington (New Zealand), and Boston.

A tireless advocate for diversity in investing, Brenda has testified before Congress on expanding participation by women- and minority-owned funds in the investment industry. She serves as Board Co-Chair of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM), a national platform that convenes institutional capital and Asian American investors across asset classes to conduct business and build alliances. As its founding President since 2007, she has guided AAAIM to national prominence, setting its strategic vision, leading fundraising, and growing its network to more than 8,000 asset owners and managers.

Brenda was named a 2022 Women to Watch in Private Equity by the Wall Street Journal.

Brenda’s has roots in Singapore. She holds a BS from the National University of Singapore and an MBA from Harvard Business School, and is fluent in Cantonese, Mandarin, and Bahasa Indonesia.

Miguel Silva is an Investment Manager within the Sustainable Investments team at CalPERS, where he leads strategy, oversight, and engagement for the organization’s emerging manager platforms across private markets. His responsibilities include sourcing and leading due diligence on new fund and co-investment opportunities, and overseeing performance across intermediated emerging-manager strategies in Private Equity. He works closely with asset class leadership, external advisors, and investment managers to support disciplined capital deployment aligned with long-term beneficiary outcomes.

Miguel began his investment career in 2002 and has experience spanning institutional allocation, private market sponsorship, financial advisory, and commercial brokerage. Earlier in his career, he served as a Managing Member of real estate partnerships, raising capital and executing value-add investment strategies in Northern California. He also worked as a financial consultant and as a commercial brokerage professional advising on acquisitions and dispositions. This cross-platform experience across LP, GP, advisory, and transactional roles informs his approach to manager evaluation, risk assessment, and capital formation.

A first-generation Portuguese American, Miguel is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish. He earned dual Bachelor of Arts degrees from the University of California, Davis.

Carl Chang is the Chief Executive Officer and founder of Kairos. Prior to founding Kairos, Mr. Chang co-founded Chang Family Partners Limited Partnership and CMCB Development Company, both focused on real estate investments and development. He also served as CEO of SullivanHayes, a commercial real estate brokerage firm, and Dunton Commercial, a property management company. Mr. Chang’s experience extends beyond real estate. He has managed numerous private equity investments, guiding early-stage ventures to successful exits through M&A or IPO. His diverse background includes being named Tennis Magazine’s 1996 Coach of the Year for his work on the Association of Tennis Professionals Tour and spearheading the design and development of the Prince Longbody tennis racquet.

Mr. Chang served on the Head Office Board of Directors of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and chaired its Los Angeles branch board. He currently manages the Carl and Diana Chang Family Office and serves on the Board of Advisors at UC Irvine’s Center for Investment and Wealth Management.

Mr. Chang received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Economy of Industrial Societies, with a focus on International Business and Multinationals, from the University of California, Berkeley.

Ellen Hung is the State Investment Officer (Chief Investment Officer) for the Nebraska Investment Council, where she directs the investment of $44 billion in state assets—including retirement funds, operating cash, education savings plans, endowments, and trusts. Under her leadership, the Council has made significant strategic changes to benefit and support Nebraska’s assets through disciplined asset growth and diversification.

Ellen has over three decades of institutional investment and public finance experience. Before Nebraska, she oversaw a $23 billion portfolio as Deputy Chief Investment Officer for the State Universities Retirement System of Illinois, shaping investment committee decisions, onboarding new managers, and driving asset allocation improvements. Her earlier roles—spanning Assistant Chief Executive Officer for Santa Barbara County Employees’ Retirement System and treasury and finance leadership in San Jose, Ca and Spokane, WA —reflect her breadth in both governance and financial operations.

Ellen is a CFA Charterholder and holds both a BS and MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. She is recognized for fostering strong consultant engagement, overseeing rigorous manager selection and review processes, and championing operational transparency—resulting in prudent stewardship of Nebraska’s public funds and meaningful risk-adjusted net-of-fees performance for its beneficiaries.

In addition to her executive leadership, Ellen has shared her knowledge as a board member of multiple local, regional, and professional associations and non-profits. Ellen is a proud mom of two children.

Vinod Chathlani is a Senior Vice President, Portfolio Manager and Researcher on the Multi-Asset and Hedge Funds Solutions team. In this role, he is responsible for designing, constructing and managing investment solutions focused on dynamic and cost-effective hedging of growth and inflation risks in portfolios. Chathlani joined AB in 2013 as a quantitative researcher and assistant portfolio manager on the Dynamic Asset Allocation team, where he helped research and develop quantitative tools and systematic macro strategies. Prior to that, Chathlani held roles in investment risk and corporate strategy. He holds a BTech in information technology from the University of Madras, India; an MBA from the Indian School of Business, India; and an MFE from the University of California, Los Angeles. Location: New York

Sylvia Owens joined Kennedy Lewis in 2021 and is a Partner and the Co-Head of the Institutional Client Group. Ms. Owens was formerly a Managing Director and Global Private Credit and Real Assets Strategist with Aksia, a specialty investment consultant. In her role at Aksia, she was responsible for overseeing the implementation of private credit and real assets portfolios across a global base of LPs, and advised investors with respect to portfolio construction, investment selection, pacing, risk and tactical plans.

Ms. Owens has partnered with prominent industry organizations to increase awareness of private credit as an asset class, including spearheading the development of Institutional Limited Partners Association’s (ILPA) Private Credit Specialist Series, where she was one of the lead instructors for the course.

Prior to joining Aksia, Ms. Owens spent nearly a decade in the private markets space, working with both investors and GPs across private equity, real assets, and private credit selection and positioning. She began her career at Goldman Sachs in Chicago, where she oversaw the Midwest Convertibles business and then moved to New York to co-lead the institutional synthetics convertibles business.

Ms. Owens graduated from the University of Southern California with a BA in Economics and East Asian Studies and holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Han Yik is the Senior Advisor to the Executive Director and Chief Investment Officer of the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS). He is a member of the Executive Leadership Team and owns the strategic asset allocation process for the $160 billion multi-asset portfolio, in addition to leading NYSTRS’ stewardship and sustainability initiatives and their integration and implementation across the portfolio.

Han was formerly the Head of Institutional Investors at the World Economic Forum, where he worked with the senior leadership of the world’s largest asset owners and led the Forum’s initiative on the global pension crisis. Han began his career as an actuarial consultant at Towers Perrin and Mercer, before joining Bank of America as a Senior Institutional Portfolio Strategist and Head of Institutional Thought Leadership, where he managed OCIO mandates with full investment discretion, growing discretionary AUM from $1.5 billion to $2.5 billion. Han earned his B.S. in Applied Mathematics from Yale University, where he won the Benjamin F. Barge Prize for Excellence in Mathematics.

Josh Lerner is the Jacob H. Schiff Professor at Harvard Business School and Co-Director of the HBS Private Capital Project. He also co-directs the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Productivity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Program, founded the Private Capital Research Institute, and is Managing Partner at Bella Private Markets. Much of his research focuses on venture capital and private equity organizations and innovation policy.

Matt Spielman is the Founder and Head Coach of Inflection Point Partners, an executive coaching and leadership advisory firm that works with senior leaders and leadership teams to improve performance through greater clarity, accountability, and purpose. Matt and his team partner with some of the most successful professionals and organizations in asset management, private equity, and institutional investing, helping leaders navigate growth, complexity, and organizational change.

Matt brings more than two decades of operating experience to his coaching and advisory work. He has built and led businesses across entertainment, media, and technology, including senior leadership roles at MTV Networks and Publicis, and earlier experience in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. He has helped grow several companies that were successfully acquired, giving him a real-world perspective that resonates strongly with senior operators and investors.

Over the course of his coaching career, Matt has conducted thousands of executive coaching sessions and hundreds of 360-degree interviews. He has been recognized by Institutional Investor as one of the premier executive coaches in the industry and has become a trusted resource for leadership and organizational development within the asset management community. Matt is a Professional Certified Coach with credentials from Columbia University and Duke University, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and a BA from Columbia University, where he was a nationally recognized varsity baseball player.

Jay Park is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Prysm Capital where he provides growth capital to disruptive management teams across the technology and consumer sectors.

Jay is passionate about helping entrepreneurs to do whatever is needed to realize their vision for their companies.

Prior to Prysm, Jay spent 18 years with BlackRock Private Equity Partners where he served on the Management and Investment Committees, helping to lead investing activities across the U.S. and Asia. Jay’s notable deal experience includes Chewy, Coupang, Alibaba, Habit Burger Grill, Spyder, and AIM Aerospace.

Prior to BlackRock, Jay was a principal investment officer with Merrill Lynch Global Private Equity focused on investing in the emerging markets, after starting his career in Merrill Lynch’s Mergers and Acquisitions department.

Jay earned a BS degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Brown University, and an MBA degree, with honors, from Columbia University. Jay was born in Seoul, Korea, grew up in New Jersey and now lives in the Princeton area with his wife and kids.

Current board responsibilities include ALSO, Clear Street, Electra, FieldAI, Island, Mind Robotics, Outerspace, Replit, Sequen, and Winners Alliance, among others.

Sophia Tsai is Chief Investment Officer of The Wallace Foundation, overseeing the Foundation’s investment portfolio in support of its mission to build a more vibrant and just future through the arts, education leadership, and youth development. Previously, she held senior investment leadership roles at Trinity Church NYC, GE Asset Management, GE Capital, and State Street Global Advisors. She also chairs the Investment Committee of the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

Stephanie is head of the Americas Institutional Client Business within Goldman Sachs Asset Management. She drives the team’s business development and client engagement strategy for pensions, healthcare and nonprofit clients in the US, Latin America and Canada across all asset classes. Previously, Stephanie was head of the Asset Management West Coast Institutional Client Business.

She joined Goldman Sachs in 1997 as an associate in the Municipal Finance Investment Banking Group. Stephanie was named managing director in 2012 and partner in 2022. Stephanie serves on the boards of the National Association of Securities Professionals, Southern California Chapter, the Robert Toigo Foundation and the Board of Directors for the Ralph M. Parsons Foundation. She also serves on the Advisory Board for Girls Who Invest. Stephanie graduated from Wesleyan University, Phi Beta Kappa, and earned an MPP from Harvard University.

Mina Pacheco Nazemi is the Head of Infrastructure Secondaries & Solutions team and serves on the Investment Committee. She is responsible for originating, underwriting and monitoring GP relationships, direct/co-investments and continuation vehicle opportunities for private equity and real assets. Mina has worked in the industry since 1998 with experience as a general partner and limited partner investor in private markets and focused on underwriting direct/co-investment opportunities. Prior to joining the firm in 2017, Mina held several leadership and investment positions including co-founder and partner at Aldea Capital Partners and partner and investment committee member at GCM Grosvenor Customized Fund Investment Group (formerly Credit Suisse CFIG). She is an alumna of Sponsors for Education Opportunity (SEO) and the Robert Toigo Foundation. She is also a board member of the Pan American Development Fund and serves on the investment committee for the City of Hope and Cal State Los Angeles. Additionally, Mina is a current Finance Fellow for The Aspen Institute and an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. Mina holds a Bachelor of Arts with honors in Economics and Political Science from Stanford University and her Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Geeta Kapadia is the Vice President and Chief Investment Officer at Fordham University, where she manages an endowment of $1 billion in assets and oversees all aspects of portfolio management. She joined Fordham in August 2022, following her role as Associate Treasurer of Investments at Yale New Haven Health System, where she led a team responsible for managing over $5 billion in assets. Before her tenure at Yale New Haven, which began in 2009, Geeta worked as a senior consultant at Mercer in London and Edinburgh. She also served as the head of marketing at Capital Metrics in Pune, India. Geeta earned her Bachelor of Arts from the University of Chicago and a Master of Science in Financial Markets from the Illinois Institute of Technology. She is a CFA charterholder and currently serves as the board president of Chester County Family Academy and as a board member of the FINRA Investor Issues Committee.

Puneet Kohli is the investment director of Risk Mitigating Strategies at CalSTRS, the largest educator-only public pension fund in the world. Kohli and the RMS Portfolio team oversee allocations to long treasuries, trend, macro and alternative risk strategies.

Kohli leads a team of more than a dozen investment professionals responsible for developing additional diversifying strategies that support RMS’s objective of preserving capital and delivering positive, low volatility returns that enhance total fund resilience. RMS holds strategic partnerships with global investment managers while collaborating with the Global Equity and Fixed Income teams to build internally managed strategies.

Kohli has more than 25 years of experience in trading, investing and leading teams across major banks and pension plans. Prior to joining CalSTRS, Kohli led the external managers group at Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan, where he oversaw the growth and consolidation of a $25 billion external manager platform spanning insurance linked funds, global equity funds and hedge funds, and led a team of 14 investment professionals in London and Toronto.

Kohli also served as assistant vice president at the Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan, directing investment programs across capital markets, fixed income and derivatives, and overseeing derivatives, alternative strategies, insurance linked securities and quantitative trading initiatives. Prior to that, he was a portfolio manager at the National Bank of Canada and held multiple roles at the Bank of Montreal.

Kohli earned a master’s degree in business administration from the Schulich School of Business, has a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Toronto, and is a Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder.

Tanay Kothari is the co-founder and CEO of Wispr, the company on a mission to make interacting with your devices as effortless as talking to a close friend. A four-time founder, he launched FeatherX, an AI personalization startup for online stores, while still in college. After it was acquired by Cerebra Technologies, he joined the company to lead engineering and product. Earlier, he built Convert, a music discovery platform that grew to more than 2.5 million organic monthly active users.

Tanay holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a master’s degree in Artificial Intelligence from Stanford, where he taught the university’s Deep Learning course alongside Prof. Andrew Ng and published research at the Stanford AI Lab. He also served as President of the Stanford Venture Capital Club for three years. In 2023, he was named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 list.

Ed Shim is Director of Investments at Pomona College, where he oversees the endowment’s Global Equities and Hedge Funds portfolios. He brings both allocator and manager-side experience: previously an allocator at UBS Hedge Fund Solutions’ fund-of-funds group and at the Teachers’ Retirement System of Illinois, where he served as Investment Officer and Head of Diversifying Strategies; and on the manager side at Point72, where he led Macro Business Development, and at Kirkoswald Asset Management, a global macro hedge fund. He began his career in exotic rates and hybrids structuring at RBS in London and holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Statistics from Imperial College London.

Ray Chan is a Senior Managing Director at Blue Owl and member of the Alternative Credit Investment Team. In his role as co-head of the Asset Based Finance team within Alternative Credit, he is jointly responsible for the team’s efforts in non-corporate, private credit investments which are backed by financial or hard assets.

Before joining Blue Owl, Ray was a Partner at Atalaya Capital Management, the predecessor firm to Blue Owl’s Alternative Credit team, where he co-founded the ABF/Financial Assets Team and co-led the firm’s efforts in the space. Ray also sat on the firm’s Executive Committee, Risk Committee, DEI Steering Committee and the Investment Committees for multiple funds. Prior to joining Atalaya, Ray was a Partner and Co-Founder of TTM Capital, LLC, an investment firm focused on acquiring and lending against portfolios of financial and other assets. Previously, he was a Managing Director and co-head of the Assets Group at Highbridge/Zwirn Capital Management. Earlier in his career, Ray was a member of the Principal Transactions and Principal Finance teams at Lehman Brothers and the Asset-Backed Securities Group at Salomon Brothers. He began his career as a consultant at Price Waterhouse, followed by internal consulting and operations roles at Lehman Brothers.

Ray is a member of the Board of Directors for Apex for Youth, a nonprofit providing mentoring, education, and after-school services to underserved Asian and immigrant youth.

Ray received a BA in Economics and Political Science from Columbia University.

Brent Tasugi is a Managing Director at I Squared Capital, a leading independent global infrastructure investor dedicated to the mid-market, managing more than $60 billion in assets and a portfolio that includes over 100 companies operating in more than 115 countries across the power & utilities; transportation & logistics; digital infrastructure; environmental infrastructure and social infrastructure sectors.

At I Squared, Brent leads coverage of the transport and logistics sectors in North America. He brings decades of experience and relationships from investing across private equity, principal investing and real assets around the world.

Prior to I Squared, Brent worked at AMP Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s transportation, industrials and social infrastructure strategies in North America,
focusing on middle-market opportunities in aviation, aerospace, marine terminals, short-line railroads, food logistics and cold storage, alternative fuels, asset leasing, specialty transportation and advanced mobility, social infrastructure and circular economy.

Previously, Brent spent nine years at Oaktree Capital Management / Highstar Capital in New York, where he served as a Senior Vice President and Co-Led the Transportation Infrastructure and PPP practice. Earlier in his career, Brent was an Associate at The Carlyle Group.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Deborah Way is the founder of dWayForward (www.dwayforward.com), an executive coaching and leadership consulting firm that partners with senior executives and high-potential professionals to strengthen their leadership capabilities, deepen self-awareness, and navigate career transitions. Drawing on over 27 years of experience spanning global financial markets and executive search, she brings a rare, 360-degree perspective on how leaders are evaluated, developed, and positioned for advancement.

Deborah began her career at Goldman Sachs in fixed-income derivatives before holding senior leadership roles at Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns, and Barclays. During her 11-year tenure at Barclays, based in New York and Singapore, she built and led the firm’s first global cross-asset macro distribution team. She later joined Spencer Stuart, where she advised institutional asset managers, private equity firms, family offices, and banks on C-suite recruitment, succession, and leadership assessment.

Having benefited from executive coaching during her own career, Deborah recognized that few coaches combined deep coaching expertise with firsthand experience leading global businesses. Her coaching integrates real-world business acumen with research-based tools, including the Hogan Assessment and applied neuroscience. Known for her empathy, grounded candor, and humor, she is a trusted thought partner to her clients.

Deborah holds a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University and a Wharton Executive Education certificate in applied neuroscience. She is an ICF Associate Certified Coach (ACC), a Founding Member of Chief, a private network of senior women executives, and serves as an Executive Coach and Professional Development Partner for AAAIM and its Emerging Leaders Initiative.

In her role as Head of Diverse and Emerging Manager Strategy, Taffi Ayodele drives the strategy within the Bureau of Asset Management (BAM) to expand engagement with and increase allocations to Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises and emerging investment managers and is a voting member of the Investment Committee. She also has oversight of the Minority, Women and Disabled Veteran – Owned Broker Program and coordinates BAM’s annual Emerging and Diverse Manager Conference. Ms. Ayodele is a seasoned executive with experience in the financial services, technology and real estate sectors. Prior to joining the Comptroller’s office, Ms. Ayodele most recently served as a Principal with Harpia Asset Management, a mission-driven real estate investment and development company and co-founded Thando Holdings, a global fashion and technology company focused on creating a global platform for African artists and their fashion products. In 2015, Forbes named her one of the 10 Emerging Women Entrepreneurs to Watch in Africa. Prior to founding Thando Holdings, she served as a Principal of TW Advisory, a boutique small business advisory practice. Ms. Ayodele began her career at Blaylock Van, LLC, (BRV), Wall Street’s longest continuously operated African American investment banking and financial services company. She previously served as Director of the Office of Executive Initiatives at the New York State Dormitory Authority (DASNY), New York State’s public finance and construction authority. She currently serves on the board of the NYU Global Libraries and is a Trustee Emeritus of New York University (2015-2021), The Guyana Economic Development Trust (2018-2021), and New Jersey SEEDS (2017-2019). Ms. Ayodele earned a BA in Economics from New York University and an MBA from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business.

Hans Tung is a Managing Partner at Notable Capital, where he leads the firm’s AI-driven Prosumer, Commerce, and Fintech practice. He partners closely with exceptional founders to scale global businesses and navigate strategic exits. His investment portfolio features several companies that have scaled to become household names, including four investments with outcomes exceeding $30 billion, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Slack, and Rednote, and four valued at over $100 billion including ByteDance and Anthropic.

Hans has been named to the Forbes Midas List for 14 consecutive years, within the top ten for five straight years, and has been recognized among the Top 100 Asian Americans by Gold House.
Originally from Taiwan and raised in Los Angeles, he began his career on Wall Street, where he covered the Taiwanese semiconductor sector. He also co-founded two Silicon Valleyaffiliated startups. Most recently, after nearly a decade investing in Asia, he returned to Silicon Valley in 2013, focusing on supporting globally-minded founders.
Hans holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, where he currently serves on the Asia Advisory Council for the School of Engineering and is a frequent guest speaker at the Graduate School of Business. His investment portfolio includes leading companies such as Affirm, Anthropic, Aven, Clara, dub, Gorgie, Ibotta, Lime, Otter.ai, Parafin, Phia, Poshmark, Quince, StockX, Stori, Turtlemint, Wispr, and more.

Clayton Jue is founder and CEO of Leading Edge Investment Advisors, LLC (LEIA), a San Francisco based Manager-of-Managers. During his 30+ year investment career, he developed more than 40 emerging manager programs for large institutional investors and has provided early funding to numerous firms.

Prior to founding LEIA in 2005, Mr. Jue was Executive Vice President and Managing Director of Northern Trust Global Advisors, where he managed $3 billion in emerging manager programs. He was also a senior member of Northern’s Hedge Fund and Trust Investment Committees which oversaw $25 billion in global assets.

Previously, Mr. Jue was co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Progress Investment Management in 1990 where he successfully developed and managed multi-manager programs for over 11 years. Prior to Progress, Mr. Jue was a Consultant with Callan Associates Inc.
Mr. Jue is one of the six founding Board members of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM) in 2006 and served as a Board Chair from 2010-2017.

Mr. Jue is a graduate of San Francisco State University (MBA) and the University of California, Berkeley (Dual BA). He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation (1991).

Ginger is the CEO of Three Oaks Investments, LLC, an advisory services firm based in Naples, Florida.

Ginger was one of the co-founders of Cube Hydro Partners, and its predecessor company, Enduring Hydro. She served as Managing Director and General Counsel. She guided the company through an expansive acquisition period g rowing from one 6 Megawatts Western Pennsylvania hydropower plant and five employees to nineteen facilities, 374 Megawatts in five states along ten river systems with 130 employees in less than four years. She provided a broad range of advice and led critical regulatory and financial negotiations throughout the life cycle of the company. In October 2019 Cube Hydro was sold to Eagle Creek Renewable Energy, owned by Ontario Power Generation of Canada. She continues to provide consulting transition services to the new owners. In addition, since 2014, Ginger is a senior policy advisor to I Squared Capital, a $13 billion global infrastructure fund based in Miami, Florida.

Ginger has held numerous roles in federal government. She was the Acting Chief Counsel for the Western United States, Department of Energy. She was appointed by Secretary Vance to be Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia. When Bill Clinton was elected President, she served on the transition team and subsequently joined the White House Presidential Personnel Office with a focus on economic agencies. Ginger was nominated and unanimously confirmed as the General Counsel for the Department of Commerce under Secretary Ron Brown. She was nominated and unanimously confirmed as Deputy Administrator and Chief Operating Officer of the Small Business Administration under Administrator Phil Lader. Ginger worked on the Obama transition team as co-chair of the SBA agency team. She then joined the Obama White House National Economic Council as a senior advisor and focused on small business issues, entrepreneurship and women in the economy.

For ten years, Ginger was a member and Board Chair of the Slovak American Enterprise Fund – a US government authorized investment fund in Central Europe to promote small business and entrepreneurship. She was a managing member and venture partner of two venture funds in Washington DC. Ginger also served on the NASDAQ Listing and Hearing Review Council for ten years as a member and Co-Chair.

Ginger has also served on numerous corporate and not for profit boards including Yo semite National Institute (now NatureBridge), the Meyer Foundation, the Smithsonian Institute Travel Exhibitions, Asian Americans for Advancing Justice, and the East West Center. She is the Co-Founder of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers, a trade organization that promotes diversity and inclusion in the investment industry.

Ginger and her husband, Lennart Ehn, live in Naples, Florida. They have two adult children and three grandsons. She enjoys bicycling, hiking and pretends to play golf.

A native of the Chicago area, Gordon is an independent entrepreneur, investor, operator, activist and performer. He is the Founder and Managing Partner of Promise Holdings (www.promise-holdings.com), a family office/independent holding company that has equity interests ranging from small passive minority investments, to controlling positions, in nearly 20 companies. Gordon sits on the Boards of almost all of these companies and serves as Chairperson for the majority of them.

Prior to his current activities, Gordon spent 15 years in institutional Private Equity as a Principal and Investment professional with Baird Capital, Reliant Equity Investors, and Wind Point Partners. Gordon received his MBA from Harvard Business School where he was a Toigo Fellow and the Founder of the Asian American Business Association (AABA), and his BS from the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana, where he graduated with Highest Honors and as a recipient of the Bronze Tablet.

Gordon’s core mission in life is focused on lifting up underserved/under-resourced communities, with an emphasis on (a) Economic wealth creation, Entrepreneurship, Professional development and (b) The enhancement of self-esteem through the performing arts. Towards this end, he is the past President of the Goodman Theater’s Auxiliary Board, a Co-Founder and current Vice Chair of AAAIM (the Association of Asian American Investment Managers), Board Member of Leaders Forum (Asian American Advocacy Group), Definition Theater, and a former Board member of the Chicago Sinfonietta.

Finally, he is a published writer, frequent speaker regarding the glass ceiling and underrepresented minorities, a published poet, produced playwright, spoken word artist, actor and wedding singer.

Aakar Vachhani is a Managing Partner of Fairview Capital, an investment management firm focused on venture capital and emerging managers. He is a member of Fairview’s investment committee and is involved in research, due diligence, investment monitoring, and business development for Fairview’s venture capital and private equity partnership and direct co-investment portfolios.

Prior to joining Fairview, Aakar was with Cambridge Associates, a leading investment advisor to foundations, endowments, and corporate and government entities. He was responsible for analyzing private equity and venture capital investments in support of the firm’s clients and consultants. In addition, he led research and data analytics projects on the firm’s private equity and venture capital database. Aakar also spent time with MK Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm with a sector focus on software and cloud services. He is a founding advisor to Alterion, an emerging leader in AI governance.

Aakar holds a B.S. in Economics-Finance from Bentley University and an MBA in Finance and Entrepreneurship & Innovation from the Kellogg School of Management. He is a member of the Board of Directors of San Francisco Achievers and the New Breath Foundation and Co-Leads the Northern California chapter of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM). He established and leads Fairview’s San Francisco office.

Deborah is a Senior Investment Officer for the approximately $12.9 billion Emerging Manager Program. The program spans direct investments and program partners across all of CRF’s asset classes. Prior to joining the Common Retirement Fund, Ms. Medenica was a Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Fred Alger Management, launching and managing the firm’s first emerging market equity strategy. Before her time at Alger, Deborah worked at PineBridge and its predecessor AIG Investments where she started as an investment analyst and became a portfolio manager and head of the emerging market equity organization. She has also worked for Baring Asset Management, Toronto Dominion Bank and Cambridge Associates.

Deborah has an A.B. from Harvard-Radcliffe College, an M.A. from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. She is a Toigo alumna, a Chartered Financial Analyst and formerly served on the board of ParentChild+.

Tony Lee is a co-founder and Managing Partner of One Rock Capital Partners. Prior to founding One Rock, Mr. Lee was a Managing Director at Ripplewood Holdings. Mr. Lee joined Ripplewood in 1997 and was responsible for Ripplewood’s efforts in the global chemicals and industrial sectors. Prior to joining Ripplewood, Mr. Lee worked in the Mergers and Acquisitions Group at Salomon Brothers.

Mr. Lee earned an A.B. in Economics from Harvard College and serves on the Board of the National Association of Investment Companies.

Tegan Chapman is an Associate Investment Manager in the Private Equity program at CalPERS, where she oversees a diverse portfolio of funds and co-investments.

Before joining CalPERS in 2021, Tegan held valuation and financial advisory roles at Lincoln International in the Valuations and Opinions Group and at Grant Thornton in Valuation Services.

Tegan is a CFA charterholder and holds a B.A. in Political Science and Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, as well as an M.S. in Applied and Computational Mathematics and Statistics, both from the University of Notre Dame.

Jay is the Founding Managing Partner of GFT Ventures, Global Frontier Technology Ventures. GFT Ventures invests in category leading early-stage startups in the US and Israel focused on AI, robotics, and other frontier technologies. Jay currently serves as Board Director at Abacus, Anyware Robotics, Bria AI, Rabot, and Gauss Labs.

Prior to GFT Ventures, Jay co-founded TransLink Capital, a Palo Alto based early stage venture capital firm supporting entrepreneurs developing customer connections and partnerships in Asia. Previously, Jay was Founding Managing Director of Samsung Ventures where he established and led the US venture capital operations for Samsung, responsible for U.S. based investments and portfolio management. Jay started his venture capital career at the Silicon Valley office of Vertex Management, the Singapore based venture capital arm of investment firm Temasek Holdings.

Jay received an MBA from Stanford University and M.S/B.S. in Chemistry from Seoul National University. Jay serves as a Board Director of the Asia America MultiTechnology Association (AAMA) and on the National Advisory Council of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM).

Stephen Gilmore serves as CalPERS chief investment officer and assumed the role in July 2024. He leads the CalPERS Investment Office and is responsible for Total Fund investment strategies and business management.

As chief investment officer, Gilmore oversees a team of more than 300 professionals and a portfolio valued at over $500 billion.

Stephen has earned global recognition as an investment leader during his 40-year career working in public and private financial institutions. Before joining CalPERS, he served for more than five years as chief investment officer of the government-owned New Zealand Superannuation Fund, a sovereign wealth fund.

The New Zealand fund was valued at $75 billion (NZD) when he left in mid-2024, nearly doubling in size under his watch. It achieved annual investment returns of more than 12% from 2013 to 2022 and was named the best performing sovereign investor globally over the preceding 10 years in 2023.

He was also chief investment strategist of the Future Fund, Australia’s sovereign wealth fund and oversaw portfolio strategy, portfolio overlays, investment risk and investment data and analytics. While in the private sector, Stephen held international positions with AIG Financial Products and Morgan Stanley. He held positions as an economist and a resident representative in Tajikistan with the International Monetary Fund and at the Reserve Bank of New Zealand as a research officer.

Stephen attended the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand and earned a Bachelor of Commerce and a Master of Commerce in economics. He is a chartered accountant and a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Pearl Tobay, a Vice President within Dimensional’s Global Client Group, works closely with US-based registered investment advisor clients. She helps firms address their most significant challenges, from developing investment solutions to thinking through strategic business initiatives.

Prior to joining Dimensional, Pearl worked in financial services at PricewaterhouseCoopers within their risk assurance practice. She earned an MBA from University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA in Business Economics from University of California, Los Angeles. She is a CFA® charterholder and a member of the CFA Society of Los Angeles.

Dilshat Erkin is Co-Founder of Halo Partners, a private equity firm he launched in 2025 after more than a decade at an established platform. He co-leads Halo’s investing activity and its day-to-day management, and has built the firm’s team, infrastructure, and investment process from the ground up.

Before founding Halo, Dilshat spent eleven years as a senior investment professional at Clearlake, where he played a significant role in scaling the firm and led investments across the technology and industrials. That experience, being a core part of a platform that grew from $1B to $90B of AUM in a decade, shaped his conviction about what a new firm needs to get right from day one.

Earlier in his career, Dilshat was a member of the middle-market buyout team at H.I.G. Capital, and began in Morgan Stanley’s Global Technology Group, advising software and technology clients on M&A and capital markets transactions.

He currently serves on the board of directors of Grubb, Halo’s first platform investment, and has served on ten other portfolio company boards. He holds a B.S. from UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.

Alex Cha is a Partner and Co-Chief Investment Officer. He serves as a member of the Investment and Executive Committees. Alex is responsible for asset allocation, sector selection, asset selection, trading and risk management. He joined 400CM from Banc of America Securities where he was the Head of ABS Credit Trading, responsible for a team of traders and quantitative analysts committing capital in private label residential mortgage backed securities, credit derivatives, whole loans and residuals. During his fourteen-year tenure at BAS, Alex also spent time in London developing the firm’s expertise in dollar and non-dollar denominated ABS as Head of European ABS trading and syndicate. Prior to London, Alex‘s trading responsibilities included Head of Structured Finance, Collateralized Debt Obligations (“CDOs”) trading and syndicate, Agency Collateralized Mortgage Obligations (“CMOs”) trading and ABS trading. Before joining the financial industry, Alex worked at Lockheed Martin where his primary responsibility was Naval Weapons Systems design for the U.S. Navy. Alex holds a Master’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University and an MBA from the University of Chicago. Alex also holds a B.S. in Computer Science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Jessica Chen is a globally recognized expert helping people navigate change in the age of AI with clarity, communications, and confidence. She is a bestselling author, instructor at Columbia University, and a keynote speaker trusted by the world’s top companies.

As the Founder of Soulcast Media, Jessica has helped over 2 million people communicate with confidence and clarity at work. Her thought leadership has inspired organizations to see communication not just as a skill, but as a culture shift that transforms the way companies work. Her keynotes have been delivered at Citibank, Google, Microsoft, Chanel, and the United Nations.

She is the author of the bestselling communication book “Smart, Not Loud: How to Get Noticed at Work for All the Right Reasons,” a modern guide that empowers professionals to lead, influence, and get noticed—without raising their voices.

A former Emmy Award–winning journalist, Jessica brings storytelling finesse and cross-cultural intelligence to every engagement. Her insights have been featured in Forbes, Fortune, and Entrepreneur, and her clients span industries from tech and finance to media and government.

Paul Hayama is the Chief Investment Officer of Avante Capital Partners. Based in Los Angeles, Mr. Hayama currently manages the firm’s investment strategies, deal
execution, due diligence, and portfolio management activities. Mr. Hayama joined
Avante in 2009 as a founding member of the firm and serves on its investment and
management committees.

Mr. Hayama has over two decades of lower-middle-market debt and equity investment experience. Prior to Avante, he held positions at Allied Capital and Houlihan Lokey. Paul is a frequent speaker on a variety of investor panels and has been a recurring lecturer on capital markets at Pepperdine University.

Mr. Hayama graduated magna cum laude from the University of Southern California. A native of Hawaii, Paul lives with his wife and two children in Manhattan Beach. A retired youth sports Coach, you can now find him cheering loudly in the stands.

Samantha S. Lau was named Chief Investment Officer of AllianceBernstein’s Small and Mid Cap Growth Equities in October 2023. Previously, she was the Co-Chief Investment Officer of Small and SMID Cap Growth Equities since 2014. Samantha joined the firm in 1999 as a portfolio manager/analyst responsible for research and portfolio management for the technology sector of AB’s Small and SMID Cap Growth strategies. From 1997 to 1999, Ms. Lau covered small-cap technology companies for INVESCO (formerly Chancellor Capital Management). Before joining Chancellor in 1997, she worked for three years as a healthcare securities analyst in the investment research department of Goldman Sachs. Samantha co-chaired the Women’s Leadership Council at AB from 2019 to 2022. Samantha holds a B.S. (magna cum laude) in finance and accounting from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA charterholder.

Thomas K. Lee was appointed in 2007 as the sixth leader of the New York State Teachers’ Retirement System (NYSTRS), which was founded in 1921. He is responsible for the administration of retirement benefits to nearly 455,000 participants and the investment of plan assets totaling $160 billion.
NYSTRS is among the best-funded public pension plans in the nation with a funded status of 100.2%. The System pays approximately $9 billion in annual benefit payments, over 80% of which are distributed to New York residents.

Mr. Lee is a member of the Executive Committee of the National Association of State Retirement Administrators (NASRA). He serves on the Board of the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries (NCREIF).

Mr. Lee has a BA in Political Science and Sociology from Dickinson College, a MA in Political Science from Temple University, and a MBA from George Washington University.

Tony joined Leading Edge Investment Advisors in April 2023. His focus is on portfolio management and manager research. He uses his experience to provide recommendations that serve client objectives. Tony is a member of the Investment Committee and client team.

Tony served as Senior Vice President at Bivium Capital Management where he created the Fixed Income product and managed the underlying portfolios. This accounted for approximately $1 billion in total assets for the firm. He led the firm’s efforts in capital markets research and economic insights. Tony worked with Progress Investment Management Company as Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager. He was responsible for managing all fixed income products as well as select equity and multi-asset class portfolios. Tony directed manager sourcing, portfolio construction, and allocation. He was a voting member of the Investment Committee. Earlier experience includes serving as Senior Portfolio Manager at the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS). He oversaw the organization’s $10 billion public equity portfolio, supervised the underlying sub-manager relationships, and managed $2 billion in internal capital. During his time as an Investment Officer with the State Universities Retirement System of Illinois, he oversaw the emerging manager of managers program. His prior experience includes various asset management, research, and corporate finance roles with Citigroup, Silverado Capital and Citadel Investment Group.

Tony earned his Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Chicago. Tony has been a member of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers since 2010. He served on the Board of the organization from 2017-2022.

Avery A. Robinson, CAIA, is Head of Callan’s Real Assets Consulting group. He has overall responsibility for real assets consulting services, and oversees research and implementation of real estate, timber, infrastructure, and agricultural asset classes. He also oversees all investment due diligence for real assets. He is responsible for strategic planning, implementation, and performance oversight of plan sponsor clients’ real assets portfolios. Avery heads research coverage for core open-end funds and emerging managers. He is a member of Callan’s Management Committee and Diversity, Equity & Belonging Council. He is a shareholder of the firm.

Prior to joining Callan in 2008, Avery was employed with the Real Estate Equity Group at Principal Global Investors as an asset manager.

Avery received his MBA and BS in engineering from the University of Iowa and has earned the right to use the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation.

Alison Romano serves as CEO and CIO of the San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System (SFERS). She oversees the $41 billion pension plan and the $6.6 billion deferred compensation program as well as business operations and benefits administration. In addition, she serves as Trust Administrator for the $1.7bn Retiree Health Care Trust Fund. Prior to SFERS, Ms. Romano was Deputy CIO at the Florida State Board of Administration, an organization responsible for investing $225 billion in defined benefit, defined contribution, and other assets. Previously, Ms. Romano held various positions at Goldman, Sachs & Co., last as Vice President in Investment Banking.

Mr. Singh joined Capital Group in 2025. A research analyst in the Capital Solutions Group, he is involved with investment recommendations in support of Capital Group’s multi-asset portfolio solutions effort, which includes Target Date Solutions, Model Portfolios, and Custom Solutions. Prior to Capital Group, Mr. Singh served as a Senior Vice President at Meketa Investment Group. While at Meketa, Mr. Singh sourced, evaluated, and monitored private equity investment opportunities on behalf of institutional clients. Mr. Singh graduated from Rutgers University with a Bachelor of Science in finance and accounting with a minor in economics and graduated from Georgetown University with Master of Science in finance. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation and is a member of the CFA Society New York. Mr. Singh also holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) designation and is a member of the CAIA Association®.

Gini Zhang is a Vice President and Research Analyst at AllianceBernstein, where she focuses on emerging markets technology, specializing in semiconductors and hardware across Asia. She has over a decade of experience in finance across New York and Hong Kong, and previously worked at Bernstein Research and Bank of America. Gini holds an MBA from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s degree from Barnard College, Columbia University. She is a CFA charterholder. She previously served as co-chair of AB Asians, AllianceBernstein’s Asian employee resource group, and is a current member of AAAIM’s Norman Mineta ELI cohort.

Mr. Kim is the Chief Executive Officer of ZNest, an AI underwriting platform for commercial real estate.

Prior to ZNest, Mr. Kim was Managing Partner of Big Rock Senior Housing, a national developer of upscale senior housing communities. Mr. Kim was also the Chief Investment Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Big Rock Acquisition Corp., a NASDAQ-listed Special Purpose Acquisition Company.

Mr. Kim was Head of Acquisitions for Carefree Communities, Chief Investment Officer at Big Rock Partners, a real estate private equity firm with $800 million in AUM. Previously, Mr. Kim was a Vice President at Apollo Real Estate Advisors. At Apollo, Mr. Kim was a member of the turnaround team for Apollo’s investment in Summerville Senior Living, then the largest private assisted living operator in the nation.

Prior to Apollo, Mr. Kim held evaluated investments at Oaktree Capital Management, Merrill Lynch Real Estate Investment Banking, Walt Disney Imagineering, and Disney Development Company.

In 2006, Institutional Investor News selected Mr. Kim as one of “The 20 Rising Stars of Real Estate” in the nation. Mr. Kim graduated with an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics from UCLA.

Eric J. Kim is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Goodwater Capital, a global consumer technology venture capital firm. He has led investments in companies including Kakao, TikTok, Coupang, Xendit, Viva Republica (Toss), Daangn Market (Karrot), MoMo, Scentbird, Hallow, and Everlywell. Previously, Eric was a Managing Director at Maverick Capital, where he helped build the firm’s global venture capital practice, leading investments across North America, Europe, and Asia. He began his career as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company. Eric has long been involved in education and the arts. A classically trained cellist, he was a member of the Grammy-nominated Yale Cellos. He serves on the Board of Advisors for Yale University’s School of Music and on the boards of Empowerly and StudySmarter, companies operating at the intersection of AI and education, and previously served on the national board of College Track. Eric earned his undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science from Yale University (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude) and an MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

Navyug (Nav) Patel is currently the Deputy CIO of the New York State Common Retirement Fund (CRF). CRF is the third-largest public pension fund by assets under management in the United States. The fund invests in global equity, fixed income, private equity, real estate, real assets, credit, and opportunistically. He joined CRF in June 2015 as a Sr. Investment Officer. Before becoming Deputy CIO, he was also the Director of the Credit and Opportunistic/Absolute Return Portfolios. Previously Nav spent over a decade as an equity derivative sales trader at various investment banks including JP Morgan, Barclays and Jefferies. Nav holds a Master’s degree in Physics from Brown University and an Undergraduate degree in Physics from University of Florida.

James Atwater is a Managing Director on the Client Solutions and Business Development Team at CVC Marathon. Based in New York, he joined the firm in 2011. James received a B.S. in Finance from Georgetown University as well as an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago. He previously worked at Blaylock Robert Van, Ryan Beck, KeyBanc Capital Markets, and Salomon Brothers.

Fun Fact: James is fluent in French and enjoys sports.

Rob is a Senior Vice President at Platinum Equity with more than 15 years of experience across private equity, investment banking, and financial advisory. Rob is a deal lead within the Platinum Equity Small Cap team ($2.3B Fund II raised in September 2025) which is focused on investment opportunities in the lower middle market.

Prior to joining Platinum Equity, Robert was at Caprice Capital Partners and Breakwater Management, Imperial Capital and Ernst & Young.

Rob earned a B.A. in Economics with a minor in Accounting from the University of California, San Diego.

Anita Ng is a Managing Director for the Endowment & Foundation Practice at Cambridge Associates.

Anita joined Cambridge Associates in 2006 and has almost 30 years of investment experience. She constructs global private investments portfolios, in aggregate committing billions of dollars annually to the asset class. She works with a broad group of clients, including universities, foundations, public pension plans, and private clients. Anita also conducts private investments research and manager due diligence for the firm.

Anita is often featured as a speaker at prominent industry conferences. In 2020, she was listed on the Chief Investment Officer’s Knowledge Brokers list, which highlights the most influential investment consultants and advisers.

Outside of her role as an investor, Anita is a Co-Lead of External Partnerships for CA Women, the firm’s employee resource group dedicated to cultivating an inclusive culture for women. Anita also volunteers as an Investment Committee member of the Gardens of Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

Previously, Anita held roles in technology investment banking at CIBC World Markets, Credit Suisse First Boston, and Banc of America Securities. She also worked in Hong Kong with Merrill Lynch’s Asia-Pacific Investment Banking Group, where she focused on Greater China clients.

Anita received her MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and her AB in Economics with honors and distinction from Stanford University. She is also proficient in Mandarin Chinese.

May Ng is Chief Investment Officer of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, a private philanthropic organization dedicated to improving health outcomes and access to healthcare, creating a future in which health is no longer a privilege, but a right. She leads the team responsible for managing the Foundation’s $14 billion endowment.

May has two decades of experience in endowment and foundation investment management. Prior to joining the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in 2023, she served as Vice President and Chief Investment Officer for the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Earlier in her career she was a Senior Investment Officer in George Washington University’s Investment Office.

May holds an MPA with a concentration in Economics and Public Policy from Princeton University and a BA in Political Science from Williams College. She currently serves on the investment committees of Williams College, the William Penn Foundation, the France-Merrick Foundation and the American Chemical Society.

Mr. Vahabzadeh joined Audax in 2001 as one of the early members of the Audax Private Debt investment team. Mr. Vahabzadeh serves on the Fund’s Investment Committee and leads its origination, underwriting and portfolio management effort. Prior to joining Audax, Mr. Vahabzadeh was at TCW/Crescent Mezzanine where he focused on identifying, evaluating and investing in mezzanine opportunities and monitoring portfolio companies. Mr. Vahabzadeh began his career in the Global Energy Group of Salomon Brothers, and also worked in the Private Equity Group of Merrill Lynch & Co. Mr. Vahabzadeh received a B.A. from Princeton University.

Mourad Yesayan is a Managing Director at Paladin Capital Group, one of the most active multi-stage venture investors in cyber security, AI, and deep tech, with a track record of over 90 investments and over $2 billion in committed capital since its founding. Over his 17 years at Paladin, Mourad has led or supported 25 investments across the full company lifecycle, from seed through growth, with a focus on cyber security, AI, and deep tech areas such as space and defense. His active portfolio includes over a dozen companies, including several early-stage AI-native investments either applying generative AI to reimagine cyber security problems or providing trust, security, and governance for enterprise AI adoption. Earlier in his career, Mourad was part of the founding team and an executive of a cleantech startup that scaled from pre-revenue to over $1 billion in annual revenue in under four years and went on to become a publicly traded company, giving him operating and scaling experience that shapes how he partners with founders navigating the toughest stages of company building.

Mr. Alam is Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Sentinel Dome Partners, a cross-capital structure alternative investment firm he established in 2014. Sentinel Dome Partners focuses primarily on technology, digital communications, business services, and tech-enabled consumer businesses. The Firm manages capital on behalf of pension funds, endowments, foundations, governmental entities, and family offices, and is based in Burlingame, California.

Prior to Sentinel Dome, Mr. Alam was Co-Portfolio Manager and Managing Member of Watershed Asset Management, an event-driven, credit-biased firm and Farallon Capital Management spinoff. At Watershed, he was jointly responsible for portfolio construction and held primary sector responsibility over Technology, Media, Telecommunications, Business Services, and Industrials. He was also jointly responsible for hiring, training, and evaluating investment professionals, and was involved in key managerial decisions at the firm. He joined Watershed in July 2005 and was promoted to Managing Member in January 2009.

Before Watershed, Mr. Alam was an Associate at Nautic Partners from 2001 to 2003. Prior to Nautic, he was an Analyst in the Media and Telecommunications investment banking groups at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette/CSFB from 1999 to 2001.

Mr. Alam received an M.B.A. with High Distinction from Harvard Business School in 2005, where he was named a Baker Scholar. He earned a B.A., Summa Cum Laude, in Economics with a minor in Physics from Middlebury College in 1999, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.

Jinwen Chen is a Managing Director in the Office of Investments at the Smithsonian Institution, where she has over a decade of experience in institutional investing and oversees private market investments across private equity, venture capital, real estate, and renewable energy. Prior to joining the Smithsonian in 2012, she worked as an Investment Analyst focusing on commercial real estate investments in China. Ms. Chen holds degrees from The George Washington University, Kent State University, and Beihang University, and is both a CFA charterholder and a CPA. She was recognized as a 2025 CIO NextGen honoree.

Ms. Nicholson is Chief Operating Officer of StepStone Private Equity and a member of its Portfolio Risk and Management Committee. She is also member of the private equity investment team, focusing on buyouts, special situations and co-investments.

Prior to joining StepStone in 2009, Ms. Nicholson was a Credit Analyst for Tudor Investment Corporation, an asset management firm, where she was responsible for performing credit, cash flow and liquidity analyses on emerging markets corporate debt. Before that Ms. Nicholson was a Private Equity Analyst in Lehman Brothers Merchant Banking group.

Ms. Nicholson graduated magna cum laude with a BA from Georgetown University.

Pamela Pavkov joined TPG in September 2022 as Managing Partner of TPG NEXT.

Before joining TPG, Pamela Pavkov was a Partner at Jasper Ridge Partners where she focused on private equity investing and impact advisory services. Pamela started her career at Cambridge Associates. Pamela is a member of the Wellesley Business Leadership Council.

Pamela earned a BA in English and Neuroscience from Wellesley College, an MA in English from Stanford University and an MBA and Certificate in Public Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Chloe Choi is a director in the Piper Sandler private capital advisory group, Aviditi Advisors.

Prior to joining Piper Sandler, Choi served as a principal at Aviditi Advisors where she was a member of the capital formation team. She was responsible for origination and leading capital advisory activities across asset classes. Previously, Choi was a member of the private funds advisory group at Moelis & Company. In this role, she was responsible for leading the advisory and execution of primary fundraises, and covered select limited partners. Prior to that, Choi worked at BlackRock focusing on corporate finance strategy and at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the transaction services group.

Choi received her bachelor/s degree in finance and information systems from the Stern School of Business at New York University. She is a CAIA charterholder and serves on the network of women and emerging leaders initiative committees of The Association of Asian American Investment Managers.

Dan is a partner at Decibel where he focuses on helping founders build the next-generation of disruptive AI engineering, cloud infrastructure and cybersecurity companies. He loves working with founders who have paradigm-changing visions and partnering with them – starting from ideation to building and scaling enduring businesses. Prior to joining Decibel, he was a Vice President at Battery Ventures where he led investments in Databricks, SumoLogic, Expel, Contrast Security and InfluxData. Earlier in his career, Dan worked at VMware and spent time at UBS in the technology investment banking group.

Dan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley and is an avid fan of his hometown football club FC Bayern Munich. In 2019, Dan made the Forbes 30 under 30 list for Venture Capital.

Grace Juhn is a Senior Investment Officer in Alternative Credit at New York City Comptroller/s Bureau of Asset Management. In this role, she assists in overseeing the Alternative Credit program, comprising both public and private credit mandates for the five New York City pension systems.

Prior to the Comptroller/s Office, Ms. Juhn was in the Principal Investment Group at Woori Bank based in Seoul, Korea, managing private investments. Previously, she spent 11 years at Barclays Capital and held positions in emerging markets research and institutional fixed income sales before she transitioned to investment management roles.

Ms. Juhn received her BA in Economics and Mathematics from Barnard College and MPA in International Development from Harvard Kennedy School.

Johann Lee serves as the Director of Research at AlphaCore. He helps oversee the investment decision process, the building of model portfolios, and provides guidance on the firm/s research efforts. He also is responsible for conducting due diligence and helps guide the asset allocation process. His coverage includes hedge funds, liquid alternatives, and traditional strategies. Previously, Mr. Lee worked at Wilshire Associates, an institutional consulting firm, as a research associate responsible for evaluating alternative investment strategies. Prior, he began his career at Cambridge Associates as an Investment Associate aiding their research team in a variety of due diligence on both traditional and alternative investments.

Beth Smith is a Private Wealth Advisor within Morgan Stanley/s Private Wealth Management division. She has over 20 years of experience advising clients on various aspects of wealth management, including pre-liquidity planning, multi-generational wealth transfer, and cross-border strategy. As a former practicing tax and estate-planning attorney, Beth provides tax-efficient solutions to investing, credit and lending, insurance, and charitable giving. She takes a collaborative, client-centric approach, often partnering with clients/ legal and tax advisors to arrive at a cohesive solution that promotes family unity while preserving wealth. Beth received her B.A. in Political Science from the University of California, Santa Barbara; her J.D. from Santa Barbara College of Law; and her LL.M. in taxation from Golden Gate University. Beth is an active member of the California State Bar and former chair of the Estate and Gift Tax Committee of the California State Bar. She also holds her Certified Financial Planner® designation. Beth resides in Burlingame, California, with her spouse and two children. In her free time, she enjoys running, cycling, and tennis.

Kristi Yamaguchi is an Olympic, U.S. and World Hall of Fame figure skater. She has won two World Championship Gold medals along with an Olympic Gold medal.

Kristi’s professional career has flourished both on and off the ice. When she joined the cast of Stars on Ice in 1992, her presence helped define the tour as the preeminent skating show in the world. She toured for 10 years, consistently delivering exquisite performances that brought audiences to their feet. During that time, she also won numerous professional competitions and frequently appeared on television specials. She served as a Goodwill Ambassador for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and was one of the few artists asked to perform at both the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. Kristi has also authored multiple books including: Figure Skating for Dummies, Always Dream, as well as New York Times Best-selling children’s books Dream Big, Little Pig!, and It’s a Big World, Little Pig!.

Throughout her professional career, Kristi has been a highly sought after corporate spokesperson and done work with Kellogg’s® and the American Lung Association. She is the creator of, Tsuya, a clothing line that delivers the style that fits every part of an active lifestyle. Kristi’s victory on the sixth season of ABC’s Dancing with the Stars is another achievement in a career marked with golden success.

One of Kristi’s lasting legacies will be her Always Dream Foundation (www.AlwaysDream.org) founded in 1996. It was established with one goal in mind: to find innovative ways to provide support for a diverse range of programs designed to inspire and embrace the hopes and dreams of children. Committed to the belief that early childhood literacy is the foundation on which all academic and life success is built, the Foundation has set its sights on improving access by children of low-income families to books and technology.

Kevin Dinh is a Partner at Muddy Waters Capital, where he focuses on investor relationships, strategy communications, and capital formation. He previously served as a Director at Tensile Capital, Head of Capital Markets at Vested, Vice President at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, and Associate at Morgan Stanley Global Research. Before his finance career, Kevin served as an officer in the U.S. Army. He holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, a B.B.A. from Berkeley College, and a B.A. from Hawaii Pacific University.

Ms. Godinho serves as a Portfolio Manager for a number of multi-strategy portfolios and for other specialized strategies and custom mandates. Ms. Godinho leads activities related to the construction, implementation and monitoring of portfolios. She also serves on the firm’s Culture Council. Prior to joining GCM Grosvenor, Ms. Godinho was a Senior Client Portfolio Manager at Lombard Odier Asset Management where she led sales and strategy efforts for their hedge fund platform. Previously, she was a Vice President at Fortress Investment Group in London. Prior to that, she worked at FRM Americas LLC and Attalus Capital conducting manager research due diligence. Ms. Godinho started her career as an actuarial analyst in the insurance industry and received her Bachelor of Arts and her Masters of Arts in Economics in a dual program from Boston University. Ms. Godinho is a member of the Board of Trustees of Kids Above All.

David Hou is a Managing Partner of Evoke Advisors, a division of MAI Capital. David has advised institutional clients and high net worth family offices since 1992.

David joined the wealth management industry after graduating from the UCLA Anderson School of Management and spent a combined 16 years at Goldman Sachs and Merrill Lynch. Prior to attending Anderson, David worked in the Financial Restructuring Group at Houlihan Lokey and graduated in 1988 from UCLA with a BS in Business/Economics.

In May 2008, David and his partners launched Luminous Capital, an independent, partner and employee-owned RIA. Luminous was acquired by First Republic Bank in November 2012. At the time, First Republic’s acquisition of Luminous was considered a watershed moment in the wealth management industry. While at First Republic, David served as Senior Managing Director and was a member of the Altair Alternative Investments Committee, the bank’s private alternative investments platform.

In 2019, David and his partners launched Evoke Advisors, another independent RIA. The firm grew quickly to $30 billion in AUM and eventually merged with MAI Capital in October 2025. David continues to manage Evoke Advisors, the Institutional Consulting, Ultra High Net Worth, and Family Office division of MAI Capital.

David lives in Pacific Palisades with his wife and four children. He serves as an Advisory Board Member for the UCLA Fink Center for Finance and as an advisor to the Investment Committee for the Cedars-Sinai Endowment Fund.

As Chief Investment Officer, Elmer leads the investment team and works with the Trustees in managing the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust’s investment portfolio. He also serves as the executive sponsor for the Trust’s Enterprise Risk Management program. Previously he held capital markets roles at EY Capital Advisors, Lehman Brothers and Morgan Stanley. Currently, Elmer serves on the LP advisory committees of several of the Trust’s investment managers’ funds. He also participates as a board member for several nonprofits, foundations and other organizations focused on strategy, finance, and leadership development. He holds an MBA, MS, BS, and a Senior Executive program certification (CIO program) from Columbia University (honors).

Ashley Loh is a Managing Director with Benefit Street Partners (a Franklin Templeton subsidiary) and is based in our New York office. Ms. Loh is our senior research analyst specializing in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) sector. She has extensive experience evaluating companies across telecommunications, media, and digital infrastructure, with expertise in fundamental credit analysis, relative value and capital structure investing. Her work focuses on identifying attractive risk-adjusted opportunities across public leveraged loan, high yield and private credit markets, and is responsible for our investments within the sector across the firm’s various strategies.

Prior to joining BSP in 2008, Ms. Loh was an associate at Providence Equity Partners, where she worked on private equity transactions in the technology, media and telecom sectors. Before that, she was an analyst at Deutsche Bank at the leveraged finance group.

Ms. Loh received a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from New York University.

Jamie Lu is a Director of Investments at CommonSpirit Health, one of the nation’s largest non-profit health systems. She serves on the private equity investment team and oversees the team leading the Community Investment Program, a dedicated pool of impact capital providing below market-rate loans to projects addressing social determinants of health.

Prior to joining CommonSpirit Health in 2018, Jamie was a limited partner at organizations including the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, and worked in investment banking at Citigroup. Jamie holds an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management and a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Hadley Ma is Founder and Managing Partner of Ferghana Investment Partners, an opportunistic private credit firm providing flexible private capital solutions to middle-market businesses across growth, succession, minority recapitalization, and management buyout situations where traditional debt or equity may not fit. Ferghana partners with founders, management teams, sponsors, and family-owned businesses. Earlier, Hadley held private credit and special situations roles at MGG Investment Group, Sixth Street, Oaktree Capital Management, and J.P. Morgan.

Prashant Mehrotra is a Partner and Managing Director at Clearlake Capital Group where he focuses on investments in software businesses. Prior to joining Clearlake, he was a Principal at Silver Lake Partners, where he focused on investments in technology and technology-enabled industries. Before that, Mr. Mehrotra was a Principal at Tennenbaum Capital Partners. Prior to Tennenbaum, he worked in investment banking in the Technology, Media and Telecommunications Group at Goldman, Sachs & Co.

Mr. Mehrotra currently serves as a director on several Clearlake portfolio boards, including Cornerstone OnDemand, Digicert, Ivanti, Precisely, Quest Software, RSA Security, Symplr and Zywave. Mr. Mehrotra graduated with a B.S. and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Stanford University, where he was also a Mayfield Fellow, and he received his M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

He currently lives in Santa Monica, California with his wife and their two children.

Seiji Nishimura serves as the Head of US Intermediaries at Pictet Asset Management, part of the Pictet Group, a prestigious independent investment partnership founded in Europe in 1805 that oversees approximately $900bn in client assets*. In this pivotal role, he leads the team responsible for the Intermediary Distribution business across the United States, cultivating strategic relationships with key players including Wirehouses, Private Banks, Registered Investment Advisers (RIAs), Outsourced Chief Investment Officers (OCIOs), and Insurance Companies.

Prior to his move to the US in 2021, where he was a founding member of Pictet’s inaugural New York office, Seiji was a member of the US business development team at Pictet Asset Management’s London office. He has over 16 years of experience with the firm, all in distribution of Pictet’s investment solutions to some of the world’s largest financial institutions, having joined in June 2009.

Seiji holds a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Science in Economic History from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

With more than 30 years in national policy, business and nonprofit experience, Jim Park is currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer of the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM).

Prior to joining AAAIM, Park was one of the founders of the Mortgage Collaborative (TMC), a cooperative of independent US lenders working together to create growth and profitability. TMC also runs a mortgage technology Venture Capital fund (TMC tech fund) on behalf of its lender members.

Jim is also the past-President & CEO, and Chair Emeritus of the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA), the largest AAPI focused trade organization focused on expanding sustainable housing opportunities for Asian American and immigrant communities. Additionally, Park currently serves on the Smithsonian SITES board which provides arts and education programming with partnering educational institutions and museums throughout the country.

Previously Jim was the Co-founder and CO-CEO of New Vista Asset Management, a distressed asset management USA firm, focused on restoring home ownership in traditional underserved markets.

He was also lead Industry Relations at Freddie Mac, the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, where his team worked with outside industry groups on regulatory and business issues. Prior to his work at Freddie Mac, Jim was the political appointee to the United States Federal Housing Administrative (FHA) Commissioner, where he oversaw legislative and regulatory issues. Jim started his career as a lobbyist at the National Community Development Association, which represents 500 cities and counties on housing and economic development issues.

Jim’s passion has always been to organize and empower the Asian American community. In this at regard, he has helped to fund and launch a number of prominent non-profit organizations focused on the AAPI community including National CAPCD and AREAA as well as serving as a chair of various AAPI leadership organizations such as Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies (APAICS).

Sanjiv Shah has been actively involved with AAAIM since its founding in 2006 and has been a long-standing member of its executive committee, as well as co-chair of the AAAIM board. Sanjiv was formerly a Managing Director at HarbourVest Partners for nine years. At HarbourVest, he was a key member of the firm’s Primary Investment Team, leading its emerging, diverse, and micro-buyout investment strategy. During his time at HarbourVest, he led over $2.6 billion in primary investment commitments and often with General Partners who were new to HarbourVest. Sanjiv has developed meaningful relationships with both Limited and General Partners in private equity and is a frequent speaker at industry events. He also sourced over 450 investment opportunities for HarbourVest’s co-investment, credit, and secondary strategies which resulted in another $2 billion of investment across several dozen investments. Sanjiv was a founding member of HarbourVest’s Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Council and a mentor to many of the junior/mid-level investment professionals on the Primary Team. He was also one of the firm’s most active and accessible investment professionals, as Sanjiv sat on 82 Limited Partner Advisory Committees and was the lead coverage officer for nearly 1,300 funds in market during his time at HarbourVest.

Sanjiv joined HarbourVest in 2016 as part of its acquisition of the BAML Capital Access Funds business, which he co-founded in 2002. He joined Bank of America in 1994 and was instrumental in growing its portfolio of community development equity investments, including the formation of the group’s fund-of-funds investment programs. Sanjiv was previously one of the youngest individuals to be promoted to the Managing Director level within Bank of America’s Principal Investing division. He was profiled in the India Tribune as a successful, young professional from the Indian-American community, was formerly an executive sponsor of the bank’s Asian Leadership Network (Chicago), and a business mentor for the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women’s mentoring women in business program.

He received a BS in Accounting from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Sanjiv is a Registered Certified Public Accountant in the state of Illinois.

Elizabeth “Liz” Yan currently serves as Chief Operating Officer at the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (“AAAIM”) after more than 20 years of experience in New York City’s investment industry.

Most recently, Liz was a Senior Director at First Eagle Investments, where she covered institutional relationships across the Eastern and Midwest regions of the United States.
Liz dedicates significant professional and personal time to serving Asian American and under-resourced communities. She sits on the Board of Directors and is currently a high school mentor for Apex for Youth – a local nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower underserved Asian American and immigrant youth from low-income families in New York City.

Prior to First Eagle, Liz served as Managing Director and Senior Consultant Relations Executive at TCW. Before that, she was Head of Business Development at 1623 Capital, a long-short equity hedge fund. Liz also spent several years as Vice President at AQR Capital Management, where she managed consultant relationships, oversaw existing client relationships, advised on asset allocation and portfolio construction, and discussed AQR’s investment strategies. Earlier in her career, she held roles in the Credit Portfolio Group at JP Morgan and on the Debt Capital Markets desk at HSBC.

Liz holds a BS in Finance and Accounting from Boston College and earned an MBA, with concentrations in Analytic Finance, Economics, and Entrepreneurship from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She is a CFA charterholder, a Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA), and a member of the New York CFA Society.

Vivian Young is the Global Head of Asian & Pacific Islander Affairs at JPMorganChase, where she leads initiatives for the firm’s Business Resource Groups and Executive Forums and collaborates with business partners to strengthen ties to the community. She is dedicated to fostering an inclusive workplace that supports employees and drives meaningful change within the organization.

Since joining JPMorganChase in 2012, Vivian has led strategic initiatives for the Product and Platform team in the Private Bank and J.P. Morgan Wealth Management. Her responsibilities included product management, development, and expansion of trusts and estates services, donor-advised funds, and financial planning tools. Most recently, she served as the Global Head of Bank Product Marketing in Asset & Wealth Management, where she provided Bankers with tools and insights to deepen client engagement.

Vivian holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. She serves as a Board Member for National ACE and the Coalition for Asian American Children and Families, is a member of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies National Advisory Council, and is a founding supporter of the United States Pan Asian American Chamber of Commerce’s Women’s Initiative for Strategic Empowerment.

She resides in New York City with her husband and two children.

Wendy Li is the co-founder and Chief Investment Officer at Ivy Invest, a fintech investment platform bringing an endowment-style portfolio to everyday investors. Before Ivy Invest, Wendy was Managing Director of Investments at the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, where she built the Investment Office from the ground up and managed a $4 billion portfolio, specializing in a diverse range of asset classes. Prior to Mother Cabrini Health Foundation, Wendy was Director of Investments at UJA-Federation, where she oversaw a $1 billion endowment and a $400 million pension plan. Wendy began her career in the Investment Office at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University and is a CFA charterholder.

Linda Luu is a Managing Director in Blackstone Multi-Asset Investing (BXMA).

Prior to joining Blackstone in 2018, Ms. Luu was involved in manager evaluation, selection and monitoring across investment strategies at PAAMCO. She began her career in the investment banking department of Credit Suisse.

Ms. Luu received a BA in Economics from Barnard College, Columbia University, where she graduated cum laude, and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She serves on the National Advisory Council for the Association of Asian American Investment Managers (AAAIM).

Ryan Verlin leads sales and go-to-market strategy as Head of Exchanges Ecosystem, Capital Markets at Google Cloud. He partners with global exchanges, data providers, and market participants to modernize legacy capital markets infrastructure using scalable, AI-driven cloud capabilities—covering latency-sensitive and non-latency-sensitive workloads across trading, AI inference, model training, market data distribution, security, risk, and analytics.

With over 20 years of experience in financial services and fintech, Ryan started his career as a foundational member of TMC Bonds, an electronic OTC fixed-income market acquired by Intercontinental Exchange in 2017.

Before Google Cloud, Ryan held a global role in FactSet’s Analytics & Trading Solutions business, specializing in multi-asset class investment solutions. He also served as Vice President of Trading at Lazard Asset Management, trading taxable and tax-exempt fixed-income securities.

As a former practitioner, he is passionate about the role technology, specifically cloud computing and AI, will play in modernizing market infrastructure, creating new markets, boosting efficiency, and enhancing insights. Ryan holds a BBA in Finance from the University of Notre Dame and is a CFA charterholder.

Ryan Verlin leads sales and go-to-market strategy as Head of Exchanges Ecosystem, Capital Markets at Google Cloud. He partners with global exchanges, data providers, and market participants to modernize legacy capital markets infrastructure using scalable, AI-driven cloud capabilities—covering latency-sensitive and non-latency-sensitive workloads across trading, AI inference, model training, market data distribution, security, risk, and analytics.

With over 20 years of experience in financial services and fintech, Ryan started his career as a foundational member of TMC Bonds, an electronic OTC fixed-income market acquired by Intercontinental Exchange in 2017.

Before Google Cloud, Ryan held a global role in FactSet’s Analytics & Trading Solutions business, specializing in multi-asset class investment solutions. He also served as Vice President of Trading at Lazard Asset Management, trading taxable and tax-exempt fixed-income securities.

As a former practitioner, he is passionate about the role technology, specifically cloud computing and AI, will play in modernizing market infrastructure, creating new markets, boosting efficiency, and enhancing insights. Ryan holds a BBA in Finance from the University of Notre Dame and is a CFA charterholder.

Barbara Jesuele is Deputy Chief Investment Officer at the J. Paul Getty Trust, where she partners with the CIO on the Trust’s long-term investment strategy, asset allocation, and portfolio positioning. She has direct responsibility for the Global Equities and Real Assets portfolios, overseeing manager selection, portfolio construction, risk management and capital allocation.

Barbara joined Getty in 2002 as a Senior Investment Analyst focused on Private Equity and has since held progressively senior roles across the investment program. Over more than two decades, she has invested across public and private markets and helped shape the evolution of Getty’s endowment strategy and portfolio construction.

Barbara serves on the Board of Directors of Four Corners Property Trust (NYSE: FCPT) and on the board of PREA. Earlier in her career, she was a credit analyst at HypoVereinsbank in Munich, where she focused on Asian financial institutions.

Dr. Sylvia Kwan is the CEO of Ellevest, an investment advisory firm dedicated to helping women, families, and the next generation build and manage wealth with intention and impact. Ellevest helps women understand, own, and deploy the power of their capital through holistic wealth management and financial planning, tailored content, and customized impact investing solutions.

With over 30 years of experience, Dr. Kwan held key leadership roles at Financial Engines, Charles Schwab Investment Management, and The Boston Company. A holder of both CFA® and CAIA® designations, she serves on the boards of Lotus Campaign, a nonprofit addressing homelessness; the Alternative & Direct Investment Securities Association (ADISA); and the advisory council of CAIA.nxt™, a certificate educational program designed for advisors and private wealth managers. She is also a former Director of Exit 182 Group, LLC, sharing fiduciary oversight of Grinnell College’s $3B endowment.

Dr. Kwan earned a B.S. in applied mathematics and computer science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University. Her doctoral dissertation on investor behavior and social interaction was one of the first in the field of behavioral finance.

Outside of her work closing the gender wealth gap, Dr. Kwan is an avid cyclist and ice cream maker.

Janice Llereza is a Senior Investment Officer for the Diverse and Emerging Managers Program at the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois (TRS), the state’s largest public retirement system with over $83 billion in assets under management. In her role, she helps oversee the development and implementation of TRS’s approach to sourcing, managing, and integrating diverse and emerging managers across the broader portfolio.

Prior to TRS, Janice spent over two decades at Boeing, contributing to the management of the company’s $46 billion defined benefit plan. In her most recent role as Director of Real Estate and Real Assets, she oversaw Boeing’s $4.4 billion real assets portfolio, including real estate, infrastructure, commodities, private equity energy, farmland, and timber. She began her Boeing career in 2001 and held roles across managing real assets, private equity, and public equity investments.

Outside her investment work, she serves on the board of Filipinos in Institutional Real Estate (FIIRE), a nonprofit focused on supporting Filipino professionals in the institutional real estate field. Expanding access and opportunity across the investment landscape has been a longstanding passion and remains central to her work.

Janice holds an MBA from DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business and a BA in Psychology with honors from the University of Illinois at Chicago.