Principal and Portfolio Manager. Ms. Fisch is a co-portfolio manager for the International and Emerging Markets strategies, along with the Global Best Ideas service. Ms. Fisch became a member of the firm in 2001 and helped to launch the Emerging Markets strategies in 2008, on which she has been a co-portfolio manager since inception.
She joined the International portfolio management team in 2016 and has co-managed the International Small Cap Value strategy since its inception in 2017. Since 2017, she has overseen the Global Best Idea service. Prior to joining Pzena Investment Management, Ms. Fisch was a business analyst at McKinsey & Company. She earned a B.A. summa cum laude in Psychology and a minor in Drama from Dartmouth College.
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Churchill Franklin (he/him) is the Executive Chairperson on the Board of Directors at Intech Investments, the newly privatized spin out from Janus Henderson. Intech, founded in 1987, has been a consistent innovator in the global investment field, with unique mathematical underpinnings for many global and U.S. equity investment strategies. Intech has continued to be a pioneer in the industry, offering institutional investors worldwide an unconventional, mathematics-based approach to investing. Under the new leadership of current CEO, Jose Marques, Intech has been adding to its investment team to ensure Intech's innovation heritage continues well into the future.
Franklin co-founded Acadian Asset Management LLC in 1986. Acadian is a $100 billion AUM quantitative institutional asset management firm with offices in Boston, London, Sydney, and Singapore. He assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2013. In December 2017, he became Chairman, retiring in March 2020.
A graduate of Middlebury College, Churchill is an Emeritus Trustee of Middlebury, having joined the Board of Trustees in 1989. He served as an active board member for 15 years, first as a Charter Trustee from 1989 until 2000 and then as Chair of the Board from 2000 until 2004. After a mandatory year off, he became an Emeritus Trustee for life. He remains a member of the investment committee for the College's $1.5 billion endowment. In May 2008, he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Middlebury College.
Churchill also sits on the Boston Advisory Board of the Posse Foundation, as well as on the Board for the Whitehead Institute, where he serves on their investment committee which oversees their $800 million endowment. In June 2018, he stepped down as the volunteer President of the Board of the Concord Museum in Concord, Massachusetts, having raised $16 million to fund a significant addition to the museum. He served in that role for 6 years.
Before joining Acadian, Churchill was the Assistant Treasurer of Thermo Electron Corporation (now Thermo Fisher Scientific), a Fortune 500 company, where he managed all aspects of the treasury function. He was previously a commercial loan officer at Bank of Boston (now Bank of America).
In Churchill's spare time, he is the CEO of Bread Loaf View Farm, the source of the world's best Vermont maple syrup.
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As president of PH&N Institutional and chairman of the Canadian Institutional Management Committee, Bruce is responsible for RBC GAM's institutional asset management business in Canada. He is also a member of the Leadership Committee, the group responsible for developing RBC GAM's global business strategy, and the head of the North American Institutional Product team, which assesses new and innovative fixed income, equity, and alternative solutions for the Canadian and U.S. markets.
He joined PH&N Institutional in 2008 as an institutional portfolio manager specialized in developing structured derivative-based investment capabilities and liability-driven investment solutions. Previously, he had been the managing director of Portfolio Management, the head of Institutional Quantitative Fixed Income and Derivatives-Based Solutions, and the fixed income member of the Asset Allocation Committee for the asset management division of another major Canadian bank. Bruce started his career in the investment industry in 1990.
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Kevin leads our 25-person Capital Markets Research team, which is charged with identifying emerging trends, risks, and opportunities across global investment markets. In this role, he oversees the firm’s research publications and helps develop the firm’s guidance on investment strategy. He has authored dozens of publications since joining the firm and is a regular presenter at industry conferences and webinars.
Prior to joining Cambridge Associates in 2015, Kevin served as an Intelligence Officer with the United States Government. Based in the Pentagon, he led a team of civilian and military officers and regularly briefed senior US officials. He deployed to Afghanistan as a member of Operation Enduring Freedom, earning awards from the US Army, US Department of Defense, and NATO. Prior to his government career, Kevin had investment banking roles at Freeman & Company and Wachovia Securities.
EDUCATION
CFA Charterholder
MSc, International and European Politics, University of Edinburgh
BA, Economics and Political Science, Emory University
Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst
Mr. Brough focuses on manager research and selection in the US value equity, global equity, REITs, and public infrastructure spheres. He assists clients in assessing the pros and cons of new potential managers for their portfolios and helps add new ideas to Meketa's list of high conviction managers. Mr. Brough is also Co-Chair of Meketa's Emerging and Diverse Manager Committee, and a member of the firm's Marketable Securities Oversight Committee and Profit Sharing Plan Committee.
Prior to joining Meketa in 2017, Mr. Brough held positions of management consultant at LEK Consulting and research analyst at Brown Brothers Harriman & Company.
Mr. Brough received his BA from The College of the Holy Cross and an MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. He is a CFA charterholder. He is also a volunteer for the Dedham Food Pantry.
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Seyi Bucknor is senior vice president and head of Consultant Relations for the Institutional Client Group within Fidelity Institutional®. Fidelity Institutional is a division of Fidelity Investments that offers investment insights, strategies, and solutions, as well as trading services to a wide range of wealth management firms and institutional investors. Fidelity Investments is a leading provider of investment management, retirement planning, portfolio guidance, brokerage, benefits outsourcing and other financial products and services to institutions, financial intermediaries, and individuals.
In this role, he is responsible for managing the investment consultant relations function for Fidelity's U.S. institutional business.
Prior to joining Fidelity, Mr. Bucknor held several senior roles at Newton Investment Management. He was most recently head of North America, where he led the business development and client service functions. Prior to joining Newton, he was a co-head of the Manager Research group and the sector head of Equity Manager Research for BNY Mellon Investment Management. In this capacity, he oversaw the due diligence, selection, and monitoring of BNY affiliated and third-party managers. Additionally, he served at GE Asset Management as a managing director in the Investment Solutions group and as a director of investment research at Rogerscasey. He has been in the financial industry since 2000.
Mr. Bucknor earned his bachelor of science degree from Cornell University and his master of business administration degree from Columbia University.
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Tony Criscuolo is senior vice president, chief investment officer & treasurer for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, the largest private health plan in the state and one of the largest independent, not-for-profit Blue Cross Blue Shield plans in the country.
Tony leads the investment and cash management functions for the organization. He is responsible for the management of the Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts core, pension, 401k, captive, and foundation investment portfolios. He oversees overall corporate liquidity efforts and pension asset liability management. Tony also participates in the investing activities of Zaffre Strategic Investments, a subsidiary that supports the parent’s strategic health initiatives.
Before joining BCBS of Mass he served in a variety of institutional portfolio management roles at Standish Asset Management. Tony began his career at Blue Cross Blue Shield of Connecticut, serving as assistant treasurer.
Tony is a Chartered Financial Analyst and a member of the Boston CFA Society and volunteers on the Financial Literacy Committee. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Quinnipiac University, as well as a Master of Science in Finance from Fairfield University.
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Robert Duwa, CFA, Partner, is head of North America distribution at William Blair Investment Management. He is also a member of Investment Management's leadership team and the William Blair extended leadership group.
Previously while at William Blair, Bob was head of North America client service, a global equity portfolio specialist, and a senior client relationship manager. Before joining William Blair in 2010, Bob was a senior consultant and practice leader with DeMarche Associates for 11 years. In this role, he was responsible for the strategic investment direction for institutional clients, and was president and founder of Discretionary Management Services, a registered investment advisor providing OCIO services. Before joining DeMarche, Bob worked in institutional investment management for Boatmen's Trust Company. He is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society Chicago. Bob received a B.A. in finance from Loras College.
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Jeffry Haber is Professor of Accounting at Iona University, teaching undergraduate and graduate classes in a variety of accounting areas, and Senior Director, Finance at the Commonwealth Fund and also Managing Member of Classic Lanes Operating LLC.
He publishes in academic journals about investing and accounting matters. A sampling of some recent publications include:
Journal of Applied Business and Economics
"Passively Active Investing — A Five Year Test," Volume 22(2), 2020, pp 74-87
Global Journal of Business
"Can Active Fund Managers Be Replaced with Exchange Traded Funds?" Vol. 13, No. 2, 2019, pp 95-104
The CPA Journal
"Issues in Measuring and Reporting Diversity," November/December 2022, pp 50-53
"A Primer on Cause Investing," April 2019, pp 46-51
"Preparing the Statement of Cash Flows Using the Direct Method: Illustrating a Simpler Approach," April 2017, pp 52-55 (Co-authored with Karen Wallace)
International Journal of Financial Research
"Forecasting Portfolio Balance Using Return Mean, Standard Deviation and Spending," Vol. 7, No. 2; April 2016, pp 98-121 (Co-authored with Andrew Braunstein)
He is the author of "What If Everything We Knew About Investing Was Wrong?" and "Accounting Demystified," a primer on financial accounting, which is available in English and Chinese.
He is also the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Theoretical Accounting Research.
Haber received BS and MS degrees from Syracuse University and a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and is a CPA licensed in New York, and holds other licenses and certifications. He is a frequent speaker at academic, professional, investment and accounting conferences.
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Liz Haines is senior vice president and client experience program manager at Voya Investment Management. In this role, Liz and her team are focused on key business transformation initiatives designed to deliver exceptional client experience working with all teams in the client life cycle, including distribution, client service, operations, compliance, marketing and finance.
Prior to rejoining Voya, she worked at Bridgewater Associates as the business manager to the back office COO, where she was the right hand on key strategic initiatives. Previously at Voya, Liz worked as vice president and business manager for the head of distribution. Prior to that, she was an assistant vice president at MF Global holding roles as trading assistant to the proprietary trading desk and also management associate to the fixed income COO. Prior to that, Liz was research assistant to the chief economist at Handelsbanken Capital Markets and began her career as a litigation paralegal at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. Liz earned a BA in Psychology from Kenyon College.
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Mr. Hume is a Vice President in Segal Marco Advisors' Boston office. He is an active member of both the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and the Investment Management Consultants Association.
Mr. Hume began his career in 1993. Prior to joining Segal Marco Advisors', Mr. Hume gained experience servicing corporate, public and multiemployer benefit plans at Fidelity Investment and Putnam Investments. He is also a contributing author to the IFEBP Trustee Handbook and a speaker at multiple industry conferences.
Mr. Hume received his BS in Economics from the University of Massachusetts and his MBA from the Sawyer School at Suffolk University. Mr. Hume also holds his CIMA® designation awarded by the Investment Management Consultants Association.
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Jamie Kase joined HarbourVest in 2015 to oversee all aspects of the Firm's global sales, marketing communications, and investor relations efforts.
Jamie joined the Firm from Capula Investment Management, a London-based hedge fund manager, where he served as global head of investor relations. Jamie brings more than 30 years of experience to his role and has extensive experience leading sales and marketing efforts in the US and globally. His prior experience includes leadership positions at global asset management firms including State Street Global Advisors, ING Investment Management, Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, and Lehman Brothers. Jamie serves on a number of philanthropic boards, including Chair, NYC Foundation for Cerebral Palsy, United Cerebral Palsy of NYC, and the Wheeler School.
Jamie received a BA in Political Science from Brown University in 1982.
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Nikki Kraus, CFA, is the President and Chief Client Officer of Strategic Investment Group and a member of its Board of Managers.
She has 28 years of experience in the OCIO industry having most recently served as Director of Institutional Business at Hirtle, Callaghan & Co., where she attracted and serviced a broad range of clients. Before that, she held various positions at SEI Investments Company working with OCIO clients. She has extensive experience advising investment committees, to whom she is often asked to provide insights on best practices and governance. Nikki serves on the Investment Advisory Subcommittee of the John Templeton Foundation. She also serves on the U.S. Impact Committee for 100 Women in Finance and as a mentor for Girls Who Invest. Nikki has actively collaborated with the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) for nearly a decade, including serving as a speaker at multiple NACUBO events. Nikki is the Co-author of Endowment Management for Higher Education (most recent edition published in February 2022), a publication released by the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB), and Endowment Management for Foundations and Nonprofits, published in October 2022, in partnership with AGB and the Council on Foundations. She is also often asked to speak at AGB events. Additionally, she has published various articles in the areas of investment committee governance and investment management.
Nikki holds a B.A. in English and Computer Applications from the University of Notre Dame. She is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Society of Washington, D.C.
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Maurice Leger is the head of global distribution at Loomis, Sayles & Company. He is responsible for distribution and client advisory functions which includes sales, relationship management, consultant relations, marketing and product management. Maurice is also a member of the firm's Board of Directors.
Previously, he led the firm's product management and strategic planning group. Maurice has 31 years of investment industry experience. Before joining Loomis Sayles as the director of strategic marketing in 2009, he led the institutional investment services group at Old Mutual Asset Management. Prior to Old Mutual, he was head of the product management team at Columbia Management. Earlier in his career, Maurice provided consulting services to investment managers at Accenture and PriceWaterhouseCoopers. He earned a BA from the College of the Holy Cross and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
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Amy Lesch joined KKR in 2009. She is a Partner in the firm’s Client and Partner Group and the Head of KKR’s Global Product Strategies Group. Ms. Lesch and her team are responsible for product origination and management across private equity, infrastructure, real estate, and credit.
In addition, Ms. Lesch is a member of the firm’s Global Conflicts and Compliance Committee and Global Inclusion and Diversity Advisory Committee. Prior to joining KKR, she was a managing director and global head of consultant relations for Citi Capital Advisors (formerly Citi Alternative Investments). Ms. Lesch has more than thirty years of experience working directly with institutional investors and the consultant community. Her earlier experience also includes Deutsche Asset Management and State Street Global Advisors. She holds a B.S. from the University of Rochester and a J.D. from New England School of Law. Ms. Lesch is a member of the Board of Trustees for the University of Rochester, where she serves on the investment committee. She also sits on several advisory Boards, including Girls Who Invest and WIN (Women In Need), the largest provider of shelter for homeless families in New York City.
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Judy Snow May is Vice President, Product Marketing at RBC Global Asset Management. In this role, she is responsible for leading the firm’s U.S. intermediary marketing effort across all client segments, developing and executing a marketing strategy, and working closely with the firm’s shared service partners including sales, product and sales enablement teams.
Prior to joining RBC GAM in 2019, Judy worked for Pax World Management (now Impax Asset Management) as Head of Marketing. She also served as Director of Marketing for Eaton Vance, where she was responsible for retail marketing initiatives. She previously held marketing positions with other investment firms, including Tucker Anthony and Freedom Capital Management. Judy earned an A.B. from Bowdoin College and an M.B.A. from Babson College. Judy holds the FINRA Series 7, 65 and 24 registrations.
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As the chief operating officer for the Client Platform, Susan works across all our client-facing teams which include the firm's product management, fund sponsor, business development, client service and marketing functions, and is responsible for driving scale and efficiency, serving as a center of operational excellence, mitigating risk, and enhancing the client experience. The team leads global strategic projects and initiatives with a focus on technology and data.
From 2016 until 2023, Susan served as head of Marketing and Communications, leading a global marketing team with members in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC. The team was responsible for Wellington's global brand and for creating and delivering integrated marketing programs and thought leadership to deepen client relationships and grow the business. The team's efforts spanned all marketing channels including PR, digital, and social media.
Susan joined the firm in 1999. During her time at the firm, she has served as director of Investment Analytics and Communications, a team that provided investment content, analytical expertise, and business automation solutions across asset classes, and also held management positions in a number of groups including Product Management and the Client Group. Before joining the firm, she spent five years at McKinsey & Company where she was an engagement manager (1994 — 1999).
Susan received her Master of Philosophy in international relations from Oxford University (1994) and her Bachelor of Arts in history, summa cum laude, from Princeton University (1992). She also has a graduate certificate in executive coaching from William James College (2014).
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Mark Najarian is a senior vice president and co-head of global institutional. Mark is responsible for overseeing all institutional activities for American Century Investments, with an emphasis on leading teams that develop and manage relationships with institutional consultants, outsourced CIO’s, intermediary home office due diligence groups, and private banks. Mark sits on the investment oversight committee and is a member of both the global distribution leadership team and the investment leadership team.
Mark is executive sponsor of Allies for Action, an employee driven initiative focused on fostering a diverse and inclusive workplace. He shares an advisory board seat at the Institutional Investor Institute, co-chairs the MMI institutional community steering council, and is a founding member of the Chestnut Solutions Institute, an independent OCIO think tank. He also serves on the NY advisory board of Facing History and Ourselves, a global non-profit educational organization.
Before joining American Century Investments in 2018, Mark was managing director and head of platform development at Goldman Sachs Asset Management. Previously, he was director of platform distribution at Columbia Threadneedle Investments. Mark has worked in the investment industry since 1997. He earned a bachelor's degree in finance from the University of Vermont.
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Ms. Nova is Partner, Client and Product Solutions, at Apollo Global Management, Inc, where she is responsible for leading the Americas institutional sales business. Ms. Nova joined the firm in November 2021. Previously, she was Senior Managing Director and Head of Americas Business Development and Investor Relations at Värde Partners. Prior to that, she served in various leadership roles at Neuberger Berman across alternative investments in New York and Hong Kong from 2003. Ms. Nova co-founded the Hong Kong chapter for 100 Women in Finance (fka 100 Women in Hedge Funds).
Ms. Nova is a member of the National Council for the University of Rochester, College of Arts, Sciences & Engineering, her alma mater from which she graduated cum laude with a BA in Political Science and was awarded All-American, Cross Examination Debate Association. Ms. Nova also earned an MBA from Harvard Business School. She holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation.
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Christopher Philips is a Senior Vice President and the OCIO Practice Leader at LCG Associates. In addition to developing and coordinating the firm's OCIO solution, Mr. Philips also conducts capital market and asset class research, investment manager due diligence, and special topical studies.
Prior to joining LCG, Mr. Philips was at Vanguard where he had several key roles over his career. Most recently he was Principal and Head of Vanguard's Institutional Advisory Services, where he was responsible for leading, evolving and expanding the OCIO business. In this role his primary responsibilities included leading the client service teams, who provide asset allocation modeling, investment policy consulting, portfolio construction recommendations, and ongoing investment management to endowments, foundations, and defined benefit plans.
Prior to leading the OCIO business, Mr. Philips was Regional Head of Institutional Asset Management, where he was responsible for leading a team serving the investment needs of DB, DC, nonprofit, and other institutional clients. And before joining the institutional team, Mr. Philips spent 12 years in Vanguard's Investment Strategy Group, creating and presenting investment thought leadership behavioral finance, asset allocation and portfolio construction.
Mr. Philips is a CFA Charterholder and is an active member of the CFA Institute and CFA Society of Philadelphia. He holds a B.A. from Franklin and Marshall College.
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Brian A. Schroeder is the founder of OCIO Monitor, a specialty consulting firm that provides due diligence of investment consultants and outsourced chief investment officers. He has over 30 years of investment experience, as both an institutional manager and consultant.
He is the leading objective and unbiased due diligence provider on behalf of institutional asset owners. He has worked for pensions, foundations and endowments with assets up to $15 billion. Besides quantitatively determining their value-add and discovering behavioral finance heuristics, he is a leading expert in benchmarking and performance reporting transparency. He has been consulted by academics and presented in 2022 to the Securities Exchange Commission’s Division of Exams’ investigators on how to spot performance reporting fraud when conducting routine firm inspections.
Schroeder has spoken at the International Foundation’s Trustee Masters Program, the Investments Institute and the ISCEBS Symposium. In July 2014, Benefits Magazine published his article “Multi-balanced Model: The Missing Link in Investment Approaches?” and, in May 2019, “3 Simple Strategies for Adopting a Passive Investment Consulting Approach” and, in July 2020, “Investing in Response to the Covid-19 Response.”
His forensic analysis is novel by quantitatively scoring the value-add of investment consultants and OCIOs in their five main duties- strategic asset allocation, tactical asset allocation, rebalancing, active manager hiring and active manager firing. Since standard performance reports usually do not show the value-add of these five duties, the analysis provides insights not found anywhere else.
A by-product of his work concerns relative performance reporting and analysis of benchmarks. He has discovered many clever techniques within performance reports that distort performance perception. Many institutional investors have suffered terrible performance without knowing it due to these techniques and thus poor investing has often continued for far too long.
Schroeder has a bachelor of arts degree in economics and a master of science degree in financial analysis. He served for 3 years on the Riverton, Utah Committee for Economic Development and is a volunteer at the Salt Lake City YWCA.
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Since July 2019 Francis has been Head of Client Service, Walter Scott North America, a division of BNY Mellon Securities Corporation and is based in Boston. He joined the firm in 2001, initially as an investment manager and in 2012, took on the role of Head of Client Service based in Edinburgh. He is also a member of the Executive Management Committee. Francis holds a BA (Hons) in Financial Services from Edinburgh Napier University.
Paul Zettl, Executive Vice President, Global Head of Marketing, serves as the Chief Marketing Officer. He has over 25 years of experience in marketing and product management.
Prior to joining the firm in 2019, Mr. Zettl's tenures included roles at T. Rowe Price, TD Ameritrade, and Fidelity, where he developed integrated marketing strategies that helped the firms expand client outreach and raise brand awareness. He has extensive expertise in business planning, digital marketing, advertising, public relations, and brand management for financial services companies, including retail brokerage, banking, retirement, and asset management. Mr. Zettl has a BA from the State University of New York College at Cortland and completed the Securities Industry Institute program at the Wharton School of Business. Paul and is based in New York.
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