The Fiftyfaces Podcast

LaRoy Brantley is a managing principal at Meketa Investment Group. He has over 20 years experience in an investment consulting capacity. We first met when we joined Cambridge associates earlier in our careers. He has had multiple public fund board positions and has a particular focus on raising awareness of diverse investment managers.  Our conversation starts with LaRoy's unconventional path into...

Sinead Colton Grant is Global Head of Investor Solutions at BNY Mellon, based in NYC.  She has over 25 years of global multi-asset experience across investment and wealth management in both Europe and the US, and started out in derivatives sales and later currency management. She was included in the 2022 Worth.com groundbreakers list https://www.worth.com/groundbreakers2022/ Our conversation start...

John Robinson is Chief Executive Officer at Bridge Capital Advisors, a firm he founded in mid 2021.  He previously was Chief Executive Officer at Consequent Capital Management and is a Board Member of Mifugo Hela, a fintech company based in Kenya.  Our conversation starts with John's childhood where he was born into a family of entrepreneurs, restaurant and business owners.  The lessons learned th...

Doug Heron is Chief Executive Officer at CERN pension fund based in Geneva, a role he assumed in August 2021. He was formerly Chief Executive Officer of Lothian Pension Fund, and prior to that held a number of finance industry roles throughout banking and asset management. He's a trustee director of the NatWest group pension funds and was a Member of the Business Council of the Royal Zoological So...

David Vickers is Chief Investment Officer at Brunel Pensions Partnership Limited, which manages assets on behalf of 10 partner funds within the local government pension scheme, representing about £30 billion He has extensive experience and investing in the multi asset arena, where he has spent time managing assets for a range of institutional investors. Our conversation starts with David's upbring...

Chris Hitchen is Chairman of the Border to Coast pension partnership, as well as the Pension Super Fund and Trustee and Chair of the Investment Committee at Nest, the National Employment Savings Trust. He holds a number of other Board and director roles and was formerly chief executive of RPMI representing over £27 billion of pension arrangements for the UK rail industry. Our conversation is a far...

Mike O’Donnell is Chief Executive Officer of London LGPS CIV Ltd., a position he has held since March 2019, following a career of over 30 years in local government including a range of finance-related roles.  He recently announced his intention to step down from that role in March 2023. Our conversation celebrates his roots in Leicester, and notes the learnings from his parents who had emigrated f...

Fabiola Schneider is a doctoral researcher at UCD Michael Smurfit business school, where she focuses on sustainable finance with a particular focus on progressing the UN SDG agenda.  She is Research Co-Lead on Greenwatch, which applies AI to detect Greenwashing in the market.  She is also passionate about issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. Our discussion is a wide-reaching one which cycles...

Robin Powell is a journalist, investor advocate, financial educator and content consultant.  He is Head of Client Education at RockWealth, as well as Editor of The Evidence Based Investor, and executive director of Regis Media and Ember. He is a frequent commentator on investment management and behavioural finance,  often probing the purported value added by active managers and advocating for bett...

Debbie Cunningham is Chief Investment Officer of Global Liquidity Markets at Federated Hermes and has been a portfolio manager for all government and prime liquidity products since 1990.  She previously was Director and President of the CFA Society of Pittsburgh and sits on the board of Robert Morris University, Treasury Market Practices Group and Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation.  Our...

Matt Sherwood, Ph. D. is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of WeVidIt Media, a video streaming platform that leverages data and analytics for a more inclusive and profitable entertainment industry. We met while he worked as an asset allocator, where he headed up public market investments for MMBB Financial Services.  He has spent time as a guest lecturer and an appointed professor at Columbia...

Jack Dodd describes himself as a human who talks about mental health. I came across him thanks to a powerful LinkedIn post he made about how boys get sad too, in which he called to normalize expressing emotion, sometimes at work. He is a corporate partnerships lead in the Charity Sector and prior to that worked in recruitment. I asked Jack to join me to talk about the mental health advocacy that i...

Welcome back to the Fiftyfaces Podcast where we are delighted to bring you Series 3 of 2022, which features critical thinkers from all walks of life. We hear about the value added of active management, the robustness of sustainable investing terminology, the role of politics in promoting inclusion and economic empowerment and the opportunity in Africa.  First we hear from Debbie Cunningham , who h...

Maureen Downey is a Managing Director in Alternative Assets at The Beneficient Company Group as well as a Venture Partner at DigitalDx Ventures, and has specialized in alternatives investing with a particular focus on secondary investments and ESG integration for over 15 years.  Maureen and I got to know eachother at Goldman Sachs in London and it was fascinating for me in this discussion to disco...

Meredith Jones is a published author, speaker and consultant with decades of experience in the investment industry.  She is a Partner and Global Head of ESG at a large consulting firm, where she chairs the ESG Think Tank with oversight of global solution development and strategy relating to climate change and ESG.  She runs her own research firm MJ Alternative Investment Research and is on the Boa...

Nawar Alsaadi is a Senior Portfolio Manager in ESG investing at Canada Post and previously worked as a long-only portfolio manager.  He has led product development for ESG product research and spent time as a private ESG investor.  Our discussion covers Nawar's childhood in Iraq, what drove his early interest investing and his transition to ESG-focused investing.  He is a frequent commentator on L...

Jennifer Coffey is Chief Executive Officer at Bright Capital Advisors, a firm she founded a decade ago that focus on capital introductions and placement for a range of alternative asset managers.  She started her career in foreign exchange research at Lehman Brothers and worked in hedge funds for many years.  Our conversation starts with Jennifer's start in the world of finance, how she learned by...

Nazmeera Moola is Chief Sustainability Officer of Ninety One, based in Capetown, where she previously headed up South African investing.  Our podcasts starts with a discussion of her farming background as a child and the lessons that that taught her in terms of planning, market volatility, the importance of diversification and risk management.  It was an interesting preparation for a career in inv...

Molly Burba is Managing Director in Investment Research at RiskBridge Advisors, an OCIO firm serving institutional and individual investors.  She previously held a series of investment research and allocation roles.  She has a passion for wellness and spent a period working as a wellness consultant in a firm she established, and was captain of the Women’s Soccer Team while at Vanderbilt University...

Dr. Namukale Chintu is a finance professional who holds Non Executive Director Roles including roles at Invesco Limited and Arkadia Asset Management and a number of advisory roles. She started her career in investment banking and held a series of Executive Director roles in Proprietary Capital and Wealth Management covering Africa. She is the founder of Frontier Market Consultants.  A former Rhode...

Hardeep Rai is Group Chief Executive Officer at The Kaleidoscope Group of Companies, which enable disabled individuals to realize their full potential and find their purpose by enabling them to learn new skills, find their dream job or start their own business.  Kaleidoscope Investments invests in disabled individuals with great ideas enabling them to launch their own businesses.   Hardeep is a pr...

Tremaine Wills is the founder and chief operating officer of Mind Over Money, which provides financial planning advice and manages investment portfolios to help clients meet their financial goals. She formerly spent time as an investment advisor representative, and from 2015 to 2019 worked as a maths teacher initially for Teach for America. Based in Virginia, she is passionate about increasing fin...

Marquette Chester is Senior Managing Director and Head of Alternatives at Xponance, Inc., based in Atlanta Georgia.  He previously spent over 20 years at Invesco, the last 11 years of which were as Managing Director within the Private Capital area.  Our conversation covers Marquette's legendary career - where he has worked in a range of financial services firms and forged a name for himself as a r...

Alex Edmans, is a professor of finance at the London Business school.  Alex has a PhD from MIT as a Fulbright Scholar, and was previously a tenured professor at Wharton and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Alex has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk “ What to Trust in a Post-Truth World ” and the TEDx talk “ The Social Respons...

Ryan Bailey is a Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Carbonado Partners LLC, a leading placement agent with a differentiated approach to fundraising for emerging managers.   He was previously Head of Investments at Children’s Health in the Dallas Area, and prior to that held various roles in investment boutiques including placement firms.  Our conversation starts with his ultra-early interest...