Speakers

Vineer Bhansali, Ph.D. is the Founder and CIO of Long Tail Alpha, a firm that positions portfolios for the unexpected, while maintaining convexity. His 29-year investment career started at Citibank, where he founded and managed the Exotic and Hybrid Options Trading Desk. Dr. Bhansali later joined Salomon Brothers in its Fixed Income Arbitrage Group, followed by the CSFB Proprietary Trading Group. He was at PIMCO for 16 years, serving the last eight years as MD and Head of the Quantitative Portfolios Team, which he founded in 2008. He has received numerous awards, including the Graham and Dodd Scroll Award and TIME magazine’s college achievement award. Dr. Bhansali received his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Harvard University in 1992 and M.S. and B.S. degrees in Physics from Caltech in 1987.

Jim Chanos is the Founder and Managing Partner of Chanos & Company (f.k.a. Kynikos Associates).  As the world’s oldest exclusive short selling investment firm, Chanos & Company provides investment advisory services for domestic and offshore clients. Mr. Chanos launched Kynikos Associates in 1985 to implement investment strategies he had uncovered while beginning his Wall Street career as a financial analyst with Paine Webber, Gilford Securities, and Deutsche Bank.  Throughout his investment career, Mr. Chanos has identified and sold short the shares of numerous well-known corporate financial disasters; among them, Baldwin-United, Commodore International, First Executive, Integrated Resources, Boston Chicken, Sunbeam, Conseco, Tyco International, WorldCom, Valeant Pharmaceuticals, and Wirecard. His celebrated short-sale of Enron shares was dubbed by Barron’s as “the market call of the decade, if not the past fifty years.”  The media has noted his prescience in alerting finance ministers and others about the global financial crisis well before it occurred.  His views on financial market fraud, capital markets regulation and the Chinese financial system, among other topics, are regularly covered by news organizations worldwide. Mr. Chanos has testified before Congress and provided comments to regulations proposed by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission and the Financial Services Authority in the United Kingdom. Born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Mr. Chanos lives in Bucks County, PA, and has four adult children.  He is currently a Lecturer in Finance at both the Yale School of Management and the University of Wisconsin School of Business, where he teaches a popular class on the history of financial fraud. Mr. Chanos received his BA in economics and political science in 1980 from Yale University.

Ulrike Hoffmann-Burchardi is the CIO for Global Equities at the UBS Chief Investment Office. She is a member of the Global Investment Committee, which defines the UBS Investment House View, the core of UBS’s USD 5.5 trillion Global Wealth Management ecosystem. Before joining UBS, Ulrike was a Partner and Senior Portfolio Manager at Tudor Investment Corporation, where she oversaw a global equity portfolio inside Tudor’s flagship client strategy fund. Ulrike was recognized in 2022 and 2023 as one of the “100 Most Influential Women in US Finance” by Barron’s magazine. She is the recipient of the 2023 Women’s Investment Leadership Award presented by the Managed Futures Association (MFA). Ulrike serves on the board of 100 Women in Finance, a global 15,000-member not-for-profit organization to empower women in the finance and alternative investment industries. An advocate for STEM education in grades K-12, she serves on the board of NYC FIRST, a global youth-serving robotics community. Ulrike is a Fellow of the 2021 class of the Finance Leaders Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network. She holds a Ph.D. in Finance from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Master’s degree in Finance from the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

Mr. Greg Lippmann is a Managing Founding Partner and the Chief Investment Officer of LibreMax. He is chairman of LibreMax’s Investment Committee, a non-voting member of its Risk Management and Valuation Committees, and a member of its ESG Committee. Prior to co-founding LibreMax, Mr. Lippmann was head of all non-agency RMBS, ABS and CDO trading globally at Deutsche Bank, where he led a team of 30 senior professionals in New York and London. Prior to joining Deutsche Bank in 2000, Mr. Lippmann was a Director and head of ABS/MBS Subordinate and CDO trading at Credit Suisse, which he joined in 1991. Mr. Lippmann graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 1991, magna cum laude, with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in English.

Rick Rieder, Senior Managing Director, is BlackRock’s Chief Investment Officer of Global Fixed Income, Head of the Fundamental Fixed Income business, and Head of the Global Allocation Investment Team. Responsible for roughly $2.7 trillion in assets, Mr. Rieder is a member of BlackRock’s Global Executive Committee (GEC) and its GEC Investments Sub-Committee. He is also a member of BlackRock’s Global Operating Committee, and Chairman of the firm-wide BlackRock Investment Council. Before joining BlackRock in 2009, Mr. Rieder was President and Chief Executive Officer of R3 Capital Partners. He served as Vice Chairman and member of the Borrowing Committee for the U.S. Treasury and member of the Federal Reserve’s Investment Advisory Committee on Financial Markets. Mr. Rieder currently serves on the Alphabet/Google Investment Advisory Committee and the UBS Research Advisory Board. He has been awarded the 2023 Outstanding Portfolio Manager by Morningstar, was nominated for Outstanding Portfolio Manager by Morningstar in 2021, was awarded the Global Unconstrained Fixed Income Manager of the Year for 2015 by Institutional Investor, was nominated for Fixed Income Manager of the Year by Institutional Investor for 2014, and was inducted into the Fixed Income Analysts Society Fixed Income Hall of Fame in 2013. Five of the funds Mr. Rieder manages (Strategic Income Opportunities, Fixed Income Global Opportunities, Total Return, Strategic Global Bond, and Global Allocation) have been awarded Gold Medals by Morningstar. From 1987 to 2008, Mr. Rieder was with Lehman Brothers, most recently as head of the firm’s Global Principal Strategies team, a global proprietary investment platform. He was also global head of the firm’s credit businesses, Chairman of the Corporate Bond and Loan Capital Commitment Committee, and a member of the Board of Trustees for the corporate pension fund. Before joining Lehman Brothers, Mr. Rieder was a credit analyst at SunTrust Banks in Atlanta. Mr. Rieder earned a BBA degree in Finance from Emory University in 1983 and an MBA degree from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1987. He is a member of the board of Emory University, Emory’s Goizueta Business School, and the University’s Finance Committee, and is the Vice Chairman of the Investment Committee. Mr. Rieder is founder and chairman of the Goizueta Business School’s BBA investment fund and community financial literacy program, Graduation Generation Public School Collaboration in Atlanta. Mr. Rieder serves as Chairman and President of the Board of Education for North Star Academy’s fourteen Charter Schools in Newark, New Jersey. He is on the Board of the BlackRock Foundation, the Cal Ripken Sr. Foundation, the Board of Advisors for the Hospital for Special Surgery, and the Board of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Newark and Essex County. Mr. Rieder is a Member of the Ownership Group and Board of Advisors of the Baltimore Orioles. He formerly served on the Board and National Leadership Council of the Communities in Schools Educational Foundation, and Trustee for the US Olympic Foundation. Mr. Rieder was honored at the Choose Success Awards ceremony in Atlanta in 2015 for his dedication to public education in Atlanta through CIS and Graduation Generation.

Ross Stevens founded Stone Ridge in 2012, and serves as Chief Executive Officer and member of the Investment Committee.  Ross founded the New York Digital Investment Group (NYDIG) in 2017, and serves as its Executive Chairman.  Ross received his PhD in Finance and Statistics from the University of Chicago (Booth) and his BSE in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton).  Ross founded and serves as the Advisory Board Chairman of the Stevens Center for Innovation in Finance at the University of Pennsylvania (Wharton).

Matthew Weir is a senior member of the Investment Strategy Group (ISG), which advises ultra high net worth and institutional investors on asset allocation. In this role, he helps develop ISG’s investment recommendations and its economic and financial market outlook, with a primary focus on equity markets. Prior to moving to San Francisco in 2021, Matt was based in New York where he held other leadership positions in ISG. He initially joined Goldman Sachs in 2003 as an analyst in the Global Investment Research Division, covering companies in the US consumer sector. Matt transferred to ISG in 2006 and was named managing director in 2012. Matt is an advisory member of the Investment Committee for the University of Southern California’s endowment and a member of the Board of Councilors for the University of Southern California’s Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. Matt earned a BA in Economics, Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Southern California in 2003.

Joanna Welsh is Chief Risk Officer at Citadel. Joanna chairs Citadel’s Portfolio Committee and advises in determining risk tolerance levels for the strategies, businesses, and the funds as a whole. Prior to joining Citadel, Joanna was at Tudor Investment Corporation for 15 years, most recently serving as Chief Risk Officer. With more than 25 years of experience in financial services and risk management, she began her career in the Financial Services division of Andersen Consulting. She is also a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Financial Advisory Roundtable, as well as the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Foundation’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee. Joanna received a master’s and bachelor’s degree from Oxford University.

John Zito is Co-President of Apollo Asset Management, co-leading all investing activity and day-to-day management of the Firm’s asset management business. John is also the Head of Credit and a member of Apollo’s Leadership Team. Prior to joining Apollo in 2012, John served as a Managing Director and Portfolio Manager at Brencourt Advisors and previously spent five years as a Portfolio Manager at Veritas Fund Group. John is a Chartered Financial Analyst charter holder and he graduated cum laude from Amherst College with an AB in economics.

Val Zlatev is Senior Founding Partner and CIO of Analog Century Capital Management, a multi-billion dollar long/short equity fund focused on hard technology sectors. Prior to Analog Century, Val was a Partner at Quentec Asset Management (2012 – 2018), a New York based TMT sector fund. At Quentec, Val focused on investments in hard technology sectors: semiconductors, communications, and technology hardware – the fund’s largest allocations and most profitable sectors. Val worked collaboratively with Peter Law, Senior Analyst, and the research team to enhance the firm’s research efforts. Val built many of the quantitative tools for data collection, analysis, and interpretation.  Prior to Quentec, Val worked as Senior Analyst at Kingdon Capital from 2008-2011, covering the semiconductor and hardware sectors. Val began his investment career as an Investment Analyst at MSD Capital covering TMT sectors in 2007. From 1999 – 2007, Val was an Associate Principal for the consulting firm McKinsey & Company. He provided strategic and operational advice to senior executives of hard technology businesses, including semiconductor, smartphone, and US telecom companies. Val studied all aspects of these businesses, providing insights and recommendations into sales channel strategies, supply chain management decisions, supplier negotiations, and inventory management decisions. Val holds a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Pennsylvania, 1999. Val’s thesis furthered understanding of the early moments following the Big Bang. ScienceWatch called it the “4th most cited cosmology paper of 1999” Quintessence, cosmic coincidence, and the cosmological constant. Phys.Rev.Lett., 82:896–899, astro-ph/9807002. Val earned his Bachelor of Arts in Physics and Mathematics from Berea College in 1993 (magna cum laude).