Anne Ackerley
Anne Ackerley is a Managing Director and head of BlackRock's Retirement Group, bringing together the defined contribution and retirement insurance businesses. Ackerley oversees the group’s development and distribution of strategies and services – serving over 80,000 retirement plans and ultimately reaching more than 40 million Americans.
Since joining BlackRock in 2000, Ackerley has held various leadership positions, including Chief Marketing Officer. She is a member of BlackRock's Global Operating Committee, U.S. and Canada Executive Committee, Philanthropy Board, and Retirement Committee for the BlackRock Retirement Plan. She is also a co-founder of BlackRock's Women's Network and Financial Inclusion Network.
Ackerley has written and spoken extensively on retirement readiness and women's leadership. A three-time honoree on Barron's "100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance" list, Ackerley was named to Forbes’ “50 over 50” list in 2022 and Yahoo Finance's "100 Women Executives" list in 2019. She was also honored for her outstanding leadership in financial services by the Women's Bond Club. Ackerley is a member of the Advisory Board for the Aspen Institute Leadership Forum on Retirement Savings and the World Economic Forum Working Group on the Longevity Economy. She also serves as a trustee of the Mosaic Mental Health Association.
Ackerley earned a B.A. degree, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, in economics from Harvard College, and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School.
Dr. George Friedman
Dr. George Friedman is an internationally recognized geopolitical forecaster and strategist on international affairs and the founder and chairman of Geopolitical Futures.
Dr. Friedman is a New York Times bestselling author. His most recent book, “The Storm Before the Calm: America’s Discord, the Coming Crisis of the 2020s, and the Triumph Beyond,” published February 25, describes how “the United States periodically reaches a point of crisis in which it appears to be at war with itself, yet after an extended period it reinvents itself, in a form both faithful to its founding and radically different from what it had been.” The decade 2020-2030 is such a period that will bring dramatic upheaval and reshaping of American government, foreign policy, economics, and culture.
His most popular book, “The Next 100 Years,” is kept alive by the prescience of its predictions. Other best-selling books include “Flashpoints: The Emerging Crisis in Europe,” “The Next Decade,” “America’s Secret War,” “The Future of War,” and “The Intelligence Edge.” His books have been translated into more than 20 languages.
Dr. Friedman has briefed numerous military and government organizations in the United States and overseas and appears regularly as an expert on international affairs, foreign policy, and intelligence in major media.
For almost 20 years before resigning in May 2015, Dr. Friedman was CEO and then chairman of Stratfor, a company he founded in 1996. Dr. Friedman received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of the City University of New York, and he holds a doctorate in government from Cornell University.
KEITH AMBACHTSHEER
Keith Ambachtsheer is the director emeritus of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM) Executive-in-Residence, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; a senior fellow of the National Institute on Aging (NIA), Ryerson University; and president of KPA Advisory Services.
Ambachtsheer has been a participant in the pensions and investments industry since 1969 and is widely recognized as one of the globe’s most original thinkers on pension design, governance, and investing issues.
Since its founding in 1985, KPA Advisory Services has become known as a trusted incubator for new thinking in pensions, and for providing strategic advice to a global clientele in person and through the monthly Ambachtsheer Letter. CEM Benchmarking Inc., co-founded by Ambachtsheer in 1991, has earned a reputation as the premier benchmarking organization in the global pensions and investments industry.
Ambachtsheer has received many industry awards for his research and advisory work in the pensions and investments field. His fourth book, “The Future of Pension Management,” offers a progress report from the field, referencing case studies from around the world. Using the discipline of integrative thinking, the book shows how today’s pension challenges are best addressed. A Chinese translation was released by China Development Press in October 2017.
Jim Grant
James Grant, financial journalist and historian, is the founder and editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, a twice-monthly journal of the investment markets. His book “The Forgotten Depression, 1921: The Crash that Cured Itself,” a history of America’s last governmentally unmedicated business-cycle downturn, won the 2015 Hayek Prize of the Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. “Bagehot: The Life and Times of the Greatest Victorian,” a biography of the muse of modern central banking, was published in 2019.
Among his other books on finance and financial history are “Bernard M. Baruch: The Adventures of a Wall Street Legend” (Simon & Schuster, 1983), “Money of the Mind” (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1992), “Minding Mr. Market” (Farrar, Straus, 1993), “The Trouble with Prosperity” (Times Books, 1996), and “Mr. Market Miscalculates” (Axios Press, 2008).
Grant is also the author of a pair of political biographies: “John Adams: Party of One, a life of the second president of the United States” (Farrar, Straus, 2005) and “Mr. Speaker! The Life and Times of Thomas B. Reed, the Man Who Broke the Filibuster” (Simon & Schuster, 2011).
Grant’s television appearances include “60 Minutes,” “The Charlie Rose Show,” “CBS Evening News,” and a 10-year stint on “Wall Street Week.” His journalism has appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Foreign Affairs, and The Claremont Review of Books. He contributed an essay to the Sixth Edition of Graham and Dodd’s “Security Analysis” (McGraw-Hill, 2009).
Grant, a former Navy gunner’s mate, is a Phi Beta Kappa alumnus of Indiana University. He earned a master’s degree in international relations from Columbia University, began his career in journalism in 1972 at the Baltimore Sun, and joined the staff of Barron’s in 1975. He is a trustee of the New York Historical Society and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He and his wife, Patricia Kavanagh, M.D., live in Brooklyn. They are the parents of four grown children and the grandparents of many.
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Jeff Gitterman is a widely recognized leader in the climate change, ESG, and sustainable investing fields, and the creator of SMART (Sustainability Metrics Applied to Risk Tolerance)® Investing Solutions, a suite of global climate-aware allocation strategies available to financial advisory firms and individual investors.
With over 30 years of experience as a financial advisor, Gitterman began realigning Gitterman Wealth Management, LLC toward sustainable investing in 2015. In 2020, the firm launched the Gitterman Asset Management brand to house its rapidly expanding ESG strategies, thought leadership, and practice management offerings for the financial advisory and institutional markets. Over the past several years, the firm has hosted many ESG and climate-focused events for financial advisors, including conferences at the United Nations, the ESG Practice Playbook series of webinars in partnership with RIA Channel, and most recently, the Climate & Capital Conference at the New York Stock Exchange.
Gitterman is also a co-host of TheIMPACT and The Great Repricing shows, which film at the New York Stock Exchange and air on fintech.tv. Noted as an “ESG expert” by Financial Advisor magazine, he has also been featured in the past in Barron’s, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and CNN, among many others. He also speaks frequently about ESG and climate-focused investing at conferences throughout the US, and in 2018 he was named RIA “Thought Leader of the Year” by WealthManagement.com.
Gitterman deeply believes that the migration of investor capital toward ESG, sustainable, and impact investing is one of, if not the most effective ways to help realize the United Nations-supported Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and he is committed to helping both investors and other financial professionals navigate this rapidly growing landscape. He is also the author of “Beyond Success: Redefining the Meaning of Prosperity,” and an associate producer of the feature documentary film “Planetary.”
Gitterman also serves on the board of directors for the Child Health Institute of New Jersey at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School and dedicates much of his free time to raising funds and awareness for the autism community.
Jeff Gitterman
Dr. Kimberley Miner
Dr. Kimberley R. Miner is a scientist and systems engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab in California, where she researches and forecasts climate risks. Her work has taken her to the most extreme environments in the world – from Antarctica to Mt. Everest – where her team secured a Guinness World Record for identifying the highest altitude pollutants. Dr. Miner’s research has been highlighted by CBS, The New York Times, The Washington Post, GQ, and Sports Illustrated. Before coming to NASA, she worked with the Department of Defense in Washington DC, assessing climate risks to national interests.
Dr. Miner is a fellow at the Center for Climate and Security and co-chair of the NASA HQ Interagency Forum on Climate Risks, Impacts, and Adaptation. She is a graduate of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (MPA) and the University of Maine's Climate Change Institute (Ph.D.), where she was a Fulbright, Switzer, and Department of Defense fellow. She has a black belt, is a certified Wilderness Firefighter and First Responder, and a mom to a lively cattle dog.
Dr. peter stone
Dr. Peter Stone holds the Truchard Foundation Chair in Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin. He is Associate Chair of the Computer Science Department, as well as Director of Texas Robotics. In 2013 he was awarded the University of Texas System Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, and in 2014 he was inducted into the UT Austin Academy of Distinguished Teachers, earning him the title of University Distinguished Teaching Professor.
Dr. Stone's research interests in artificial intelligence include machine learning (especially reinforcement learning), multiagent systems, and robotics. In 1998, Dr. Stone received his Ph.D. in computer science from Carnegie Mellon University. From 1999 to 2002 he was a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Artificial Intelligence Principles Research Department at AT&T Labs - Research. He is an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, AAAI Fellow, IEEE Fellow, AAAS Fellow, ACM Fellow, Fulbright Scholar, and 2004 ONR Young Investigator.
In 2007 Dr. Stone received the prestigious IJCAI Computers and Thought Award, given biannually to the top AI researcher under the age of 35, and in 2016 he was awarded the ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award. In 2015, Dr. Stone co-founded Cogitai, Inc., a startup company focused on continual learning, and he currently serves as executive director of Sony AI America.
Sid jha
Siddhartha Jha is the founder, chairman, and CEO of Arbol, a global climate risk solutions platform focused on data-driven parametric insurance. Jha is also a co-founder of dClimate, the first decentralized climate information ecosystem. Prior to Arbol and dClimate, he had over 13 years of experience in the financial industry covering interest rates and commodities in both quantitative research and trading roles. Jha launched an agriculture futures trading portfolio, managing over $100 million at a major commodity trading firm, and was the first analyst at a startup commodity hedge fund, which grew to manage over $600 million in assets. He was previously a vice president of interest rates strategy at J.P. Morgan.
Jha authored the well-received book "Interest Rate Markets," published in both English and Mandarin. He has taught financial markets at New York University and was on the board of a non-profit working with inner city youth. Jha graduated from Harvard University with a B.A. degree cum laude in applied mathematics and M.A. degree in statistics as part of a four-year combined degree program.
Richard Fullmer
Richard is an American investment strategist, pensions researcher, entrepreneur, and innovator. After beginning his career in insurance, he held senior portfolio strategy positions at Fidelity Investments, Russell Investments, and T. Rowe Price. A global authority and thought leader on pension design and portfolio decumulation, he founded Nuova Longevità Research in 2017 where he helped pioneer the field of modern fair tontine finance.
Pat Tschosik
Pat Tschosik, CFA, CMT, is US sector strategist at Ned Davis Research (NDR). Tschosik authors US Equity Sector Strategy publications, which provide insights on US sector and industry leadership trends and themes based on macro, fundamental, valuation, quantitative, and technical analysis. Tschosik also makes overweight and underweight recommendations on all 11 GICS sectors relative to an S&P 500 benchmark. Given the top-down approach, Tschosik works closely with Chief US Strategist Ed Clissold to incorporate firm market views and Chief Global Macro Strategist Joe Kalish to incorporate macro views into his analysis.
Prior to his current role, Tschosik served as NDR’s consumer strategist for nearly 10 years. He began his investment career covering consumer staples for Banc of America Capital Management in St. Louis, MO. Subsequently, Tschosik worked as a senior equity analyst at RCM Capital Management in San Francisco, CA, covering consumer discretionary and consumer staples industries. He joined Ned Davis Research in 2006.
Tschosik has been featured as a guest on CNBC and Bloomberg television in addition to being quoted by The Wall Street Journal. He earned his MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and has a B.S. degree in computer science from Illinois State University. Tschosik is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Institute. He is also a Chartered Market Technician and a member of the Market Technicians Association.