Advisory Board

As Chief Risk Officer, Rodney leads the Risk Management, Compliance and Ethics, and Assurance and Advisory functions for OMERS. Under his leadership, these functions work closely with the businesses units across OMERS to fulfil their mandate, and to provide ongoing monitoring and reporting to senior management, the OMERS Board of Directors and its various committees.

Prior to joining OMERS in 2011, Rodney worked as a Partner at an international accounting firm, where he specialized in auditing complex public and private companies. During this time, he also held several leadership roles with the firm.

A graduate from the University of Kent at Canterbury, with an Honours Degree in Accounting with Computing (Honours), Rodney is an Associate of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ACA-UK).

He is also a Chartered Professional Accountant (CA, CPA) in Canada. Originally from Ireland, Rodney is passionate about giving back through involvement with community. Rodney also serves on the Financial Committee for Crescent School. He lives in Toronto with his family.

Alec Crawford is a partner and chief investment risk officer at Lord Abbett. He is responsible for identifying and managing risk in the firm's portfolios and is a member of the investment leadership team, the strategic allocation committee, and the environmental, social and corporate governance committee.

Crawford joined Lord Abbett in 2012 and was named partner in 2013. His previous experience includes serving as managing director and global head of risk management at Ziff Brothers Investments; managing director and head of agency mortgage-backed securities strategy at RBS Greenwich Capital; managing director and head of mortgage and cross-rates strategy at Deutsche Bank Securities; vice-president and head of mortgage strategy at Morgan Stanley; vice-president, research liaison at Goldman Sachs; and vice-president, research liaison at CS First Boston. Crawford has worked in the financial services industry since 1988 and holds a bachelor of arts degree in computer science from Harvard College.

Heli Khandelia is head of international change management at Apollo Global Management. She is responsible for managing and delivering a  of changes across various business areas in Europe. Khandelia has delivered a range of large-scale, cross-functional business change and regulatory programmes. Her expertise covers multiple asset classes, building and managing high-performing teams and leading multi-disciplined projects from inception to delivery. Khandelia has worked for global banks and consulting firms such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Deutsche Bank, Lloyds and KPMG. She is skilled in programme and project management, governance, regulatory risk and compliance, business change, operations and technology. Khandelia holds a master's degree in applied computing technologies from Northumbria University.

Tanmoy is the Chief Risk Officer for Waterfall Asset Management a $12BN Hedge Fund specializing in Structured Credit in both Public and Private Markets. Prior to joining Waterfall, Tanmoy was the Head of Risk, North America and Senior Data Scientist at CQS, a $20BN Multi Strategy Credit Hedge Fund based out of US and Europe, where he managed Risk for the Credit Businesses and led Data Science projects for the Investment and Marketing Teams. Before CQS, Tanmoy worked at Axonic Capital, a $5BN Credit Hedge Fund where he was the Chief Risk Officer and the Head of Quantitative Research. Tanmoy has prior work experience at Sorin Capital and at Capital One. Tanmoy received a Master’s in Financial Engineering from Cornell University, an MBA from University of Delhi and a Bachelors in Chemical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology.

Murad Nayal is head of risk architecture and informatics at Millennium. Before joining Millennium, he was global head of the risk informatics group at Goldman Sachs and global head of market risk analytics and reporting, and market risk core technology, responsible for calculating and reporting firm-wide market risk and capital metrics. In previous roles at Goldman Sachs, Nayal managed the market risk modelling team in the Americas, driving the development of market risk, the Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review, and capital models. He also managed the corporate treasury modelling team developing models of liquidity risk. Having joined Goldman Sachs in 2005 as an associate in market risk technology, Nayal was named managing director in 2017.

Previously, he has worked as a research scientist in computational biology at Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Columbia University in New York, where he used physical and statistical models, and machine learning techniques to predict the function of proteins and the manner in which they interact with drugs.

Murad holds a doctor of medicine degree from Damascus University, a PhD in biophysics from Washington University in St. Louis and a masters degree in mathematical finance from the Courant Institute, NYU.

Will Hadfield runs the investing team for Risk.net, overseeing coverage of hedge funds, conventional asset managers and insurance companies. He previously covered market structure for Bloomberg News in London, both as a reporter and an editor. He studied history at the University of Durham and speaks French.

Judith joined DWS (formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management) in 2005 following 8 years with JPMorgan Chase. Prior to her current role as head of non-financial risk management & programmes, Judith was the chief risk officer for DWS Americas, she served as the regional control officer for DWS Americas. Before that, she was the global chief operating officer for the DWS Alternatives and Fund Solutions business based in London.

Judith holds an MBA in Financial Management from Pace University, New York.

 

Chris Callies has partnered with senior officers of major financial institutions to address growing complexity in the nature of financial risk and its propagation across geographic, asset class, market structure, and operational boundaries. After initially working with institutional asset managers, commercial and investment banks, and multi-family offices through the financial crisis that began in 2007–08, her professional domain later expanded to alternatives managers, insurance firms, non-bank lenders and regulators. Callies has advanced through a series of senior roles at Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch and Bessemer Trust, including chief investment strategist, chief strategist, head of market risk strategy, and acting chief investment officer, with oversight of more than $40 billion in traditional and alternative assets. She is a dedicated advocate for fully integrated, flexible, proactive risk analytics as a vital tool for effective capital planning, product development and sustainable returns. Callies holds a bachelors degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with a sub-specialty in advanced applied mathematics.

Sudipto is the head of investment risk for Principal Asset Management focusing across all asset classes. Sudipto joined Principal in April 2022. Prior to this, he was the Deputy Head of Investment Risk at Lord, Abbett & Co. LLC, an independent, privately held investment management company, where he spent six years developing and executing the investment risk management program across all asset classes. 

Before Lord Abbett, Sudipto spent seven years at Goldman Sachs as a fixed income quantitative strategist focusing on asset backed securities, commercial and residential mortgage-backed securities and real estate. Sudipto has a PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA and is also a CFA charter holder.

Max is responsible for defining the next generation of multi-asset investment processes for Franklin Templeton Investment Solutions. Previously, he was president and chief investment officer of the start-up asset manager AlphaTrAI, where he harnessed artificial intelligence to build alternative strategies for traditional and digital assets. Before that, he was head of asset allocation at the asset management arm of Pacific Life Insurance for seven years. Prior to Pacific Life, Max was a portfolio manager with Mellon Capital’s multi-asset group and a founding member of Coefficient Global, a quantitative macro hedge fund. Outside of work he’s an amateur racecar driver.

For 25 years Tat has been contributing in Treasury and Capital Markets quant and mathematical finance space. He is currently the Global Head of Risk Model Methodology at Jefferies, and was a senior principal and senior manager for  many years in the financial technology space.Tat holds a Ph.D from Columbia mathematics department and currently an adjunct professor at Columbia University, inspiring the next generation since 2006.

Jen Liang is a Vice President and Portfolio Manager at AIG Investments, where she co-manages more than $13 billion in emerging market debt. She is an honoree on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List 2022.

At AIG, Jen is responsible for constructing portfolios, developing strategies, providing market insight and execution, and managing counterparty relationships for USD and local currency portfolios across strategies. She also plays an active role in improving portfolio analytics and marketing for EM. Prior to joining AIG, Jen was an investment manager at Fosun Group, an international conglomerate and investment company. Before Fosun, Jen was an associate at AllianceBernstein. Jen obtained Bachelor of Arts in Economics from Grinnell College and was a recipient of the merit-based Trustee Honor Scholarship.

Jen is a CFA Charterholder and holds the Certificate in ESG Investing. She is also a RYT500 Yoga Teacher and an avid traveler who speaks 4 languages.

Mr. Mariasch has 30 years of experience trading and investing in emerging markets equities and macro. He is currently the Co-manager of the Pembroke Emerging Markets Fund and the HI-BennBridge EM Absolute Return Fund, two equity long/short hedge funds. Previously he was a Partner and Portfolio Manager at The Rohatyn Group, where he ran the Global Equities practice, and had two stints at Goldman Sachs, one running international equity trading in New York and the second in the Investment Strategy Group running the emerging markets equity exposure for the tactical asset allocation team. Mr. Mariasch holds an MBA from the Stern School of Business (NYU) and a Masters Degree in Accounting from the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Beata Harasim is a senior investment strategist at BlackRock and a member of the BlackRock Investment Institute. She is responsible for developing tactical asset allocation frameworks and contributing to related thought leadership. Before starting her current role, Harasim worked at BlackRock for nine years, most recently as a global macro portfolio manager in the diversified strategies team, running a discretionary fundamental investment process with a primary focus on currencies and fixed income. Prior to that, she worked as a portfolio manager in BlackRock's global and European fixed income teams. Harasim is a Chartered Financial Analyst Institute and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association charterholder. She holds a masters degree in finance and banking from the Warsaw School of Economics and completed a post graduate course in big data and advanced analytics in 2016.

Michel Fournier is Vice President and Chief Risk Officer for Beneva.  He is responsible for Risk Management across the organization. 

Prior to his appointment at Beneva, he was Head of Risk Management and then Head of Hedging at National Life Group, Head of Global Equity Risks at Manulife and Head of Hedging for VA Europe at ING Group. 

Michel has an MBA-Finance and a BSc in Actuarial Science both from Laval University. He also holds the titles of ASA (from the Society of Actuaries), CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and FRM (Financial Risk Manager).

Chris Matta is the president of 3iQ Digital Asset Management. Matta also serves as the president of the Blockchain Association of New Jersey, which advocates for innovative regulatory leadership and enterprise collaboration for the cryptocurrency space. Prior to joining 3iQ, Chris was the co-founder of Crescent Crypto, an asset management firm focused on creating innovative investment solutions to bring the cryptocurrency asset class to institutional and mainstream investors. Previously, Chris was a vice-president at Goldman Sachs, where he managed assets for the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund and Trust Company.