Linda-Eling Lee

Global Head of ESG Research, MSCI

As Global Head of Research for MSCI’s ESG Research group, Linda-Eling Lee oversees all ESG-related content and methodology. MSCI ESG Research is the largest provider of ESG Rating and analytics to global institutional investors. Linda leads one of the largest teams of research analysts in the world who are dedicated to identifying risks and opportunities arising from material ESG issues. She and her team have been widely recognised as the best SRI/ESG researchers by market surveys and awards.

Linda joined MSCI in 2010 following the acquisition of RiskMetrics, where she led ESG ratings research and was head of consumer sector analysis. Linda joined RiskMetrics Group in 2009 through the acquisition of Innovest. Prior to joining Innovest, Linda was the Research Director at the Center for Research on Corporate Performance, developing academic research at Harvard Business School into management tools to drive long-term corporate performance. Previously, she was a strategy consultant with Monitor Group in Europe and in Asia, where she worked with Fortune 500 clients in industries ranging from beverages to telecommunications.

Linda received her AB from Harvard, MSt from Oxford, and PhD in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University.

Linda has published research both in management journals such as the Harvard Business Review and MIT’s Sloan Management Review, as well as in top academic peer-reviewed journals such as Management Science and Journal of Organizational Behavior. She is frequent media commentator on ESG topics and sustainable investing in outlets including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Forbes and the New York Times.

Jor law

Co-Founder, VerifyInvestor.com

Having built out product and advised on strategy for some of the most prominent companies in the space, Jor is a pioneer in building out the ecosystem for digitizing and trading securities on the blockchain and other distributed ledger technologies. A finance and securities attorney, he is most well-known for his expertise in secured lending and alternative finance, including EB-5, venture capital, crowdfunding, and initial coin offerings (ICOs) or security token offerings (STOs). He is a co-founder of VerifyInvestor.com, the dominant accredited investor verification service in the world, and an expert on attracting and verifying accredited investors. Within the crypto space, he's most passionate about securities regulations affecting tokens, identity for regulatory purposes vs privacy and anonymity, and cross-ledger or cross-chain technologies.

Farrah Lakhani

Director of U.S. Growth & Operations, OakNorth Analytical Intelligence

Farrah Lakhani is the Director of Growth and Operations in the US for OakNorth Analytical Intelligence (“ONAI”). Prior to joining ONAI, Farrah was a senior investment banker at JPMorgan advising financial institutions and fintech companies for M&A and capital markets transactions. Farrah has over 13 years’ experience as an investment banker and private equity investor focused on financial services.

Julia La Roche

Host, The Julia La Roche Show

A veteran financial journalist, Julia has interviewed some of the world's top CEOs and investors. Julia dives deep into the lives and minds of her guests, uncovering their stories, experiences, and insights. She doesn’t shy away from the hard-hitting questions, and her guests always bring thoughtful answers.

Alexandra Krystal

Head of Origination and Distribution, Prime Services, CIBC

Alexandra Krystal joined CIBC in August of 2017 as Managing Director and Sales Head, Prime Services Group. Ms. Krystal’s responsibilities include the strategic development and implementation of CIBC’s U.S. Prime Brokerage Launch Initiative, including oversight of core activities involving product development and sales & marketing. In her current role, Ms. Krystal is also responsible for managing senior client relationships with alternative asset managers, overseeing the build-out of client-facing strategies and providing ongoing guidance with respect to structure, industry best-practices and forward looking trends in the Prime Brokerage market.

Prior to joining CIBC Capital Markets, Ms. Krystal worked in the Hedge Fund Consulting Practice at a professional services firm, where she led the Prime Brokerage Hedge Fund Strategy. Ms. Krystal developed their Prime Brokerage Advisory business, where she and her team worked along-side Prime Brokers to perform business assessments considering metrics across infrastructure, legal entity analysis, balance sheet, human capital, risk, client composition, and fixed / variable technology costs. She also developed an industry-leading Treasury Function Study to substantiate the evolution of the financing role, based on a detailed examination of collateral management processes, counterparty risk management practices, margin replication methods, Prime Brokerage relationships and funding technology solutions. Ms. Krystal chaired that same firm’s Emerging Manager Hedge Fund Strategy and was involved in emerging manager consulting, including start-up considerations and franchise-sized best practices across middle and back office functions.

Ms. Krystal also held senior sales and relationship management roles within the Prime Brokerage groups at two other financial institutions. In this capacity, she helped bring new clients to the respective banks, grow client profitability within Prime and was a conduit into the broader banking organization.

Ms. Krystal graduated from Colgate University with a Bachelor of Arts (Political Science & English) and from Columbia University with a Master of Business Administration (Finance).

Ms. Krystal spent 2 years as the Co-Chair of Hedge Fund Cares Committee of Hope and 7 years on the Committee, she is an Angel Member of 100 Women in Finance and a Board Member of The Adam Gaynes Foundation.

Daniel Kowalski

Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury

Daniel Kowalski currently serves as a Counselor to the Secretary of the Treasury. In this role, Dan advises the Secretary regarding Treasury’s efforts to drive the Administration’s domestic policy agenda. His particular areas of focus are budget and fiscal policy; health, education and welfare policy; tax policy; and infrastructure policy. From June through November, 2016, Dan served in several roles in the Trump campaign in New York City with an emphasis on these domestic policy issues.

Dan has 30 years of experience in fiscal policy at the federal, state, and local levels of government.

Prior to Treasury, Kowalski was Deputy Staff Director of the Republican staff of the Senate Budget Committee. He also served as the Director of Budget Review for the Republican staff of the House Budget Committee. In those two positions, Dan helped shepherd several balanced budgets and reconciliation bills through the U.S. Congress.

He started in Washington in 1995 with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) as a Principal Analyst in the unit responsible for preparing CBO’s baseline budget projections.

In state government, Dan worked as Director of the Legislative Budget Office for the Missouri General Assembly, and as the senior individual income tax analyst with the Republican staff of the Finance Committee for the New York State Senate.

He started his career as a management analyst for the Deputy Commissioner for Audit in the New York City Department of Finance.

Kowalski earned a Master in Public Policy from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a Bachelor of Arts from St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland.

Paul Kovarsky, CFA

Director of Institutional Partnerships, CFA Institute

Paul is a Director of Institutional Partnerships for CFA Institute, the leading global association of investment professionals. Responsible for design and implementation of Employer Partnerships and Executive Education, including CFA-Harvard Business School’s Investment Management Workshop, he is passionate about wider adoption of CFA Institute standards as well as distribution and use of educational resources for the investment management profession.

Frequent speaker on the topical industry issues, Paul has been featured in video interviews available on the RIAChannel, Real Vision TV and AdvisorAnalyst. His conference speaking engagements include events by Pensions&Investments, InsideETFs, Exchange Traded Forum and CFA New York. Paul also started Csuite Talks series for CFA Institute’s Enterprising Investor online publication with over 15 interviews of printed interviews of leading CIOs, Asset Owners and prominent academics from Harvard, Yale, Sorbonne and New York University.

Prior to joining CFA Institute, Paul led the Sales/Business Development for North American Financial Institutions for Australasia’s premier bank, Westpac. In addition to his buy-side experience as Investments Director for a family office, Paul worked for and Deutsche, Société Générale and ANZ Bank.

Karin Klein

Founding Parter, Bloomberg Beta

Karin Klein is a founding partner, leading east coast investing activities for Bloomberg Beta, a venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies that make business work better and has a focus on machine intelligence. Karin currently serves on the board of directors for Paramount Group (NYSE: PGRE), Harvey Mudd College, and L’Oreal’s Women in Digital. Prior to launching Bloomberg Beta, she led new initiatives at Bloomberg and oversaw Softbank’s venture capital team that reviewed new investments. She also was the co-founder and president of an educational training business for children and currently enjoys volunteering as a mentor with TechStars and the New York City Economic Development Corporation. She has been recognized on the Techweek100, Silicon Alley 100, Crain’s Women to Watch in New York Tech, and New York Business Journal’s “Women of Influence.” Karin has an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and is a summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the Annenberg School of Communications and The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

David Klein

Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder, CommonBond

David Klein is CEO and co-founder of CommonBond, a financial technology company on a mission to give students and graduates more affordable, transparent, and simple ways to pay for higher education. Prior to CommonBond, David worked in consumer finance at American Express, and started his professional career at McKinsey & Company, where he advised clients in financial services.

David started CommonBond when he decided to go back to school to pursue his MBA, having to pay his way 100% with student loans. That's when he experienced firsthand high rates, a confusing process, and poor service. He knew there had to be a better way, so he created one. To date, CommonBond has funded over $2B of student loans. The company is also first and only finance company with a "1-for-1" social mission: for every loan CommonBond funds, it also funds the education of a child in need. Additionally, CommonBond has been named to the World's 50 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, TIME's 50 Genius Companies, and the Forbes Fintech 50.

David graduated from Brandeis University with a BA in Politics, Economics, and International Business, and attended the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania. He frequently speaks on topics related to student debt, social impact, and personal finance, and can be seen on FOX Business, CNBC and Bloomberg West. David is also a contributor to Forbes, Inc, American Banker, The Hill and TechCrunch. He was named to Crain’s New York 40 Under 40 list in 2016 and is a 2017 Ernst & Young New York Entrepreneur of the Year award winner. For his work on student loan employee benefits, David was named a 2017 Benefits Technology Innovator by Employee Benefit News. 

Jared Klee

Product Manager, IBM Blockchain

Jared is responsible for IBM Blockchain tokenization, an emerging business to enable enterprises to issue, manage, and redeem digital assets on blockchain.

Jared previously led acquisitions and strategic partnerships for IBM Industry Platforms, including Watson Financial Services and IBM Blockchain. Jared helped lead the acquisition of Promontory Financial Group and launch the Watson Financial Services unit.

Prior to the formation of Watson Financial Services, Jared was the global head of Watson Risk & Compliance. As part of his role he met with analysts, regulators, and bank c-suite officers to discuss how AI can help solve challenges in financial services and was on the governance board of IBM Research initiatives to create the next generation technology for risk and compliance.

Jared serves as a trustee for The Williams School and as a class officer for Dartmouth College alumni.

Jared holds an AB from Dartmouth College.

Charlie Kirk

Founder & President, Turning Point USA

Charlie Kirk is the Founder and President of Turning Point USA, a national student movement dedicated to identifying, organizing, and empowering young people to promote the principles of free markets, and limited government. Since the inception of Turning Point USA on June 5th of 2012, Charlie has grown Turning Point USA from nothing to having representation on over 1,400 high schools and college campuses nationwide and over 150 full time staff. A Fox News contributor and a columnist at The Hill, at 25-years-old, he has appeared on Fox News, CNBC, and FOX Business News over 500 times. His social media reach is over 100 million people per month with one of the highest engaged handles on Twitter. He has been ranked the 2nd most influential conservative on social media and has appeared on the Forbes 30 under 30 list. He is also a best-selling author, was the youngest speaker at the 2016 Republican National Convention, and is a proud Eagle Scout.

Cormac Kinney

Founder, Diamond Standard

With innovations cited in nearly 4,000 U.S. Patents, Cormac Kinney has founded four startups acquired by public companies. He is a quant finance pioneer who invented heatmaps, designed more than 100 institutional trading systems, and perfected sentiment analysis, using it to manage $500 million for Tudor and Millennium. Now, as founder of Diamond Standard, Cormac has solved the challenge of creating a standardized diamond commodity. Transacted on the blockchain, it is the first physical and digital asset, forming a decentralized reserve to asset-back any digital contract.

Sal Khan

Founder, Khan Academy

Sal Khan is the founder of Khan Academy, a nonprofit organization with the mission of providing a free, world-class education for anyone anywhere. Khan Academy's content and mastery learning platform has over 71 million registered users from all over the world and has been localized into over 30 languages.

Sal holds three degrees from MIT and an MBA from Harvard. He has been profiled by 60 Minutes, was the only non-profit leader ever profiled on the cover of Forbes and recognized as one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Andrew Keys

Co-Founder, ConsenSys Capital

Andrew Keys supports ConsenSys Capital, ConsenSys’ financial services constellation of companies, including Fund Foundry, ConsenSys Ventures, and Token Foundry.

Previously, Andrew ran ConsenSys’ global business development from inception of the company, co-founded ConsenSys Enterprise, co-created the first Ethereum Blockchain-as-a-Service offering with Microsoft, and began the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.

Andrew comes to ConsenSys with capital markets, healthcare, technology and entrepreneurial experience. Previously, Andrew worked for UBS investment bank in equities analysis. Later, he was involved within multiple hedge funds and broker dealers in alternative asset investing. After, he co-founded a healthcare revenue cycle management company where he learned about Bitcoin and eventually Ethereum.

Andrew graduated from Loyola University in Maryland and University of Auckland with degrees in economics and international finance. His best computer science was in college, and it’s been downhill technically, since then.

William J. Kelly

Chief Executive Officer, CAIA Assocation

William (Bill) J. Kelly, CAIA is the President & CEO of the CAIA Association. Bill has been a frequent industry speaker, writer, and commentator on alternative investment topics around the world since taking the leadership role at the CAIA Association in January, 2014. Previously, Bill was the CEO of Boston Partners and one of seven founding partners of the predecessor firm, Boston Partners Asset Management which, prior to a majority interest being sold to Robeco Group in Rotterdam in 2002, was an employee-owned firm. Bill’s career in the institutional asset management space spans over 30 years where he gained extensive managerial experience through successive CFO, COO and CEO roles. In addition to his current role, Bill is a tireless advocate for shareholder protection and investor education and is currently the Chairman and lead independent director for the Boston Partners Trust Company. He has previously served as an independent director and audit committee chair for ’40 Act Mutual Funds and other financial services firms. He is also currently an Advisory Board Member of the Certified Investment Fund Director Institute which strives to bring the highest levels of professionalism and governance to independent fund directors around the world. A member of the board of the CAIA Association, Bill also represents CAIA in similar capacities via their global partnerships with other associations and global regulators. Bill began his career as an accountant with PwC and is a designated Audit Committee Financial Expert in accordance with SEC rules. Follow Bill Kelly on Twitter @CAIA_BillKelly

Bruce Katz

Founding Director, Nowak Metro Finance Lab, Drexel University

Bruce Katz is the Founding Director of the Nowak Metro Finance Lab at Drexel University in Philadelphia and is the coauthor of The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism. Previously he served as inaugural Centennial Scholar at Brookings Institution and as vice president and director of Brooking’s Metropolitan Policy Program for 20 years. He is a member of the RSA City Growth Commission in the United Kingdom and a Visiting Professor in Practice at London School of Economics. Katz previously served as chief of staff to the secretary of Housing and Urban Development and staff director of the Senate Subcommittee on Housing and Urban Affairs. Katz co-led the Obama administration’s housing and urban transition team. He is coauthor of The Metropolitan Revolution and The New Localism: How Cities Can Thrive in the Age of Populism, editor or coeditor of several books on urban and metropolitan issues, and a frequent media commentator.  

Brad Katsuyama

Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer, IEX

As CEO, Brad oversees both the long-term strategic direction of IEX and its day-to-day management. As a former head risk trader and head of electronic trading at RBC Capital Markets, he is hands-on in the development of the products and services that IEX builds for clients interested in better execution quality.

Brad was one of the co-founders of IEX in 2012 after their team uncovered ways that the existing stock exchanges were selling high speed technology and data to the detriment of long-term investors. Brad and his team’s pursuit of a fairer market has been chronicled in Michael Lewis’ book Flash Boys, as well as in outlets ranging from 60 Minutes to the New York Times Magazine and Bloomberg Markets. Brad was honored as part of New York Times Dealbook’s 2018 inaugural class of Groundbreakers.

Cameron Kasky

Activist

Cameron Kasky is a former student at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School who, after the tragic shooting on February 14th, 2018, created a movement advocating for gun control called the March for Our Lives. Cameron later left the organization to focus his efforts on supplementing the political conversation by promoting civility in debate.

David S. Karow, MD, PHD

Chief of Radiogenomics & Interim Chief Executive Officer, Human Longevity

An innovative leader who brings more than 10 years of experience in advanced MR Imaging and genomic analytics.

Before joining HLI, Dr. Karow was the Director of Body MRI in the Department of Radiology at UC, San Diego, where he still maintains an appointment as an Associate Professor. Dr. Karow was awarded multiple federal and private research grants and published numerous papers focusing on the development of imaging biomarkers for chronic age related disease.

Dr. Karow completed his fellowship in diagnostic and non-vascular interventional radiology at UCLA. Dr. Karow completed his medical training at the University of Michigan medical school in the combined M.D./Ph.D., graduating with a distinction in research.

Brett Jefferson

President & Co-Chief Investment Officer, Hildene Capital Management

Mr. Jefferson is the Founder and President of Hildene Capital Management, an asset management firm specializing in structured finance investments. Mr. Jefferson oversees all firm investment decisions and strategies. With over 25 years of combined experience in the structured finance market and the option arbitrage industry, Mr. Jefferson has led Hildene to Barron’s Top 100 Annual Hedge Funds list for six consecutive years.

Mr. Jefferson graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Syracuse University and a Master of Management degree from J.L. Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Prior to founding Hildene, Mr. Jefferson was a Senior Portfolio Manager of the Marathon Structured Finance Fund, which had no down months during his tenure. Prior to Marathon, he worked in the Structured Credit Products groups at Salomon Smith Barney and Chase Securities.

Mr. Jefferson is very active in the community. He is a member of the board of directors of the Tewaaraton Foundation, which annually awards the Tewaaraton Trophy to the best college lacrosse player in the nation; as well as a board member of the Premier Lacrosse League (PLL), a tour based professional lacrosse league featuring the best players in the world. Mr. Jefferson is also on the board of trustees of the Gifft Hill School in St. John, US Virgin Islands. He is the managing member of RPP Advisors LLC, a financial services firm based in the US Virgin Islands.