John Robinson, who 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 there in terms of hard work, risk and resilience stayed with him throughout his life.
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 Society of Scotland for five years.
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.
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
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 University and The King’s College in New York, and has authored a textbook on the topic of ESG Investing. He is a board member of the Guide Dog Foundation and American Vet Dogs and serves on the Lavelle Fund’s Investment Committee.
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.
Adesuwa Okunbo Rhodes is the founder of Aruwa Capital Management, a growth equity impact fund investing in untapped opportunities across Nigeria and West Africa.
Founded when she was only 29, Aruwa Capital Management aims to change the narrative for women as capital allocators and entrepreneurs by investing in businesses that make an impact on addressing the gender gap.
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.
Adam Demuyakor is the founder and managing partner at Wilshire Lane Capital, a venture capital and private equity firm that focuses on PropTech solutions based in Los Angeles California. Born in the US to a family originally from Ghana, Adam started out on Wall Street in investment banking and held a number of private equity and venture capital roles before found in Wilshire Lane. He also holds a number of Board roles and is a Board of Trustee of the education nonprofit 9 Dots.
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 Responsibility of Business” with a combined 2.4 million views.