Afsaneh Beschloss is the Founder and CEO at RockCreek, an investment firm which invests across diverse sectors with a special focus on climate, affordable housing and education investments in developed, emerging and frontier markets. She is on the Board of Directors of the World Resources Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations, and the Rockefeller Foundation and holds numerous other Board and Trustee roles. 

Between Series 1 and series 2 of 2023, we kicked off a brand new focus series – the Love Series – in celebration of love in February 2023.  This had a great response – reminding us of what made people human.  It sent one listener back to his old photo album to remind himself of his showjumping days, and others felt motivated to take up hobbies again.  

Now we are back to our main series focused on investment professionals but love runs through it like a golden thread.  Love, discipline, lessons from parents.  Our guests include a former college football player, who spent time working as a prison guard before returning to university and ultimately entering the investment industry, an expert on music valuation, multiple ESG and pensions specialists and founders of fund companies – large and small.  

It is hard to believe that we are back for our fourth year of the Fiftyfaces Podcast – and in Series 1 of 2023 we hear about unorthodox beginnings such as the twelve year old who arbitraged the price of chickens when growing up in Uganda, and ended up in a senior role in Bridgewater before starting his own firm. We hear about traditional ones too, about investment instincts honed at the family dinner table, or through seeing the world through an artist’s eyes. 

Les Bond is CEO at Attucks Asset Management, a firm he founded over 20 years ago.  Attucks is an MBE-certified registered investment advisor which builds portfolios of emerging investment managers- in particular female and minority owned firms. 

Robin Powell is a journalist, investor advocate, financial educator and content consultant.  He is Head of Client Education at RockWealth, as well as Editor of The Evidence Based Investor, and executive director of Regis Media and Ember. He is a frequent commentator on investment management and behavioural finance,  often probing the purported value added by active managers and advocating for better transparency and investor education.

Kirk Sims is a Senior Investment Manager and Head of the Emerging Manager Program at the Teachers Retirement System of Texas, a public pension plan with over $150 bn in assets under management. He previously worked at the Teachers Retirement System of Illinois, where he spent close to 7 years, and where he had oversight of the $7 bn minority investment program and the $750 m emerging manager program. Prior to that he held a variety of financial services roles.

A delightful canter through an inspiring HBCU education, a lifelong passion for jazz and a role at the helm of an emerging manager program that is one of the most prominent in the USA.

Gary Greenberg leads the Emerging Markets Equity team at the international business of Federated Hermes. He has had the role of portfolio manager in the flagship fund for over 9 years, and recently passed the baton on this to his co-portfolio manager Kunjal Gala on September 1 of this year. He has had a long career in investment, but what has fascinated me most about Gary is his parallel focus on spirituality.

A portfolio managers shares his journey into the arena and how he integrates his spirituality and inner self with the stresses of a financial services role.

Mel Lindsey is Managing Partner of Nile Capital Group based in the Los Angeles Area. He is already a veteran of the asset management industry having established the US asset management arm of a Swiss Asset Manager in 2004 and grown it to a peak of $78 bn in AUM in 2008 before successfully launching an IPO in 2009.

In 2014 he set up Nile Capital Management, which is a company that takes strategic stakes in asset managers specifically at their growth phase. Our conversation discusses sales alpha, what it is, and how you learn to create it, some of the challenges facing emerging independent firms, and what the key features are to sustainable growth – such as the halo effect, ownership incentives and speed.