Webinar: CIO: Survival of the Fittest by Chief Investment Officer

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About This Webinar

Can our institutions—pension plans, endowments, foundations, etc.—survive, given the dismal outlook for expected returns? What changes might need to be made? Do risk tolerances need to change? What are some survival tips?

Presenters

Shivin Kwatra

Head of LDI Portfolio Management – US, Insight Investment

Shivin joined Insight in November 2017 as Head of LDI Portfolio Management for North America. Prior to this, Shivin was a senior portfolio manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where he managed fixed income and LDI portfolios. He started his career within the Investment Bank at JP Morgan on the Structured Products and Derivatives Marketing team. He was a founding member of the pension advisory group at JP Morgan (which was acquired by Pacific Life) and Head of Direct Investments at Pacific Global Advisors (which was acquired by Goldman Sachs). Shivin holds a BSc in Commerce with a concentration in Finance from the McIntire School at the University of Virginia, where he was also the captain of the men’s golf team. He is a CFA charterholder and maintains Series 7 and 63 licenses from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority and Series 3 license from the National Futures Association.

Clint Coghill

Chief Executive Officer

Clint Coghill co-founded Backstop Solutions Group in 2003 as the Founding Chairman and has helped guide the company as Chairman of the Board. Clint now leads the Backstop Executive Team as CEO.
Prior to joining Backstop in an executive role, Clint was CIO of Coghill Capital Management, a successful Chicago-based hedge fund management company he started in 1995. Among his other professional pursuits, Clint was the Founding Chairman of NFTE Chicago’s Regional Advisory Board, which provides entrepreneurship programs to young people from low-income communities and reaches more than 2,000 youth per year. He is also the founder of two charitable Organizations, the Coghill Family Foundation and the Environmental Impact Initiative.
Clint received his Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration from the University of Arizona, and his Master’s Degree in Business Administration from the London Business School.

Andrew Palmer

Chief Investment Officer for the Maryland State Retirement and Pension System

Andrew Palmer, CFA is the Chief Investment Officer for the Maryland State Retirement
and Pension System. In this role, he is responsible for the day-to-day operations of the
System’s investment division and has overall responsibility for the System’s investment
program.
Previously he was the Deputy Chief Investment Officer, Director of Fixed Income for the
Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System. In addition to his role as Director of Fixed
Income, he led the construction of a Strategic Lending Portfolio, was a member of the
Private Equity and Real Estate Committees and shared in the responsibility for tactical
asset allocation and new product development. He began his career at ASB Capital
Management, a Bethesda, Maryland based institutional advisory firm.
Mr. Palmer is a member of the University of Maryland, Economics Leadership Council,
and the ILPA, has been active in the CFA program and was President of the Washington
Association of Money Managers. He received a BA and an MA in Economics from the
University of Maryland

Dominic J. Garcia

Chief Investment Officer, New Mexico Public Employees Retirement

Dominic Garcia along with his wife and family, returned to New Mexico in 2017 after spending a decade away. Their roots and family are deep within New Mexico and chose to return to help make a positive impact in the community they love.
As CIO of New Mexico PERA, Dominic brings his unique experience and success in investment and pension management to continue to push PERA forward to meet its goals in a very challenging investment environment. Thus far, Dominic and his team have led the effort to integrate a risk-based approach to investing, separating Alpha and Beta in its investment philosophy. This innovative approach has been recognized nationally and has helped the system produce strong risk adjusted returns and exceed benchmarks. At the end of 2018, PERA has met its actuarial hurdle over 10 year and 30 year periods, exceeded its benchmarks for all time periods, and produced significant value add for members.
Dominic has over 15 years of experience in investment and pension management. His career began as an Analyst for the Legislative Finance Committee and later as a Deputy CIO for New Mexico PERA. At that time, much of Dominic’s work helped lead to the adoption of the Prudent Investor Act, which allowed New Mexico’s investment agencies, including PERA, to modernize its investment portfolios to include alternative assets. Then, in 2008, Dominic was recruited and joined the $100 billion State of Wisconsin Investment Board (SWIB) pension system, which is the only fully funded pension system in the country. For nearly a decade, Dominic had a successful tenure at SWIB serving jointly on the fund’s Investment Committee and as a Senior Alpha Manager. Dominic has been a speaker at numerous industry events and he and his teams’ have received
numerous industry-wide awards recognizing their innovative work. Dominic was also named 40 under 40 for three consecutive years by AI CIO magazine. Dominic is a member of the Santa Fe Community Foundation, Impact Investing Committee, a member of the Managed Funds Association (MFA) Institutional Investor Advisory Council, and Co-Chair of the Institutional Investor 2019 Public Funds Roundtable. Dominic graduated from Manzano High School in Albuquerque and has degrees from the University of New Mexico and University of Chicago. He lives in an old adobe home in Santa Fe, NM with his wife and three children.

Christine Giordano

Managing Editor, Chief Investment Officer

Christine Giordano has been managing editor of ai-CIO.com (Chief Investment Officer’s digital news site) since 2016. The ai-CIO brand was honored with the prestigious Best Media Brand award in 2016, 2018, and 2019 in the Jesse H. Neal Awards.
A career journalist, prior to joining the company, Giordano wrote in-depth news for daily newspapers and as a staff writer for The New York Times Company, winning the team NYT Chairman’s Award, the Florida Bar’s Grand Prize award, and various first place awards from the Society of Professional Journalists. She is a fellow of both the National Press Foundation and the American Institute for Economic Research.

Melissa Waller

President, AIF Institute & Former Deputy Treasurer, State of North Carolina

Melissa Waller currently serves as President of the AIF Institute, providing essential research and resources to institutional investors globally to help them achieve their investment objectives.
Previously Melissa served as the former Deputy Treasurer and Chief of Staff for the North Carolina Department of State Treasury, where she successfully oversaw Department strategic planning, operations, and public-policy implementation, along with a staff of more than 400 employees.
The North Carolina Retirement Systems, the pension fund for the state, is the tenth largest public pension fund in the United States, with assets in excess of $100 billion.
Melissa’s background includes over 20 years of private and public-sector financial industry experience, including 15 years in the banking sector with Wachovia/Wells Fargo. She has served as Chair of the North Carolina Department of State Treasurer’s Corporate Governance Committee, as well as on the Council of Institutional Investors Board of Directors and the Governor’s Board of Innovation for the North Carolina University System. She currently serves as Executive Program Director for the National Institute of Public Finance, as well as Director of Public Private Partnerships for the Kenan Institute at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.