CFA Institute Research Foundation Board of Trustees

Professional Diversity

Investment Management (portfolio management, investment analysis, trading)
Fund Sponsor/Asset Owner (public & private Defined Benefit, Defined Contribution funds, endowment, foundation, Taft Hartley, insurance, high net worth)
Advisory (academic, actuarial, consulting, brokerage)

Area of Expertise

Equity (public, private, domestic, international)
Fixed Income (government, credit, short, long, domestic, international, quality)
Alternatives (real estate, commodities, hedge funds, derivatives)

Investment Publication Credentials

Representation by trustees who know high quality investment research and the experts who conducting such research

Marketing/Promotion Expertise

Representation by trustees who know the global investment community and how to reach out to it

Geographical Diversity
Age, Experience, and Gender Diversity

Throughout the year, members of the CFA Institute Board of Governors submit recommendations for new trustees. The selection process is as follows:

Board members' and others recommendations, along with names offered up by CFA Institute, represent the pool of future trustee candidates. All nominations must come from this pool.
The Research Foundation’s Nominating Committee meets annually to review the pool and select two finalists for each open position, considering diversity needs (gender, geography and expertise). Finalists are assigned sponsors and interviewed by phone.
The Nominating Committee makes a recommendation to the Research Foundation Board, who then take a vote and contact the chosen members. Finalists not chosen will receive priority in being considered as finalists in future.

Submit a Nomination

The CFA Institute Research Foundation Board of Trustees is comprised of the original founding members of the board, as well as the most recent directors.

Contact the CFA Institute Research Foundation Board of Trustees

Jeffery V. Bailey, CFA, is a retired Senior Finance Lecturer at the University of Minnesota. Previously, he was Senior Director, Benefits, at Target Corporation, where he supervised the company’s employee benefit plans as well as directed the investment of the defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans. Prior to Target, Jeff was a managing partner of Richards & Tierney, a Chicago-based pension consulting firm specializing in quantitative risk control techniques. Before that position, he was assistant executive director of the Minnesota State Board of Investment, which manages the pension assets of Minnesota public employees. Jeff has published numerous articles about pension management. He co-authored the textbooks Investments and Fundamentals of Investments with William F. Sharpe and Gordon J. Alexander and co-authored the CFA Institute Research Foundation publications, Defined Contribution Plans: Challenges and Opportunities for Plan Sponsors, A Primer for Investment Trustees, and Controlling Misfit Risk in Multiple-Manager Investment Programs. He is currently Chair of the University of Minnesota Foundation Investment Advisers and Vice Chair of the CFA Institute Research Foundation. Jeff received a BA in economics from Oakland University and an MA in economics and an MBA (Finance) from the University of Minnesota.

Aaron Low, CFA, is a principal at Lumen Advisors, LLC, where he manages emerging markets macro long-short funds and oversees Lumen's operations in Asia. He also serves as a board trustee of the Singapore government's pension fund. Previously, Dr. Low served as a senior portfolio manager and head of Asia ex-Japan at PIMCO and as a senior portfolio manager and head of Asia at RCM Global Investors. He serves on the Board of Governors of CFA Institute and the board of directors of the Wealth Management Institute. Dr. Low holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the National University of Singapore and a PhD in international financial economics from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

President and CEO

CFA Society Toronto

Margaret Franklin, CFA, leads CFA Institute and its more than 170,000 members worldwide in promoting the highest standards of education, ethics, and professional excellence in the investment profession. She assumed her role in September 2019 and has more than 25 years of investment and wealth management experience.

Before joining CFA Institute, Ms. Franklin led International Wealth Management for North America and was president of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Advisory Services in Canada. She also served as a board member of BNY Mellon Trust Company (Cayman). Margaret joined BNY Mellon in 2016.

Prior to joining BNY Mellon, Ms. Franklin held multiple senior management positions, including president of Marret Private Wealth and COO of Marret Asset Management, a credit and hedge fund asset manager in Toronto. During that six-year tenure, she had direct oversight of all aspects of the private wealth business. Prior to joining Marret, Margaret was a partner with KJ Harrison & Partners.

Ms. Franklin began her career in the institutional business and has worked with pension plans, endowments, foundations, and government agencies at State Street Global Advisors, Mercer, and Barclays Global Investors.

She previously served as chair of CFA Institute Board of Governors and is a former president of the CFA Society Toronto Board. Ms. Franklin is a founding member of the CFA Institute Women in Investment Initiative, a past recipient of the Alfred C. Morley Distinguished Service Award in 2014, and a member of its Future of Finance Content Council.

Ms. Franklin earned a Bachelor of Administration in Economics from McMaster University in Ontario. She is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Society Toronto.

Board Member, Member of CFA Society Switzerland

CFA Society Switzerland

Dr. Giuseppe Ballocchi, CFA, is passionate about bridging the gap between the theory and the practice of finance with a pragmatic, multi-disciplinary approach. He is a partner with Alpha Governance Partners and specializes in derivative strategies. Dr. Ballocchi serves on a number of company and investment fund boards. He is an adjunct professor and member of the Steering Committee for the Master in Finance at the University of Lausanne and a visiting professor at the University of Malta.

Dr. Ballocchi is a member of the Future of Finance Content Council of CFA Institute and represents CFA Institute on the IFRS Advisory Council. He served on the Board of Governors of CFA Institute, where he chaired the Audit and Risk Committee. He also served as president of CFA Switzerland. Dr. Ballocchi was head of financial engineering and risk analytics at Pictet & Cie, chief investment officer at Olsen Ltd, a fixed-income manager at the Asian Development Bank in Manila and a high-energy physicist at CERN.

He holds a laurea (MS) in physics from the University of Bologna (Italy), an MBA from the Open University (United Kingdom), and a PhD in high-energy physics from the University of Rochester (United States). He is the author of more than 50 academic publications in physics and finance, including a reading for the CFA curriculum. He is currently writing a book on pitfalls in wealth management.

Manager, Treasury & Deputy City Treasurer, City of Calgary

CFA Society Calgary

Aaron joined The City of Calgary in 2016 and took the role of Deputy City Treasurer in March 2018. As the head of Treasury, he has oversight of the $6 billion investment portfolio, all cash management, banking, and cashiering operations, and debt issuance and capital project advisory functions. Mr. Brown holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta in 1997 and became a CFA charterholder in 2003. He currently holds numerous board appointments including Calgary Housing Corporation and Silvera for Seniors. In August 2022, completed four years as global Chair of the CFA Institute’s Presidents Council. In this global senior society leadership role he represented the 161 CFA societies around the world and their over 160,000 charterholders. Aaron is member of both CFA Society Calgary and CFA Society Edmonton.

Frank J. Fabozzi, CFA, is a professor of practice at Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University. He has held various professorial positions in finance at MIT, Yale, Princeton, EDHEC Business School, New York University, and Carnegie Mellon. He is the editor of the Journal of Portfolio Management, cofounder and coeditor of the Journal of Financial Data Science, and an editor of Annals of Operations Research. He has authored and edited a number of books on asset management and, in 2002, was inducted into the Fixed Income Society’s Hall of Fame. From 1988 to 2023, he served on the board of directors of the BlackRock fixed income complex.

Bill Fung joined the CFA Institute Research Foundation's board in 2007 serving as trustee until his retirement in 2015. Prior to his retirement, Bill also served as a member of the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal. Bill returned to the Research Foundation board in late 2017 and currently chairs the research committee of the board. Bill entered the financial services industry during the early 80s working for Lehman Brothers and Bankers Trust. In 1990 he co-founded a hedge fund and subsequently a fund of hedge funds which was acquired in 2005. Bill remained active in the alternative investment industry serving on investment committees and boards of private investor vehicles. He is one of the founding fathers of an alternative investment due diligence specialists firm Albourne Partners. Bill holds a BSc and a PhD degree in Mathematics from London University and a PhD degree in Finance from the University of Manchester. He held visiting faculty positions at London Business School, Manchester Business School, the London School of Economics, New York University, and Rutgers University. Bill maintained his academic interest throughout his career and published his work in journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Financial Analysts Journal, and, more recently, Management Sciences. Bill received the CAIA 2015 Award for Excellence in Alternative Investment Research, a Graham and Dodd Scroll Award in 2004, and the 1999 Fischer Black Memorial Foundation’s Robert J Schwartz Memorial Prize.

Phil is an independent member of the State Investment Advisory Board in Queensland and a consultant to AustralianSuper. He has extensive experience in investment management, financial markets and economic policy, including in asset allocation (both strategic and dynamic), portfolio construction and manager selection across a broad range of sectors.

Phil studied economics at university and worked as an economist in economic policy with the Reserve Bank of Australia, and in business with the ANZ Banking Group for a total of 18 years. Phil then transitioned into investment management in 1999, and worked with the Queensland Investment Corporation and Access Capital Advisors before joining Mercer in 2007, where he was Senior Portfolio Strategist and Deputy Chief Investment Officer until August 2018.

Phil is actively involved with the CFA Institute. He is a past-President of the CFA Society of Melbourne and was the Presidents Council Representative for the CFA Asia Pacific North and Oceania region in 2015-19.

Phil’s academic qualifications include a Bachelor of Arts (Economics) with Honours from Macquarie University, a Master of Commerce (Finance) with Honours from the University of Melbourne and the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) qualification. He is also a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors course.

Vest Financial

CFA Society South Carolina

Joanne Hill has over 25 years of experience in research and strategy with an emphasis on indexes, options and quantitative investments. Prior to joining CBOE Vest, Dr. Hill worked with ProShares for 8 years, as Head of Institutional Investment Strategy, focusing on ETF research and education, and spent 17 years at Goldman Sachs, where she was a Managing Director leading global equity index and derivatives research and advising institutional investors on strategies using index and risk management tools.

She heads the research committee for the "Q" Group and the CFA Institute Research Foundation where she is also a board member. She also serves on the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal, Journal of Alternative Investments, and Journal of Index Investing.

Money Management Executive named Dr. Hill one of the ten inaugural recipients of the Top Women in Asset Management Awards. She was a Founding Member and Co-President of Women in ETFs and currently serves on their board. She is a member of the Investment Committee of the Montgomery County Public School Defined Benefit and Defined Contribution pension plans. Prior to her career on Wall Street, Dr. Hill was on the faculty of the University of Massachusetts (Amherst) and she has a Ph.D. in Finance from Syracuse University.

Professor in the Practice Emeritus of Finance, Yale School of Management; Chairman, Zebra Capital Management, LLC

Roger G. Ibbotson is Professor in the Practice Emeritus of Finance at Yale School of Management and chairman of Zebra Capital Management, LLC, a global equity investment and hedge fund manager. He is founder and former chairman of Ibbotson Associates. Professor Ibbotson conducts research on a broad range of financial topics, including popularity, liquidity, investment returns, mutual funds, international markets, portfolio management, and valuation. He has written numerous books and articles, including Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation (coauthored by Rex Sinquefield), which is updated annually and serves as a standard reference for information and capital market returns. Professor Ibbotson’s other books include The Equity Risk Premium, Lifetime Financial Advice, and, most recently, Popularity: A Bridge between Classical and Behavioral Finance. He is a regular contributor to and an editorial board member of both trade and academic journals. Professor Ibbotson serves on numerous boards and frequently speaks at universities, conferences, and other forums. He received his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Purdue University, his MBA from Indiana University, and his PhD from the University of Chicago, where he also taught for more than 10 years and served as executive director of the Center for Research in Security Prices.

Founder and co-CIO at ViviFi Ventures

Lotta Moberg is an analyst on William Blair’s Dynamic Allocation Strategies (DAS) team. In this role, she is responsible for global macro research. Lotta previously worked for the Swedish foreign ministry in Russia and the Swedish Defense Forces in Kosovo, and has been a consultant for the World Bank. She has published articles in several economics journals, including The Journal of Institutional Economics and The Review of Austrian Economics, and has taught classes in economics at George Mason University. Lotta’s research includes special economic zones, tax policy, and municipal bankruptcy. She is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of Chicago. She received a BA in economics from Lund University in Sweden and a PhD. in economics from George Mason University.

CEO, CFA Society Germany

CFA Society Germany

Susan Spinner, CFA, is currently CEO of CFA Society Germany, the largest professional association for investment professionals in Germany.

Susan looks back on over 25 years of professional experience in the investment industry with a focus on capital markets, credit portfolio management and structured securities analysis. In Germany, she has worked in senior roles for well-known financial institutions such as Cominvest, Commerz International Capital Management, the Hamburgische Landesbank, and Dresdner Bank. In addition, she worked in Chicago (USA) for the Bank of Montreal, trading interest rate derivatives, as Director, Global Financial Products.

Before Susan Spinner took over the full-time management of CFA Society Germany in 2011, she was a founding board member of the Society in late 2000. She has been an active volunteer at CFA Institute, including serving as Chair of the EMEA Society Advocacy Advisory Council and as a member of the Annual Conference Advisory Board.

In addition, Susan gives regular lectures and trainings on topics such as capital market ethics at several universities in Germany and lectures as adjunct faculty the award-winning master-in-finance class "Ethics in Finance" at the Goethe Business School of the University of Frankfurt. At Goethe Business School, she also serves on the jury to award the Woman+ academic scholarship

Emenike D Uduanu (“Dave”) is the managing director and chief executive officer of Sigma Pensions Limited. He currently serves as the chair of the Africa Pension Funds Network (APFN) and is also a past chairman of the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria. He previously worked with Ernst and Young in Lagos, was a partner in a Lagos based consulting firm, and subsequently became an executive director of an insurance company in Nigeria. Dave was also a founding director of Pensions Alliance Limited (“PALPensions”) and served as the MD/CEO from 2009 to October 2016. Dave holds an honors degree in Civil Engineering from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He also holds a certificate in Institutional Private Equity Investing jointly awarded by the EVCA and the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is a Chartered Accountant and a CFA Charterholder.

Co-founder and CEO of Navega Strategies, LLC

Kurt Winkelmann has over 30 years of experience in investments and pension-related issues. He is a co-founder and CEO of Navega Strategies, LLC, a quantitative investment research firm. He was a Senior Fellow at the Heller Hurwicz Economics Institute (University of Minnesota), where he spearheaded the Institute’s pension policy initiative. Before founding Navega, Kurt was Managing Director and Global Head of Research at MSCI, Inc. Prior to MSCI, he was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where he led the Global Investment Strategies group in the Investment Management Division. He has written extensively on asset allocation and risk management themes. He was an advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, a board member of the Alberta Investment Management Company, an advisor to the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme, a Director of the University of Minnesota Foundation Investment Advisors, and a Trustee of the University of Minnesota Foundation. He chairs the Advisory Board for the Heller Hurwicz Economics Institute. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Minnesota, and his B.A. from Macalester College (double major in Mathematics and Economics).

Gary P. Brinson Director of Research, CFA Institute Research Foundation

Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant. He has authored, edited, or co-edited six CFA Institute Research Foundation monographs and is the author of Fewer, Richer, Greener, published by Wiley in 2019. Mr. Siegel serves on the editorial boards of several prominent journals and on the board of directors of the Q Group and the American Business History Center. He has assisted a variety of nonprofit organizations in the role of investment committee chair or member. Previously, Mr. Siegel was director of research in the Investment Division of the Ford Foundation. Before that, he served as a managing director at Ibbotson Associates (now Morningstar). His website is www.larrysiegel.org. Mr. Siegel received a BA in urban geography and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago.

Florida Atlantic University and EIA Economic Index Associates

Dr. Luis García-Feijóo, CFA, CIPM, is Professor of Finance at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), where he teaches investments and international finance. He is also a co-founder of Economic Index Associates (EIA), LLC. Professor García has served as associate editor of the Financial Analysts Journal since 2012, and he is also a research director for CFA Institute Research Foundation. Prior to joining FAU, he worked as director, exam development at CFA Institute and was an associate professor at Creighton University. Professor García’s research interests include factor investing, monetary policy and asset returns, and behavioral finance, among others. His research has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals. He is co-author of the book Invest with the Fed: How to Maximize Portfolio Performance Following Federal Reserve Policy. Professor García holds a PhD in finance from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He actively served on the Board of Directors of the CFA Society of South Florida from 2009 to 2014 and has been an active volunteer for CFA Institute since 2009.

Francesco A. Fabozzi is a doctoral candidate at Stevens Institute of Technology and the research director for Yale’s International Center for Finance (ICF). His research focuses on the intersection of machine learning and finance, with a particular interest in equity return forecasting using Natural Language Processing (NLP). He also serves as the managing editor of the Journal of Financial Data Science and is the Director of Data Science at the CFA Institute Research Foundation. He has coauthored a number of books in investment management and quantitative methods. His research has been published in the Journal of Financial Econometrics, Journal of Derivatives, Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Journal of Portfolio Management, and more. He holds a BA in economics from Princeton University and an MS in financial analytics from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Bud Haslett, FRM, CFA, holds masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. He was awarded the CFA designation in September of 1995. Mr. Haslett previously served as director of option analytics for Miller Tabak + Co., LLC and spent two decades on the options trading floor, where he managed portfolios of stocks and options. He previously served as a board member of CFA Society of New York, chairman of the Board of Regents for the CFA Institute Seminar for Global Investors, and president of the CFA Society of Philadelphia. He was an active volunteer for CFA Institute, having served in a variety of capacities, including CFA exam grader and member of the Council of Examiners. Mr. Haslett has also taught coursework on options at New York University, Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers. He is the founding chairman of the Derivatives Committee for the New York Society of Security Analysts and was a member of the Institutional Investor Advisory Committee for the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He has conducted option presentations and workshops at more than 50 CFA Institute societies.

Business Operations Associate, Research, CFA Institute

Treasurer, CFA Institute

CFA Institute Research Foundation Board of Trustees

Trustee Nomination Process