Ward Bortz is a Senior Client Portfolio Manager for Invesco’s Fixed-Income Factors platform. Most recently, Ward was Head of Factor Investing for US Wealth within BlackRock’s Factor-Based Strategy Group. He worked with home offices and RIAs to help integrate factor-based solutions into their equity, fixed-income and alternative allocations. Prior to BlackRock, Ward was on the Equity Portfolio Management team at Dimensional Fund Advisors focusing on $20 billion of AUM in large cap international equity strategies. He holds a BA from The University of Chicago in Economics and an MBA from Columbia Business School where he focused on Finance and Asset Pricing.

Brandon Kunz is responsible for external communication of Research Affiliates’ insights and products, with an emphasis on multi-asset solutions. In this role, he is responsible for managing Research Affiliates’ multi-asset partnerships with key affiliates, which includes regular interaction with portfolio managers, product strategists, and client facing professionals. Previously, he was a portfolio specialist and director of business development at Dorchester Capital, a fund-of-hedge-funds manager. Prior to working for Dorchester, Brandon was a portfolio manager of the flagship GTAA overlay at the Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Brandon holds an undergraduate degree from the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University and an MBA from the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona.

Christopher K. Merker, PhD, CFA, is a Financial Advisor and a Director with Private Asset Management at Robert W. Baird & Co. Inc. He holds a Ph.D. in investment governance and fiduciary effectiveness from Marquette University. He is past president of the CFA Society Milwaukee, and a founder and current board member of the CFA Society Milwaukee Foundation, a sister organization dedicated to promoting financial literacy. An adjunct professor of finance at Marquette University, where he teaches the investment course “Sustainable Finance,” he is also executive director of Fund Governance Analytics, LLC, a provider of environmental, social, and governance (ESG) research and diagnostic tools for asset owners and institutional investors.

Karen Schenone, CFA, Director, is a Fixed Income Product Strategist within BlackRock’s Global Fixed Income Group focusing on iShares fixed income ETFs. She focuses on supporting iShares clients, generating content on fixed income markets and ETFs, developing new fixed income iShares strategies, and partnering with the iShares team on fund launches.Prior to joining BlackRock, she was an investment research analyst at Laird Norton Wealth Management, providing investment solutions for high net worth clients through asset allocation and security selection decisions. Mrs. Schenone began her career as short-term funding trader in the treasury department of Washington Mutual Bank. Ms. Schenone earned a Bachelors of Business Administration in Finance from The University of Texas at Austin and is a CFA Charterholder.

Dr. Peter Stone’s main research interest in AI is understanding how we can best create complete intelligent agents. He considers adaptation, interaction, and embodiment to be essential capabilities of such agents. Thus, his research focuses mainly on machine learning, multiagent systems, and robotics. For him, the most exciting research topics are those inspired by challenging real-world problems. He believes that complete, successful research includes both precise, novel algorithms and fully implemented and rigorously evaluated applications. His application domains have included robot soccer, autonomous bidding agents, autonomous vehicles, autonomic computing, and social agents.

Nancy Folbre is a Professor Emerita of Economics and Director of the Program on Gender and Care Work at the Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a Senior Fellow of the Levy Economics Institute at Bard College. Her research explores the interface between political economy and feminist theory, with a particular emphasis on the value of unpaid care work. She is the author of The Rise and Decline of Patriarchal Systems (forthcoming in 2020 from Verso), the editor of For Love and Money: Care Work in the U.S., and the author of Greed, Lust, and Gender: A History of Economic Ideas, Valuing Children: Rethinking the Economics of the Family, and The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. You can learn more about her at her website and blog, Care Talk.

Reva Goujon is Stratfor’s Vice President of Global Analysis and leads a team of analysts around the world. She plays an integral role in applying a forward-looking, strategic lens to Stratfor’s coverage of global events. Ms. Goujon is known for her ability to watch the map move and explain how powerful underlying forces, from demographics to technology, are reshaping the global order. Ms. Goujon is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She has a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Texas and a master’s degree from the Security Studies program of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.

Bob co-founded Sage in 1996 with Mark MacQueen, and serves as the firm’s President and Chief Investment Officer and leads the Investment Committee. He began his career in 1970 at Moody’s Investors Services as a member of the Corporate Bond Rating Committee; he then went on to Loeb, Rhodes & Co. to cover the insurance industry in the Institutional Equity Research department. He later worked at Merrill Lynch & Co. for 13 years in a variety of institutional research, trading and portfolio management roles in New York and London. During this period, he was assigned to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency as a Resident Financial Advisor in Riyadh responsible for managing the foreign reserves of the Central Bank. Bob Smith received his M.B.A. in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business, is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF) and Certified Investment Management Consultant (CIMC).

Andy serves as a Research Analyst in Sage’s Quantitative Strategy Group. He began his career in 2006 as a Naval Aviator in the United States Navy, where he completed four deployments to the Middle East and Western Pacific while performing a variety of leadership roles during his 13 years of service. Andy holds an MBA with Distinction from the Naval Postgraduate School and a B.A. degree in Economics from Rice University. He also is a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserves.

Michael is a Managing Partner of the firm and leads the Business Development Team. He began his career in 1996 with Invesco AIM Investments in a variety of senior marketing and supervisory roles within the organization’s marketing and financial advisor sales group. Later, he worked with U.S. Fiduciary, LLC (USF) in Houston, Texas, as the Director of Wealth Management Services. Michael received his B.A. degree from Texas Tech University in Lubbock, Texas. Michael is an Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF) and has a strong background in wealth management services as well as institutional distribution system design and management.