AAAIM High ELI

Our guest for today’s podcast is Jonathan Xiong, former Asia-Pacific Co-CEO of Millennium. After a 20+ year career in portfolio management working for some of the top investment houses in the business including Millennium, GSAM, Mellon Capital and Franklin Templeton, Jonathan has taken the bold step to start his own asset management business.

I was intrigued with Jonathan’s background after reading a Bloomberg article about him launching his ownAsia multi-strategy fund. The platform model is dominated by the largest and most well established firms like Millennium, Citadel, and Point 72. How could a small guy enter the market and compete with the Goliath’s in the business?

Well, I wanted to know and Jonathan was ready to share his story. Without further ado, please enjoy our interview with Jonathan Xiong.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Amanda Moore, CEO and Co-Founder of Aurora Peak Capital, a mission-driven investment firm, dedicated to alleviating the U.S. housing affordability crisis through investments in below market-rate multifamily housing communities.

Amanda's first home in the United States was an affordable housing complex in Los Angeles County. Her family were Vietnam war refugees who were rescued by the U.S. Airforce from refugee camps and flown to California and placed in a Section 8 community. Amanda is grateful for the Section 8 housing complex because it filled her childhood with happy memories where her family had a safe and beautiful environment with a strong sense of community. Amanda is on a mission to ensure affordable housing parallels her childhood experience: provide low -income families a safe environment where they are proud to call home and can thrive against the backdrop of a housing crisis: lack of affordable, safe, and quality housing.

Amanda has over 20 years of real estate experience, starting her career as an underwriter and then transitioning to become a capital raiser for Starwood Capital’s notable opportunistic global funds, covering Asia and U.S. institutional investors.

So what does it take to launch your own real estate investment firm? Authenticity, passion, and a fearless, kick-ass leader in Amanda Moore. Without further ado, here is our podcast with Amanda Moore.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Soo Kim, Managing Partner and CIO of Standard General, an investment firm he started in 2007. Soo also serves as Chairman of Bally's Corporation.

Soo has been investing in special situations strategies since 1997, including as co-founder of Cyrus Capital Partners from 2005 to 2007 and at Och-Ziff Capital Management from 1999 to 2005, where he was a Principal and co-founder of its fixed income business. Before joining Och-Ziff, he was an analyst for the Capital Management Group at Bankers Trust Company from 1997 to 1999.

Soo holds an A.B. from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University and is a graduate of Stuyvesant High School, one of the top public high schools in New York City. I always learn a lot whenever I interact with Soo so I know the audience will get a lot from this conversation. Joining me on the podcast as co-host is Mike Kim, CIO of Lalia Capital, a single family office focused on private investments. Without further ado, here is our conversation with Soo Kim.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Eva Ho, General Partner of Fika Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm that invests in founders solving meaningful, systemic problems through the use of data, related AI-enabled technologies, and automation. While this horizontal thesis allows Fika Ventures to be fairly sector agnostic, the firm is especially drawn to innovations in enterprise software, fintech, marketplaces, and digital health. Fika is investing out of their Fund III and has committed capital of over $300 million life to date.

Prior to Fika, Eva was a founding GP at Susa Ventures. She is a serial entrepreneur and founder, most recently a founding executive at Factual, a leading location data provider in Los Angeles. Prior, she was a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Google and Youtube for 5 years. Prior to Google, she was the head of marketing for Applied Semantics, a company that sold to Google in 2003.

Eva holds an MBA from Cornell and a BA from Harvard. Eva also graduated from one of the top high schools in the country, Boston Latin School. And for those listeners who know me, I am biased as that is my high school. In fact, Eva and I were high school classmates and we took many of the same AP classes together back in the day!

So, how does one get their start to becoming a great venture capitalist? There isn’t a clear answer, but I know our listeners will get a lot from this interview. Without further ado, here is our conversation with Eva Ho.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Marcie Frost, Chief Executive Officer of CalPERS. Marcie joined CalPERS as CEO in October 2016. She is the ninth CEO and second woman to head America's largest pension fund. As CEO, Marcie oversees an annual budget of $1.8 billion, an experienced team of 2,800 professionals, and three lines of business for the fund: pensions, health benefits, and investments.

CalPERS administers a defined benefit retirement system for more than 1.9 million California public sector workers and their families. It is the nation's second-largest purchaser of health care benefits, covering more than 1.5 million lives. CalPERS' global investment portfolios stand at roughly $460 billion at the time of this recording.

Under Marcie's leadership, CalPERS is focused on maximizing long-term investment returns to meet the fund's fiduciary responsibility to members and leverage the fund's global strength to drive sustainable markets.

So how did Marcie land one of the most coveted jobs in the business? What does it take to run one of the nation’s most influential pensions? What is CalPERS looking for in the next CIO? You want to know? Well, we’ve got the answers.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Marcie Frost.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Arun Assumall, Global Head of Cross Asset QIS and Commodity Investor Products at Macquarie Group.  Since joining Macquarie in 2011, Arun has built an impressive global business within the bank by offering sophisticated investors access to beta and risk premia strategies commonly referred to as Quantitative Investment Strategies, QIS.  In a recent article published by Bloomberg, they estimate that over $370 billion in investor assets are currently tied to QIS offered by investment banks.

So what does it take to build a global business from scratch?  And how did Arun, who started off in sales, do it?  Humility, luck, and not being afraid to hire people that are smarter than himself….

Congrats to Macquarie on becoming a market leader in QIS and Arun Assumall - a British Indian, an Asian leader, a champion of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – for leading the way.  And thanks to Arun for sharing his path on this podcast.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Arun Assumall.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Andy Lee, Managing Partner of Parallaxes Capital, an investment firm he founded in 2017 at the age of 26.  Previously, Andy was with Lone Star Funds and, with Lone Star’s support, he spun off to form Parallaxes Capital to take advantage of an esoteric and growing asset class – Tax Receivable Agreements (TRAs).

Andy is as smart and talented as they come, having entered college at 15 and earning his Bachelors in Finance and Accountancy from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  He went on to earn his Masters in Accountancy before joining Citigroup as an investment banker for his first job out of college.

Andy has been featured in publications including Institutional Investor, NBC, Forbes (as part of the 2020 Class of 30 under 30), ReOrg Radio and Fitch’s LevFin Insights.

Joining me on this podcast as co-host is Nicholas Pon, Investment Director at the YMCA Retirement Fund, where he is part of a team that manages over $8.5 billion in assets under management.  Nick’s expertise is on uncorrelated assets across public and private markets, where he focuses much of his time on evaluating hedge fund strategies.  Thanks to Nick for joining this podcast and taking the time to interview Andy.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Andy Lee.

Our guest for today’s podcast is David Ng, who is a Vice President at Avante Capital Partners, a boutique private credit firm with approximately $1 bn in AUM that harnesses the power of diversity and challenges the status quo.  David joined Avante in 2022 and is responsible for identifying, underwriting, executing and managing investment opportunities.

David has over 10 years of middle-market debt and equity experience. Prior to Avante, David worked as a Vice President in Partners Group’s NYC office, where he was responsible for originating, underwriting, structuring, and managing middle market credit investments across a diverse range of industries. Prior to Partners Group, he spent his formative years at Nomura and KPMG.

David is a member of AAAIM’s Norman Mineta co-hort program and we look forward to all the great things he will continue to do in his career and for the industry.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with David Ng.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Sarah Hammer, Managing Director of the Center for Innovation in Finance and Senior Fellow of the Alternative Investments Program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and who most recently served as Acting Secretary of the Dept of Banking for Commonwealth of PA and has now returned to her love for private capital investing and financial technology.  She is also Adjunct Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, teaching a course on financial regulation and alternative investments.  No stranger to public service, she also previously worked at the US Dept of Treasury as Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary for Financial Institutions and Director of the Office of Financial Institutions Policy. She is a lifetime learner who instills the same passion in her students and with the Cypher Accelerator Program at Wharton supporting new startups in the fin tech space including blockchain and crypto.

Sarah has held various leadership positions throughout financial services in portfolio management, trading, marketing, research, and analytics at various firms like Vanguard, PIMCO, JP Morgan, BlackRock, and Tudor Investments.

But it’s her love of learning and connecting folks that has led Sarah from finance to law to academia to public policy and back to financial technology and always with the [mindset] of being a public servant and serving the greater good.

Without further delay, here is my conversation with Sarah Hammer.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Pedro Ramos, CEO of Somar Capital Management, a consumer focused equity long/short hedge fund he started in 2015 after perfecting his craft as a portfolio manager at Tremblant Capital.

Pedro combines strategy consulting, investment banking, entrepreneurial and buy-side public and private investing experience in multiple industries and countries. His investing activities have spanned multiple macro-economic and political scenarios (including the 1980s inflation, the 1990s dot.com bubble, the 2008 GFC, sovereign crisis, Brexit, and the 2020-2021 Covid-19 pandemic).

Joining me as guest co-host on this podcast is Rich Cheung, who looks after Alternative Investments and Hedge Funds for the private bank arm of Truist Financial.  Rich is an experienced hedge fund allocator with over 20+ years experience in the space.

Without further ado, here is our conversation with Pedro Ramos.