AAAIM High ELI

Our guest for today’s podcast is Cynthia Tseng who is a Partner at Fairview Capital Partners, one of the longest running private equity fund of funds in the business.  I hold Fairview in very high regard given that diversity has been woven into the fabric of their organization since the firm’s beginning.  Fairview was founded in 1994 by Laurence Morse and Jo-Ann Price and prides itself on being one of the top managers for sourcing, evaluating and partnering with emerging managers in the venture capital space.
 
I’ve known Cindy through our time together serving on AAAIM’s board and I’ve always found Cindy to be pleasant, thoughtful and insightful.  Cindy takes us through her journey from immigrating to the US at the age of 9, through her formative investment banking years, and finally pivoting to the fund of funds private equity business when she landed a role with Fairview in the midst of the Global Financial Crisis.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Cindy Tseng.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Roger Sit, CEO, Sit Investment Associates, Inc which manages $16.6 billion in assets for institutional and individual clients with investments in both domestic and international markets.  As the global chief investment officer, Roger leads the firm’s Investment Policy Committee and directs investments in custom separately-managed accounts, private investment funds, and mutual funds portfolios.

Prior to joining Sit Investment Associates, Roger was vice president and senior equity research analyst at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York for seven years.  He joined Goldman Sachs & Co. after receiving an M.B.A. degree from Harvard Business School.

Following graduation from the U.S. Air Force Academy with military distinction in 1984, Roger was an officer in the U.S. Air Force.  He served six years of active duty with financial management responsibilities at Headquarters Space Division and rose to the rank of captain.  While serving in the military, he earned an M.S. degree in Systems Management from the University of Southern California.

Roger currently serves on the boards of Convergent Capital, Huntington Bank, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, and The McKnight Foundation.  Roger chairs the board of the Minnesotans’ Military Appreciation Fund, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization co-founded in 2005 by Gene Sit, Roger’s father.

As the leader of one of the oldest Asian American money management businesses in the US, Roger is a role model for all of us at AAAIM.  What a pleasure it was for me and AAAIM Co-Chair, Brenda Chia, to interview Roger for this podcast.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Roger Sit.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Soo Chuen Tan, Founder & President of Discerene Group, an investment firm he started in 2010 channeling core investment principles practiced by the great value investors of our time.  If you were to sketch out how a value investor should invest: never overpaying for stocks, being greedy when others are fearful, not being afraid to be contrarian, being patient, having an ownership mentality, understanding moats and competitive advantages, holding stocks forever…. Soo Chuen has implemented all of these disciplines and more at his firm.
 
As an Asian American founder of an investment firm that has surpassed the $1bn AUM mark with over a 10 year track record, Soo Chuen is as a rare breed in the business.  I was happy to get to know Soo Chuen as he is humble, genuine, and a true gentleman practicing as pure a form of value investing that you learn in text books.  As many of you know, I went to Columbia Business School, and it is refreshing to hear someone who has built a great firm following this philosophy.  Despite the fact that Soo Chuen is a graduate of Harvard Business School, we won’t hold this against him.
 
Beyond investing, Soo Chuen’s intellect and how he thinks about complex systems, cultures, peoples, and economies shines through throughout the podcast.  I know you will enjoy his views on the world.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Soo Chuen Tan.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Carey Lai, Founding Member and Managing Director at Conductive Ventures, a venture capital firm that invests in expansion stage companies with a focus on software, hardware, and technology enabled services.

In 2016, after a 12 year career in venture capital working for two of the best in the business: Institutional Venture Partners (IVP) and Intel Capital, Carey left his job in pursuing the dream of most venture capitalists, starting his own venture capital firm.  After over a year, 150+ investor meetings, and failing to secure enough capital to run their strategy, Carey and his partner concluded starting a fund was not in their cards.

In 2017, as Carey began to look for a job, his fortune took a turn for the best and he landed a $100 million seed commitment from an investor to launch his own venture capital firm.  How did he do it?  Well, you are in the right place to hear his story and the lessons learned during his journey.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Aaron Yoon, Assistant Professor of Accounting & Information Management at Northwestern University.  According to the Financial Times, his research on ESG was a turning point on how investors viewed and integrated ESG information and the methodologies suggested in his research have been widely implemented by asset owners and investment managers.
 
He has presented his research to academics, regulators, and practitioners around the World and his work has been regularly cited in outlets such as Barron's, Bloomberg, Financial Times, Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. He also received multiple awards for his research and teaching, including the Chair's Core Teaching Award from Kellogg, Crowell Prize for Best Paper in Quantitative Investing from PanAgora Asset Management, Best 40 Under 40 Professors Recognition from Poets & Quants, and the Best International Accounting Dissertation Award from the American Accounting Association.
 
Professor Yoon earned his Doctor of Business Administration from Harvard University; he also earned his masters in Economics and bachelors in Economics and Mathematical Methods in the Social Sciences (MMSS) from Northwestern University. Prior to academia, he worked as an equities salestrader and research analyst at Credit Suisse, and also controlled air traffic in the 8th US Army as a Korean augmentee.
 
Joining me on the podcast is Susan Oh, a 25+ year veteran and widely respected investment professional at the Pennsylvania Public School Employees’ Retirement System (PSERS), who we featured on Episode 11 of our podcast.  Susan is a Director and Head of ESG Research where she is responsible for strategic ESG initiatives across the total plan, leading sustainability research with a focus on culture and transformative innovation to create long term value for the plan.  I was thrilled to have Susan join me as co-host for this podcast to interview Aaron.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Professor Aaron Yoon.

We have two special guests for our podcast today:  Anita Ng, MD for Private Investments @ Cambridge Associates and Tanya Kemp, MD and Head of Private Markets at San Francisco Employees’ Retirement System.  Anita has more than 25 years of investment experience, 15 of those managing client portfolios at Cambridge Associates (a global advisory investment firm responsible for advising on over $500B in aum).  She is a trusted advisor to a broad group of institutional clients, including endowments and foundations, public pension plans, and private clients. In 2020, Anita was named in Chief Investment Officer’s annual list of Knowledge Brokers, a list of the most influential investment consultants and advisers.  Prior to joining Cambridge Associates in 2006, Anita was a technology investment banker at CIBC World Markets, Credit Suisse First Boston and Banc of America Securities and earlier in her career, worked in Hong Kong at Merrill Lynch. 
 
Our co-guest is Tanya Kemp, Head of Private Markets.SFERS is a public plan with over $34B assets.  Tanya rose up through the ranks from inv analyst in VC then PE and head of Pvt mkts overseeing a $14 billion portfolio comprising private investments across leveraged buyouts, venture capital, growth equity, real estate and natural resources strategies.  Prior to joining SFERS, Ms. Kemp was Risk and Performance Analyst with Missouri State Employees Retirement System. She holds an MA, MBA, CFA and CAIA designations. She has received numerous awards including Private Equity Buyouts “Trailblazers: Ten women pioneering new paths in private equity” in 2016; Trusted Insights Top Public Pension Investment Directors 2021, Rising Star 2021 Venture Capital Journal.
 
Anita and Tanya are two highly talented, engaging women in our industry passionate about investing and their roles. What a pleasure it was for me to speak with them together during this podcast.
 
 
Without further delay, here is my conversation with Anita and Tanya.

 

Our guest for today’s podcast is Randy Cohen, Senior Lecturer in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School.
Randy is one of the most likeable professors in the business and has been at the top of teaching profession for over 20 years at HBS and MIT.More recently, along with his co-founder, Jean-Louis Lelogeais, Randy launched PEO Partners, an asset management firm that specializes in liquid private equity alternative offerings.
I truly enjoyed my wide ranging conversation with Randy as he shares his perspective on the path to becoming a professor, the obstacles he has overcome being blind, and why he thinks PEO Partners is really the next big idea in finance.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Les Baquiran, Founder of Alpine Capital Advisors, a leading placement agent that advises and raises assets for asset managers and businesses. Les is well known in the industry and, during the early months of the COVID pandemic in 2020, launched the Alpine Annual Asian Leaders in Investment virtual summit that has taken place the last two years in honor of Asian Awareness Month and in the support of UNICEF.
 
I found Les to be particularly insightful and humble and a real master at cultivating and building relationships.  Les takes us through his professional career before launching his own independent placement agent firm after having great success at Park Hill.  Throughout the podcast, Les shares valuable advice on how he has been able to navigate the business of finance to become a true role model for the AAPI community.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Les Baquiran.

Our guest for today’s podcast is Christina Qi, Chief Executive Officer of Databento, an on-demand market data platform she co-founded after spending several years running a high frequency trading hedge fund.  Earlier this year, Christina and her co-founder raised $7.5 million in seed funding to build out “their data-as-a-service” solution for the financial industry.
 
I very much enjoyed interviewing Christina as I found her to be quite authentic and transparent about her failures and missteps in her career.  But as the great Winston Churchill once said, “Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss in enthusiasm.”
 
Christina has accomplished much in her early career including being named on Forbes “30 under 30” list in finance and she is absolutely a role model for the AAAIM community.  I discovered Christina through linkedin as she is very generous about sharing her wisdom and experience for entrepreneurs looking to start their own firms.
 
Christina takes us through her upbringing in Utah, path to MIT, and subsequent launch of her hedge fund from her dorm room after failing to secure a permanent full time offer after a Wall Street summer internship.
 
Without further ado, here is our conversation with Christina Qi.