Education Advisory Committee

Lautaro Veliz Espeche, CFA is Vice president and CIO for BBVA Argentina Asset Management, leading a team responsible for the management of mutual funds for individual and institutional investors. He is part of the Board of Directors of the Mutual Funds Association in Argentina (CAFCI) and in the past he was Vice president and Secretary.Prior to become CIO of the company, he was Analyst with focus on the Latam Financial Sector. In addition, Mr. Veliz Espeche teaches Fixed Income in Master of Finance at Universidad Del Cema, where he is finishing its PhD. He became a CFA charterholder in 2012 and is a graduate of the London Business School Senior Executive Programme.

Ashraf El Khatib is the Chief Investment Officer, Private Equity, at Ekuity Holding—the investment arm of Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund Kuwait Investment Authority (KIA) in Egypt. Ashraf is responsible for direct and indirect investments. Before joining Ekuity Holding, Ashraf led 30+ transactions across the deal continuum in the Middle East & Africa (MEA) region and orchestrated the build-up of a leading modern micro-finance institution and a venture capital fund.

Ashraf is a former Vice President and currently a Board Member at CFA Society Egypt. In addition, he serves at the CFA Institute Education Advisory Committee (EAC). Ashraf has contributed as a speaker at investment conferences, including those hosted by the SuperReturn, Fund Forum, CFA Institute, and IE Business School among others.

Ashraf founded a startup and has had leadership roles in the startup and innovation space with IE Business School, PwC, CFA Institute, and the World Bank. He was the mastermind behind receiving the CFA Institute Global Most Innovative Initiative in 2011 Award, and he was the recipient of the Best EMEA Talk Award at the 2017 CFA Institute EMEA Society Leadership Conference. Ashraf earned an MBA from IE Business School in Madrid and is a CFA Charterholder. He passed the CPA exams and the CFA Institute ESG Investing Certificate. Ashraf speaks Arabic, English, and Spanish.

Adrian Codirlașu, CFA, PhD, is a senior banker with over 18 years of experience in banking and financial markets and has held the CFA designation since 2006. He also holds the title of Doctor of Economics, with a specialization in international finance. Mr. Codirlasu has 5 years of experience as a Senior Options Dealer with ING Bank and 7 years of experience as a Risk Director within a Top 5 international bank operating in Romania, being in charge with managing financial risk (market and liquidity risk), operational risk and reputational risk. Previously, Adrian has been a Senior Economist in the research department of the National Bank of Romania for about 6 years. In addition, Mr. Codirlasu is an Associate Professor with DOFIN – Doctoral School of Finance and Banking for over 18 years and CEFIN - Center for Advanced Research in Finance, where he teaches subjects for MSc students such as econometrics, derivatives, fixed income, FX and money markets and risk management. For the last 12 years Mr. Codirlasu has been a member of the CFA Romania Board of Directors, as well as the association’s President from 2009 to 2011 and from 2015 to present-day. For his volunteer activity, Adrian was awarded Volunteer of the Year EMEA East by CFA Institute in 2012.

Joanna Chang, CFA, is an Investment Risk Specialist at the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA). She provides advice and guidance on investment risk matters relating to regulated institutional asset owners such as pension funds and insurers. Australian pension fund assets under APRA regulation total around $A2 trillion. Ms. Chang's area of specialisation is investment risk governance covering key aspects of the investing process from investment objective and strategy formulation through to implementation. Her scope of work covers all asset classes from fixed interest and listed securities through to alternative assets. She regularly engages with both domestic and overseas peer regulators, industry bodies and investment service providers on investment related matters. This has included working with the UK Financial Conduct Authority on policy initiatives. In addition, she has recently served as a Technical Advisor to the Australian House of Representatives Standing Committee on Economics. Ms. Chang’s current areas of focus include climate change financial risks. She is regularly sought out as a conference speaker on this topic and was also involved with the work of the Australian Sustainable Finance Initiative.

Prior to joining APRA, Ms. Chang held several roles within Westpac Banking Corporation's institutional division across financial markets trading and corporate advisory areas.

Ms. Chang’s volunteer work with CFA Institute includes exam question reviews and engagement on online member education initiatives. She holds a Commerce degree majoring in Accounting and Finance from Macquarie University (Sydney) and a GARP Financial Risk Manager designation.

Nick is a senior portfolio manager and team leader for Commerce Trust Company. Upon gaining a thorough understanding of a client’s needs and goals as well as assessing the client’s entire financial situation, he works with our investment research team to construct a portfolio to help clients achieve their long-term goals. Nick comprehensively represents our research- and goals-based investment process, starting with the initial assessment and creation of an investment objective to ongoing evaluation and adjustments based on changing market and life circumstances. With a deep knowledge of the market and experience in investment management, he serves clients with thought leadership, insight, and consulting services. Nick has more than 25 years of portfolio management experience, most recently with U.S. Trust in St. Louis, where he was a portfolio manager and team leader for 15 years. Nick has a bachelor of business degree in finance from Western Illinois University and is a Chartered Financial Analyst® charterholder. Nick is a past president of the CFA Society of St. Louis and a past director on its board of governors. He also serves as a volunteer at the CFA Institute. Additionally, Nick has served as treasurer of the Repertory Theatre of St. Louis and a past chair of Boy Scout Troop 808.

Jodie M. Gunzberg is Managing Director at CoinDesk Indices. She leads index product management and strategy, as well as serves as the company’s public facing spokesperson. Prior to joining CoinDesk Indices, Jodie was the Chief Institutional Investment Strategist, Wealth Management at Morgan Stanley. She served as head of the Graystone Investment Office supporting the investment needs of Graystone Consulting, which include the supervision and guidance of the Graystone Discretionary program. Jodie was also responsible for creating institutional model portfolios for ultra high net worth, pensions, endowments and foundations, and managed a robust platform of thought leadership aimed exclusively at the needs and concerns of institutional clients.
Previously Ms. Gunzberg was the Managing Director and Head of U.S. Equities at S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) where she was responsible for the product management of S&P DJIís U.S. Equity indices, including the S&P 500 and The Dow, the most followed equity indices in the world. Ms. Gunzberg had joined S&P DJI in 2010 as Director of Commodities product management. Prior to that, she spent several years in investment consulting at Ibbotson and Morningstar, and was the chief investment strategist for Marco Consulting, where she advised roughly 350 Taft-Hartley plans with $85 billion in assets. Ms. Gunzberg started her career as an actuarial associate at New York Life Insurance Company and subsequently worked as a quantitative analyst and portfolio manager on the buy-side. She managed real estate at Equity Office Properties, fixed income at ABN AMRO Asset Management, and equities and hedge funds at Driehaus Capital Management and Aragon Global.

Ms. Gunzberg is a CFA charterholder, as well as a member and curriculum consultant of the CFA Institute. She is also a former member of the Board of Directors for CFA NY and CFA Chicago, and founded the CFA New Jersey Group of CFA NY. Ms. Gunzberg currently serves on the Advisory Board for the Department of Finance of Hofstra University and on the Industry Advisory Council and Editorial Advisory Board for the Global Commodities Applied Research Digest at the University of Colorado Denver Business School’s J.P. Morgan Center for Commodities. She received her M.B.A. from the University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, and earned a B.S. in Mathematics from Emory University.

Fan Huang CFA, CPA, is currently Executive Director, Head of China Index Business with MSCI. before this role, he led the Private Banking unit for United Oversea Bank (China) LTD. Prior to his UOB (China) position, he was the Head of Private Banking with Bank of Ningbo. Before joining Bank of Ningbo, he ran the Asset & Wealth management business for Deutsche Bank in China for 9 years. He had also worked for HSBC, CIBC, TD Canada Trust, and other local Asset management companies.

He is a senior practitioner in the Asset & Wealth management segment of the financial industry with over 25 years of experience. Before and concurrent with his career in Finance, he has been conducting academic teaching and researching, and is a leader of campus finance laboratories with various reputable local universities.

Mr. Huang is a columnist for Financial Times (Chinese Version), Forbes (Chinese Version) and other local mainstream financial medias. He has also have published two popular Chinese books: “Growing the wealth through easy ways” and “Effective Equity Investment Strategy to Surfing Market Turbulence”.

Gabriele Montalbetti, CFA, CIPM, FRM is currently Director at Consultinvest SGR, an Italian asset manager. He is responsible for fund selection and he is a multi-asset fund manager. Previously he was general manager and one of the founders of an asset manager based in Italy. Prior to that he was Vice President at JPMorgan Investment Management, where he worked as a fixed income and global balanced portfolio manager for private and institutional clients.

Gabriele graduated in Electronic Engineering from Milan Polytechnic and has over 25 years of experience in asset management. He also holds an MBA from POLIMI Graduate School of Management (GSOM). He teaches ESG asset management in the ESG analysis and investing course at POLIMI GSOM.

Gabriele joined the board of CFA Society Italy in 2001 and later became Treasurer and then President. He also served in many CFA Institute committees since 2005, such as the GIPS Executive Committee, the GIS Steering Committee and the Standards of Practice Council, and he was Chair of the CIPM Advisory Council. He is an active volunteer for the exams offered by CFA Institute.

Brishni Mukhopadhyay, CFA is the ESG Product Specialist and Co-Chair of the ESG Strategic Steering Committee for Western Asset Management, which is a Specialist Investment Manager of Franklin Resources, Inc, the holding company for Franklin Templeton Investments and its subsidiaries. Prior to this, Brishni worked at Lazard Asset Management, J.P. Morgan Asset Management and J.P. Morgan Investment Bank.

Brishni is currently the Chair of the ESG Working Group responsible for the Certificate in ESG Investing, having previously served as the Vice-Chair of the working group with CFA UK since inception in 2017. Brishni holds a M.S. in Operations Research (Finance) from Columbia University, M.Eng. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Sheffield and is a CFA charterholder.

Kampoleak Pal, CFA, is Vice President, Head of Quantitative Models and Strategies at Athene, an Apollo Global Management company. He is responsible for the creation and management of pricing models, risk analytics and decision-making tools to support derivative hedging and solutions. Additionally, he manages derivatives risk oversight and strategies. Prior to Athene, Kampoleak was Senior Director, Head of Structured Investments at Guardian Life where he managed Guardian’s derivatives hedging programs, equities and commodities portfolios.

Kampoleak has over 25 years of investment experience in financial markets, trading, risk management and portfolio management across several industries.

He holds an engineering degree in Computer Science from Ecole Internationale des Sciences du Traitement de l’Information (EISTI) in Paris and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Additionally, Kampoleak received a post graduate certificate in Artificial Intelligence from the MIT Sloan School of Management and is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of New York.

Kampoleak speaks French and Cambodian and has a passion for mathematical modeling/analytics, travel and sports.

Srivathsan Ramachandran, CFA, is a sell-side analyst with over a decade of experience, and he has held the CFA designation since 2009. Sri has worked at Spark Capital Advisors since 2006 where he has lead research efforts across sectors. Mr. Ramachandran has experience in the Indian / Global Technology sector including internet and Exchanges. He has authored over 50 initiation and thematic research notes across sectors such as technology, Tech distribution, Internet and exchanges. Mr. Ramachandran has been a CFA Institute grader since 2015, a member of the Practice Analysis working body and a mentor for the research challenge since its inception in India.

Isaiah Schulze, CFA is a Managing Director for the frontier and emerging markets investment platform of Cerberus Capital Management, a global leader in alternative investing with approximately $55 billion in AUM. Isaiah's focus is on the underwriting and execution of private equity deals in geographies across Asia and Africa, with a particular emphasis on ESG and impact measurement. Isaiah joined Cerberus in 2018 when Cerberus acquired SGI Frontier Capital where he was a Senior Partner from 2013 to 2018.

Isaiah graduated magna cum laude from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He is proficient in Mandarin Chinese and has achieved the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. In addition, he serves on the CFA Education Advisory Committee. Isaiah has contributed as a speaker at investment conferences including those hosted by JP Morgan, Private Equity International, EMPEA, and CFA Society New York, among others. Isaiah lives in NYC and enjoys amateur triathlon training in his free time.

Marie Winters, CFA, CAIA is a senior vice president for Northern Trust Asset Management, leading a research team supporting high yield and investment grade corporate bond portfolios. She also oversees sustainable investing initiatives for Northern’s Fixed Income group globally. Previously, Winters began her career at JPMorgan Chase where she served as a leader and participant in new departments and initiatives for high yield securities, distressed investing, and M&A due diligence.

Winters is a former chair and executive officer of CFA Society Chicago. She also currently serves as president of Chicago Finance Exchange, a professional organization for senior women in finance. Marie earned her MBA in finance and economics at Washington University and her BA in mathematics at Knox College.