CFA Institute Appoints Nikolaz Foucaud as Managing Director of Institutional Solutions

CFA Institute, the global association of investment professionals, announces the appointment of Nikolaz Foucaud as Managing Director, Institutional Solutions, effective 26 January. Based in London, Foucaud will join the organization’s Leadership Team, reporting to President and CEO Margaret Franklin, CFA. He will lead the newly established Institutional Solutions division.

The creation of the Institutional Solutions division represents a cornerstone of the organization’s commitment to serving institutional clients’ growing demands for education and skills-training tailored to the evolving needs of the industry’s workforce. The new division will leverage the extensive resources of CFA Institute to design and deliver scalable solutions that complement the established credentials and certificates that the organization offers.

Margaret Franklin, CFA, President & CEO, CFA Institute, comments:

“In my discussions with financial leaders around the world, I hear a consistent refrain about the need to better prepare staff with the education and skills necessary to flourish at work. Given our leadership in mapping the competencies required to excel in investment management and our 70-plus years of assessing candidates’ proficiencies, we believe that CFA Institute is uniquely suited to help the profession meet the challenges of workforces that are being disrupted by AI. Nikolaz brings an exceptional track record of working with clients to design learner-centric solutions in an industry in which the skills lifecycle is shortening. I’m delighted to welcome Nikolaz to CFA Institute.”

Foucaud brings over 25 years of leadership experience across financial services, education, and technology, driving global go-to-market transformations and complex institutional partnerships. Most recently, he served as Managing Director, EMEA, at Coursera where he steered the region’s commercial strategy, partnering with sovereign entities and major enterprises to deliver large-scale data and GenAI upskilling programs.

“I’m excited to join CFA Institute at such a pivotal moment. The rapid advancement of technology is fundamentally reshaping the skills that investment professionals need for their firms to compete and win. Building on the heritage of CFA Institute as the ‘gold standard’ for investment education across the industry, I look forward to collaborating with institutions as we develop scalable offerings that span learning, skills development, and innovation.”