CFA Institute Research Foundation Board of Trustees

Aaron Low, CFA, is a principal at Lumen Advisors, LLC, where he manages emerging markets macro long-short funds and oversees Lumen's operations in Asia. He also serves as a board trustee of the Singapore government's pension fund. Previously, Dr. Low served as a senior portfolio manager and head of Asia ex-Japan at PIMCO and as a senior portfolio manager and head of Asia at RCM Global Investors. He serves on the Board of Governors of CFA Institute and the board of directors of the Wealth Management Institute. Dr. Low holds an undergraduate degree in engineering from the National University of Singapore and a PhD in international financial economics from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Bud Haslett, FRM, CFA, holds masters degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and Drexel University. He was awarded the CFA designation in September of 1995. Mr. Haslett previously served as director of option analytics for Miller Tabak + Co., LLC and spent two decades on the options trading floor, where he managed portfolios of stocks and options. He previously served as a board member of CFA Society of New York, chairman of the Board of Regents for the CFA Institute Seminar for Global Investors, and president of the CFA Society of Philadelphia. He was an active volunteer for CFA Institute, having served in a variety of capacities, including CFA exam grader and member of the Council of Examiners. Mr. Haslett has also taught coursework on options at New York University, Johns Hopkins, and Rutgers. He is the founding chairman of the Derivatives Committee for the New York Society of Security Analysts and was a member of the Institutional Investor Advisory Committee for the Chicago Board Options Exchange. He has conducted option presentations and workshops at more than 50 CFA Institute societies.

Margaret Franklin, CFA, leads CFA Institute and its more than 170,000 members worldwide in promoting the highest standards of education, ethics, and professional excellence in the investment profession. She assumed her role in September 2019 and has more than 25 years of investment and wealth management experience.

Before joining CFA Institute, Ms. Franklin led International Wealth Management for North America and was president of BNY Mellon Wealth Management, Advisory Services in Canada. She also served as a board member of BNY Mellon Trust Company (Cayman). Margaret joined BNY Mellon in 2016.

Prior to joining BNY Mellon, Ms. Franklin held multiple senior management positions, including president of Marret Private Wealth and COO of Marret Asset Management, a credit and hedge fund asset manager in Toronto. During that six-year tenure, she had direct oversight of all aspects of the private wealth business. Prior to joining Marret, Margaret was a partner with KJ Harrison & Partners.

Ms. Franklin began her career in the institutional business and has worked with pension plans, endowments, foundations, and government agencies at State Street Global Advisors, Mercer, and Barclays Global Investors.

She previously served as chair of CFA Institute Board of Governors and is a former president of the CFA Society Toronto Board. Ms. Franklin is a founding member of the CFA Institute Women in Investment Initiative, a past recipient of the Alfred C. Morley Distinguished Service Award in 2014, and a member of its Future of Finance Content Council.

Ms. Franklin earned a Bachelor of Administration in Economics from McMaster University in Ontario. She is a CFA charterholder and a member of the CFA Society Toronto.

Punita Kumar-Sinha, PhD, CFA, has focused on investment management and governance roles during her 30-year career. Ms. Kumar-Sinha has been investing in emerging markets since the late 1980s and pioneered some of the first foreign investments in the Indian subcontinent in the early 1990s.

Currently, she is the Founding Partner, Pacific Paradigm Advisors, an independent investment advisory firm focused on Asia, and a Senior Advisor to companies in India and North America. She serves as an Independent Director and Chairs Audit, Stakeholders Relationship, and Risk Committees for many boards. Prior to this, Ms. Kumar-Sinha was a Senior Managing Director of Blackstone and the Head & Chief Investment Officer of Blackstone Asia Advisors. Prior to joining Blackstone, Ms. Kumar-Sinha was a Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager at Oppenheimer Asset Management Inc. and CIBC World Markets, where she also managed India and Asia funds. She has also worked at Batterymarch (a Legg Mason company), Standish Ayer & Wood (a BNY Mellon company), JP Morgan, and IFC/World Bank.

Ms. Kumar-Sinha is frequently featured in the media and at global conferences as an expert commentator on Asian capital markets and women’s issues. Ms. Kumar-Sinha has a PhD and a Master of Finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. She received her undergraduate degree in Chemical Engineering with Distinction from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. She has an MBA and is a CFA charterholder. Ms. Kumar-Sinha is a member of CFA Institute, has been a member of the CFA Society Boston and India, a TiE Charter Member, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Ms. Kumar-Sinha has been awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from IIT Delhi. She has also been awarded the “Best Woman Director” in 2016 by Asian Center for Corporate Governance and Sustainability.

Dr. Heinz J. Hockmann is a member of the Advisory Council of Lovell Minnick Partners LLC, a private equity company and buyout manager focusing on financial services and business services.

Heinz was an executive officer at Commerzbank AG in Germany for nearly twenty years and was a Member of the Management Board of the Bank with responsibilities for asset management, private banking, and investment banking. Earlier in his career at Commerzbank, he formed its asset management business for international institutional clients and later built the bank’s global asset management platform. Afterwards, he ran the Management Board of Westfalenbank AG, a midsize bank for corporate and private clients, investment banking, and asset management. He then joined Fortis Investments and developed its asset management business in Germany, Austria, and Eastern Europe.

In 2008, Heinz co-founded Silk Invest, an investment management company headquartered in London and specialized in frontier markets with offices in various African and Middle Eastern countries. He serves on the Board of Silk Invest as well as the boards of several German companies in the financial services sector including WWK, a major German insurance company.

Heinz holds a master’s degree from Bochum University, where he also received his PhD in 1983. He is a lecturer for Investment Banking and Commercial Banking at the Justus-Liebig University in Giessen.

Amra is responsible for leading BIS EMEA in all its activities as it engages with companies and others in the investment stewardship ecosystem to promote the governance and business practices aligned with long-term value creation. Amra is responsible for leading BlackRock's investment stewardship efforts covering company engagement including voting in Europe, the Middle East and Africa on behalf of BlackRock's clients globally. Amra also oversees BIS’ client strategy globally as well as the fundamental research which supports the development of BlackRock stewardship engagement priorities, guidelines and voting policies.

Amra is a member of BlackRock’s Global Operating Committee, EMEA Executive Committee and EMEA Investments Committee.

Amra is an active contributor to public corporate governance, stewardship and sustainability discussions and regularly speaks on the importance of these issues for company performance and investment decisions. Amra serves on a number of industry bodies and initiatives to enhance governance and sustainable business practices, including the UK Investment Association’s Stewardship Committee, the UK Institute of Directors Center for Corporate Governance Advisory Board, the UK Investor Forum, the CFA Research Institute Board and the ECGRF Board of Trustees. Previously Amra was a member of the European Commission (EC) Expert Group on technical aspects of corporate governance processes, the FRC Investor Advisory Board, Eumedion General Board and the Pensions and Lifetime Savings Association (UK) Stewardship Advisory Group. In 2019, Amra was named as one of the “100 most influential women in European finance” by the Financial News magazine. She is also an alumna of BlackRock’s Women’s Leadership Forum.

Prior to joining BlackRock in 2011, Amra spent almost 15 years working on issues surrounding investors and investment decisions ranging from fixed income analysis, deal origination, investment appraisal and management of research & analytical content. Amra joined BlackRock after 11 years with Standard & Poor's (now S&P Global), where she was a Director in European Corporate Credit Ratings. Amra started her career in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), London in 1997. Amra holds a B.A. (Hons) Economics and MSc Accounting and Finance from London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).

Aaron joined The City of Calgary in 2016 and took the role of Deputy City Treasurer in March 2018. As the head of Treasury, he has oversight of the $6 billion investment portfolio, all cash management, banking, and cashiering operations,  and debt issuance and capital project advisory functions. Mr. Brown holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Alberta in 1997 and became a CFA charterholder in 2003. He currently holds numerous board appointments including Calgary Housing Corporation and Silvera for Seniors. In August 2022, completed four years as global Chair of the CFA Institute’s Presidents Council. In this global senior society leadership role he represented the 161 CFA societies around the world and their over 160,000 charterholders. Aaron is member of both CFA Society Calgary and CFA Society Edmonton.

Kati Eriksson, CFA, has over 15 years’ experience in the financial markets and institutional investing. Currently she is working as the Head of Institutional Banking Finland at Danske Bank. In this role, she leads an organization responsible for Institutional Client Coverage, Institutional Advisory, Institutional Asset Management Sales and Investor Services Sales in Finland. Her role is to lead and develop the strategic dialogue with the clients and to guide and coordinate the bank-wide client team to service the clients in the best possible way.

Previously she worked as Head of Investments at Aalto University Endowment having overall responsibility for the endowment management. Her role was to steer the investment strategy and implementation in order to generate additional funding for top quality research and education. Prior to that, she worked for the State Pension Fund of Finland as Head of Strategic Analysis. She was responsible for planning strategic and dynamic asset allocation. She was in charge of the investment policy and investment risk management.

Ms. Eriksson holds M.Sc. in Economics and Business Administration from University of Oulu, Finland. She has earned the right to use the Chartered Financial Analyst designation. At CFA Institute, she currently serves in the Capital Markets Policy Council and has previously served as President Council Representative, EMEA West and as EU Standards & Advocacy Advisory Committee Chair. Ms. Eriksson contributes to the CFA Program Practice Analysis, giving practitioner input on the topic areas of Portfolio Management and Wealth Planning. She is Past President of the CFA Society Finland as well as past member of EDHEC Risk-Institute International Advisory Board.

Bill Fung joined the CFA Institute Research Foundation's board in 2007 serving as trustee until his retirement in 2015. Prior to his retirement, Bill also served as a member of the editorial board of the Financial Analysts Journal. Bill returned to the Research Foundation board in late 2017 and currently chairs the research committee of the board. Bill entered the financial services industry during the early 80s working for Lehman Brothers and Bankers Trust. In 1990 he co-founded a hedge fund and subsequently a fund of hedge funds which was acquired in 2005. Bill remained active in the alternative investment industry serving on investment committees and boards of private investor vehicles. He is one of the founding fathers of an alternative investment due diligence specialists firm Albourne Partners. Bill holds a BSc and a PhD degree in Mathematics from London University and a PhD degree in Finance from the University of Manchester. He held visiting faculty positions at London Business School, Manchester Business School, the London School of Economics, New York University, and Rutgers University. Bill maintained his academic interest throughout his career and published his work in journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, the Financial Analysts Journal, and, more recently, Management Sciences. Bill received the CAIA 2015 Award for Excellence in Alternative Investment Research, a Graham and Dodd Scroll Award in 2004, and the 1999 Fischer Black Memorial Foundation’s Robert J Schwartz Memorial Prize.

Kingpai Koosakulnirund, CFA, has diversified work experience. She worked as an equity research analyst for UOB Kay Hian Securities and KGI Securities. Her research focus includes residential property, industrial estate, renewable energy, and agriculture. She has been a lecturer for several courses such as equity valuation and analysis, financial modeling and fundamental finance in Chulalongkorn University and National Institute of Development Administration (NIDA), Thailand. Apart from financial profession, she is also a farmer, currently working on sustainable agricultural projects. Kingpai is a CFA Charterholder and a current board member of CFA Society Thailand. Her active volunteer roles with CFA Institute and CFA Society are in the area of Society Events, Advocacy, Asia-Pacific Research Exchange (ARX), and CFA Institute Research Challenge. She received a M.Sc. in Finance and a BBA in Accounting from Chulalongkorn University, Thailand.

Lotta Moberg is an analyst on William Blair’s Dynamic Allocation Strategies (DAS) team. In this role, she is responsible for global macro research. Lotta previously worked for the Swedish foreign ministry in Russia and the Swedish Defense Forces in Kosovo, and has been a consultant for the World Bank. She has published articles in several economics journals, including The Journal of Institutional Economics and The Review of Austrian Economics, and has taught classes in economics at George Mason University. Lotta’s research includes special economic zones, tax policy, and municipal bankruptcy. She is a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Society of Chicago. She received a BA in economics from Lund University in Sweden and a PhD. in economics from George Mason University.

Emenike D Uduanu (“Dave”) is the managing director and chief executive officer of Sigma Pensions Limited. He currently serves as the chair of the Africa Pension Funds Network (APFN) and is also a past chairman of the Pension Fund Operators Association of Nigeria. He previously worked with Ernst and Young in Lagos, was a partner in a Lagos based consulting firm, and subsequently became an executive director of an insurance company in Nigeria. Dave was also a founding director of Pensions Alliance Limited (“PALPensions”) and served as the MD/CEO from 2009 to October 2016. Dave holds an honors degree in Civil Engineering from University of Nigeria, Nsukka. He also holds a certificate in Institutional Private Equity Investing jointly awarded by the EVCA and the Said Business School at the University of Oxford. He is a Chartered Accountant and a CFA Charterholder.

Kurt Winkelmann has over 30 years of experience in investments and pension-related issues. He is a co-founder and CEO of Navega Strategies, LLC, a quantitative investment research firm. He was a Senior Fellow at the Heller Hurwicz Economics Institute (University of Minnesota), where he spearheaded the Institute’s pension policy initiative. Before founding Navega, Kurt was Managing Director and Global Head of Research at MSCI, Inc. Prior to MSCI, he was a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where he led the Global Investment Strategies group in the Investment Management Division. He has written extensively on asset allocation and risk management themes. He was an advisor to the Monetary Authority of Singapore, a board member of the Alberta Investment Management Company, an advisor to the British Coal Staff Superannuation Scheme, a Director of the University of Minnesota Foundation Investment Advisors, and a Trustee of the University of Minnesota Foundation. He chairs the Advisory Board for the Heller Hurwicz Economics Institute. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from the University of Minnesota, and his B.A. from Macalester College (double major in Mathematics and Economics).

Maureen O’Hara is the Robert W. Purcell Professor of Finance at Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. She is an expert on market microstructure and publishes widely on banking and financial intermediaries, law and finance, and experimental economics. Professor O’Hara is the author of numerous journal articles, as well as the books Market Microstructure Theory; High-Frequency Trading: New Realities for Traders, Markets, and Regulators; and Something for Nothing: Arbitrage and Ethics on Wall Street. She has served as president of the American Finance Association, the Western Finance Association, and the Financial Management Association and as executive editor of the Review of Financial Studies. Professor O’Hara was a member of the CFTC-SEC Emerging Regulatory Issues Task Force (the “flash crash” committee) and served on the Global Advisory Board of the Securities Exchange Board of India, the Advisory Board of the US Treasury’s Office of Financial Research, and the SEC’s Equity Market Structure Advisory Committee. She was named to Institutional Investor’s Trading Technology Top 40 and is a fellow of the Initiative for Cryptocurrencies and Contracts. Professor O’Hara is an adviser to Symbiont, a company focusing on blockchain and smart securities, and AVA Labs, a cryptocurrency and blockchain startup.

Laurence B. Siegel is the Gary P. Brinson Director of Research at CFA Institute Research Foundation and an independent consultant. He has authored, edited, or co-edited six CFA Institute Research Foundation monographs and is the author of Fewer, Richer, Greener, published by Wiley in 2019. Mr. Siegel serves on the editorial boards of several prominent journals and on the board of directors of the Q Group and the American Business History Center. He has assisted a variety of nonprofit organizations in the role of investment committee chair or member. Previously, Mr. Siegel was director of research in the Investment Division of the Ford Foundation. Before that, he served as a managing director at Ibbotson Associates (now Morningstar). His website is www.larrysiegel.org. Mr. Siegel received a BA in urban geography and an MBA in finance from the University of Chicago.

Dr. Luis García-Feijóo, CFA, CIPM, is Professor of Finance at Florida Atlantic University (FAU), where he teaches investments and international finance. He is also a co-founder of Economic Index Associates (EIA), LLC. Professor García has served as associate editor of the Financial Analysts Journal since 2012, and he is also a research director for CFA Institute Research Foundation. Prior to joining FAU, he worked as director, exam development at CFA Institute and was an associate professor at Creighton University. Professor García’s research interests include factor investing, monetary policy and asset returns, and behavioral finance, among others. His research has been published in leading academic and practitioner journals. He is co-author of the book Invest with the Fed: How to Maximize Portfolio Performance Following Federal Reserve Policy. Professor García holds a PhD in finance from the University of Missouri-Columbia. He actively served on the Board of Directors of the CFA Society of South Florida from 2009 to 2014 and has been an active volunteer for CFA Institute since 2009.