AIC

Keynotes

 

Alan Bowser

Former Americas Region Co-Head and Chief Diversity Officer, Bridgewater Associates

Alan Bowser is an experienced Corporate Director and C-Suite Executive with a two-decade track record leading sales and client management divisions at global financial firms. His 36-year career includes senior roles in national politics and experience with public policy and government decision-making.

Before his recent retirement, Bowser was Co-Head of the Americas Region at Bridgewater Associates, a Partner and member of the firm’s Operating Committee. As a capstone to his career, Bridgewater’s CEO asked Bowser to take on the role of Chief Diversity Officer, bringing the credibility of a seasoned line manager to highlight the tie between diversity goals and business performance.

Prior to Bridgewater, Bowser was Managing Director and Head of Investment Services at UBS Wealth Management Americas. Before UBS, he was a Managing Director at Citigroup. In a series of roles with increasing responsibilities, he led an international sales team spanning Latin America and Europe; helped shift a Private Banking business from a credit-driven to an investment-oriented franchise; and supported the Corporate Strategy Team’s work on organic and acquisition growth opportunities.

Bowser is an Independent Director at Eaton Vance, a mutual fund company recently acquired by Morgan Stanley. He serves on the Portfolio Management, Contract Review and Governance Committees. He is also a Director at the privately-held company, Stout Risius Ross, serving on the Compensation and Strategy Committees.

Bowser’s early career was in politics and non-profit management. He was Chief of Staff to the Majority Whip of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Hon. William H. Gray, III, and still maintains his ties to public policy and international affairs as a Member of the Council on Foreign Relations. After his service on Capitol Hill, he was the EVP for Operations at the United Negro College Fund where he helped transform that storied institution into a leading philanthropic organization.

Bowser is a past member of the Executive Leadership Council, the current Board Chair of the Black Hedge Fund Professionals Network and has served on the Boards of the University of Pennsylvania, the New York Urban League and the Robert Toigo Foundation, among other organizations. In 2020 he was named a top 100 EMpower Ethnic Minority Role Model, and in 2022 he was named by Business Insider as 1 of 14 diversity trailblazers in corporate America.

Bowser is a 1984 summa cum laude graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a B.S. in Economics. He received his Masters of Philosophy in Politics from the University of Oxford in 1986. He and his wife, Sarah Matthews, have one son and live in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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John D’Agostino

Senior Advisor, Coinbase Institutional; Lecturer, MIT and Columbia Universities

John D’Agostino serves as an independent director on several of the world’s largest asset managers, where he represents the interests of Limited Partners in a fiduciary capacity. Separately, John is a Senior Advisor to Coinbase. Prior, John was the US Managing Director for Waystone Governance, the world’s largest fund governance firm. There, John served on the global governance committee and served on the Board of Directors for several of the world’s largest asset managers, including several of the largest digital asset funds in the United States.

Previously, John was a Managing Director at KPMG Consulting, where he was part of the firm’s global leadership for the Finance and Hedge Fund consulting groups. While at KPMG, he provided operational and strategic advisory services across a variety of industries, including advising on the acquisition of the London Metals Exchange by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

John served as Vice President and Head of Strategy for the New York Mercantile Exchange, where he helped transition the floor to electronic trading and was part of the leadership team building out the core systems to accommodate co-location, quant and HFT volumes. He also led the effort to develop the first Middle East energy derivatives exchange in partnership with the Dubai Government. This work and John’s role was chronicled as the subject of two NY Times bestselling books, Rigged by Ben Mezrich and The Start Up Of You by Reid Hoffman.

A cum laude graduate of Williams College, John received a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, after studying Politics, Philosophy and Economics at Oxford University. John has adjunct lecturer positions at Instead, MIT and Columbia Universities, where he lectures in Fintech and Governance. In 2021, John was named Fellow of the AIF Institute Financial Innovation Center of Excellence. In 2019, John was named Chair of the UK Consulate’s Financial Services Working Group.

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Tim Jenkinson

Professor of Finance, Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

Prof. Tim Jenkinson is one of the leading authorities on private equity, IPOs, and institutional asset management. Tim is renowned for his ability to collect critical, previously inaccessible, data by building strong links with institutional investors, regulators and other players in the financial industry. His research is widely quoted and has been published in the top academic journals. Tim is Director of the Oxford Private Equity Institute and one of the founders of the Private Equity Research Consortium.

Tim is a renowned teacher and presenter, and teaches executive courses on private equity, entrepreneurial finance, and valuation. He is a frequent keynote speaker at practitioner conferences and his research has won many awards, including the 2016 Harry Markowitz Prize (from the Journal of Investment Management for his work on private equity), the 2015 Commonfund Prize (for the paper with the most relevance to institutional investors) and a 2014 Brattle Group Prize (awarded by the American Finance Association for the best research on corporate finance). He is also a Professorial Fellow at Keble College, University of Oxford and a Research Associate of the European Corporate Governance Institute. Tim’s published papers, and current working papers, are available at SSRN.

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Amy Wierenga

Managing Director, Investments & Chief Risk Officer, GCM Grosvenor

Ms. Wierenga is GCM Grosvenor’s Investment Chief Risk Officer and is responsible for global risk strategy and oversight encompassing public and private markets investment process, portfolio construction, risk framework, investment data strategy, and quantitative research. She is a member of the Absolute Return Strategies, Alternative Credit, and the Private Equity, Real Estate and Infrastructure Investment Committees. She also serves on the ESG Committee.

Prior to joining GCM Grosvenor, Ms. Wierenga spent 12 years at BlueMountain Capital Management. At BlueMountain, Ms. Wierenga  was a Partner, Chief Risk Officer, and served as a close advisor to the CIO on all capital allocation, portfolio management and risk management decisions. She also acted as a resource and thought partner to the firm’s most sophisticated institutional clients. Ms. Wierenga led BlueMountain’s day-to-day Risk and Portfolio Construction, Treasury, Trade Support, PnL, and other Operations functions during her tenure, and served as BlueMountain’s Risk Committee and Valuation Committee Chairs.

Previously, Ms. Wierenga was with Merrill Lynch in the Global Rates and FX trading division, and the Federal Reserve Bank where she was a commissioned Bank Examiner and Market and Liquidity Risk Specialist. Ms. Wierenga received her Bachelor of Science in Economics and Bachelor of Arts in Music cum laude from Butler University and her Master of Business Administration in Analytic Finance, Econometrics & Statistics from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She currently serves as the Butler University Board of Trustees Vice Chair and is Chair the Butler University Endowment and Investment Committee. Ms. Wierenga is Treasurer on the Society of Quantitative Analysts (SQA) Board of Directors, is a member of the Board of Advisors for the Rutgers University RTWS, and was recognized by the Hedge Fund Journal as one of the 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds in 2018.

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