TJ Carlson (MBA, CAIA, CTP) is the Chief Investment Officer of the Missouri State Employees’ Retirement System (MOSERS), a $10B retirement system that provides retirement, life insurance and long-term disability benefits to over 135,000 members of the system.

He has almost 30 years of diversified investment experience including public pensions, the private sector and institutional consulting experience.

Prior to his investment career TJ served in the United States Marine Corps and Reserves.

Laurence L. Gottlieb is the Chairman, Chief Executive Officer, Founder of Fundamental and a member of the Senior Management Team. Mr. Gottlieb has focused his career on revitalizing distressed assets and businesses. Prior to founding Fundamental, Mr. Gottlieb was Co-head of Citigroup’s Municipal Distressed & Special Situations Proprietary Trading Desk. In this position, Mr. Gottlieb focused on investments in high-yield and distressed municipal bonds, securities that were owned and traded on a proprietary basis by Citigroup and generally secured by real estate, operating businesses and other assets. Prior to joining Citigroup, Mr. Gottlieb served as Senior Vice President at C.A.K. Universal Credit Corporation, a subsidiary of Prudential Securities. He began his professional career practicing law in Los Angeles at the law firm of McDermott, Will & Emery where he specialized in distressed asset and business restructurings, insolvency proceedings and complex commercial matters. Mr. Gottlieb earned his J.D. from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and B.A. cum laude from Boston University. Following law school, he was admitted to the California Bar in Los Angeles where he served as a Judicial Law Clerk to the Honorable Kathleen T. Lax, United States Bankruptcy Judge, Central District of California. Mr. Gottlieb currently serves on the Board of Directors of the Big Apple Chapter of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO).

Dan is a managing director in the Client Solutions Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, leading the Alternative Portfolio Solutions team.  Prior to his current role, Dan led the portfolio research efforts in the open architecture business at GSAM, focusing on developing risk management, performance analysis, and portfolio construction techniques for private investments.  He has written papers on several topics including risk management in private equity, a quantitative framework for analyzing private asset allocations, and performance analysis in illiquid assets, and his work has been published in The Journal of Private Equity.  Dan earned a BS in Physics and Economics from the California Institute of Technology.

Greg Brown is a professor of finance and the founder and research director of the Institute for Private Capital. He was formerly the executive director of the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

His recent research centers on alternative investments, including hedge funds and private equity funds. He also is a leading expert on financial risk and the use of derivative contracts as risk management tools.

Dr. Brown’s research has been published in leading academic and practitioner finance journals, including The Journal of Finance, The Journal of Financial Economics, The Review of Financial Studies, The Journal of Derivatives and The Financial Analyst Journal. He serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Alternative Investments.

He previously served as director of research for Amundi Smith Breeden Associates, a global asset management firm specializing in fixed income investments. He has served as a consultant on financial risk and portfolio management for money management firms, the U.S. government, non-profits and Fortune 500 companies.

Prior to joining UNC Kenan-Flagler, he worked at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System in the Division of Research and Statistics. He also worked in artist relations for a subsidiary of Capitol Records in Hollywood. He received his PhD in finance from the University of Texas at Austin and his BS with honors in physics and economics from Duke University.

Drew Conway joined Two Sigma in April 2019 and is currently Head of Data Science for Two Sigma’s private investment businesses, where his responsibilities include oversight of all private investment data science initiatives including those related to Two Sigma Real Estate, where he manages strategy and resourcing.

Prior to joining Two Sigma, Mr. Conway founded Alluvium to bridge the gap between industrial machine data and the businesses and consumers who use this data to make better decisions. He served as CEO and was the driving force behind the company’s vision and growth, until its acquisition in 2019 (acquired by Augury). Mr. Conway is a former senior advisor to the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics for the City of New York, and he previously served as an advisor to Mortar Data (acquired by Datadog in 2015) and YHat (acquired by Alteryx in 2017). Mr. Conway started his career as a computational social scientist in the U.S. intelligence community, supporting the U.S. counter-terrorism mission.

Mr. Conway is also the co-founder of DataKind, a global non-profit of pro bono data scientists, and sits on its advisory board. He also sits on the advisory boards of multiple other startups, academic institutions, and government agencies. Mr. Conway is also the author of “Machine Learning for Hackers,” an introductory text on machine learning techniques.

Mr. Conway is a graduate of Hamilton College and holds a Ph.D. from New York University.

Dr. Kieser is a Principal and Co-Head of the Research & Data Science team within Ares’ Quantitative Research Group. In this role, he works closely with Ares’ investment teams, institutional investor clients, and academics to develop quantitative tools that provide investible insights. Previously, he was a Vice President in Landmark Partners’ Quantitative Research Group, before Ares acquired Landmark in 2021. Dr. Kieser holds a B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University in Risk Management, an M.S. from Villanova University in Finance and a Ph.D. from the University of Georgia in Finance.

David is a Co-founder and General Partner of Bull City Venture Partners.  He currently serves on the board of Reveal Mobile, Biospatial, CareAlly, and a board observer Blueprint Title and AdWerx.

Prior to joining Southern Capitol Ventures, David was with Deloitte Consulting where he managed strategic technology projects for the newly formed Department of Homeland Security.

David was on the boards of Spoonflower (acquired by Shutterfly – Aug 2021), Attila Security (acquired by ID Technologies – June 2021), Medfusion (acquired by NextGen Healthcare – Dec 2019), ArtusLabs (acquired by PerkinElmer – March 2011), AVIcode (acquired by Microsoft – Oct 2010), and BrightContext (acquired by WealthEngine – March 2014). He is co-Founder and former Chief Technology Officer of medical device portal, Orthocopia.com, which provides surgical information to operating room professionals.

David’s background in technology stems from the military where he served as a Naval Aviator flying over 1900 hours in the P-3C Orion.  David served as the Weapons and Operations Officer during two deployments to the Mediterranean theater and North Atlantic and led a Naval Intelligence special projects crew testing cutting-edge technologies for acoustic and non-acoustic sensors and combat mission hardware and software.

David received the Triangle Business Journal’s “40 under 40” leadership award and is a frequent guest lecturer at UNC Kenan Flagler Business School.  He received his BS in Electrical Engineering from the US Naval Academy, his MS in MIS from the University of Virginia and his MBA from UNC Chapel Hill.

Isaac Beckel covers private markets at Missouri State Employees Retirement System (MOSERS). With a background in derivatives (trading and portfolio optimization), hedge funds, risk parity, and private markets – Isaac has a unique perspective to help bridge the gap between the tools readily available to investors in public markets and hedge funds into the opaque world of private market investing, which, among other issues is still plagued by archaic and less than optimal performance measurements like IRR and MOIC, which lack context and are often very misleading as presented. He is transforming MOSERS’ approach to private market performance analytics, which helps them focus on strategies that truly add ‘alpha’ against their opportunity cost of efficient, passive investments in public markets.

Before this, Isaac was an Investment Officer at New Mexico Public Employees Retirement System (PERA), where, in addition to covering various private markets, risk parity, and portable alpha, Isaac contributed to creating the Excess Value method, a transformative tool for measuring performance in long-lock funds, creating the ability to construct alpha-share fee agreements on that performance to align incentives between LP/GP. Before that, Isaac worked on a hospital balance sheet portfolio covering alpha/diversifier strategies and real assets. Leading up to these allocating roles, Isaac was an Associate Portfolio Manager at Parametric in Minneapolis, trading various cleared and OTC derivatives for institutional clients. Isaac gained a BBA in Finance from the University of Minnesota Duluth and is a CFA and CAIA charter holder.

Drew currently serves as an evergreen portfolio manager and a voting member of the firm’s Evergreen Portfolio Management Committee (EPMC).

Prior to his current role, Drew served as a QIS Client Strategist, engaging with clients to understand their critical investment objectives leveraging proprietary QIS research and tools to address those needs. Drew joined HarbourVest in 2020 after 16 years at Wellington Management Company where he held various leadership, investment, and product roles. His previous experience includes roles at Cambridge Associates, The Parthenon Group, and Fidelity Investments.

Drew received a BA in Government (Honors) from Colby College and an MBA from Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Prior to joining Landmark Partners, Mr. Charles was a co-founder of Cogent Partners, the first secondary market sell-side advisor. Cogent, which was acquired by Greenhill & Co., is widely recognized for transforming the private equity secondary market by providing institutional-grade advisory services to sellers and providing a consistent source of deal flow for existing, new and non-traditional secondary buyers.

Mr. Charles graduated with honors from Texas Christian University, where he received a BBA in Finance and a BBA in Accounting. He received his MBA from the Wharton School of Business and is a CFA® charterholder.

Dwight Anderson is the Founder and Managing Partner of Ospraie Management, LLC (“Ospraie”), which actively invests in commodity markets and basic industries worldwide based on fundamental, bottom-up research. Mr. Anderson launched Ospraie in 1999 in partnership with Tudor Investment Corporation (“Tudor”), where he served as Head of the Basic Industries Group, before establishing Ospraie as an independent firm in 2004. Prior to joining Tudor, Mr. Anderson was a Managing Director at Tiger Management, in charge of the Basic Industries and Commodities Group. Mr. Anderson serves as Chairman of the Board of Concord Resources Limited, a global metals merchant business. Additionally, he serves on the Boards of Trustees of NYU Langone Medical Center, UNC Kenan Flagler Business School, and the United States Olympic Committee. He holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina and an AB in History from Princeton University. Mr. Anderson has been a recipient of the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Young Alumni Award and its MBA Alumni Merit Award. In 2008, he was inducted into NYU’s Sir Harold Acton Society. In addition, Mr. Anderson was the 2016 recipient of the Princeton in Africa Founder’s Medal.

His research has been published in academic and practitioner journals, including The Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Accounting Studies, Journal of Investment Management, and Energy Risk.

Navneet received a bachelor’s degree from Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur, a post-graduate degree from Indian Institute of Management-Kolkata, and a PhD in finance from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Ms. Baranski’s service with the firm dates back to 1997, including her years with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (“MLIM”), which merged with BlackRock in 2006. Prior to her current leadership role, Ms. Baranski was PEP’s Global Head of Investments with primary responsibility for all aspects of PEP’s investment process including sourcing, due diligence, and monitoring as well as portfolio construction and strategy. Before joining PEP in 2001, she worked as a high yield portfolio manager and research analyst in the fixed income division. She joined MLIM from Bank of America Securities, Inc. (formerly NationsBank), where she was a member of the Financial Sponsor Advisory group.

Ms. Baranski currently serves on the advisory boards of certain funds managed by Certares LLC, Black Diamond, Tailwind Capital Partners, 1315 Capital and Z Capital Partners. Additionally, she is currently on the board Internova Group and Guardian Alarm. She previously participated on the boards of Juweel Holdings, Amex Global Business Travel, TowerCo, Canbriam Energy, and Evenflo.

Ms. Baranski earned an MBA in Finance from Vanderbilt University and a BA in history and Art History from Wake Forest University.

Wes Bradle is a Senior Portfolio Manager in Private Equity at the Florida State Board of Administration (FSBA). His duties include reviewing and monitoring PE co-investments as well as assisting in new investment underwriting, portfolio management, and monitoring. Mr. Bradle has sourced more than 170 co-investment opportunities since August 2023. He previously monitored 17 PE firms and 50 funds that represent more than $3.8 billion in committed capital. Prior to FSBA, he was an Investment Officer in Private Equity at CalPERS. Before CalPERS, Mr. Bradle was an Analyst at Friedemann & Associates and also worked at a boutique consulting firm. His published works include “Mythbuster #2: Outperformers That Become Underperformers Should Be Avoided” and “Mythbusting: LPs should avoid Venture Capital if you can’t invest with top-tier VC funds.” Mr. Bradle has spoken at numerous conferences including UNC/IPC Alternative Investments Conference, PartnerConnect East, Carmo Private Markets Secondaries, IPEM, and has done multiple webinars including “Fundraising Masterclass: Do’s and Don’ts When Pitching LPs” and “Private Equity Exclusive – LP Perspectives.” Mr. Bradle graduated magna cum laude with a B.A. in business administration from Point Loma Nazarene University and an M.B.A. from Florida State University.

Juliana is an Alternatives Investment Strategist in the Client Solutions Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, responsible for private markets portfolio solutions and thought leadership. Juliana first joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in the Investment Banking Division, and rejoined the firm in 2020. Prior to rejoining the firm, she held a number of roles at Neuberger Berman, most recently as co-head of the Investment Strategy Group advising high net worth, endowment and foundation clients on customized portfolio strategy, and, prior to that, as director of investment risk focused on private equity. Juliana graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics (Summa Cum Laude) from The Wharton School and an MBA (with Distinction) from Harvard Business School.  She is a CFA charterholder.

Mr. Ijaz joined EJF in 2011 and oversees the structured product strategy.  Mr. Ijaz specializes in the specialty finance, insurance, and banking sectors, and currently leads the credit analysis and trust preferred CDO structuring for the Insurance and Bank Trust Preferred Securities (“TruPS”) team as well as the structuring for bank subordinated debt CDOs. Most recently, Mr. Ijaz led EJF’s inaugural commercial real estate credit risk transfer (“CRT”) trade with a regional bank.   Mr. Ijaz has spearheaded twelve EJF sponsored securitizations, totaling approximately $3.8 billion. Mr. Ijaz also manages the investments of legacy TruPS CDOs and some corporate debt.  Mr. Ijaz came to EJF from Merrill Lynch, where he was employed as a summer research analyst in the Global Private Client Division.  Prior to his time at Merrill Lynch, he worked for Citibank N.A. and Muslim Commercial Bank.  Mr. Ijaz earned a BA in Business Economics from the College of Wooster.

Mike is on the Pan-Alts team and has over 22 years of private equity, private credit, and co-investing experience. He is responsible for alternative investment portfolios in the Americas with a focus on developing portfolio strategies and building co-investment portfolios.

Prior to Aksia’s acquisition of TorreyCove Capital Partners, Mike was a Managing Director of TorreyCove Capital Partners, where he was responsible for the identification, due diligence, and selection of private equity and credit investments, including co-investments. Prior to that, he was a Senior Vice President at PCG Asset Management in a similar capacity. Mike previously worked at Smith Breeden Associates, a fixed income money manager where he worked on the corporate bond trading desk.

Mike graduated from Duke University with a BS in Economics. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and is a CFA charterholder.

Mr. Levy is a Partner and Co-Head of the Ares Venture Capital Group, BootstrapLabs, an Ares company, where he focuses on venture capital investing. He is also Co-Head of the AI Innovation Group, which focuses on driving internal AI strategy.

Prior to joining Ares in 2024, Mr. Levy was Co-Founder and General Partner at BootstrapLabs, a venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley with an applied AI investment thesis since 2015, where he worked with AI portfolio company founders to build and scale technology, products, teams, and operations. Additionally, Mr. Levy was an entrepreneur who launched, built, and exited two startups in the financial technology space, including Praedea Solutions, a data mining software company using machine learning and natural language processing technology, that was acquired by Mergent in 2005, and InsideVenture, a software platform that connects the founders of venture-backed pre-IPO startups and long-only institutional investors on Wall Street, that was acquired by SecondMarket in 2009 (and is now part of NASDAQ).

Previously, Mr. Levy was a Technology, Media, and Telecom Investment Banker at Lazard, SG Cowen, Houlihan Lokey, Wedbush Securities, and QuantumWave Capital where he advised CxOs of Fortune 500 companies and startup founders on mergers and acquisitions, corporate strategy and financing. Mr. Levy is a member of the Association for the Advancement of AI (AAAI). He is a frequent industry speaker on topics such as innovation, technology investing, entrepreneurship and artificial intelligence in the US, Europe and Asia. He is currently a member of the board of Looq AI, IUNU, and Southie Autonomy, among others. He holds a B.S. from the University of Paris IX Dauphine in Finance and Economy and an M.B.A. in Corporate Finance from the University of Paris X Nanterre, where he graduated as valedictorian.

As a sector lead, Rob leads the investment activity for late-stage private companies in the technology sector and covers private companies in the fintech sector. The firm currently sponsors a series of late-stage growth funds that seek capital appreciation through investments in late-stage companies looking for strategic capital to move to the next phase of development. He leverages insights from portfolio managers, global industry analysts and other global research resources within the firm to identify, lead diligence, pursue and manage investments in private companies.

Prior to joining Wellington Management in 2023, Rob was a partner at TrueBridge Capital Partners (2014 – 2022), a venture capital fund-of-funds and direct investor. At TrueBridge, he sourced and led investments into mid and growth stage private technology companies in addition to investing in leading venture capital funds. He started his career as part of the Private Investments Team at UNC-Chapel Hill’s endowment before joining TrueBridge as an early team member.

Rob earned his MBA with honors and concentrations in entrepreneurship, economics and finance from the University of Chicago – Booth School of Business (2014), and his B.S. with honors in business administration from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2005). Additionally, he holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation.

Paul McGeough is a Managing Director in BlackRock’s Aladdin Private Markets Product team. He is responsible for driving strategy and execution to deliver private markets technology and data solutions to the Aladdin and eFront client community, and BlackRock. Previously, Paul was a part of the BlackRock’s Financial Markets Advisory and iShares businesses. Prior to joining BlackRock in 2017, Paul was a fixed income derivatives trader on the Index and ETF Total Return Swaps desk at Barclays. He started his career in Deutsche Bank’s Credit Risk Management group. Paul holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a BA in Economics from Connecticut College.

Jason Morrow is the Deputy Chief Investment Officer for Utah Retirement Systems, which manages $48 billion in pension and $10b in defined contribution assets. Jason oversees investment research and due diligence, manager selection, co-investments and direct investments. His focus as DCIO has been expanding the private markets programs, building teams, and shaping an engaged and collaborative culture. Before becoming DCIO in 2015, Jason was a portfolio manager, played a key role in building the Absolute Return and Private Credit portfolios, and managed fixed income.

Prior to joining URS, Jason held operating roles in product management, corporate finance, and healthcare revenue information systems at Ingenix (now Optum), a UnitedHealth Group company providing data, analytics, and technology services.

Jason is a member of the CAIA Allocator Advisory Council, providing practitioner input on curriculum content, and is an Investor Board Member at AIF, an independent economic think tank focusing on institutional investment policy. He is also adjunct faculty in the graduate program at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah, from which he received both his BS in Finance and an MBA.

Bryan Reid is an Executive Director on MSCI’s Global Real Assets Research and Development team, where he specializes in performance measurement, portfolio management, and risk research to support asset owners and investment managers. His work centers on aligning MSCI’s data and analytical tools with client investment challenges to drive informed decision-making.

Bryan joined MSCI in 2013 in Sydney before relocating to New York in 2020. Prior to joining MSCI, Bryan worked in the structured finance team at Moody’s Investors Service, having started his career with the Reserve Bank of Australia.

Michael worked at PNC Equity Partners before establishing Riverarch Equity Partners. Previously, he was in the Investment Banking group at Schneider Downs where he focused on mergers and acquisitions and private placements. Michael received a bachelor of arts in business administration from the University of Notre Dame. He also received an M.B.A. from the Kenan-Flagler School of Business at The University of North Carolina. Michael was previously a director of Authority Brands, Carbon’s Golden Malted, Environmental Express, Feeders Supply, North American Breaker Company, LawLogix, Pirtek Europe, Precision Aviation Group and Steelite International. He is currently a director of Barr GeoSpatial Solutions, Empire Group, Forta, Fresh Direct Produce and Safco Dental Supply.

Mr. Scott is a member of the UNC-Chapel Hill Board of Visitors, the UNC Hussman Foundation Board of Trustees, and the Wall Street for McCombs Advisory Board. Mr. Scott is a member of the Board of the coldwater conservation organization Trout Unlimited. Mr. Scott has served on numerous public and private corporate boards during his career.

Mr. Scott graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Texas’ McCombs School of Business MBA program.

Kristen Tongberg is the Head of the Investment Strategy Office and a Partner at Cambridge Associates.

Kristen joined the firm in 2004 and has over 25 years of investment experience. As a member of our executive leadership team, she is responsible for ensuring the firm is delivering best-in-class investment results for all clients. Additionally, she works to continually improve the effectiveness of our investment platform and portfolio implementation. Kristen also serves as an OCIO for non-profit clients building sophisticated investment portfolios designed to meet critical financial and client alignment objectives.

Outside of Cambridge Associates, Kristen is an Investment Committee Member for UNC Management Company.

Prior to joining Cambridge Associates, Kristen was an Equity Research Analyst at MFS Investment Management. Prior to MFS, she was an Investment Banking Analyst at Wheat First Butcher Singer and worked on more than 25 transactions including mergers, private placements, and public equity offerings.

Kristen received her MBA from The University of Chicago and her BA in Economics and History from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is a CFA® charterholder.