The Fiftyfaces Podcast

Asha Mehta is Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer at Global Delta Capital, where she has a thematic focus on Emerging and Frontier Markets as well as Sustainability Investing. She was previously Lead Portfolio Manager and Director of Responsible Investing at Acadian Asset Management and prior to that an investment banker.  She has traveled to over 80 countries and lived in six, and recently released a book, The Power of Capital: An Adventure Capitalist’s Journey to a Sustainable Future. Our conversation starts with her upbringing and her parents' immigration story, and winds its way through Asha's college years and her early interest in biological sciences.  A setback to funding of a vaccine distribution project in India, led to her finding work experience in Microfinance, and there a belief in impact and the power of capital was born. Asha then takes on a world tour, first through an investor's lens - we hear about her travels around the world and the areas where technology is enabling leapfrogging of existing infrastructure and breakthroughs that improve living standards and ultimately create impact. We travel from Nigeria to Saudi Arabia, from Tunisia to Cambodia, and apply also the lens of sustainability, examining what meaningful ESG data looks like and how it can be used to fashion investment decisions. We spend some time speaking about Asha's book, The Power of Capital, which is written in the spirit of a true Adventure Capitalist, and the labor of love that that entailed.  Another labor of love was Asha's founding of her own firm Global Delta Capital, and we discuss the "adventure" of entrepreneurship and capital raising. You can find the book here: Link to powerofcapital.com and Power of Capital: An Adventure Capitalist's Journey to a Sustainable Future: Mehta, Asha: 9781119906032: Amazon.com: BookAs final words of wisdom, Asha encourages listeners to be the change they wish to see in the world. Similarly, to learn to work through change and even embrace it. Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

Jason Singer is Partner and Global Lead for Product Development & Innovation in the Client and Product Solutions group at Apollo. Prior to joining in 2021, he worked at Goldman Sachs Asset Management (GSAM) for 22 years. At GSAM, he was Managing Director and Global Head of Product, leading the Public Capital Markets team within GSAM’s retail client business.   Our conversation starts with Jason’s studies at Syracuse University, where he majored in finance and entrepeneurship and moves then to his early entry into the asset management industry at Goldman Sachs, where he cycled through nine different roles across the business in 22 years.  We return then to his training and roots in entrepreneurship to link it to building client solutions, which is his current focus, and look at the craft involved in this. We also bring in the global perspective, given his recent trips to clients around the world.  This brings us to the evolving role of alternatives in client portfolios, the increased awareness of income and its importance, and the future of the 60/40 portfolio.   Staying on innovation, we look to the evolving nature of private wealth offerings, how the advisory world is shifting as client needs change, and the role that accessible and digestible education and training plays in this.  .  In the context of product launches and assessing client appetite Jason broaches the topic of where this fails, and what can be learned from maybe evolving too quickly.  Delivered through a lens that embraces complexity and the challenge of pattern recognition, this is a master class in the art of building client solutions and its many facets.Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

Elizabeth Browne is Managing Director and Co-Head, Elevate at GCM Grosvenor, where she works in the Sponsor Solutions division. She was previously Head of Entrepreneurship and Family Office Partners at RedBird Capital Partners and was a senior member of the investment team at DNS capital, a family office. She has held numerous board roles.Our far reaching conversation starts with Elizabeth's upbringing in Chicago and her family's history, in which glass ceilings were shattered and women were expected to have every opportunity that men had. We chart her course through college in Montreal and then her early roles in emerging markets including China.  As a witness to corporate transactions amid the M&A boom in China we discuss lessons learned.  This is a fascinating discussion which examines the customs of how business is done, the importance of viewing networking in a non-transactional way, and how, especially in emerging markets, improvisation is sometimes the order of the day. Championing the rights and causes of women and girls is a lifelong dedication for Elizabeth through both industry groups and NGO and charity work and we talk a little about the origins of this passion and how the cause has evolved. Moving back to her professional path, we speak then about the Grosvenor Elevate Platform, its seeding activities and the kind of opportunity set it perceives among Emerging Managers - which tend to be mostly first and second vintage funds that are below $1 bn. We end with a rousing reminder of the importance of industry networks, supporting eachother and being the change we wish to see. Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

Uwe Schillhorn is Program Director at Emerging Markets Investors Alliance.  He previously was CIO at Principal International Americas, where he managed the investment teams and developed the business in Latin America.  Prior to that he was previously a global bond portfolio manager at UBS, and his most recent role was as CIO of a Chicago based public fund. Our conversation starts with his high school years, and his early interest in trading stocks - we hear about trades placed on Italian options from the phone booth during high school lunch break, and the rest might be deemed to be history.  He studied economics and then transitioned to emerging market debt, which opened up a career path through emerging markets which saw him spend over 5 years in Chile.  We talk in detail about the reality on the ground in emerging markets, and what the media can sometimes get wrong about them. Uwe mentions the potential for political instability and unrest, which he himself had underestimated, despite living on the ground there.  This, among other risks, change the shape of emerging markets investing.From the land of some uncertainty then, we move to discuss uncertainty in investing and how the art of investing and client liaison links so directly to human conditions of doubt and the craving for certainty or closure. Uwe compares investment advice and financial planning to the ancient shamans who divined answers in early medicine.  Many of the answers then were unknowable, but people were drawn to guides who could provide assurance.  While modern medicine may have changed, arguably financial markets have not.  There are no scientific truths or certainties about outcomes - so the desire for guidance is stronger than ever.  This entertaining and sometimes philosophical discussion helps us map then landscape even if finding the way is ultimately up to us. Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

Catherine Beard is SVP of Alternatives Consulting at Callan, the investment consultants. She has had a long career in investment consulting and allocation with a particular focus on private credit and is based in Chicago. Catherine is a veteran of the private credit arena, having cycled through time on a bond trading desk at a hedge fund, and having the irreplaceable experience of being "in the room where it happened" in the financial crisis of 2008. We briefly tour through her roots in Kentucky and growing up in a family of bankers, then explore her rise in the ranks of finance. The good, the bad and the ugly of the hedge fund world pre and post 2008 is dissected as only Catherine can - with candor, realism and a good dose of humor.We move then to her move into consulting and a spell at an allocator where she built a private credit portfolio before pivoting back into the consulting role. We talk about the private credit opportunity set, distinguish what is sustainable and here for the long haul from the fly-by-night fad strategies.  We look inside the mindset not only of an allocator but also of a credit investor and ask what it takes to stay to course. Some of this includes pattern recognition, and how to flex one's entrepreneurial muscle even within a large firm, because entrepreneurial instincts rarely die away. We look at the strain that can come from M&A at a firm level, and how cultures don't always meld and can ultimately destroy each other. One plus one can sometimes be negative. Finally we turn to Catherine's personal reflections, which may be summed up by the great French icon Edith Piaf, "Je Ne Regrette Rien".  Given Catherine's love of all things French and her inspiring sense of adventure it is a fitting creed for a bold and adventurous career.Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

2024 will be a year of tremendous change, and tremendous noise.  With elections in key regions, we are likely to be subjected to a volley of rhetoric and uncertainty will be the order of the day. In times like this, it seems even more important to reach out to our wise community for their insights on what should stay the same, and evolve, amid this uncertainty. Tune in to hear about the power of networks, the importance of investing in relationships for the long term, the need for certainty and the importance of hearing the bad news early - particularly as a credit investor.  We also talk about the blue economy, the power of capital, company culture and blockages to effective governance, as well as the transformational role of alternatives in individual portfolio.  Tune in to hear from Catherine Beard, about her path through private credit and Jason Singer about what it means to provide solutions to clients on a global scale, and how alternatives will grow as portfolio components.  Uwe Schillhorn charts his career, which involved stints in Latin America and other Emerging Markets, and describes how the desire for certainty drives advisory behaviors even amid great market volatility while Paul Richards takes us deep inside the governance mindset and teaches us some words that every board member and executive should learn.Elizabeth Browne charts her extraordinary career and family history of female empowerment and shares the kind of founder she is now committed to supporting, while Asha Mehta takes us on a journey of her own, describing the Power of Capital, the book she wrote with the same title, and how being an Adventure Capitalist has become her life's mission.Chris Gorell Barnes describes the depths and opportunities in investing in the Blue Economy, and Shane Lanigan describes why credit investors need the bad news upfront, while discussing the opportunity set in Ireland and the UK. Julie Castro Abrams talks us through creating a seat at the table for all women, while Angela Miller May returns to the podcast to update us on her new CIO role at IMRF in Illinois, and how she is determined to leave no stone unturned in making an impact.  Series 1 of 2024 is supported by Apollo Global Management, a leading provider of alternative asset management and retirement services solutions. Apollo seeks to provide clients excess return at every point along the risk-reward spectrum and is focused on empowering retirees, building and financing stronger businesses and driving a more sustainable future. 

In this podcast we return to a former guest, Matt Sherwood, whom we featured in an earlier podcast in this series (see https://www.fiftyfaceshub.com/157-matthew-sherwood-ph-d-of-wevidit-media-determination-vision-and-the-power-of-reframing/) in order to catch up with his new venture, Pothos Partners. The name comes from the golden pothos plant which sequesters carbon particularly efficiently among plants. It is also a resilient plant that is difficult to eliminate. The firm will be focused on delivering asymmetrical value opportunities and is currently focused on the opportunity set in California carbon emission allowances market. Matt describes the window of opportunity in this market and some of the misunderstandings that persist about this market, particularly how it is differentiated from the voluntary carbon offset market. He ties it to the goal that many investors have to achieve net zero targets and how this regulated market can offer real evidence around emissions and progress. Finally we return to Matt's own story of visual impairment and how this has not deterred him from pursuing his passion of value investing, founding a firm and making impact. This bonus series is kindly supported by Sound Mark Partners. Sound Mark Partners LLC is a women-owned and led private credit firm focused on commercial real estate.

Jane Buchan is CEO of Martlet Asset Management, based in Newport Beach CA. She was one of the co-founders of Pacific Alternative Asset Management in 2000, which grew to $32 bn n AUM under her leadership. She was been a chair of the Board of CAIA as well as an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Amos Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and has a number of Board roles. Jane's career straddles academic life and an entrepreneurial and business one, and she describes how her time as a professor taught her to be comfortable being an outsider, and confident in challenging the status quo. We follow her into consulting and then into striking out boldly to service a select group of large institutions - the genesis of what became PAAMCO. The unique structure and approach taken by PAAMCO led it to stand apart from peers, and we discuss some birthing pains that launching a new approach entailed. Moving to her current portfolio of roles, we examine the growth of group think in governance structures, and how developing a voice should be approached. We move then to topics of leadership, decision making and mentorship. Overall this is a richly layered conversation from one of the founders of the approach to hedge funds as we know it among institutions today. This bonus series is kindly supported by Sound Mark Partners. Sound Mark Partners LLC is a women-owned and led private credit firm focused on commercial real estate.

John Teahan is a portfolio manager at Redwheel, which is focused on value oriented UK and global equity funds where he leads on engagement and responsible investing. The firm was formerly known as RWC Our conversation starts with John’s early life on a farm, and the resolute work ethic that that instilled in him. His college education took him into Bank of Ireland asset management and eventually London. There was a detour out of finance into a media role which saw him visit and write about frontier markets such as via a number of emerging market countries including Ethiopia, Ghana and Turkey. We spend some time examining what that experience taught him about impact and sustainability and then move to his move back into finance and learning the art of value investing. We then move to the Climate Engagement Strategy of which John is portfolio manager and talk about the origins of such a product, what it entails and how clients have responded to what it delivers. We take a short detour into the future of engagement and how that is evolving and how it will serve the emerging net zero agendas going forward. This bonus series is kindly supported by Sound Mark Partners.  Sound Mark Partners LLC is a women-owned and led private credit firm focused on commercial real estate.

Sinead Faughnan has worked as a financial advisor with UBS for the past 17 years. She is focused in particular on inter-generational wealth transfer. We start by discussing Sinead's rich Irish roots, her parents were originally from County Kerry and she herself was born in Ireland and moved to the US when she was three years old. She discusses her upbringing in Yonkers and the values that her parents' work ethic instilled in her. When it came to her own career, she was driven to be self-sufficient and once told, along her trajectory, that she was too ambitious for a role. We dwell on that for a minute - asking whether it inspired or deflated her, and ultimately learn how it made her only more determined to win at the game, even it meant playing - for a spell - by some different rules. With a long career in wealth management we trace her mentors, her role models and how she learned to find her own voice with her clients. Ultimately this meant giving them a voice - setting the table around their expectations, learning curve and values and only then, when these basics are set, moving to the investment discussion. We speak about the evolution of financial planning and the role that a compassionate advisor can play. We talk in particular about the concerns of female clients and how we can include them more in the conversation. When it comes to words of wisdom, Sinead suggests saying yes to stretch assignments and dressing for the job you want, not the one you have. This bonus series is kindly supported by Sound Mark Partners, Sound Mark Partners LLC is a women-owned and led private credit firm focused on commercial real estate.