The Fiftyfaces Podcast

Toyin Alalade's last role was as a Senior Strategy Manager with Royal London. She previously worked in a range of financial and marketing roles at Standard Life and Moody Monday. She recently left Scotland and  returned to her home country of Nigeria, and it was a moving Linked In post that she wrote that led me to her. Our conversation starts with Toyin's upbringing in Nigeria and what led her to university and the first part of her career in the UK.  She describes how she settled there and eventually made Scotland her home.  We talk about graduating with an engineering degree into a bleak job market and how she stumbled upon a career in finance and investing almost by accident.  We discuss the ups and downs of a career in finance, the importance of seizing opportunities and the need to be flexible and adaptable as the industry's opportunities ebb and flow. Moving then to what prompted her move back to Nigeria just this summer, we learn of the confluence of professional and personal opportunities that enabled it and Toyin's initial impressions of returning to Nigeria as a professional and her assessment of the opportunities in store. We take a short detour into another one of Toyin's passions - interior design - what sparked that and how it may be more and more relevant to how we build our workplaces going forward.Finally we turn to what inspires her - to a discussion of her parents and other key people (including many women) who have inspired her in the workplace.  We refer to a creed, which is "whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might", which captures Toyin's commitment to doing her best at whatever she finds in front of her.  It is an uplifting and life-affirming message. 

Stephan Breban is Head of Research at Renewity, the Founder of Giants Shoulders Capital and a consultant to a number of different firms.  He is known as one of London’s original (and legendary) private equity investors and advisors and has witnessed some of the good, the bad and the ugly of that the sector presents. We had the pleasure of working together, side by side in our own entrepreneurial ventures, for over a decade.I have been keen to get Stephan on the podcast for some time, because I knew that his years of industry insight and reputation for straight talking and calling "a spade a spade" when it comes to difficult topics would make for a refreshing and insightful conversation. And he did not disappoint.This sweeping conversation took us from his internship in an actuarial firm that he started at the tender age of 14, through his years as an actuary and then investment consultant and how he became one of the first private equity specialists in this area decades ago. We dive into why private equity makes sense for investors - institutional and high net work alike - and how he would approach constructing a portfolio today. As a seasoned investor Stephan has seen a few fund failures and debacles in this arena and we talk through the lessons learned there too.We then move to the area of investing in Africa - long an area of expertise for Stephan, and explore why so many investors skip the onsite due diligence part and therefore fail to fully understand the opportunity in this area. We finish with our usual discussion of diversity in the profession and what can be done to address it.  Stephan, again, does not hold back in his prescription for change and progress.

Deb Clarke was Global Research Chair and Global Head of Investment Research at Mercer for close to 16 years, following an extensive career in asset management and consulting which included 20 years as a portfolio manager.  She retired from her position at Mercer in June 2021 and is building a portfolio career, including a NED role on the EMEA board of Blackrock and a member of the UK CFA Institute Advisory Board. She is an active speaker on the conference circuit and has been voted in the FN 100 Most Influential Women in Asset Management in 6 of the last 9 years.   Our conversation tracks Deb's career progression, what drove her move to London, and later to Chicago for a few years.  We talk about what led her to a research role, her investment beliefs as well as the advice that she gives to younger career professionals.  My favorite part of this podcast was the time we spent discussing Deb's prodigious craft collection - as an avid quilter as well as a cross stitch and crochet expert, and I deliberately recorded a video so that we could showcase some of Deb's masterpieces - see the linked video on Linked In.  This may be a skill that is in shorter and shorter supply now, but hear how Deb's heartfelt creations put the S in sustainability and recycle meaningful strands of lives lived into a gorgeous portfolio.

Mark Steed is Chief Investment Officer at Arizona PSPRS Trust, a US public defined benefit fund with over $13 bn AUM, where he has spent over 14 years.  He previously worked as a banker and prior to that as a financial analyst, and has a Masters in Predictive Analytics.  He describes himself as an “investment ideas” guy and an out of the box thinker at that.  This wide-ranging conversation canters through multiple topics - from pension fund governance to building and maintaining a motivated team that has clear career trajectories to the power of data.  We then move to some specific opportunities (in broad terms) that have been of interest recently - noting their diverse and diversifying nature - including English soccer clubs, e-sports franchises and the bereavement business.  Mark also comments on the innovations that the team is seeing in emerging markets and China in particular.Mark is unique in the pension fund arena for the breadth of his vision and his careful referral back to data and to analyzing his own and his team's predictions and for course correction in real time.  Faced with a steep return target (as is the case for many US public funds) he looks for ways that the pension fund assets can be optimized for return and an all-weather profile.Innovation and empowerment of team members is a hallmark of the investment style at Arizona PSPRS and it is fascinating to hear how more pension funds might be set up for success in this way. This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Bevon Joseph is co-founder of the Greenwood project, which is an organization that connects Black and LatinX students with career opportunities in financial services and fin-tech.  He previously held a series of roles in investment banks and other financial service firms, mainly in trading management functions. He is an advisory board member at the DePaul Career Center and is a graduate of the GS 10,000 small business program. Our conversation starts with Bevon's upbringing in Trinidad, his move to the US and his early career when he admitted that one of the biggest challenges was not having mentors or being connected to the industry because he lacked the social capital that some others had. He said he had to figure out things on his own, which was a challenge and a relatively steep learning curve.Later in his career he realized that he had the potential to bridge this gap for the next generation of Black and Latin-x students by creating the kind of infrastructure that many of them lacked.  He set up the Greenwood Project with his wife Elois Joseph (whose podcast is to follow in Series 4, 2021) with the goal of reaching as many students as possible and bridging the lack of opportunity and exposure, because talent was not lacking. The Greenwood Project is intended to act almost like a market maker broker between firms and diverse candidates by getting them ready and bringing them to their doorsteps. Bevon describes the mission as being bigger than just the internship, how it is to teach black and Latin x students that they can start building generational wealth starting with themselves. There is more information about the Greenwood Project at greenwoodproject.org.This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Annabel Gillard is an International Advisory Council Member at the Institute of Business Ethics.  She previously had a long career in asset management where she ran institutional business development businesses for large asset managers and held various board and committee roles in the CFA UK organization. She is currently pursuing a post-graduate degree in the twin disciplines of Philosophy and AI. Our conversation touches multiple times on the importance of lifelong learning and the systems thinking approach that can bring together seemingly orthogonal topics and enable richer learning.  First, though, we return to Annabel's investment career and her insights on what it takes to build asset management businesses that are sustainable.  We examine the positives and negatives of the culture of some financial environments and ask the question as to whether Chief Ethics Officer should be elevated as a C-Suite role within financial services firms.  We ask whether ethics training is like training a muscle needing a case study approach and frequent reminders and how this can be integrated into firm structures.We then move to AI, one of Annabel's current topics and its areas of fit as well as lack of fit.  This is also an area where an ethical overlay will increasingly be applied. This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Julian Tregoning has worked in the asset management business for many years, having had senior roles in the Flemings Group (where he also covered Latin America) and at BNY Mellon. He has held multiple Director and Chair roles and is a member of the investment committee for SAUL, a multi-employer defined benefit scheme for the non-academic employees of the University of London, which is where we met.Our conversation goes back to some common ground Julian and I share - schooling in Ireland.  His dates from the 1950s, when he attended boarding school near Kells, Co Meath. He then took a gap year in France where a passion for wine was born, and joined the navy, fulfilling a love of boats and exotic travel.  Julian's career in the navy came to a shattering end following a skiing accident, and in a theme that we have seen again and again in this podcast series, from that crisis came opportunity - it was while recuperating from that injury that he read about the world of investing.There began a fascinating career which saw him move from the era of top hats (and little diversity) in the City of London to a global career which saw him visit a wide sweep of Latin American countries as well as much of Asia.  He saw the most fierce of bear markets as well as the most stunning recoveries.  When asked what advice he has used to guide him through this journey Julian refers to the adage of the KISS principle - Keep it Simple Stupid.  We talk about that as well as the current wave of ESG investing in order to round out this chronicle of a truly unique career journey. This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Esther Peiner is Co-Head of the Infrastructure Group Europe in Partners Group, based In Zug.  She previously spent close to 11 years at Macquarie Group, where she was a managing director focused initially on the TMT sector and then infrastructure and real assets. Our conversation traces her entry into investment banking, how she thrived there and how she found being in a minority worked to her advantage at times - making her more visible, more memorable and more impactful.  We cover then her move to Switzerland and ultimately Partners Group. Esther is open about a painful period in her personal life that forced her to reassess her priorities and appreciate the supports that she had around her.  We talk about integrating family and work life, and why we need to normalize this balance. Esther is now a leader in the infrastructure investor space and we mention how much opportunity sits in this space and why more people should consider it for their careers. This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Sam Kunz is Chief Investment Officer at Core Financial Partners, a firm that provides financial planning to small and medium sized businesses based in Venice, CA. He was previously a Senior Managing Director responsible for asset allocation and investment strategy at the University of California and prior to that he was my predecessor as CIO at the Chicago Policemen’s Annuity and Benefit Fund.  Our conversation starts with Sam's early days in investing as a trader and the skills and insights that that time provided - his transition to an institutional investing role was driven by a multitude of circumstances, but the training it provided in managing volatility and forgiving mistakes and even tolerating fallibility was highly instructive.  Sam has seen the world of institutional investing from many angles - within a public pension fund, within a large university endowment and now within a more nimble boutique firm. Always philosophical and analytical we examine the lessons learned over decades of investing, why we need to be mindful of the industry's hubris and why, above all, we must learn to be gentle with ourselves, in what can be an unforgiving and challenging work environment. This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.

Sandy Urie is Chairman Emeritus at Cambridge Associates, a role she has held since 2016, when she retired as Chairman and CEO, having held the CEO role since 2001, and capping an over 30 year career at the firm. Her current focuses include sustainability and impact investing and she has held multiple board and investment committee roles. Currently she sits on the boards of the Stanford Management Company, Social Finance US, Crane Institute for Sustainability (parent organization of The Intentional Endowment Network – IEN), and Plymouth Rock Insurance Company.Sandy was one of the first people to inspire me in the world of investment, and I sat, enthralled, during my Cambridge Associates induction as she described her rise through the ranks of the firm, all while juggling mothering a toddler and then young child. It was (and remains) so rare to find a role model who has actually made some of the same choices and trade-offs that you face yourself day to day.As an investment professional Sandy is without parallel. Passionate and visionary, she led the vision for global expansion of Cambridge Associates and now is at the forefront of its work on sustainability and impact investing. She loves what she does, loves the value it brings to the investment process of countless institutions from endowments to foundations to large family offices and has always been effective in nurturing a network. We also manage to find time to discuss teaching and Russian language and literature in particular - which, as we have often discussed on this podcast, can be a pathway to better communication and storytelling, and highly useful in other careers.This series was made possible by the kind support of MainStreet Partners, a London-based independent and dedicated sustainable investment advisor that provides ESG multi-asset and multi-manager portfolios and a range of holistic portfolio analytics tools including sustainability ratings and bespoke sustainability intelligence. It was also supported by Carbonado Partners, an industry expert in capital raising for all asset classes, that endeavors to provide thoughtful solutions that address emerging managers’ perspectives and challenges.