2017 Conference Speakers

John Ameriks
Principal, Head of Quantitative Equity Group, Vanguard

John Ameriks, Ph.D., is a principal and head of Vanguard Quantitative Equity Group. He oversees the portfolio management and strategy research teams that advise Vanguard’s internally managed active equity and multi-asset funds. Ameriks’ research has appeared in The Journal of Finance, The American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, The Review of Economics and Statistics, and the Journal of Financial Planning. His current research interests include quantitative equity investment strategies, behavioral economics, retirement finance, and solutions-oriented single-fund investments. Ameriks earned a bachelor’s degree from Stanford University and a master of arts, master of philosophy and doctorate in economics from Columbia University.

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Jennifer Bender
Director of Research, State Street Global Advisors

Jennifer Bender is a Senior Managing Director at State Street Global Advisors and Director of Research for the Global Equity Beta Solutions team. In this role, she is responsible for promoting the thought leadership of SSGA across key areas of passive investing including smart beta, thematic investing and global equity investing. Previously, Bender was a Vice President in the Index and Analytics Research teams at MSCI, where she was responsible for research on equity index-related topics including asset allocation and indexing. Prior to joining the Index Research team, Bender worked in the Barra Research group, focusing on portfolio construction and risk modeling. She began her career as an economist at DRI in 1996, and has held research roles at State Street Associates and Harvard University. Her work has been published extensively in industry-leading journals and books such as the Institutional Investor Journals and Wiley Finance Series. She is on the editorial board of The Journal of Portfolio Management and a member of the Chicago Quantitative Alliance. Bender holds a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from Brandeis University.

Phil Davies
Senior Quantitative Research Analyst, Jacobs Levy Equity Management

Phil Davies joined Jacobs Levy Equity Management as a Senior Quantitative Research Analyst in 2013. In this capacity, he performs proprietary investment research. Most recently, Davies was an Assistant Professor of Finance and Economics at Rutgers University, where he conducted research and taught courses in finance and investments. Before that, he was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Iowa. Davies has a bachelor’s degree in accounting and finance and a master’s degree in economics and finance from the University of Warwick, U.K., and a doctorate in business administration (finance) from The Ohio State University.

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Giorgio De Santis
Director of Research, Kepos Capital

Giorgio De Santis is the Director of Research and a founding partner of Kepos Capital. Prior to Kepos, he was a Partner in the Quantitative Investment Strategies Group at Goldman Sachs Asset Management, where he was the co-head of the research team as well as a senior portfolio manager. He also previously was a member of the faculty at the Marshall School of Business at USC. De Santis has published articles in The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of International Money and Finance, and other publications. He has also contributed chapters to several books on investment management and is a co-author of Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach. His research covers various topics in international finance, from dynamic models of risk in developed and emerging markets to optimal portfolio strategies with multiple asset classes and time-varying market conditions. De Santis holds a bachelor’s degree from the Libera Universita’ Internazionale degli Studi Sociali in Rome, and a master’s degree and a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago.

Geoffrey Garrett
Dean and Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Geoffrey Garrett is Dean, Reliance Professor of Management and Private Enterprise and Professor of Management at the Wharton School, and Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. He became Dean of the Wharton School in 2014, having been a member of the Wharton faculty in the Management Department from 1995 to 1997. Prior to his return to Penn, Garrett was dean of the business schools at both the University of Sydney and UNSW in his native Australia. He served as President of the Pacific Council on International Policy in Los Angeles and Dean of the UCLA International Institute before his return to Australia in 2008. A highly cited international political economist, he has been a professor at Oxford, Stanford and Yale universities. Garrett is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences, sits on the Advisory Boards of the Indian School of Business and the Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, and is a winner of the Foreign Policy Association Medal and the Advance Global Australian Award. A well-respected commentator on global business, economics and politics in major media outlets, he writes a regular blog as a LinkedIn Influencer. He holds a bachelor’s degree (Honors) from the Australian National University, and a master’s degree and doctorate from Duke University where he was a Fulbright Scholar.

Christopher Geczy
Adjunct Professor of Finance and Academic Director, Jacobs Levy Center, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Chris Geczy has been on the Finance Department faculty at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania since 1997. He is Academic Director of the Jacobs Levy Equity Management Center for Quantitative Financial Research, and the Wharton Wealth Management Initiative at Wharton Executive Education. He previously worked for the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington, D.C. in its Division of Research and Statistics. He currently serves on Intel’s US Retirement Plans’ Investment Policy Committee, and is on the editorial advisory board of The Journal of Wealth Management. Geczy’s work has appeared in numerous books and scholarly journals including The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Political Economy, and published by The Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology. It has also been covered in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, on CNBC’s Squawk Box and in numerous other media outlets. He has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a doctorate in finance and econometrics from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago (now the Booth School).

Michael Gibbons
Deputy Dean and I.W. Burnham II Professor of Investment Banking, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Michael R. Gibbons is the I.W. Burnham II Professor of Investment Banking and Deputy Dean of the Wharton School. As Deputy Dean, he oversees all aspects of the School relating to faculty, curriculum, and research. Before coming to Wharton in 1989, he was a tenured faculty member at the Stanford Business School. He served as Chair of Wharton’s Finance Department from 1994 to 2006. He has taught Financial Derivatives, Fixed Income Securities, and Investment Management. An outstanding teacher, Gibbons has been recognized with Wharton’s Excellence in Teaching Award. His research and teaching focus on the valuation of financial securities, including financial derivatives and fixed income securities. His papers have been published in The American Economic Review, Econometrica, The Journal of Business, The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Monetary Economics and The Review of Financial Studies. He has served as either an editor or associate editor for the major academic journals in finance. Gibbons earned his doctorate in economics at the University of Chicago.

Bruce Jacobs
Chair of the Advisory Board, Jacobs Levy Center
Principal and Co-Founder, Jacobs Levy Equity Management

Bruce Jacobs is Chair of the Advisory Board of the Jacobs Levy Center. Jacobs is Principal and Co-Founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, where he is Co-Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Manager, and Co-Director of Research. Jacobs’s articles on equity management have appeared in Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Journal of Investing, Journal of Financial Perspectives, Japanese Security Analysts Journal, and Operations Research. He has received several Graham and Dodd Awards from Financial Analysts Journal, a Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award from The Journal of Portfolio Management, and an Outstanding Article Award from The Journal of Investing. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Trading and serves on the Journal of Portfolio Management Advisory Board and has served on the Financial Analysts Journal Advisory Council. Jacobs is author of Capital Ideas and Market Realities: Option Replication, Investor Behavior, and Stock Market Crashes, co-author with Ken Levy of Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, 2^nd ed., co-editor with Ken Levy of Market Neutral Strategies, and co-editor of The Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: Five Years of Award-Winning Articles from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Volumes One through Three. He was a featured contributor to How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite. Jacobs has a bachelor’s degree from Columbia College, a master’s degree in operations research and computer science from Columbia University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, a master’s degree from Carnegie Mellon University’s Graduate School of Industrial Administration, and a master’s degree in applied economics and a doctorate in finance from the Wharton School.

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Wai Lee
Managing Director, Neuberger Berman

Wai Lee joined Neuberger Berman in 2004. He is the Global Head of Quantitative Investments with overall responsibility for quantitative investments, and is a Senior Portfolio Manager for strategies managed by the Quantitative Investment Group. Previously, he was the Head of the Quantitative Engineering group at Credit Suisse Asset Management (CSAM), the Head of Quantitative Research and Risk Management for the Global Balanced group at J.P. Morgan Investment Management, and a postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard Graduate School of Business. Lee is the author of the book Theory and Methodology of Tactical Asset Allocation. He has served on the Advisory Board of The Journal of Portfolio Management. His research work has appeared in academic refereed journals and industry journals, and won the Peter L. Bernstein Award (2012), and multiple awards from The Journal of Portfolio Management including the Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award for Best Article of the Year (2012) and Outstanding Article of the Year (2010 and 2013). Lee holds a bachelor’s degree (with honors) in mechanical engineering from the University of Hong Kong, and an MBA and doctorate in finance from Drexel University.

Kenneth Levy
Principal and Co-Founder, Jacobs Levy Equity Management

Ken Levy is a member of the Jacobs Levy Center Advisory Board. Levy is Principal and Co-Founder of Jacobs Levy Equity Management, where he is Co-Chief Investment Officer, Portfolio Manager, and Co-Director of Research. His articles on equity management have appeared in Financial Analysts Journal, The Journal of Portfolio Management, The Journal of Investing, Journal of Financial Perspectives, Japanese Security Analysts Journal, and Operations Research. He has received several Graham and Dodd Awards from Financial Analysts Journal and a Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Award from The Journal of Portfolio Management. Levy is co-author with Bruce Jacobs of Equity Management: The Art and Science of Modern Quantitative Investing, 2^nd ed., co-editor with Bruce Jacobs of Market Neutral Strategies, and co-editor of The Bernstein Fabozzi/Jacobs Levy Awards: Five Years of Award-Winning Articles from The Journal of Portfolio Management, Volumes One through Three. He was a featured contributor to How I Became a Quant: Insights from 25 of Wall Street’s Elite. Levy has a bachelor’s degree in economics from Cornell University, an MBA and a master’s degree in business economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and completed all requirements short of the dissertation for a doctorate at Wharton. He is a CFA charterholder and has served on the CFA Candidate Curriculum Committee, POSIT Advisory Board and the investment board of a community foundation.

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Andreea Mitrache
Assistant Professor of Finance, Toulouse Business School

Andreea Mitrache has been an Assistant Professor of Finance at Toulouse Business School since 2015, where she teaches courses related to corporate finance, derivatives and risk management and fixed income securities. Her research focuses on empirical asset pricing. She has presented her work at numerous conferences and institutions including the 2016 China International Conference in Finance, ESCP Europe Business School and Catolica Lisbon. Mitrache holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bucharest University of Economic Studies, and a master’s degree in financial economics and a doctorate in finance from BI Norwegian Business School.

David Musto
Ronald O. Perelman Professor in Finance, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

David Musto has been on the faculty at the Wharton School of the University Pennsylvania since 1995, and has served as Chairperson of the Finance Department since 2013. He is also a Senior Financial Economist with the Securities Exchange Commission. Prior to coming to Wharton, Musto worked as a programmer for Trout Trading Company, and as a systems consultant for Roll & Ross Asset Management. His research interests include capital markets, consumer credit and financial intermediation. His work has appeared in numerous publications including The Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies and Journal of Financial Economics. He has been recognized for his teaching and research with awards including the 2015 Teaching and Curricular Innovation Award for the Wharton MBA program, a best paper award from McMaster University’s Annual Conference on Market Structure & Market Integrity and two nominations for the Smith Breeden Prize. Musto holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Yale University and a doctorate in finance from the Graduate School of Business at the University of Chicago.

Michael Roberts
William H. Lawrence Professor, Professor of Finance, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Michael R. Roberts is the William H. Lawrence Professor and Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research has received awards including two Brattle Prizes for Distinguished Paper published in The Journal of Finance, a Jensen Prize for best paper on Corporate Finance and Organizations published in the Journal of Financial Economics, and Best Paper awards from the Financial Management Association, Southwestern Finance Association and Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research. Roberts has served on numerous journal editorial boards, including The Journal of Finance of which he was a co‐editor. He has been recognized for his teaching at Wharton with the David W. Hauk Award, three Excellence in Teaching awards and multiple nominations for the Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Teaching Award. While at Duke University, he won the Daimler‐Chrysler Core Teaching Award at the Fuqua School of Business. He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California at San Diego, and a master’s degree in statistics and doctorate in economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Richard Roll
Linde Institute Professor of Finance, California Institute of Technology

Richard Roll is a professor at Caltech and professor emeritus at UCLA. He has also been on the faculty at Carnegie Mellon, the European Institute and HEC. Previously, he worked on the Minuteman missile and Saturn moon rocket at Boeing, founded and directed the mortgage securities research group at Goldman Sachs, and led Roll & Ross Asset Management for 20 years. Having published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals, Roll has been awarded the Graham and Dodd Award for financial writing four times, and the Leo Melamed Award for best financial research by an American professor. In 2009, he was named Financial Engineer of the Year. Roll has received honorary doctorates from universities in France and Germany, and his 1968 thesis won the Irving Fisher Prize for the best American dissertation in economics. He is a past president of the American Finance Association and a fellow of the Econometric Society. He holds a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from Auburn University, an MBA from the University of Washington and a doctorate from the University of Chicago.

Nikolai Roussanov
Moise Y. Safra Associate Professor of Finance, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Nikolai Roussanov is the Moise Y. Safra Associate Professor of Finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. His research focuses on areas of interaction between asset pricing and macroeconomics, ranging from equity to fixed income, currency, and commodity markets, to entrepreneurship and consumer financial behavior. His articles have been published in The Journal of Finance, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies and Management Science. Roussanov has won a number of prizes including the 2015 AQR Insight Award. He currently serves on the board of directors of the Macro Finance Society, and on editorial boards at The Journal of Finance and Journal of Monetary Economics. Roussanov received an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Harvard College in 2001 and a doctorate in finance from the University of Chicago in 2008.

Jeffrey Saret
Senior Vice President, Two Sigma Investments

Jeffrey Saret joined Two Sigma in 2012. He is a Senior Vice President and is responsible for thematic research. Prior to joining Two Sigma, Saret was an engagement manager at McKinsey & Company from 2008 to 2012, where he led projects on mobile applications and device growth strategy, private equity high tech and telecom portfolio development, and macro- and micro-economic forecasting and risk management. From 2006 to 2008, he was an independent statistical consultant for NBA teams, applying statistical and econometric techniques to optimize player acquisition models. He has also worked for the Joint Economic Committee of Congress, where he wrote position papers on price-level stability and the dollarization of Latin America. Saret earned his bachelor’s degree from Dartmouth College and his doctorate in economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Josephine Smith
Director, BlackRock

Josephine Smith is a Director at BlackRock, focusing on investment research for the Factor Based Strategies Group in Multi-Asset Strategies. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business, where she taught undergraduate and graduate courses on debt instruments and markets. She also served as a Visiting Researcher for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C. and a Visiting Scholar for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Her research is concentrated on the intersection of macroeconomics and finance, with particular focus on the term structure of interest rates and monetary policy, and has been published in the Journal of Monetary Economics. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Rochester and a doctorate in economics from Stanford University.