Arlene Kearns is a Senior Director in the Structured Finance business of Moody’s. She is responsible for driving business and product initiatives that will grow the Structured Finance Product Suite globally.

Prior to joining Moody’s in 2010, Arlene held Structured Finance positions at Banc of America Securities, Lehman Brothers and Standard & Poor’s. Her experience spans banking, credit analysis, proprietary trading, and M&A.

Arlene earned a BA in Economics and International Relations from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Nicole Lawrence is a Senior Director – Strategist for the Moody’s Analytics. She is responsible for strategy, management and marketing in Moody’s Analytics Structured Solutions group. Her expertise spans across several ABS and CLO markets. In addition, she is responsible for the Structured Solutions Research team.

Prior to joining Moody’s Analytics, Nicole held various roles with T-REX and B Asset Manager (BAM), focusing on analyzing and investing in esoteric and consumer ABS markets. Before BAM, she spent 11 years at PPM America, most notably as a Vice President, where she was responsible for investments across several ABS and CLO asset classes. Nicole began her career as an ABS ratings analyst for Moody’s Investors Service. Nicole has a Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Notre Dame and a Master’s Degree in Public Policy from the University of Chicago.

Navneet Agarwal heads the global structured finance ratings business for Moody’s Ratings. Navneet has held leadership roles across asset classes and functions, including new ratings, surveillance, methodology, and technology development. He has also served on the Board of Directors of ICRA Ltd. a publicly traded company in India.  Navneet has over two decades of capital markets experience spanning structured and corporate finance, product innovation, and strategic leadership. Prior to Moody’s, he led debt syndication and proprietary trading at a boutique investment bank in India, and held roles in leveraged finance at Bank of America Securities in Charlotte and in absolute return investing as a fund manager at Unit Trust of India.

Navneet holds an MBA with Honors from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, a master’s degree from the University of Mumbai, and a bachelor’s degree from the University of Delhi. He is also a CFA charterholder.

Marc Pinto is the Global Head of Private Credit. In this role, he coordinates across the financial institutions, corporate, structured, and public and infrastructure finance rating groups to provide thought leadership, and ratings oversight in growth areas of the private credit market, including fund finance, private asset-backed securities, and privately placed investment-grade corporate assets. For over a decade, Marc has held a series of leadership roles of increasing scope and responsibility at Moody’s, including Global Co-Head of Insurance and Global Head of Funds & Asset Management.

Marc is deeply committed to educational and empowerment initiatives, acting as an Executive Sponsor for Moody's CFA and Global Administrative Professionals Networks, a Mentor Advisor in the Women’s Business Resource Group, and a frequent participant in career development seminars.

Marc’s extensive career in the fixed income credit markets, in New York and London, has included leadership roles at sell-side and buy-side firms including Merrill Lynch, Keefe Bruyette & Woods, and Susquehanna International. At Merrill Lynch, Marc was also a top-ranked financial institutions analyst.

Marc is a Chartered Financial Analyst and an alumnus of Columbia Business School and Trinity College (Connecticut).

Evan M. Friedman is a Senior Vice President – Head of Covenant Research in Moody’s Ratings Corporate Finance Group. Evan specializes in covenant analysis and research, with particular focus on leveraged loans and high yield bonds.

Prior to joining Moody’s in September 2013, Evan was of counsel in the banking and finance practice group at Otterbourg P.C. and was previously an associate in the banking and finance practice group at Bryan Cave LLP and Emmet, Marvin & Martin, LLP. His practice focused primarily on representing agents and lenders in asset-based lending and other commercial transactions.

Evan holds a BA summa cum laude from S.U.N.Y. Stony Brook and a JD from New York University School of Law.

Julia Chursin is an Vice President - Senior Analyst in Moody’s Corporate Finance Group (CFG) that produces research on corporate defaults and recoveries and trends in high-yield/ leveraged finance space. She is also responsible for collecting, maintaining and analyzing data in Moody's Ultimate Recovery Database used to support Moody’s LGD Assessments (LGDAs), as well as other products/services at Moody’s Analytics.

Julia has both co-authored and published her own special comments/research on default-recovery trends across various sectors and involving various types of debt facilities. Notably, her own publications and other special comments she co–wrote with Moody’s senior analysts have been featured among Moody’s high-profile research in top-tier media outlets. Julia has directly contributed to greater visibility of Moody’s B3 Negative and Lower Ratings List among investors and the media by publishing quarterly special comments, monthly newsletters and creating comprehensive data visualizations.

Julia joined Moody’s CFG in January 2013 from Moody’s Public Finance Commercial group, where she handled various aspects of business and pricing relationships with rated issuers and their bankers/financial advisors.

Prior to joining Moody’s in September 2010, Julia worked as an investment associate at UBS Financial Services, where she supported a wealth management team in various aspects of the business involving execution of investment strategies and development of asset allocation models for portfolios of high- net-worth clients, in addition to researching and analyzing performance of various investment vehicles/products.

Julia received her MBA in Finance from Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College (CUNY).

David Kirby joined KKR Capital Markets in 2016 and is a Managing Director of KKR, focusing on providing Capital Markets solutions for financial sponsors, corporate clients, and entrepreneurs as well as KKR Private Equity. Prior to joining KKR, Mr. Kirby served in Leveraged Finance Capital Markets & Syndicate at Goldman, Sachs & Co. where he focused on raising debt capital for a variety of financial sponsor-backed and corporate borrowers. He received a MAcc and BBA in Accounting from the University of Georgia.

MILAP PATEL is a partner in the finance practice at Ropes & Gray LLP in Boston. Mr. Patel advises lenders, public companies, private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies on a wide range of finance transactions, including syndicated credit facilities, mezzanine and subordinated financings, high yield offerings, liability management transactions, and debt restructurings. In addition, Mr. Patel has extensive experience advising companies in public and private securities offerings and general corporate advisory matters. His work has been recognized by Chambers USA – America’s Leading Lawyers for Business (2025) and The Legal 500 (2024–2025). 

Mr. Patel is a graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and the New York University School of Law. He is admitted to the bar in Massachusetts and New York.

Peter Hallenbeck is a VP-SF Senior Officer Legal Review in Moody’s Structured Finance

Group, where he has worked since 2006. He is currently a lawyer in the group

responsible for providing ratings for primary CLO transactions. He has worked on

a variety of Structured Credit transactions, including CLOs, risk retention

financings, Trup CDOs, structured notes, synthetic CDOs, re-securitizations, and

other esoteric transactions. He has published numerous articles related to

structured finance.

Mr. Hallenbeck holds a B.A. in French from Davidson College and a J.D. from

Vanderbilt University.

Ms. Chang is Head of CLO Capital Markets and is responsible for managing the CLO issuance pipeline, stip negotiation process, and dialogues with deal investors and arranging banks. She has 20 years of experience in the CLO market, both on the banking and issuance side.

Ms. Chang joined Elmwood from RBC Capital Markets (“RBCCM”), where she was the Senior CLO Structurer serving as senior structurer and lead deal captain, in addition to overseeing all new CLO modeling and structuring.

Prior to RBCCM, Ms. Chang was a Structured Product Specialist at GoldenTree Loan Management (“GLM”), a CMV affiliate of GoldenTree Asset Management, where she worked closely with arranging banks on new CLO transactions. Prior to GLM, Ms. Chang was an Associate in UBS’ CLO structuring group. Prior to UBS, Ms. Chang worked at the Lehman Bankruptcy Estate. Ms. Chang began her career as an Analyst in Deutsche Bank’s CLO group.

Ms. Chang is a CFA® charterholder and graduated from Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. in 2004 with a B.S. in Finance and International Business.

Peter McNally is a Vice President - Senior Credit Officer in the Structured Finance Group at Moody’s Investors Service. Since joining Moody’s in November 2000, Peter has held a variety of roles covering research for asset-backed and residential mortgage-backed securities. In addition to his research responsibilities, Peter also works as a ratings analyst covering new collateralized loan obligation transactions.

Prior to joining Moody’s, Peter performed education research at the American Institutes for Research in Washington, D.C. Peter holds a Master of Public Administration from the NYU Wagner Graduate School for Public Service and a Bachelor of Arts in economics from the University of Rochester.

Joe Rotondo joined MidOcean Credit Partners (“MCP”) in 2022 as a Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager. He is a member of MCP’s Investment Committee, and is responsible for the CLO business. Mr. Rotondo brings over two decades of experience across credit origination, structuring and CLO portfolio management. He joined MCP from Invesco where he managed over $7bn of CLOs and $1B of CLO Equity Funds. He was also responsible for Invesco’s CLO Note investment strategy and served as a member of the firm’s Investment Committee. Prior to Invesco, Mr. Rotondo originated and structured leveraged credit facilities for IBJ Whitehall’s corporate finance group. He began his career at JPMorgan Chase, where he originated and underwrote credit facilities for middle market businesses. 

Mr. Rotondo earned a B.A. in Economics from Rutgers College and an MSc in international Accounting and Finance from the London School of Economics.

Mimi Eng is a Vice President-Senior Credit Officer in Moody’s Structured Finance Group and is responsible for rating U.S. primary CLO transactions and structured notes. Prior to joining Moody’s, Mimi worked at New York Life Investments, where she was a product manager focused on CLOs and, before that, she worked at JP Morgan Securities in the CLO/CDO structuring team. Mimi has also previously held positions in derivatives marketing with JP Morgan Securities and with Bankers Trust Company.

Mimi holds a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an M.B.A from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics and Psychology from Amherst College. She is also a CFA charterholder.

Chris Gilbert joined Natixis in May 2005 as a CLO structurer and has deep banking experience across both the Middle Market and Broadly Syndicated sectors.  He Co-leads the Securitization Products Group in the Americas at Natixis, consisting of CLOs, ABS, ABCP and Structured Sales and Syndicate teams.  He has advised many direct lenders on financing strategies, structured capital solutions and market placement exercises for their BDCs, Interval Funds, and various fund structures.  Chris was previously an Investment Banker and Credit professional at Goldman Sachs.

Mr. Gilbert holds an MBA from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and a BBA in Accounting from the College of William & Mary. He is a CFA charterholder.

Anjana Ravani is the Head of CLOs and Corporate ABS at Redding Ridge, where she also serves as a member of the Structured Credit Investment Committee. She joined the firm in 2022 following a 15-year career at Citigroup Global Markets Inc., where she was a Director in the CLO Primary group. In that role, she was responsible for the origination, structuring, and syndication of U.S. CLOs, and was involved in more than 200 transactions totaling over $100 billion in issuance. 

Ms. Ravani holds dual Bachelor of Science degrees in Mathematics and Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

John is the Managing Director of Structured Credit at Seix and focuses on the CLO business. Prior to joining Seix, John was a Senior Portfolio Manager and Co-Head of Structured Products at CIFC Asset Management. Prior to CIFC, John was Head of CLO Banking at UBS, and prior to that, at Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for CLO banking and structuring for the U.S. He began his structured finance career at Goldman Sachs in the Credit Derivatives group. In addition to CLOs, he also created financing structures for credit hedge funds, BDCs, and asset managers, combining flexible leverage and term financing for long-short credit management. 

John graduated with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Yale University and has an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management. He also is a CFA Charterholder.