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Aileen Mathieson joined Aspen in November 2021, as the Group Chief Investment Officer and is based in the London office. She brings more than 15 years of investment and financial experience, and previously served at Aberdeen Standard Investments where she was Global Head of Insurance.
Prior to this, Aileen was CIO, UK Life for Zurich and during her career also held senior finance roles at Nucleus Financial Group plc, Standard Life Group, Diageo plc and EMI Music. Aileen started her career at KPMG.
Alejo is Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer Emerging Markets Americas at UBS Global Wealth Management, based in New York.
In this capacity, Alejo leads a team of analysts focusing on emerging economies, influencing the allocation of billions of dollars of the firm's assets under management. As a member of two management forums at UBS, he helps set the strategic direction of the business.
Alejo is also a professor at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, where he teaches on capital markets in developing economies.
Outside of business and academia, Alejo helps shape the policy debate impacting emerging markets through his involvement with leading global think tanks. He has been named Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. He is also a member of the Advisory Board of the Wilson Center's Latin America Program and a Millennium Leadership Fellow by the Atlantic Council.
He frequently appears on Bloomberg Television, CNBC, and CNN, and regularly contributes to financial publications including the Financial Times, Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal.
Alejo earned a PhD in economics from Columbia University. He also holds degrees in economics and finance from Tilburg University and Universidad del CEMA.
David Allen, CFA, is the Vice Chair of the Board of the CFA Society of New York. He is also Managing Director at Octane Investments, a firm he founded to invest in traditional energy companies. Prior to this, he served large institutions at Schroders and served in a similar position at AB, for nearly a decade at each of those firms. He also has founded and ran two FinTech startups and he traded FX in the 1990s. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Pennsylvania in Economics and completed the Value Investing executive education curriculum at Columbia University. Allen is Chair of the NY Society’s Programming Committee, and recently passed the CFA Institute’s ESG certification.
Kay Herr, managing director, is the U.S. Chief Investment Officer for the Global Fixed
Income, Currency & Commodities group, responsible for all fixed income investment
strategies in the U.S. Prior to becoming the U.S. CIO, Kay was the Head of Research for
the GFICC team. Kay returned to Fixed Income in 2019 after having spent the prior 17
years in Equity Research, as a portfolio manager, research analyst, and Associate
Director of Global Developed Market Equity Research. An employee since 1999, Kay was
a credit research analyst for investment grade and high yield securities in U.S. Fixed
Income before moving to U.S. Equity in 2002. She holds a B.A. in economics from the
University of Virginia, where she was an Echols Scholar, and an M.B.A. with distinction
from New York University Stern School of Business. She is also a CFA charterholder.
Director del CFA Society Perú, Presidente del Consejo de Advocacy para la Región América Latina y el Caribe, así como CEO en El Dorado Investments.
Fue Intendente de AFP en la SBS con responsabilidad sobre inversiones y registros de instrumentos nuevos (entre 1997 y 2010).
Cuenta con más de 25 años de experiencia en mercados financieros y capital, y ha participado en la estructuración y análisis de más de 2,800 productos financieros por un valor de más de US $ 32 billones en Perú y mercados internacionales.
Es Licenciado en Economía por la Universidad del Pacífico y tiene estudios en inversiones y administración en Harvard, Wharton, Berkeley, entre otros.
Sonal Desai, Ph.D. is the executive vice president and chief investment officer for Franklin Templeton Fixed Income. Dr. Desai is responsible for overseeing Franklin's Municipal, Corporate Credit, Floating Rate, Multisector, Global (including Emerging Markets), and Money Market Fixed Income teams. She is also a portfolio manager for a number of strategies, including Core Plus, Strategic Income, Total Return, Low Duration, Global Absolute Return, and Global Aggregate Fixed Income.
She is a member of Franklin Resources' Executive Committee, a small group of the company's top leaders responsible for shaping the firm's overall strategy. In addition, she serves on the firm's Management and Investment Committees.
Prior to her current role, she served as a portfolio manager with Dr. Michael Hasenstab for the flagship Templeton Global Bond and Templeton Global Total Return strategies, as well as director of research for Templeton Global Macro, shaping the team's research agenda of in-depth global macroeconomic analysis covering thematic topics, regional and country analyses, and interest rate, currency and sovereign credit market outlooks. She started her career as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh, and then worked for over six years at the International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC. Following this, she joined the private financial sector and worked for about five years as director and senior economist for Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein in London. Dr. Desai joined Franklin Templeton in 2009 from Thames River Capital in London.
Dr. Desai holds a bachelor of arts in economics from Delhi University and a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. She was part of the Templeton Global Bond Fund portfolio management team named Morningstar's Fixed Income Manager of the Year in Canada in 2013. In addition, she has been named to Barron's annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance every year since it was introduced in 2020.
Celina Apóstolo Merrill, is Managing Director and Portfolio Manager for BlackRock focusing on Emerging Market Corporate Debt. Ms. Apóstolo Merrill manages and oversees the allocation of EM Corporate Credit investments across BlackRock’s actively managed fixed income portfolios.
After beginning her career in investment banking at Goldman Sachs, Celina moved on to focus on distressed investing in the United States and Latin America within funds at Goldman Sachs and Texas Pacific Group (TPG). Since 2010 she has focused on investing in Emerging Markets across the spectrum of fixed income instruments, spanning the range of Investment Grade, High Yield and Distressed securities.
Prior to BlackRock, she worked at JP Morgan Asset Management. Born and raised in El Salvador, Celina received a B.A. in Economics and a B.A.in International Relations from Yale University and an M.B.A. from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Xavier Vegas serves as the Head of Global Credit Strategy for Global Wealth
Management. In his role, he leads the development of the Private Bank’s global
credit views as well as security level credit investments in Investment Grade,
High Yield, Emerging Markets and Municipal credit, providing investment
solutions for Global Wealth Management clients. Mr. Vegas has a leadership role
in GWM’s investment committee.
Mr. Vegas has extensive experience in the financial industry. Before joining J.P.
Morgan, he served as Emerging Markets Portfolio Manager for Credit and
Equities investments at BlueMountain Capital Management.
Previously, Mr. Vegas worked as an Emerging Markets Distressed Debt Analyst for
Contrarian Capital Management, covering Latin America sovereign and
corporate investments. Prior to that, he worked in the Financial Institution and
Governments Group at J.P. Morgan Investment Bank advising financial
institutions in mergers and acquisitions and capital raising transactions.
Mr. Vegas earned his MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University
with a specialization in Corporate Finance and Decision Sciences. Before getting
his MBA, he worked as Treasury Manager at Vencred and as Head Trader at
Activalores.
Mr. Vegas got his Bachelor's Degree from Universidad Metropolitana in
Venezuela, his native country. He currently lives in Westport, Connecticut, with
his wife and three children.