Heather Brilliant, CFA

President and CEO, Diamond Hill Capital Management, Inc

Heather Brilliant is Chief Executive Officer and President of Diamond Hill, an independent active asset management firm providing valuation-driven investment management services across a range of asset classes. Heather oversees all aspects of the business including setting and delivering on the firm’s strategy, establishing effective leadership, and ensuring a sound investment philosophy.

Heather joined the firm in 2019, bringing more than 20 years of domestic and international investment experience to the role. Previously, she served as Chief Executive Officer, Americas with First State Investments. Prior to that, Heather spent nearly 14 years with Morningstar where she served as Global Head of Equity & Credit Research before advancing to Chief Executive Officer, Morningstar Australia. Earlier in her career, she held several positions analyzing both credit and equity at firms including Bank of America and Driehaus Capital Management.

Heather is a member of the Investment Company Institute (ICI) Board of Governors and a long-standing member of the CFA Institute, serving on the Board from 2013 to 2020 and as Chair from 2018 to 2019. She also served as chair of the Chicago society from 2018 to 2019 and received the 2020 recipient of the Hortense Friedman, CFA, Award for Excellence.

In the community, she is on the Board of Future Ready Columbus, a member of the Columbus Partnership, and on the Executive Committee of the Ohio Chapter of the International Women’s Forum.
She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and earned her MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and has a degree in economics from Northwestern University. 

James Carville

Political Icon

James “The Ragin’ Cajun” Carville is America’s best-known political consultant. His long list of electoral successes evidences a knack for steering overlooked campaigns to unexpected landslide victories and for re-making political underdogs into upset winners.

His winning streak began in 1986, when he managed the gubernatorial victory of Robert Casey in Pennsylvania. In 1987, Carville helped guide Wallace Wilkinson to the governor’s seat in Kentucky. Carville continued his winning streak with a win in New Jersey with Frank Lautenberg elected to the US Senate. He next managed the successful 1990 gubernatorial campaign of Georgia’s Lieutenant Governor Zell Miller, including a tough primary win over Atlanta mayor Andrew Young, and in 1991, Carville – who had already become prominent in many political circles – drew national attention when he led Senator Harris Wofford from 40 points behind in the polls to an upset landslide victory over former Pennsylvania Governor and U.S. Attorney General Richard Thornburgh. But his most prominent victory was in 1992 when he helped William Jefferson Clinton win the Presidency.

In recent years, Carville has not been a paid political consultant for many domestic politicians or candidates, instead focusing on campaigns in more than 23 countries around the globe stretching from the continents of South America to Europe to Africa and most recently Asia.

James Carville is also a best-selling author, actor, producer, talk-show host, speaker and restaurateur. His titles include We're Still Right, They're Still Wrong: The Democrats' Case for 2016, Love & War: Twenty Years, Three Presidents, Two Daughters and One Louisiana Home; It’s The Middle Class Stupid!; All’s Fair: Love, War, and Running for President (with wife Mary Matalin); We’re Right, They’re Wrong: A Handbook for Spirited Progressives; And the Horse He Rode In On: The People vs. Kenneth Starr; Buck Up, Suck Up... and Come Back When You Foul Up; Had Enough? A Handbook for Fighting Back; Stickin’: The Case for Loyalty; his children’s book, Lu and the Swamp Ghost; and 2006’s Take it Back, 40 More Years: How the Democrats will Rule the Next Generation.

Along with pollster Stanley Greenberg, Carville founded Democracy Corps, an independent, non-profit polling organization dedicated to making government more responsive to the American people.

Carville also serves as a professor of Practice at Tulane University in New Orleans, where he lives with his wife Mary Matalin and their two daughters. 

Alex Castellanos

Co-Founder & Chairman, Purple Strategies

Alex Castellanos is one of the Republican Party’s best-known and most successful media consultants and strategists. Castellanos has served as communications consultant to seven U.S. Presidential campaigns, has helped elect over a dozen U.S. senators and governors, and enjoys over three decades of political consulting experience, both in the United States and abroad. He brings a wealth of campaign strategy, public opinion research insights, and communications experience to corporate communications and public policy campaigns. Castellanos is a co-founder of Purple Strategies, a boutique strategy firm that takes its name from the merger of colors commonly identified with Democrats (blue) and Republicans (red), and the founder of NewRepublican.org. He is also an ABC News contributor and posts regularly on media outlets, including The Huffington Post and NationalReview.com.

Alberto Cavallo, PhD

Edgerley Family Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School

Alberto Cavallo is the Edgerley Family Associate Professor at Harvard Business School, where he teaches in the Business, Government, and the International Economy (BGIE) unit, a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, and a member of the Technical Advisory Committee of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

Cavallo's research focuses on the behavior of prices and its implications for macroeconomic measurement, models and policies. He pioneered the use of online data to measure inflation and conduct research on high-frequency pricing dynamics during his Ph.D. at Harvard. He created Inflacion Verdadera in 2007 to measure the real inflation rate in Argentina and co-founded The Billion Prices Project in 2008 to expand the measurement of online inflation globally. He also co-founded PriceStats in 2011, the leading private source of inflation and PPP statistics in over 20 countries.

John Emerson, JD

Vice Chairman, Capital Group International, Inc.

John Emerson works in global distribution as vice chairman of Capital Group International, Inc. He has 19 years of industry experience, all with Capital Group. He most recently served as the United States ambassador to the Federal Republic of Germany. In 2015, John was awarded the State Department’s Susan M. Cobb Award for Exemplary Diplomatic Service, which is given annually to one non-career ambassador, and in 2017 he was awarded the CIA Medal and the U.S. Navy’s Distinguished Public Service award. Prior to accepting the ambassadorial posting, John was president of Private Client Services for the Capital Group Companies. Before joining Capital, he was deputy assistant to President Clinton where he coordinated his economic conferences, served as the president’s liaison to the nation’s governors, and led the administration’s efforts to obtain congressional approval of the GATT Uruguay Round Agreement and the extension of China’s MFN trading status. Additionally, he was appointed by President Obama to serve on his Advisory Committee for Trade Policy and Negotiations. Before working in the Clinton White House, John served as Los Angeles Chief Deputy City Attorney, and was a partner in the law firm of Manatt, Phelps, Rothenberg, and Phillips. John holds an honorary doctor of laws degree from Hamilton College, a juris doctor degree from the University of Chicago and a bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Hamilton College. John is based in Los Angeles.

Lee Ferridge

Senior Managing Director & North American Head of Multi-Asset Strategy, State Street Global Markets

Lee Ferridge is a senior managing director and the North American Head of Multi-Asset Strategy for State Street Global Markets. Mr. Ferridge and his team formulate foreign exchange, fixed income and equity market views for State Street’s range of clients utilizing unique proprietary indicators. Lee has over 15 years’ experience as a macro strategist in addition to holding previous roles as a proprietary trader. Lee has BS in economics and business economics and as well as a master’s degree in quantitative finance. He is a frequent commentator in the financial press — both written and TV — and has written articles for numerous industry publications.

Michael Green, CFA

Portfolio Manager and Chief Strategist, Simplify

Michael has been a student of markets and market structure, for nearly 30 years. His proprietary research into the shift from actively managed portfolios and investment funds to systematic passive investment strategies has been presented to the Federal Reserve, the BIS, the IMF and numerous other industry groups and associations.

Michael joined Simplify in April 2021 after serving as Chief Strategist and Portfolio Manager for Logica Capital Advisers, LLC. Prior to Logica, Michael managed macro strategies at Thiel Macro, LLC, an investment firm that manages the personal capital of Peter Thiel. Prior to Thiel, Michael founded Ice Farm Capital, a discretionary global macro hedge fund seeded by Soros Fund Management. From 2006-2014, Michael founded and managed the New York office of Canyon Capital Advisors, a $23B multi-strategy hedge fund based in Los Angeles, CA, where he established their global macro strategies, managing in excess of $5B of exposure across equity, credit, FX, commodity and derivative markets.

In addition to his work as a market theorist and portfolio manager, Michael has been noted for his work as a public speaker and financial media participant. He is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a CFA holder.

John Heilemann

Editor in Chief and Co-Founder, Recount Media; Creator and Host, The Circus on Showtime; National Affairs Analyst, NBC News and MSNBC; Co-Author, New York Times Best Sellers Game Change and Double Down

John Heilemann has covered national affairs — on television and in print, in the United States and abroad — for the past three decades, earning a place as one of America’s most prominent and vital voices at a moment when politics and public policy have rarely been more riveting or consequential. Heilemann is a co-founder of Recount Media and the editor-in-chief of The Recount, a new platform for short-form video covering politics. He is a co-host and executive producer of The Circus, the heralded weekly political documentary series now in its sixth season on Showtime. He is National Affairs Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC, where he appears on Morning Joe, The Last Word, Deadline: White House, and The 11th Hour and he is the co-author of two of the most successful and influential books in history on presidential politics: Game Change and Double Down, widely regarded as the definitive chronicles of the 2008 and 2012 elections, respectively.

A New York Times No. 1 best-seller and worldwide sensation, reprinted in nine languages, Game Change was adapted by HBO Films into a movie of the same name, which went on to win five Emmy Awards, three Golden Globes, and a Peabody Award.

During the 2016 election season, Heilemann served as a managing editor of Bloomberg Politics and host of the daily MSNBC and Bloomberg TV program With All Due Respect. Prior to joining Bloomberg, he was New York Magazine’s national affairs editor and columnist, and before that a staff writer for The New Yorker, Wired, and The Economist, exploring the corridors of power from Washington to Wall Street to Silicon Valley.

In 2008, Heilemann hosted Download, a four-part Discovery Channel series on the rise of the World Wide Web. His first book, Pride Before The Fall: The Trials of Bill Gates and the End of the Microsoft Era, was named one of the best books of 2001 by BusinessWeek.

A graduate of Northwestern University and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, Heilemann was born and raised in Los Angeles and lives in Manhattan with his wife, Diana Rhoten, and their two Great Danes, Phife and DZA. 

Eva Ho

General Partner, Fika Ventures

Eva is a General Partner at Fika Ventures, an early stage fund investing in companies that leverage the power of data as a core component of their business model. Prior to Fika, Eva was a founding GP at Susa Ventures. She is a serial entrepreneur and founder, with a company experience portfolio including Applied Semantics (AdSense), Factual, Google, Youtube and Navigating Cancer. She is active in the non-profit sector, serving on the boards of California Community Foundation and UCLA Technology Development Group. She was recently the EIR for the city of LA working with Mayor Eric Garcetti. Eva holds an MBA from Cornell and a BA from Harvard. 

 

 

Jane Leung, CFA, CFP

Head of Investment Solutions, Silicon Valley Bank

Jane leads the investment solutions and capital markets teams for the private bank and wealth management division of SVB. She is responsible for the overall investment platform, including multi-asset manager research and due diligence. In this role, she is responsible for developing and providing access to innovation economy solutions, in addition to next gen products and solutions. She is also President of SVB’s Broker Dealer, SVB Investment Services Inc, with responsibilities for Nasdaq Private Markets and capital markets execution, hedging, and cap intro, as well as the Firm’s third-party distribution platform and access to SVB Capital solution distribution. Her overall mission is to create a differentiated investment platform to meet the needs of SVB’s dynamic client balance sheets at all life stages.

She previously led the investments, family office and capital markets teams and, as Chief Investment Officer, led the development of capital markets assumptions, asset allocation, thought leadership, portfolio advisory and trading activities.

Prior to joining SVB, she was Chief Investment Officer at Scenic Advisement, a boutique investment bank focused on secondary and primary capital raises for leading mid- to late-stage venture backed private companies. In that role, she also led Asian Business Development, Distribution & Capital Markets, as well as the build out of Scenic’s Wealth Management division. She has also held senior executive roles at BlackRock/iShares, including a seven-year tenure in Hong Kong as the Head of Index equity for the Asian Pacific market, and later as the head of iShares, Asia Pacific.

Jane leads the finance committee and holds the role of Treasurer on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors for the CFA Society of San Francisco. She is the executive sponsor on the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Committee for SVB’s Private Bank Wealth Advisory & Wine Division.

Alex Rubalcava

Founder & Managing Partner, Stage Venture Partners

Alex is the founder and managing partner of Stage Venture Partners, a firm established in 2015. Alex began his VC career as an analyst at Anthem Venture Partners in 2002. In 2021, a panel of local VCs named Alex one of the top VCs in Los Angeles.

Alex has served on the boards of numerous Stage VP companies, including Balto, NotiSphere, SoundCommerce, WhiteFox, SPIDR Tech, Abett, Gray Matter Robotics, and Dyania Health.

Alex is also a leader in the civic community of Los Angeles, with past service on three nonprofit boards: KIPP LA Schools, Thrive Scholars, and Los Angeles Animal Services.

Alex is a 2002 graduate of Harvard University.  

David Waxman

Parnter, TenOneTen Ventures

David has nearly two decades of experience as a technology entrepreneur. After graduating with a masters degree from MIT’s Media Lab in 1995, David co-founded Firefly, an early pioneer in personalization and privacy technology. Firefly was acquired by Microsoft in 1998 where the company’s flagship product became the Microsoft Passport, the web’s first unified authentication and identity platform. After Firefly, David co-founded PeoplePC, a company dedicated to simplifying the process of joining the online world. PeoplePC served over 600,000 individual subscribers as well as Fortune 100 corporations such as Ford Motor Company, Vivendi Universal and Delta Air Lines. PeoplePC went public in 2001 and was acquired by Earthlink in 2002. In 2005, David co-founded SpotRunner, a Los Angeles-based technology company that worked to revolutionize the way advertising was created, planned, bought and sold. Since leaving Spot Runner, David has dedicated his time to helping entrepreneurs realize their goals. He is an active mentor, speaker and investor. David lives in LA with his wife, three daughters, and a ludicrous number of pets.

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