Steve Neel is Deputy Chief Investment Officer at the New Mexico Educational Retirement Board.  He spearheads the substantial alternative investing program at the fund. Our conversation starts with Steve’s childhood in the wettest state in the US – Hawaii – and how he ended up in one of the driest – New Mexico

“An investment in education gives the best returns” Benjamin Franklin

Tony Miller is managing director of Excolere Equity Partners, a private equity firm focused on the education space.  He holds a number of board roles including Apollo Education group, ACT, Criteria Corp and Go Guardian.  He was co-founder of the Vistria Group, a Chicago based private equity firm and prior to that was Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer in the US Department of Education

LaRoy Brantley is a managing principal at Meketa Investment Group. He has over 20 years experience in an investment consulting capacity. We first met when we joined Cambridge associates earlier in our careers. He has had multiple public fund board positions and has a particular focus on raising awareness of diverse investment managers. 

Kimberly Smith is Head of Capital Formation at Techstars.  She was previously Director of Marketing and Investor Relations at Owl Creek Asset Management and before that worked at Davidson Kempner and ABN AMRO.  She holds a number of Board Roles and is an active advocate for education.

Sonali Pier is a Managing Director at PIMCO in Newport Beach, with a particular focus on Multi-Sector Credit.  She previously worked as a credit trader and was named recently to the Marketwatch 50 most influential people in markets.  Our conversation starts with her education, and a stock picking competition at the tender stage of sixth grade, which launched an interest in finance and economics.

This summary is less a trailer than a highlight reel. The year started with a new administration in the US and an explosion of the culture wars and backlash against DEI and ESG labelling. Even engagement has become more cumbersome and some may feel the hard won policies of years ago are going into reverse.  Because we had lined up a list of industry experts with a focus on sustainable investing for this series, we had an excellent opportunity to ask them about the headwinds and the view of them.

Steve Foresti is a Senior Advisor, Investments, at Wilshire, where he has spent almost 30 years.  He previously held a role as Chief Investment Officer, among other roles and is currently in a part-time role as he pursues other interests.  Steve was recommended to us as a guest because of his extraordinary career arc in which he overcame a substantial loss of vision as a child to pursue a fulfilling career.

Mike Tiedemann was a Founding Partner, CEO and Chairman of the Internal Investment Committee at Tiedemann Advisors, as well as CEO at Tiedemann Investment Group (TIG), before leading the merger that created AlTi. Early in his career, Mike lived and worked in Brazil as part of the equity research group at Banco Garantia and later ran the equity sales and trading operations for Latin America.

Rob Gardner is the CEO and Co-Founder of Rebalance Earth, which redirects the flow of capital to protect and restore nature at scale, He was a guest on this podcast in 2021, and that show is available here.  He has recently written a book with the title FR££DOM, which advocates three money moves to transform your finances. EARN IT, KEEP IT, GROW IT. This is just one part of his career-long mission to further financial literacy, education and investing for a world worth living in.