Andy Ayim, MBE is an investor and founder based in the UK, and runs an Angel Investing School designed to “teach people how to invest small tickets in start-ups effortlessly.” He has run the School since January 2020, and is a venture partner and board member of numerous technology companies. Passionate about financial education and entrepreneurship, he has held been entrepreneur in residence at accelerators such as Entrepreneur First, and OneTech and spent time as Managing Director at the London Accelerator Backstage Capital, which focuses on supporting underrepresented founders.  He was awarded an MBE in 2020 for services to diversity in technology.

Angela Miller May is CIO at the Chicago Teachers’ Pension Fund, a public defined benefit fund based in Chicago, which has $11 bn in assets under management. The fund is a leader in promoting the G in ESG – i.e. in ensuring that the managers it does business with walk the talk in improving the diversity of their investment teams.

As a true trailblazer, Angela Miller-Mays rise to the helm of a public pension plan is a story of humility, hard work, motivating a team through inclusion and achieving diversity both inside and outside an organization.

Ariane Barker is CEO of Scale Investors Ltd, based in Melbourne, which invests patient capital in female-founded Australian early stage businesses. She has had a long career in global finance, including roles in investment banking in the US, Europe, Japan and Australasia, and in 2011 was identified as one of seventy high potential board-ready women after being awarded an AICD board diversity scholarship.

A fascinating discussion of a global career, choices made and what drove them, a passion for education and the arts and now a career in angel investing that seeds the next generation of female entrepreneurs.

In Series 4 of the Fiftyfaces Podcast of 2023 we gather 10 guests who share a passion for excellence – in very different fields. We hear from a legendary business builder about how he closes the deal while a hedge fund manager shares the humbling effect of market downturns. A CIO reveals her ups and downs and the importance of learning to take risk and having a backup plan, while a serial builder of banks and financial institutions who started her career decades ago tells us what has changed, and what has not and sharpens the focus on what kind of mentors really matter

Cathie Wood is CEO of ARK Investment Management LLC (“ARK”). Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as Chief Investment Officer of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded which, in 2000, where she managed $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to her tenure at Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates as Chief Economist, Equity Research Analyst, Portfolio Manager and Director. She started her career in Los Angeles, California at The Capital Group as an Assistant Economist.

Michael Halpern is Founder and President of Westmore Capital Advisors, a multi-strategy investment firm that invests across asset classes focused on early stage/growth capital companies as well as investments in more established companies undergoing substantial transformation.  He was previously Co-Managing Member and Co-Chief Investment Officer of Dorchester Capital Advisors, a fund management firm that invested in hedge funds, private equity funds and secondary hedge fund interests. Prior to that he ran a long/short hedge fund Dorchester Advisors that he founded in 1991. He previously held a series of roles in financial services in the Los Angeles area and currently holds a number of Board Roles.

It is hard to believe that we are back for our fourth year of the Fiftyfaces Podcast – and in Series 1 of 2023 we hear about unorthodox beginnings such as the twelve year old who arbitraged the price of chickens when growing up in Uganda, and ended up in a senior role in Bridgewater before starting his own firm. We hear about traditional ones too, about investment instincts honed at the family dinner table, or through seeing the world through an artist’s eyes.