Deanne Stewart is CEO at Aware Super, an Australian superannuation fund with over 200 billion AUD in assets under management and the third largest superannuation fund in the country. She has held this role for close to seven years, and was previously Chief Executive Officer at MetLife in Sydney, and prior to that, held a series of financial services roles.

In Part 1 of this special series focused on our brain power and whether we are losing our minds, we addressed the slide we are reported to be experiencing in terms of attention span and critical thinking capacity.  

Now In Part 2 we ask what we can do now to address slide. We are joined again by Carolina Pacheco-Punceles. She is a Behavioral Economist, AI Survival Kit Creator, Executive Function Strategist and her Linked In bio states that she is Equipping Humans with the Skills to Think Clearly, Lead Wisely & Thrive in a Disrupted World.

Are we slipping in our intellectual abilities? Have we lost the ability to read, reason, analyze, and more importantly pay attention?

Over the past decade we have seen a deluge of challenges – from Covid and its disruptive effect on education, to the rising use of screens and smart phones to the more recent threat from LLMs and an increasingly proficient set of AI tools that threaten to compete with and ultimately replace humans in almost every dimension. Each of these threats is nuanced and subjective, but we are starting to see patterns emerge in terms of the impact  on our attention span, and ability to think critically and absorb new information.

Artemiza Woodgate is Founding Partner at Integrated Quantitative Investments LLC, based in Seattle.  She has spent most of her career in the quantitative investment arena, including close to 5 years with Numeric, Man Group, and over 11 years with Russell Investments.

Stuart Dunbar is a Partner at Baillie Gifford, based in Edinburgh, where he has worked since 2003. He previously held a range of institutional marketing roles, but before that there were some unexpected interests and pursuits.

Jen Choi is CEO of ILPA – the Institutional Limited Partners Association, where she has spent over a decade. She previously spent over 7 years at the Emerging Markets Private Equity Association. 

Daniel Gore is a Founding Partner of Orthogonal Partners, a boutique asset manager investing in “next generation” alternative investment strategies. He has had an extensive career in investing, including time spent in angel investing, in a family office and in film finance. He is currently pursuing opportunities in small and mid market UK firms.

Rich Byrne is President and CEO of Benefit Street Partners as well as a decorated Brailian Jiu Jitsu champion. In this fascinating podcast we discus his journey from a fine arts major to a leading figure in finance and the many twists and turns in between. 

Our guests on this episode are Rob Gardner and Eoin Murray, both previous guests on this podcast, join us again to discuss how they have come together at Rebalance Earth.  

In this second of our short series reflecting on the lessons and takeaways of the 2024 year in The Fiftyfaces Podcast, we chat with Jeanie Coomber, executive coach and podcast host who featured on our podcast this year in Episode 278 (https://www.fiftyfaceshub.com/278-jeanie-coomber-a-chief-igniter-encourages-us-to-become-warriors-at-work/). Jeanie is the founder of the Warriors at Work platform, and an executive coach and we take this time to reflect on intention and using the year that was to shape the year that is to come.