Apurva Schwartz is a portfolio specialist at Harding Loevner LP. She was previously a principal at Rocaton Investment Advisors, where she was a senior member of the investment team. Prior to that she held a series of roles in equity analysis and investing. Our conversation starts with her serendipitous start in finance and how that experience of picking stocks drove her to launch her own hedge fund. Her interest then expanded to analyzing managers themselves and a career in investment consulting. This came full circle then when she chose her next move, which was back into the investment management field.

Paul Richards is a decision making expert with a particular focus on investment manager and trustee decision-making. He is the founder of Better Decisions, and was previously Head of Governance and Decision Research at the consulting firm Redington.

Catherine Beard is SVP of Alternatives Consulting at Callan, the investment consultants. She has had a long career in investment consulting and allocation with a particular focus on private credit and is based in Chicago. 

2024 will be a year of tremendous change, and tremendous noise.  With elections in key regions, we are likely to be subjected to a volley of rhetoric and uncertainty will be the order of the day. In times like this, it seems even more important to reach out to our wise community for their insights on what should stay the same, and evolve, amid this uncertainty. 

Jennifer Barry is an investment advisor at Aaron Wealth Advisors in Chicago. She previously spent over 26 years at Citi, where she held a series of roles and focused on institutional equity sales most recently.

Howard Fischer was the original founder of Basso Capital hedge fund and the co-founder of the Gratitude Railroad initiative in 2013. He is now the Chairman Emeritus of Basso Capital and “Chief Evangelist” at The Gratitude Railroad. The Gratitude Railroad is an initiative that unites 9 “tracks” or different concepts using capitalism to solve a social or environmental problem.