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.

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.

It has been a highly charged summer.  Between the big year of elections, a series of political and geopolitical surprises and a few market shocks, it has been anything but the silly season.  We have launched a few episodes of Fiftyfaces TV focused on investor identity and responsible investing and we have continued covering the issue of maternal mortality, women in sports and other matters close to our hearts.  

Kristina Blaschek, is Director of Business and Technology within the Investment Management division of William Blair, based in Chicago. She started her career in investment banking, and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Auditorium Theatre.