Kristen Van Gelder is Partner and Co-CIO at Evanston Capital Mangement, where she has spent her entire career since college. 

We begin our conversation with the roots of Kristen’s career, which corresponds quite closely with the roots and growth of Evanston Capital Management from the Northwestern University Endowment Management Team. Her career has spanned a significant period in the evolution and use of hedge funds in a portfolio and we spend some time on this, given the enduring focus on Evanston on this particular asset class.

We are delighted to bring you Series 3 of our 2025 series, which we again are launching amid significant volatility in markets. However, as you will hear, the more things change, the more they stay the same. We start this series down under, hearing from Debby Blakey, CEO of Hesta, who describes what it means to be a “Super with Impact”, and a gutsy advocate for a fair and healthy community. 

Varun Laijawalla is a Portfolio Manager at Ninety One, where he manages long only EM and EM ex-China portfolios.  He started his career as a consultant and moved into stockpicking via Asia focused sales.

Dr. David Kelly is Chief Global Strategist at JP Morgan Asset Management, a position he has held for over 14 years.  He lives in Massachusetts. He was previously economic advisor at Putnam Investments, and prior to that held a range of roles in the financial services industry.  Originally from Dublin, like myself, he’s a PhD in Economics from Michigan State University. 

Carrie Pickett has had a long career in asset management, and was recently a founder and principal of Blueprint Capital Advisors, having held a series of roles as Controller, director of operations, and marketing and investor relations in other asset management firms. She is a frequent contributor to the dialogue around the need for more diversity in the asset management industry.

An open discussion of the kind of capital that it takes to make it as a start up and why it is not more forthcoming in certain sectors.

Arun Kelshiker has held a series of roles in asset managers including head of Asset Allocation and Portfolio Strategy, across Europe and Asia. He is heavily involved in the CFA Society and committed to promoting diversity and inclusion within the investment profession. He has interests in behavioural finance and sustainable and impact investing.

An investor of tremendous depth and breadth, Arun shares his insights on the key differences between institutional and retail investing, how to shape a strategy and why ESG investing is an imperative.

William McGrath is CEO of C Suite pension strategies. He has a financial and industrial sector background and was a longtime CEO of AGA range master. He has an honorary doctorate from Birmingham City University for work to sustain the relevance of the Midlands industrial heritage. He returned to the financial sector after 25 years working in industry.

It has been an exciting summer, but we have managed to squeeze in a set of global guests for Series 4 of our 2025 Fiftyfaces Podcast – which takes us from the evolving world of hedge funds and the support infrastructure needed, to emerging market equities to late-stage venture capital to public pension pooling.