Jon Salstrom is Executive Director and Chief Investment Officer at the Cincinnati Retirement System, a role he has held for almost two years. He previously worked in a series of consulting and financial analyst roles. Our conversation starts by tracing his earlier career path, and particularly his roles in consulting which set him up well for the current role with the City of Cincinnati.

Frank Dixon is an expert on Systems Change.  He has been interested in sustainability since his MBA, joined one of the first ESG research firms, saw ESG wasn’t enough, and has been working on system change ever since. 

Ghiané Jones, is Deputy CIO at the Teachers’ Retirement System of the State of Illinois, where she is based in their Chicago office. She previously was Managing Principal at Meketa Investment Group, a role she held for over 6 years, and prior to that worked in a range of financial services roles including in institutional ETF Sales at Invesco and Northern Trust, and as a Regional Consultant at Goldman Sach

Sam Garetano is Senior Vice President at Brookfield Asset Management, where he works in the infrastructure area with a particular focus on data centers. He has spent his entire career in various roles in finance including at Blackrock and Adams Street Partners.

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.

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.

Do you ever over order? This year, as is the case every year we were bursting at the seams with guests and talent here at Fiftyfaces Productions and were delighted to produce a bonus series featuring 8 inspiring guests at the end of 2024. We hope you can take some time over the break to listen back to some big themes – neurodivergence and the workforce, system change, moonshots and deep dives – all delivered in bite size chunks.

Shan Chen was until recently a portfolio manager focused on mostly private investments at the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System, where he spent over 17 years. He previously worked primarily within information technology and did research work in biochemistry. He has recently retired from the PSPRS and is focusing full time on developing AI solutions for investment management.