Kurt Summers is a Senior Managing Director and Head of Public-Private Partnerships in
Blackstone’s Infrastructure Group. In this capacity, Mr. Summers is responsible for
investment strategies in partnership with governments, public entities, civic and labor
organizations, and broader stakeholders to help advance local infrastructure priorities
and he also advances Blackstone Infrastructure’s ESG efforts. Mr. Summers was
elected and served as Chicago’s 70th City Treasurer until 2019. Mr. Summers also
served as both Chairman of the Chicago Infrastructure Trust, where he led the largest
lighting retrofit project in North America, and Chairman of the Chicago Community
Catalyst Fund, a first-of-its-kind $100 million local investment fund focused on private
investments in Chicago neighborhoods.

Marcie Frost is the Chief Executive Officer of CalPERS, the largest pension fund in the US with over $400 billion in assets under management and serving over 2 million members in its retirement system. She was recently elected to the board of the Toigo Foundation.

Summer is coming, and so is Series 3 of the 2024 Fiftyfaces Podcast, and this series is filled with themes that we have not touched in as much depth before. The notion of service, and in particular serving public funds – whether in an officer, trustee or consultant capacity is explored in depth – we look at the mindset required, the rewards that accrue, and how to attract new talent into this segment.

Brent Mattis is a Principal at the Cleveland Clinic Investment Office. He specializes in idea generation, manager selection and financial modeling for the investment portfolio and likes to look “off the beaten path” for opportunity. Prior to joining the Cleveland Clinic in 2017 he worked for 6 years in a family office in NYC with a particular focus on alternative assets, direct private investments and public equitie

Grace Reyes, is the CEO and Founder of TIDE – The Investment Diversity Exchange, which she founded in January 2020 as a way to connect key industry players to promote diversity and inclusion in the investment industry. She has recently extended TIDE’s reach beyond the US and has a base in both the US and the UK.  TIDE as a partner to the largest US public pension plans, their emerging and diverse manager efforts.

We are thrilled to be back with Series 2 of the 2024 Fiftyfaces Podcast, which will marry insights from private wealth with insights on strategy, leadership and the investment landscape. Inter-dsiplinary learning is the way of the future, so we are excited to weave together diverse aspects of our investment discipline here. Series 2 is rich with insights around private wealth, 

Elizabeth Browne is Managing Director and Co-Head, Elevate at GCM Grosvenor, where she works in the Sponsor Solutions division. She was previously Head of Entrepreneurship and Family Office Partners at RedBird Capital Partners and was a senior member of the investment team at DNS capital, a family office. She has held numerous board roles.

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. 

In this podcast we return to a former guest, Matt Sherwood, whom we featured in an earlier podcast in this series (see https://www.fiftyfaceshub.com/157-matthew-sherwood-ph-d-of-wevidit-media-determination-vision-and-the-power-of-reframing/) in order to catch up with his new venture, Pothos Partners. The name comes from the golden pothos plant which sequesters carbon particularly efficiently among plants. It is also a resilient plant that is difficult to eliminate.