Michael A. Ervolini
Founder & CEO, Cabot Investment Technology
Mike has over 27 years of experience in institutional investment management and software development. Prior to co-founding Cabot, Mike was a founder and CEO of Charter Research Corporation. This company was purchased by McGraw-Hill/Standard & Poor's in 2001. Previously Mike was a Portfolio Manager and Chief Information Officer with AEW Capital Management where he first started using information technology as a strategic tool to run institutional portfolios. He was also a Vice President with Legg Mason Real Estate Institutional Advisors (Philadelphia, PA). Mike holds a B.A. in economics from Rutgers University and an M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania.
Emily Haisley
Head Behavioural Finance, BlackRock
Emily Haisley leads the Behavioural Finance initiative at BlackRock Risk & Quantitative Analysis. The team provides analytics and best practices to enhance the decision making process of investment teams. Academic researcher turned practitioner, Emily translates research insights into practical applications in organisations and is an expert on the influence of cognitive bias, emotions and personality on financial decisions. Before joining BlackRock she worked in Digital Innovation at Lloyds Banking Group where she incorporated psychological nudges into UX design. Prior to that Emily spent five years in the Behavioural Finance team at Barclays where she helped private clients, retail investors and portfolio managers mitigate biases to promote better investment decisions. Emily has published peer reviewed research on topic such as risk comprehension, myopic decision making and encouraging pension savings. Her consulting and research partners have included PNC Bank, Google, McKinsey and the US Department of Health and Human Services. Emily was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Yale School of Management and holds a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon Tepper Business School.
Clare Flynn Levy
Founder & CEO, Essentia Analytics
Clare Flynn Levy is the founder and CEO of Essentia Analytics, a fintech firm that uses behavioral analytics to help professional fund managers better understand and track their investment decision-making patterns, and measurably improve performance. Clare is an internationally noted thought leader with a deep understanding of how bias and other unconscious cognitive tendencies materially and constantly impact investment decisions, and what can be done to mitigate these invisible habits. Much like a coach reviewing game tapes with an athlete, Essentia uses a combination of “nudging” technology and human coaching to empower active fund managers to continuously prove - and improve - their investment skill. Prior to founding Essentia, Clare spent 10 years as a fund manager, both active equity (running over $1bn of pension funds for Deutsche Asset Management) and hedge (as Founder & CIO of Avocet Capital Management, a specialist tech fund manager). She ultimately “went native” into the software space as the President of Beauchamp Financial Technology, a market-leading provider of portfolio management systems to hedge funds, which was acquired by Linedata Services S.A.
Magdalena Smith
Founder & CEO, Behaviour Lab
As founder of Behaviour Lab Magdalena brings her experience from McKinsey, Goldman Sachs and as an academic at University of Cambridge together to contribute to solving the challenge of creating more alpha in the investment industry using analytics and behavioural science. Behaviour Lab’s mission is to improve the way the world makes investments, using analytics and behavioural science to capture more alpha, and ensuring world class governance, through clear transparency of robust decision-making processes. Behaviour Lab's team of expert investors, data scientist, change management consultants and world leading academics are helping organisations worldwide and across the investment industry to become recognised for outperformance in their fields. Behaviour Lab have developed a track record to do so, by reshaping the way individual investors, teams and organisations make decisions and facilitating them in making this change permanent.
Kathryn Graham
Director, Behaviour Lab
Ms Graham is currently a member of the board of Behaviour Lab, and a senior adviser to the company. She was formerly the Head of Strategy Coordination at Universities Superannuation Scheme Ltd (USS), which operates one of the largest pension schemes in the UK. She was responsible for designing and managing the reference portfolio and its asset allocation; making external manager allocations; and the DC Product range. She previously worked at BT Pension Scheme Management Limited (BTPSM), the pension advisory arm of the BT Pension Scheme. Her career began at SG Warburg in fixed income derivatives and structured products and she has also worked at UBS and Progressive. Ms Graham was educated at Edinburgh University and holds an MA in Economics and Mathematics. She was a founding Trustee of the Standards Board for Alternative Investments and Chair of the London Board of 100 Women in Finance. She has been included on the FN100 Women in European Finance list and the Institutional Investor list of the 25 “Most Wanted Allocators”.
