Meet the Experts

Meet the Experts Webinar Series 2020-2021

Meet the Experts is a series of video conversations between our Wharton Global Youth Program team and experts in investing and finance. While these interviews –created specifically for the Investment Competition –are not meant to provide student teams with a competitive advantage, they are a great way to learn about asset management careers, important financial trends like gender-lens investing, and other related fields and topics. Supplement all your great learning from the competition by joining us live or on-demand for a Meet the Experts conversation. You will even get the chance to ask questions. Access to the live webinars is exclusively available to students and advisors participating in the competition. Student team leaders and teacher-advisors should build these learning opportunities into your competition experience!

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Watch last year’s series below:

Peter Ammon

Chief Investment Officer, University of Pennsylvania
Date: Tuesday, October 6, 2020
Time: 11:00 – 12:00 p.m. EDT
Topic: Beyond the Numbers: Why People Matter Immensely to Investment Decisions

Peter's Full Bio

Peter Ammon serves as Penn’s Chief Investment Officer. Prior to joining Penn in July 2013, he worked at the Yale University Investments Office. At Yale, Ammon was also a senior faculty fellow at the Yale School of Management, where he co-taught a class on endowment management. Prior to his time at Yale, Ammon worked at the Princeton University Investment Company.

Ammon has served on a number of non-profit investment committees, including most recently at The Philadelphia School.

He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in politics from Princeton, a Master of Arts in international relations from Yale University, and a Master of Business Administration from Yale University.

Seema Hingorani, WG’96

Managing Director, Morgan Stanley Investment Management & Founder and Chair, Girls Who Invest
Date: Friday, October 9, 2020
Time: 11:00 – 12:00 p.m. EDT
Topic: Diversity and the Asset Management Industry

Seema's Full Bio

Seema R. Hingorani is a managing director at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, focused on investment talent development, strategic client relationships and diversity initiatives across the platform. She joined Morgan Stanley in 2019 and has 25 years of investment experience.

Hingorani is also the founder and chair of Girls Who Invest, a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and leadership in the asset management industry. Previously, Hingorani was the founder and Chief Investment Officer of SevenStep Capital, an opportunistic investment platform focused on seeding women portfolio managers. She was also a senior advisor at Crestview Partners and an advisory group member at Walter Scott & Partners Limited. Hingorani served until June 30, 2014 as Chief Investment Officer for the New York City Retirement Systems, which had assets of $160 billion. Previous to this appointment, Hingorani was interim Chief Investment Officer and before that head of public equities and hedge funds for the pension funds. Under her leadership, the pension fund was named Hedge Fund Manager of the Year – Large Public Pension Plans by Institutional Investor.

Prior to Hingorani’s four years of public-sector experience, she served as global director of fundamental research at Pyramis Global Advisors; a partner, portfolio manager and senior equity analyst with hedge fund Andor Capital Management; a partner and senior equity analyst at hedge fund Pequot Capital Management; co-founder of hedge fund Mirador Capital Management; and an equity analyst with T. Rowe Price.

Hingorani has worked with several organizations focused on issues concerning women and girls and is a prolific speaker on the topic of a more robust inclusion of women in the corporate sector. She was honored among the 2019 Bloomberg 50 “Ones To Watch,” the 2016 Woman with Impact by the Connecticut Women’s Business Development Council, and Wall Street Women Entrepreneur of the Year in 2015 by Traders magazine. Hingorani served as a member of the National Finance Committee of Secretary Clinton’s 2016 Presidential Campaign. She is an active member of The Economic Club of New York and 100 Women in Finance.

Hingorani earned a Bachelor of Arts in psychology/philosophy from Yale College and a Master of Business Administration in finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Caitlin Cronin, W’17

Junior Analyst, Alternative Investment Strategies, Aberdeen Standard Investments
Date: Tuesday, October 13, 2020
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EDT
Topic: Careers in the Asset Management Industry

Caitlin's Full Bio

Caitlin Cronin is a junior analyst on the Alternative Investment Strategies team of Aberdeen Standard Investments. Cronin joined Aberdeen Standard Investments in 2017 as a graduate business analyst and rotated on the Equities, Request for Proposal, and Total Return Bond teams before joining the Alternative Investment Strategies team. She is focused on researching event-driven and equity long/short hedge fund strategies.

Cronin graduated with a Bachelor of Science in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a minor in nutrition through the University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing. She is a 2020 Level III Candidate in the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) program.

William Landers

Managing Partner, BTG Pactual and Head of Latin American Equities, BTG Pactual Asset Management

Date: Wednesday, October 21, 2020
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EDT
Topic: Investing with a Global Perspective

William's Full Bio

Will Landers is a Managing Partner of BTG Pactual and Head of Latin American Equities at BTG Pactual Asset Management. Prior to joining BTG Pactual in March 2019, Landers spent 17 years as Head of Latin American Equities at BlackRock, where he was also a member of the firm’s Global Emerging Markets team and member of its Investment Stewardship Committee. Previously he worked for 7 years as a sell side equity analyst at CSFB and Lehman Brothers covering the Latin American Technology and Food and Beverages sectors respectively. Landers started his career in 1991 in the Latin American Investment Banking division at Bear Stearns. Will holds a BSBA in Finance and International Management from Georgetown University and is a CFA charterholder.

Sid Muralidhar

Senior, Virginia Tech, 2018 Global Investment Competition Champion
Date: Wednesday, October 28, 2020
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EDT
Topic: Lessons from the Investment Competition: Applying Your New Knowledge to Life after High School

Sid's Full Bio

Sid Muralidhar is a senior at Virginia Tech University and led the team that took first place overall in the 2018 Wharton Global High School Investment Competition (then called the KWHS Investment Competition). He currently leads COINS at VT, the only student-run commodities investment fund in the country, managing $1 million on behalf of the Virginia Tech Endowment, where he also serves as an investment analyst on the Investment Committee.

Building on his KWHS success, Muralidhar created his own company, Risktyle, based on his work in the competition, and has published multiple papers on behavioral finance in peer-reviewed investment journals, including the Journal of Investment Consulting, Journal of Personal Finance, and Investments & Wealth Monitor. He most recently interned for Citigroup’s Sales & Trading division after spending last summer interning for Kudu Investment Management, a private equity firm in New York City. In his free time, he enjoys following the latest in politics, global markets and sports – he’s an avid Houston Rockets and Dallas Cowboys fan (unfortunately!) – and doing service work in India for underprivileged children.

Jules H. van Binsbergen

The Nippon Life Professor in Finance, the Wharton School
Date:
Monday, November 2, 2020

Time: 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. EST
Topic: Ask the Expert: Your Investing Questions Answered

Jules' Full Bio

Jules van Binsbergen conducts theoretical and empirical research in finance. His current work focuses on asset pricing, in particular the relationship between financial markets and the macro economy, and the organization, skill and performance of financial intermediaries. Some of his recent research focuses on the influence of financial market anomalies on real economic activity, measuring the skill of mutual fund managers and the term structure of cash flow growth and stock return predictability. Professor van Binsbergen’s research has appeared in leading academic journals, such as the American Economic Review, the Journal of Finance, the Journal of Financial Economics and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He received his PhD from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. After obtaining his PhD in 2008, he joined the faculty at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, where he got tenure in 2014. He joined the Wharton School in 2014.

Tyler Wry

Associate Professor of Management, the Wharton School
Date: Wednesday, November 4, 2020
Time: 11:00 – 12:00 p.m. EST
Topic: Thinking Entrepreneurially During a Competition

Tyler's Full Bio

Tyler Wry, a Wharton associate professor of management, studies hybrid ventures, which are organizations that combine related, but potentially contradictory aims at their core. For example, many nanotechnology startups are organized around the joint pursuit of scientific discovery and technology commercialization, and social enterprises work to generate profits while simultaneously addressing societal issues. These organizations have the potential to generate important commercial and social innovations, but also face a number of unique challenges, particularly in the startup stage of development. Building on this, Professor Wry’s research focuses on how hybrids emerge, attract resources and positively affect society.

Professor Wry’s work has appeared in outlets such as the Academy of Management Annals, the Academy of Management Journal, the Academy of Management Review, the Journal of Business Venturing and Organization Science. He serves on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, the Academy of Management Journal and the Academy of Management Review.

Burcu Esmer

Visiting Faculty, the Wharton School
Date: Friday, November 13, 2020
Time: 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. EST
Topic: Alternative Investments and Global Asset Allocation

Burcu's Full Bio

Dr. Burcu Esmer is a senior research fellow at the Wharton School’s Harris Family Alternative Investments Program and a member of Wharton’s finance faculty. Previously, she was a faculty member at Kelley School of Business, Indiana University, and Bilkent University in Turkey. She received her Ph.D. in finance and Master of Arts in economics from the University of Iowa.

Professor Esmer’s research interests include empirical corporate finance and alternative investments. Her most recent research focuses on agency conflicts in financial contracts, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity investments. Her work has appeared in leading academic journals, such as the Journal of Banking and Finance and Applied Mathematical Modeling.

Professor Esmer teaches extensively on private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and corporate finance in executive and degree programs. She has also taught courses on economics and statistics. She received a teaching excellence award from the Wharton School and a ‘Thank a Teacher’ recognition from the Center for Teaching at the University of Iowa.

Professor Esmer also serves on the advisory board of Girls Who Invest, a non-profit organization dedicated to increasing the number of women in portfolio management and executive leadership in the asset management industry.