Registration and Breakfast (Harvard Hall – Grill Room)

Welcome Remarks – Vishesh Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Chief Investment Officer

The Big Picture: Navigating Nosebleed Valuations and Uncharted Waters
Winners and finalists of the CIO Industry Innovation dissect how they are positioning for the uncharted waters now forming in 2018 and unveil the most vitals lessons learned in a year when markets finally emerged from the decade-long shadow of the financial crisis.
Moderator: David Holmgren, CIO, Hartford HealthCare
Panelists:
Matthew L. Clark, State Investment Officer, South Dakota Investment Council
Scott Evans,  Deputy Comptroller for Asset Management and CIO, New York City Pension Funds

Keynote: Caveat Emptor – The Over Diversification in Active Equities and the Pursuit of Conviction
Institutional investors, charged with outperforming a policy benchmark, often allocate to external active managers in order to hit return objectives. The challenge is to do so without over-diversifying the portfolio. At some point, diversification among a set of diversified portfolios may exceed what is prudent, or required by fiduciaries. The temptation may then arise to pay for perceived high conviction, a complex attribute to judge and correlate with alpha potential and reliability – thus, “caveat emptor”! Olivia Engel, CIO of Active Quantitative Equities at State Street Global Advisors, will propose a rational framework for equity investing that seeks to maintain active risk in the pursuit of alpha, while achieving simplification and a reduction in implicit and explicit expenses. Presenter: Olivia Engel is a Senior Managing Director and CIO of State Street Active Quantitative Equities. 

Refreshment Break

Emerging Markets: Tapping Into the Rise of the Rest
With compelling relative valuations and ascendant both politically and economically on the world stage, asset owners are increasingly looking for EM to deliver growth. But what are the most innovative ways for investors to harness this generational rise?
Moderator: Kamal Suppal, Chief Investment Auditor, Emerging Markets Alternatives, LLC
Panelists: 
Karen Bater, Senior Fixed Income Specialist, Aberdeen Standard
Craig Barker, CIO, University of Arizona Foundation

Fireside Chat: New Analytical Frameworks for a New Market Era
Companies are fundamentally revamping their priorities as markets emerge from the shadow of the financial crisis. Creating sustainable competitive advantage has replaced protecting the bottom-line at the top of the agenda. But the rules of competition have also changed. Investment in innovation and R&D as opposed to traditional capex are critical to thrive, while the competitive landscape for innovation itself has been redrawn with the emergence of major new forces like China. Anik Sen, Managing Director, Global Head of Equities, PineBridge Investments will address the new paradigms and categorization frameworks investors need to embrace amid new market realities and competitive dynamics.​​
Moderator: Vishesh Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Chief Investment Officer
Speaker: Anik Sen, Managing Director, Global Head of Equities, PineBridge Investments

Lunch (North and Biddle 3rd floor)

One Year Later: Macro Investing and Political Risk
Political risk factors and macro investing were driving factors in a year that raw all risk assets vault to new highs. A year later, what have investors learned about the incoming US administration, and how does that impact portfolio positioning for the year ahead? How will the bold political developments taking place in China, Japan, and France – among others – impact markets?
Moderator: Robert “Vince” Smith, CIO & Deputy State Investment, Officer, New Mexico State Investment Council
Panelists:
Charles Van Vleet, Assistant Treasurer, CIO, Textron
Sean Crawford, CIO, Connecticut 
Retirement Plans & Trust Funds
Matt Toms, CIO of Fixed Income, Voya Investment Management 

Asset Owner Advantage
Asset owners often have to deliver for their constituents over a lifetime and have to take decade’s long views on asset allocations. But while that responsibility is daunting, the long-term view also offers advantages over other short-term investors provided asset owners can think through their strategies properly. Key among them: whether volatility – often seen as a measure of risk, can instead be a source of opportunity over the long-term, why thinking beyond the quarter or the year is vital in an era of nosebleed valuations, and how proactively communicating these strategies is vital for stewardship over the long-haul.
Moderator: Rich Nuzum,  President,Wealth, Mercer
Panelists:
Brian Gonick, Co-Chief Investment Officer, Senvest Management, LLC
Jason Klein, Senior Vice President & Chief Investment Officer, Investment Office, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Paul Benjamin, Director, Pension Investments, Alcoa Corp.

Fireside Chat: Innovative Strategies for Navigating a Low Return Environment
Expected returns will be challenged given current valuations, while downside risks remain high. Jeff Geller, Chief Investment Officer, Multi-Asset Solutions, J.P. Morgan Asset Management, drills down into the bright spots and areas of caution in the current environment. The discussion includes all key points for allocators, including the business cycle, Fed policy, and the evolution of multi-asset strategies over the last decade.
Moderator: Larry Light, Markets Editor, Chief Investment Officer
Speaker: Jeff Geller, Chief Investment Officer, Multi-Asset Solutions, J.P. Morgan Asset Management

Refreshment Break

Getting ESG Right 
No longer just a box to check, ESG frameworks are increasingly fundamental to investment decision-making and portfolio positioning. But what are the most innovative ways to navigate thorny issues like problematic divestment, measuring ESG impact, and implementing ESG frameworks in an investment team?
Moderator: Christie Zarkovich, Managing Director, Cambridge Associates 
Panelists:
Bonnie Saynay, Global Head of Responsible Investment, Invesco
Matthew Sherwood PH.D., Senior Manager, Public Markets Investments, MMBB Financial Services
Anthony S. Waskiewicz, CIO, Mercy Health
Karianne Lancee, Senior Pension Investments and Global Sustainability Manager, Univest Company (Unilever)

Revisiting Hedge Funds Amid Nosebleed Valuations
The hedge fund industry came roaring back over the last year and 2018, garnering strong inflows and with record assets under management. The turnaround followed years of outflows amid complaints of high fees and lackluster performance. Key factors for the renewed interest: nosebleed asset valuations that make downside protection, liquidity and the need for alternative risk premia imperative. How asset owners can select the best strategies to meet their portfolio goals, the innovation required on the part of asset managers, and the most important factors in partnerships in the current market environment. 
Moderator: Sean Bill, Investment Program Manager, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority
Panelists:
David Holmgren, CIO, Hartford HealthCare
Sanjay Chawla, Senior Vice President and CIO, FM Global
Jon Hansen, Managing Director, Cambridge Associates

Networking Reception (Cambridge 2^nd floor)

Breakfast (Harvard Hall – Grill Room)

Welcome Remarks: Vishesh Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Chief Investment Officer

The Digital CIO and Industry Leader 
The most innovative CIOs and Industry Leaders discuss tools and technologies that allow investment offices to take their performance to the next level. How to leverage Digital Communication Platforms, Big Data, Crowdsourcing, Alternative Data, and AI among other technologies.
Moderator: Richard Pook, Partner, Dore Partnership 
Panelists:
Clint Coghill, CEO, Backstop Solutions
Carlos Rangel, Director of  Investments, W.K. Kellogg Foundation
Amy Chen, CIO, Smithsonian Institution
Rens Götz, Head of Pension Asset Management, ABB Asea Brown Boveri Ltd

Fireside Chat: Impact of Inflation and Growth Dynamics on Funded Status
What do negative equity/bond correlations mean for plan sponsors? General investment wisdom suggests negative equity/bond correlation benefits investors because of the effects of diversification. But for corporate plan sponsors negative correlation could have the opposite effect it may increase their funded status risk. Inflation and growth dynamics are the  main drivers of bond yields and equity/bond correlation. The current environment of low and stable inflation most likely means low yields and negative correlation are here to stay for a while. Bruno Weinberg Crocco, Research Analyst, Global Asset Allocation, Fidelity Investments, analyzes the current environment in historical context and drills down into how asset owners could prepare themselves.
Moderator: Larry Light, Markets Editor, Chief Investment Officer
Speaker: Bruno Weinberg Crocco, Research Analyst, Global Asset Allocation, Fidelity Investments

How Long Can the Economic Expansion Continue?
After nine years of continuous growth, the assessments of an economy in later, or final, stages are both abundant and intuitive. Many leading and coincident indicators, however – not to mention underlying earnings – paint a picture of a recovery with continued momentum. Darrell Spence, US Economist for Capital Group, will take a comprehensive look at key metrics and places the current economic expansion in historical perspective – including the severity of the recession that preceded it – to help investors navigate this critical question. The discussion will also examine timely developments impacting the economic cycle and key asset classes.
Presenter: Darrell Spence, Senior Vice President and Economist, Capital Group

Refreshment Break

Keynote: Civilization 3.0: Forces Shaping the Future:
Vivek Ranadivé, owner and chairman of the Sacramento Kings, founder of Bow Capital and founder of TIBCO, a multi-billion dollar software company, will explore the forces shaping the future, or Civilization 3.0. There are dramatic changes ahead, industries will be disrupted with software guiding, serving, protecting and entertaining us, transforming our lives and our economy. The result will be the transformation of education, agriculture, finance, government, medicine and entertainment. From his success as a technology entrepreneur pioneering the use of real-time event processing that digitized Wall Street to transforming Sacramento into the Next Great American City, Vivek has made a career of rethinking what we know, and creating the future.

Investing in the Age of Disruption
As the pace of technology-driven change accelerates from its already breakneck pace, Future Proofing portfolio only grows in importance. The key trends to watch – how renewables reaching grid parity, distributed generation, and storage impact utilities, and how autonomous vehicles threaten fixed assets like parking garages to actuarial businesses – and how to hedge risks. And the challenges to investing in innovation, both directly and thru venture capital portfolios – they best of which tend to be closed, and the rest that have produced subpar results.
Moderator: Vishesh Kumar, Editor-in-Chief, Chief Investment Officer
Panelists:
Kim Y. Lew, Vice President, CIO, Carnegie Corporation of New York
Bill Coaker, CIO, San Francisco Employees Retirement System
Sean Bill, Investment Program Manager, Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority

Closing Remarks

Networking Lunch (North and Biddle 3^rd floor)