FRM Program and Exams

Nick led the Bank of England’s domestic and international work to promote the operational and cyber resilience of the finance sector. Prior to this role, Nick acted as Director of the BoE’s Supervisory Risk Specialist Directorate, covering traded, credit, and operational risks, liquidity and capital. Before joining the Bank, Nick was a director in the financial services practice of KPMG.

Richard Apostolik has led the world’s premiere association for risk professionals since 2003. Previously with Bankers Trust’s (Deutsche Bank) strategic ventures group, Apostolik developed financial risk management initiatives designed to provide credit risk mitigation and management services to financial service companies. He also served as JPMorgan & Co.’s global head of energy brokerage activities and Chief Operating Officer of its global listed product businesses. He ran his own consulting firm and was responsible for the start-up of SG Warburg & Co.’s North American futures and options business. He was an attorney with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, practiced law with a private law firm in Chicago, and was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s house counsel. Apostolik holds a BSBA, MBA, and JD from the University of Dayton.

Luca is the Global Head of Private Market Valuations and L3 Solutions at S&P Global Market Intelligence. He has more than 30 years of financial and capital markets experience and has held senior leadership positions in financial and risk advisory (E&Y, KPMG, D&P), investment banking (DB, Nordea) and regulators (PRA).

Richard (Rick) Brandt is Managing Director, Head of Citi’s Operational Risk Management Measurement, Framework and Tools department with responsibility for establishing the strategic direction of the Operational Risk Management (ORM) framework and overseeing its implementation enterprise wide. Rick joined Citi in 2000 and has held numerous roles across Independent Risk Management and Enterprise Operations and Technology.

Prior to working at Citi, Rick worked in Risk Management at HSBC and ran the day-to-day operations of a privately held manufacturing company. Rick holds an MBA in Finance from the University of Maryland and a BA, Mathematics with applied concentration in Economics from Johns Hopkins University.

Julian Chen is Senior Vice President of GARP’s Educational and Research program. He is responsible for the Financial Risk Manager (FRM®) program content and exam development.

Before working at GARP, Julian was a senior consultant at Consolidated Edison, where he was responsible for the development of the ERM program and plans to comply with the North American Electric Reliability Corp. Critical Infrastructure Protection (NERC CIP) standards.

Prior to that, Julian was a CFA instructor and taught the CFA exam preparatory courses to all three levels of CFA candidates around the world in both English and Mandarin.

Christopher Donohue is the Managing Director of the GARP Benchmarking Initiative, a data utility for financial services companies to compare sensitive data. Previously, he led GARP’s Educational and Research Programs, with oversight including the Financial Risk Manager (FRM®) and Energy Risk Professional (ERP®).

Prior to joining GARP, Donohue’s roles include hedge fund partner responsible for the development of asset allocation tools for pension funds and automated trading systems; director in the Global Research Center at Deutsche Asset Management, leading product research and development; and Director of Optimization Technology at Alphatech, a technology and research defense contractor, where he led algorithm development for intelligence aircraft path planning and sensor scheduling systems.

Donald Edgar, Managing Director, is responsible for investment risk management within BlackRock’s Fixed Income Risk & Quantitative Analysis group. Mr. Edgar joined BlackRock in 2005, including his years with Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which merged with BlackRock in 2009. Prior to joining BGI, he spent 6- years as Chief Architect of JRisk, a real time risk management and analytics platform. Donald holds a MSc in Financial Economics from the University of London (SOAS), a BSc in Physics from Glasgow University, and is a FRM holder. He is a regular panellist on industry events relating to risk and liquidity and contributor to BlackRock’s ViewPoint series of policy white papers.

Hervé Geny joined the London Stock Exchange Group in December 2012 as the Group Head of Internal Audit. Geny previously held various roles in consulting, finance and risk management in New York and London. He was the Chief Risk Officer of ICAP from 2007 to 2011, Head of Global Risk Management specialist group at Moody's from 2003-2007, and held various finance positions at Merrill Lynch NY from 1999 to 2003. Geny graduated as an engineer in France (Ecole Nationale des Mines de Paris) and also holds a master’s from the University of Rochester, NY.

Aparna Gupta is a professor of quantitative finance. She was the co-founder and co-director of the first-ever NSF funded center for research devoted to the financial services sector, the NSF IUCRC Center for Research toward Advancing Financial Technologies (CRAFT) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Dr. Gupta has also served as the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs of the Lally School of Management at RPI. Dr. Gupta was a visiting researcher at US SEC in Washington DC for three years. Her research interest is in financial decision support, risk management, and applying mathematical modeling, machine learning and financial engineering techniques for risk management in technology-enabled network services, as well as risk management in the inter-connected financial institutions and financial markets. She has worked on several US NSF, US DoE funded research projects in financial innovations for risk management. Dr. Gupta's research has been published in top quantitative finance and operations research journals, and has been awarded various recognitions, including 2018 best paper award of the Financial Management Association and 2019 best conference paper award at the 17th FRAP Conference. She is the author of the book, Risk Management and Simulation. Dr. Gupta is a member of WFA, FMA, INFORMS, GARP and IAQF, and serves on the GARP FRM Advisory Board and the editorial board of several quantitative finance and analytics journals. She earned her doctorate from Stanford University and her B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Mathematics from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

John Hull is the Maple Financial Professor of Derivatives and Risk Management at the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto and a Senior Advisor at GARP. He was in 2016 awarded the title of University Professor (an honor granted to only 2% of faculty at University of Toronto.) He is an internationally recognized authority on derivatives and risk management. His research has an applied focus. He was, with Alan White, one of the winners of the Nikko-LOR research competition for his work on the Hull-White interest rate model, which is widely used by practitioners. In 1999 he was voted Financial Engineer of the Year by the International Association of Financial Engineers. He has acted as consultant to many financial institutions throughout the world and has won many teaching awards, including University of Toronto's prestigious Northrop Frye award. Recently his research has focused on applications of machine learning in finance.

He is well known for his four books: “Risk Management and Financial Institutions” (now in its 5^th edition); "Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives" (now in its 11^th edition); "Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets" (now in its 9^th edition); and “Machine Learning in Business: An Introduction to the World of Data Science” (now in its 3^rd edition). The books have been translated into many languages and are widely used by practicing managers as well as in the classroom.

Dr. Hull is academic director of FinHub (Rotman’s Financial Innovation Lab). In addition to the University of Toronto, Dr. Hull has taught at York University, University of British Columbia, New York University, Cranfield University, and London Business School.

Keith is the Chief Risk Officer for RFA Bank of Canada, a Schedule I Canadian Bank, and leads teams responsible for Credit Risk, Treasury, and non-Financial Risk Management, as well as Anti-Money Laundering and Compliance. Previously, Keith worked at TD Bank for 13 years, in progressive Risk Management roles. Prior to joining TD, Keith worked in Capital Markets related roles at HSBC Bank Canada and OSFI. Keith holds an MBA in Finance from McGill University and is an FRM and CFA charterholder.

William May is Managing Director and Global Head of Certifications and Educational Programs at GARP. Prior to joining GARP, William had over 20 years of market experience including serving as a Senior Director in Fitch Ratings’ credit market research group and as a Senior Research Officer at UBS Wealth Management. He has worked for several buy-side and sell-side firms including Bank of America and Federated Investors as well as specialty firms like Andrew Kalotay Associates and Law and Economic Consulting Group. He began his career in the research function of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and has worked on the Open Market Trading Desk and as a bank examiner. William holds a BS in applied mathematics and economics from Stony Brook University; an MBA and an MA in economics from Fordham University; an MS in financial engineering from the NYU Tandon School of Engineering; and an MS in applied statistics and MEd in applied psychology from Columbia University’s Teachers College. He is currently studying engineering, artificial intelligence, and engineering education at Penn State University.

Attilio Meucci is the founder of ARPM (Advanced Risk and Portfolio Management). Attilio was the chief risk officer at KKR; the chief risk officer and director of portfolio construction at Kepos Capital, the global head of research for Bloomberg’s risk and portfolio analytics platform; a researcher at Lehman POINT, a trader at the hedge fund Relative Value International, and a consultant at Bain & Co. Attilio is the author of numerous publications. In addition to the ARPM Bootcamp®, he taught at Columbia-IEOR, NYU-Courant (New York), Bocconi University (Milan), and NUS-Business School (Singapore), where he is Visiting Senior Research Fellow at CAMRI.

Attilio earned a BA summa cum laude in Physics from the University of Milan, an MA in Economics from Bocconi University, a Ph.D in Mathematics from the University of Milan and is a CFA charterholder. Attilio is fluent in six languages.

Victor Ng is the former Managing Director, Head of Risk Architecture. Previously, he was chief risk architect in Market Risk, global head of Corporate Risk, global head of Risk Modeling and co-head of Derivatives Research in Fixed Income. Dr. Ng joined Goldman Sachs in 1995. Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, he worked at the International Monetary Fund as an economist and before that, he was an Assistant Professor of Finance at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Dr. Ng is a member of the Board of Trustees of GARP and its Financial Risk Manager (FRM) committee. He is also a member of various risk and capital related working groups and committees of ISDA, IIF and SIFMA. Dr. Ng has published in leading finance, economics and econometrics journals and was an associate editor of the Journal of Business and Economic Statistics.

Matt Pritsker is a Senior Financial Economist and Policy Adviser in the Division of Supervision, Regulation, and Credit at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.  Matt earned a BA in economics from the University of Michigan in 1986, and a Ph.D.in economics from Princeton University in 1992.  Prior to joining the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, Matt was an economist at the Federal Reserve Board.  While working for the Federal Reserve system, Matt has taught at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, NYU Stern, the University of California at Berkeley, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown University.

Matt’s research is in the areas of asset pricing, market microstructure, risk measurement and management, and banking. His most recent research is on carbon emissions and asset pricing, and on the design of systemic-risk stress tests for the banking system. Other recent papers are on how securitization affects banking and Knightian uncertainty in interbank markets. Other research papers are on market liquidity, financial contagion, and financial econometrics.  Matt’s research has appeared in the Journal of Finance, the Review of Financial Studies, the Journal of Financial Intermediation, and the Journal of Banking and Finance.  

Samantha Roberts served at PNC Bank as SVP Balance Sheet Management and Modelling, from 2015-2021.  Samantha previously held roles in financial modeling and risk management in retail banking and at Federal financial regulatory agencies in the Washington, DC metro region. She served as  the GARP Chapter Director for DC from 2008-2022.  She holds a PhD in Economics from the University of PIttsburgh, PA and an MSc in Agricultural Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

Til Schuermann advises private and public sector clients on stress testing, capital planning, enterprise-wide risk management, model risk management, corporate governance, and board effectiveness. Previously, he was Senior Vice President at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he held numerous positions, including Head of Financial Intermediation in Research and Head of Credit Risk in Bank Supervision. He is a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Financial Advisory Roundtable, is on the advisory board of the NYU Courant Institute Mathematical Finance program, and is a Research Fellow at the Wharton School. He holds a Ph.D in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Evan Sekeris has worked in various capacities in risk management for the past 20 years, most recently as the Chief Model Risk Officer at Capital One. Prior to Capital One, Evan served at PNC, where he led the model validation team responsible for all models used by the bank and at MUFG where he was the head of non-financial risk for the Americas.

Earlier in his career, he was a partner at Oliver Wyman, responsible for the non-financial risk platform for the Americas and was Aon's global head of financial institutions risk consulting. Evan started his risk career as a regulator at Boston and then the Richmond Fed. There, he was responsible for the coordination of the supervision of operational risk models for US-based AMA banks and the team that crafted the Federal Reserve’s operational risk stress testing model for CCAR.

With a foundation in academics, holding a BA and MA from the Universite Catholique de Louvain and a PhD from UCLA, Evan has always sought to blend knowledge with practical experience.

Sverrir Þorvaldsson is an experienced quantitative risk manager and ex-Chief Risk Officer, and currently serves in the role of Chief Quant for SEB.  Skilled in financial risk management and banking, as well as mathematical finance, stochastic modeling and data analysis, Sverrir has a master’s degree in financial mathematics and a Ph. D. in mathematics, both from Stanford University.