Exploring the Total Portfolio Approach

As a member of the Leadership Team at CAIA Association, Aaron partners with asset managers, institutional investors, and wealth managers to distill advanced investment concepts into real-world frameworks. With his prior experience in high-net-worth investment strategy and portfolio management, he brings thought leadership, industry context, and practical implementation to a global community of investment professionals.

Aaron has served in multiple roles at CAIA Association across its educational programs and content development initiatives. Previously, Aaron founded what is now CAIA.nxt™, an online learning platform that educates stakeholders across the industry on alternative investments.

A frequent speaker and writer, Aaron regularly contributes to CAIA’s educational programs, is frequently sought by media outlets, and has been published in various journals, books, and articles. Before joining CAIA Association, Aaron’s career was spent in private wealth management, where he focused on investment strategy, portfolio management, and manager selection for high-net-worth investors.

Aaron earned both his B.S. with distinction in Finance and his Master of Finance from Penn State University, where he also serves as an adjunct professor and advisory board member. He holds the CAIA, CFA, CIPM, and FDP designations and is a CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™ professional. He is Past President of CFA Society Columbus and serves as Vice President of CFA Society Philadelphia.

Kristen Walters is a recognized Chief Risk Officer (CRO) and leader in the financial services sector across both buy-side firms (asset managers, hedge funds and asset owners) and large trading and commercial banks with breadth and depth in public and private markets. 

She is currently Senior Advisor, Institutional Investor Risk at the Global Association of Risk Professionals, and a Lecturer at Columbia University’s School of Professional Studies. Previously, she was the first stand-alone CRO of Canadian Pension Plan Investments, the world’s 6th largest pension fund, where she enhanced governance, controls, transparency, and board reporting. Prior to CPP Investments, Kristen was the first stand-alone CRO of Natixis Investment Managers (with $1.4 trillion in AUM and ~25 global asset management subsidiaries) where she introduced risk oversight and built a supporting team “de novo” during COVID. 

Prior roles included 11 years at BlackRock working directly for the CRO and founding partner to evolve BlackRock’s investment and enterprise risk frameworks, systems, analytics, and reporting. Kristen also worked for Goldman Sachs leading “firm-wide” market risk and provided daily analysis across the trading platform to senior management during the 2008 financial crisis. Earlier in her career she held risk roles at PIMCO, Barclays Capital and KPMG. She started her career in Supervision and Regulation at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston during the 1990s banking crisis. Ms. Walters holds a BBA in Accounting with honors from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and an MBA with Distinction from Babson College, Wellesley, MA).

Mr. Lerit is the Head of Portfolio Risk for Washington Crossing Advisors. He collaborates with advisors to help design and explain portfolio solutions that meet specific needs of private client, high net worth, and institutional investors for equity, fixed income, and multi-asset portfolios.

Steve was formerly Head of Quantitative Risk for UBS Wealth Management, Asset Manager for US Trust/Bank of America, Investment Analyst for New York Life Investment Management LLC and Market Risk Analyst for JP Morgan Chase. He has extensive experience applying advanced statistical methods, data science and operations research to portfolio construction, risk management and investment manager selection and performance evaluation.

Steve is the Co-Chair of the Performance and Risk Group and a former Director at CFA NY, where he has taught courses for CFA and CIPM exam preparation. He was a founding and longstanding member of the Education Committee of GARP, which awards the Financial Risk Manager (FRM) designation. Steve is an advisory board member, contributor and top reviewer for The Journal of Performance Measurement. He has served as a subject matter expert on stress testing for regulatory purposes and a manuscript reviewer for textbooks on data science and applied financial statistics. Steve has a BA from Rutgers and an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business. He holds series 7 and series 63 licenses.

Masao Matsuda has over three decades of experience in the global financial services industry. He has acted as CEO of a US broker-dealer and CEO/CIO of investment management firms. Throughout his career, he has specialized in asset allocation, alternative and traditional investments, and in financial risk management. He has written papers that appeared in various CAIA publications, as well as in GARP’s Risk Intelligence.

He is experienced as a corporate director for operating and holding companies, and as a fund director for offshore investment vehicles. He is President and CEO/CIO of Crossgates Investment and Risk Management. Prior to founding Crossgates, Masao spent 18 years with the Nikko group of companies of Japan. For the last seven years of his career at Nikko, he served as President/CEO of various Nikko entities in the US. He received his Ph.D. in International Relations from Claremont Graduate University. He holds CAIA and FRM designations.