Advisory board 2020

Michael Patchen is a Principal and Chief Risk Officer at AQR Capital Management. In this role, Michael oversees AQR's risk function, which is responsible for the identification, measurement, monitoring and management of all financial and non-financial risks across the firm. Mike is the chair of AQR’s Enterprise Risk Committee and Market and Liquidity Risk Committee. Previously, Michael was the Head of Market and Liquidity Risk and oversaw all aspects of market risk across the firm’s portfolios. Prior to joining AQR, Michael was a Managing Director and senior risk manager at Carlson Capital. Earlier in his career, he was a portfolio manager at SAC Capital and Deutsche Bank. Michael was also part of the original AQR team that left Goldman Sachs Asset Management to found AQR in 1998. Michael earned a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A.S. in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, graduating summa cum laude in both.

Jodi Richard is vice chair and chief risk officer of U.S. Bancorp, a well-respected financial services holding company with businesses across the United States, Canada and Europe. U.S. Bancorp is headquartered in Minneapolis and is the parent company of U.S. Bank, which is the fifth-largest commercial bank in the United States. U.S. Bancorp is also the parent company of Elavon, a leader in the payment processing industry. Jodi oversees all aspects of the company’s risk management activities, including operational risk, credit risk, market risk, model risk, compliance, AML/BSA, independent risk review and regulatory services. She became vice chair and chief risk officer in 2018 and is a member of the company’s Managing Committee, the highest-ranking executives within the organization.

Jodi’s financial career spans nearly 30 years. She joined U.S. Bancorp in 2014 as executive vice president and chief operational risk officer, managing the company’s operational risk management activities.

Before joining U.S. Bancorp, Jodi was executive vice president and head of operational risk and internal control for HSBC North America. She was there for 11 years, serving in enterprise risk roles including head of risk governance and administration and director of regulatory compliance.

Jodi also spent 12 years at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), where she served as national bank examiner, specializing in retail credit and credit card bank supervision. Between two periods with the OCC, she was chief compliance officer for Sears National Bank.

At U.S. Bancorp, Jodi is executive sponsor of Business Resource Group Board. She also is the executive sponsor of U.S. Bank Spectrum LGBTQ BRG and Women of Risk chapter of the U.S. Bank Women BRG.

Jodi serves on the boards of Fairview Health Services and Catholic Charities of St. Paul and Minneapolis. She is active in the financial service industry, serving as chair of the board of directors of the Risk Management Association. She also is  on the Advisory Committee for Minnesota Center for Financial and Actuarial Mathematics. She is a frequent speaker at risk industry events.

Jodi is a graduate of the Leading Women’s Executive program and was part of American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Banking Top Team Award in 2013, 2015, 2019 and 2020. She was named Best Technology Executive in 2017 by Waters Technology. In 2017, U.S. Bank was named Operational Risk Bank of the Year by Risk.net.

Jodi holds a bachelor of arts degree in finance from the University of Northern Iowa.

Charles Elkan is a managing director and the global head of machine learning at Goldman Sachs in New York, and also an adjunct professor at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD). Previously, he was the first Amazon Fellow and the leader of Amazon's central machine learning team in the US; before that, he was a professor of computer science at UCSD for many years, with leaves that included being a visiting associate professor at Harvard. 

Andrew Y. Chin is the Chief Risk Officer and Head of Quantitative Research for AB. As the Chief Risk Officer, Chin oversees all aspects of risk management to ensure that the risks being taken are well understood and appropriately managed.  In the Quantitative Research role, he is responsible for the firm’s data science strategy and for optimizing the quantitative research infrastructure, tools and resources across the firm’s investing platforms. He joined the firm in 1997 and held various quantitative research roles in New York and London.  In 2004, Chin became a senior portfolio manager for Style Blend Equities. In 2005, he was named director of Quantitative Research for Value Equities. Prior to joining the firm, Chin was a project manager and business analyst in Global Investment Management at Bankers Trust from 1994 to 1997.

Chin teaches in the School of Operations Research and Information Engineering (Master of Financial Engineering Program) at Cornell University.  He also leads teams of students on capstone projects utilizing quantitative and data science skills to address investment issues.

Chin earned a BA and an MBA from Cornell University.

Rajesh T. Krishnamachari, Ph.D. is responsible for leading Data Science initiatives within the Global Markets division of Bank of America. Prior to joining the firm in 2018, he was an investment strategist at JP Morgan, where he served on the Quant Council for Research and specialized on the application of machine learning algorithms to cross-asset systematic investing. He also serves as adjunct faculty for machine learning at New York University. Dr. Krishnamachari is a widely cited researcher with 2 books and 25 refereed publications across quantitative finance, applied mathematics and the social sciences. 

Tatiana Segal is a Managing Director and a Chief Risk Officer at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, where she covers both public and private businesses and is a member of the Investment Committee. Prior to joining MSIM in August of 2019, Tatiana was a partner and a Head of Risk Management at SkyBridge, a global alternative investment firm, where she was also a member of the Manager Selection, Portfolio Allocation and Real Estate Investment committees. Prior to joining SkyBridge, she was a Managing Director and Chief Risk Officer at Cerberus Capital Management, LLC. Before joining Cerberus, she held a Chief Risk Officer position with Diamond Lake Investment Group and previously worked at Citigroup Alternative Investments, where she was responsible for an independent risk oversight of a multi-billion hedge fund and fund of funds portfolio. Mrs. Segal is a Co-Chair of Risk PAG NY for 100 Women in Finance, as well as a contributing member of DCRO council. She serves as a board member of the Tenement Museum and NY Landmark Conservancy. Mrs. Segal holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics from Columbia University

Ellen Koebler is deputy chief risk officer at Truist Financial Corporation, the nation’s premier financial services company serving approximately 10 million households.  In this role, Koebler is responsible for the execution and oversight of enterprise risk for Truist. She is also a member of the company’s executive management team.  

Prior to the merger of equals between BB&T Corporation and SunTrust Banks, Inc., she was chief risk officer for SunTrust.

After beginning her career as a senior chemical engineer for Shell Oil in New Orleans, she joined the financial services industry in the investment banking division of J.P. Morgan in Chicago where she focused on client coverage, originations and collateralized loan obligation structuring. She first joined SunTrust in 2004 as managing director for corporate investment bank portfolio strategies.  In subsequent years, Koebler held numerous positions in corporate risk management, including chief market risk and corporate analytics officer.

She was named chief risk officer for E*TRADE in 2016, and then returned to SunTrust in 2017 to serve as the consumer solutions executive, where she had responsibility for fintech partnerships and all direct lending and consumer deposit products.  She was named chief risk officer for SunTrust in January 2019.

Koebler has a bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering from Vanderbilt University and an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and holds a chartered financial analyst (CFA) designation.  She is a member of the TransUnion Consumer Lending Advisory Council and served as a board member of the Consumer Bankers Association through 2019.

Michelle McCarthy Beck is CRO for the TIAA Financial Solutions division of TIAA, which provides retirement, wealth management and banking services to the institutions and individuals that TIAA serves. Her previous role at TIAA was as CRO of its asset management subsidiary, Nuveen. 

Before joining Nuveen in 2010 she had prior roles including CRO at Russell Investments, and Chief Market and Operational Risk Officer at Washington Mutual Bank. From 1986-2003 she worked at Bankers Trust and then Deutsche Bank in roles including derivatives portfolio manager, head of market risk management for Europe/Middle East/Africa in London, and head of risk management for the bank’s asset management division. 

Michelle holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Washington and a master’s degree in Government from Harvard University.  She serves on the board of trustees of the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP), and is a member of GARP’s Buy Side Risk Managers Forum.

Michelle’s publications include “Measuring and Managing Market Risk,” co-authored with Don Chance, Ph.D., published by the CFA Institute in 2016, and “Utilizing Downside Risk Measures,” CFA Institute Conference Proceedings, Third Quarter 2014.

Sven Sandow is the Global Head of Credit and Operational Risk Analytics at Morgan Stanley. During his 20-year career in the financial industry, Sven has worked in various quantitative modeling, risk management, and capital management capacities. Prior to Morgan Stanley, he worked at Merrill Lynch and Standard & Poor’s. Before he joined the financial industry, Sven worked as a physicist at the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and the Weizmann Institute of Science. He has been an active researcher in physics, finance, and machine learning. His research has been published in academic journals, and he coauthored a book on learning from data. Sven holds a Ph.D. in physics from the Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg in Germany.

Flora Sah is the Chief Risk Officer for Global Risk Management at Bank of America. She is the lead risk partner and central delivery conduit, responsible for driving ownership, execution, and oversight between the technology teams and the horizontal risk functions to provide a holistic view of all risks and create robust future state strategy and implementation roadmap.

Before joining Bank of America, Flora was the executive advisory council at Gerson Lehrman Group, responsible for business advisory and technology consulting. Prior to that, Flora held multiple leadership roles at State Street Corporation, including COO of Enterprise Risk Management, Head of Risk & Regulatory Technology, and CTO & Head of Vendor Risk Management. Before joining State Street Corporation, Flora spent several years at Cambridge Technology Partners where she led consulting practices in financial services, retail, and healthcare industry.

Flora holds a M.S. in Engineering Management from Northeastern University and a B.S. in Industrial Engineering and Information Systems from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

As Chief Risk Officer, Ms. Bontemps is responsible for maintaining a robust enterprise risk management program that supports the strategic goals of the Bank and builds upon its longstanding conservative risk culture and client service focused business model.  At First Republic, she previously served as an Executive Loan Committee Member and Director of Credit Administration.  

Prior to joining First Republic, Ms. Bontemps worked for Citibank in corporate and investment banking in New York and San Francisco where she held leadership positions in both relationship management and credit risk management.  

Ms. Bontemps graduated from the Anderson School at UCLA (MBA) and UCLA (BA, Economics).    

Kris Devasabai is the New York-based editor-in-chief of Risk.net. Previously, he was bureau chief and US editor of Risk magazine. He manages the editorial team. Prior to joining Risk, Kris covered hedge funds, asset management, cross-border investing and law for several publications.

Kris holds a bachelor’s degree in law and government from the University of Manchester, and he completed his legal training at the Inns of Court School of Law in London. He was called to the bar of England and Wales in 2003.

Duncan Wood is the London-based editor-in-chief of Risk.net. He was promoted to the role at the start of 2015, to lead the editorial reorganisation of the website and its print titles. Wood had been editor of Risk magazine since July 2011. He rejoined Risk as European editor in October 2009, having originally worked for Risk and Asia Risk in London and Hong Kong as a writer and researcher between 1998 and 2000.

In the intervening years, Wood was news editor for the Oliver Wyman-founded online start-up ERisk.com. He also worked freelance for six years while living in Germany, with his work featuring in Euromoney, Financial News, IFR, and The Wall Street Journal, as well as Risk magazine and its sister titles. Wood has written about derivatives and risk throughout his 17-year career in journalism. He is a Neal Awards finalist, and has won Incisive Media's journalist and editor of the year awards.