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Sebastien Betermier is an Associate Professor of Finance at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University and the Executive Director of the International Centre for Pension Management (ICPM). He is also a member of the Research Policy Network on Household Finance at the Center for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) and a member of the Pension Administration Committee of McGill University Pension Plan. His research focuses on the relationship between risk and return, asset allocation, sustainable finance, and the design of sustainable pension systems. He teaches courses on applied investments and pension funds and retirement systems at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Betermier founded and currently directs the McGill International Portfolio Challenge, the world’s largest buy-side competition focused on sustainability challenges for pension funds and other institutional investors. He also founded and serves as Advisory Board member of the Sustainable Growth Initiative at McGill. Professor Betermier holds a PhD in Finance from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. He was Head of the Finance Area at the Desautels Faculty of Management from 2020-2022 and an Academic Advisor at the Bank of Canada from 2018-2022. Betermier’s work appears in top finance journals, and it has featured in the Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Bloomberg, among others. In 2017, he was named one of the World’s Best 40 under 40 Business School Professors by Poets and Quants.

Nicholas Clark, CAIA is a Senior Analyst, Absolute Return Strategies, in the Public Markets division at University Pension Plan Ontario (UPP) in Toronto. where he has a key role in implementing and monitoring UPP’s absolute return investment strategies, with a focus on fixed income, credit and discretionary global macro strategies and provides high-level analytical support to UPP’s Investments team. Nicholas brings experience across leading Canadian pension plans, including analyst roles in external portfolio management at CPP Investments and Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Guelph and a Master of Financial Economics from the University of Toronto’s Department of Economics and Rotman School of Management. With a passion for capital markets, data analysis, and portfolio management, he is committed to leveraging his skills to drive success and growth in the investment industry.

Claire Van Wyk-Allan, CAIA is Managing Director, Head of Canada & Investor Engagement, Americas for AIMA, acting as staff lead for the AIMA Global Investor Board and allocator-only Investment Peer Group. She has over 16 years of professional experience in alternative investments across strategy, leadership and business development roles, having joined AIMA as Director, Head of Canada in 2018. Prior to joining AIMA as staff, Claire was the first female to serve on the AIMA Canada Executive Committee, a post held for almost four years while at RBC Global Asset Management (RBC GAM), where she was Business Development Manager, Advisor Channel Sales covering advisors in the Greater Toronto Area. Previously, she was the Manager, Sales Support at RBC GAM, where she built and led a junior sales team across Canada. Claire began her career at Arrow Capital Management, a boutique hedge fund firm where she spent almost four years as Regional Manager, covering wealth advisors across Ontario. Claire has been a two-time Co-Chair for the Hedge Funds Care (Help for Children) Charity Canada Gala. She graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Management and Organizational Studies, specialising in Finance, is a CAIA Charterholder and proud mom of two young boys.

Derek leads the Portfolio Design & Construction group within the Total Fund Management (TFM) department at CPP Investments. Derek and his team are responsible for the design the Fund’s strategic and tactical allocations, for the establishment of currency, leverage & liquidity targets, and for the incorporation of emerging factors such as climate change into TFM’s approach to portfolio construction. Prior to his current role, he held several other roles at CPP Investments including Head of Active Investment Management and Head of Portfolio Engineering. Before joining CPP Investments, Derek held a variety of positions related to quantitative investing and indexing at Barclays Global Investors and Morgan Stanley Capital International SA.