Event Speakers

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Thomas Brigandi, CFA, is a Lead Analyst in the Global Project and Infrastructure Finance Group at Moody’s Investors Service, where he is responsible for a portfolio of 34 power, toll-road, airport, port, water, wastewater, natural gas pipeline and project finance credits that collectively have over $15 billion of debt outstanding. Brigandi also serves on Moody’s public pension steering committee, ESG Americas working group and formerly served on the veteran recruiting sub-committee. Brigandi previously worked at the ~$200bn NYC Pension Fund, where he focused on energy and natural resources and reported directly to the chief investment officer. Brigandi is a Board Director of the roughly 12,000 investment professional member CFA Society New York (CFANY), the largest CFA Institute Society globally. Brigandi, the CFA Institute Inaugural Global Outstanding Young Leader and CFANY’s 2016 Benjamin Graham Distinguished Service Award recipient, has organized 89 CFA Society conferences globally that were attended in-person by over 16,000 investment professionals. These events featured over 400 senior asset owner and investment consultant speakers who represent organizations that collectively oversee or advise on more than $72 trillion in fiduciary assets, in addition to over 200 senior asset manager speakers who represent firms that collectively manage in excess of $30 trillion in assets. Brigandi, the founder of CFANY’s Asset Owner Series, Emerging and Frontier Market Series, Investment Employment Outlook and Professional Development Series, Putting Beneficiaries First Series and Global Infrastructure Conference Series, leads a team of over 500 investment professional CFA Society volunteers globally. While serving as the Director of Global Volunteers of the American Foundation for African Children’s Education, Brigandi organized the NASDAQ Closing Bell Ceremony on September 23, 2011, hosted for the President of Sierra Leone. Brigandi maintains over 13,000 connections ‎on Li

M. Nicolas J. Firzli is the Director-General of the World Pensions Council (WPC), the international association of Chairmen and CIOs of public and private retirement schemes, social security funds and pension trustees organisations. He is a graduate of Canada’s McGill University (Statistics & Financial Economics), an alumnus of the HEC School of Management (MBA) and the University of Paris Law School (LL.M. Civil & Corporate Law, summa cum laude) and conducted research at the University of Louvain (UCL) Doctoral School of Economics and Management. Mr. Firzli is Co-Chair of the World Pensions & Investments Forum (WPI), General Coordinator of the Asset Owners Summit (AOS) organized in collaboration with the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (SAR) of China and regional and national pension associations from Australia, the UK and the Americas, and Co-Chair of the Central & Eastern European Pension Forum (CEE+ Summit) organized jointly with the Bucharest Stock Exchange (BSE) and the National Association of Romanian Pension Institutions. He is also a member of the Board of Advisors for the World Bank Global Infrastructure Facility (GIF), a collaborative supranational initiative led by the World Bank Group, seeking to encourage long-term private capital allocation and multilateral co-investment into modern infrastructure assets in developing economies and frontier jurisdictions – in Asia, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa. He has advised and worked with public and private pension funds, insurers, social security institutions, government agencies (at both federal and state/municipal levels), central banks, reserve funds, supranational and labor organizations in more than 30 different jurisdictions in the past 18 years, and served as judge & reviewer for various national and international rankings/awards including the South African Pension Officers Association “Imbasa Yegolide” (Golden Trophy) awards. Mr. Firzli is a regular contributor to differe

Jeff has over 35 years’ experience in public sector pensions starting his career in Liverpool before moving to London where he held a variety of posts within the Local Government Pension Scheme. In 2011 Jeff took on the role of Head of Pensions at the Local Government Association where he is responsible for the development of national and European policy for public service pensions in particular the funded Local Government and the unfunded Teachers, Firefighters and Police schemes. He is Secretary to the Local Government Pension Scheme Advisory Board and a member of the CEEP European Social Protection Taskforce. Jeff sits on several national bodies including the Pension Regulator’s Public Service Pensions Forum, CIPFA’s Pensions Panel and the board of the Cost Transparency Initiative (CTI). He is a regular conference speaker and chair and a member of the Institute of Directors.

Sammy Suzuki, CFA, is Portfolio Manager of Strategic Core Equities at AllianceBernstein (AB). He has been managing the Emerging Markets Strategic Core portfolio since its inception in July 2012 and the Global, International and US portfolios since 2015. The Strategic Core platform that he co-founded has grown to over $5B in assets. Sammy has managed portfolios for over 13 years and emerging-markets portfolios for a decade. From 2010 to 2012 he also held the role of director of Fundamental Value Research at AB, where he managed 50 fundamental analysts globally. Prior to managing portfolios, Sammy spent a decade as a research analyst. He joined AB in 1994 as a research associate covering the capital equipment industry, and then became an analyst covering the technology industry. From 1998 to 2004 Sammy served as senior research analyst for the global automotive industry. Before joining AB, he was a consultant at Bain & Company. Sammy holds a BS in materials science and engineering and a BS in finance from the University of Pennsylvania. He is a CFA charterholder.