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Steve Novakovic, CAIA, CFA is the Managing Director, CAIA Curriculum for CAIA Association. In this role, he is responsible for managing the CAIA Charter curriculum, ensuring the content remains relevant and reflects current trends in the institutional asset allocator space. He joined CAIA Association in 2022 and has been a Charterholder since 2011. Prior to CAIA Association, Steve was a faculty member at Ithaca College in Ithaca, NY, where he taught a variety of finance courses including: Cryptocurrencies, Alternative Asset Management, and Wealth Management, among others. Before entering academia, he worked at his alma mater, Cornell University, (B.S. 2004, MPS 2006) in the Office of University Investments. In his time at Cornell University, Steve invested across a variety of asset classes for the $6 billion endowment. His twelve years at Cornell generated substantial insight into endowment management and fund investing across the alternatives and traditional landscape.

Brad Sturm has three decades of commercial real estate experience. He spent 28 years as a real estate institutional investor with the Ohio Public Employees Retirement System (“OPERS”) and retired from OPERS in 2021. Post retirement activities include forming Edwin Realty Advisors, LLC, updating the 2024 CAIA Level 1 real estate curriculum, and researching workforce housing development opportunities. As the lead real estate portfolio manager at OPERS, Brad headed a team of three real estate investment professionals who were responsible for a private market real estate portfolio with a $9 billion NAV. This team ran a staff-directed investment program without a consultant gatekeeper. The portfolio was invested through thirteen non-discretionary separately managed accounts, five open-end funds, 23 closed-end funds managed by eleven firms, and six non-discretionary co-investment vehicles. Brad incorporated what he learned at OPERS into the CAIA curriculum. The OPERS real estate team achieved success by being sound investment tacticians: looking for voids in the real estate capital markets, assessing the expected risks and returns, then building investment positions ahead of other institutional investors. The team invested throughout the capital stack and life cycle of assets for traditional and specialty property types. The investment strategy was to build a diversified portfolio that would perform well in both up and down markets, which was accomplished in 11 of the past 13 calendar years, for the period ending December 31, 2021.