Vinay Shandal leads Boston Consulting Group’s principal investors and private equity practice in Canada, and is the global leader of the firm’s sustainable finance and investing business.
Shandal has helped leading pools of capital (pension, sovereign wealth, private equity, infrastructure, and real estate funds) across the globe on strategy, transaction support, and portfolio value creation. Most recently, he has helped a leading investor launch a first-of-its-kind digital Shandal is also a core member of BCG’s Centre for Canada’s Future. In that role, he helps move Canada forward by providing insight and expertise on the country’s most important issues. The centre also aims to convene leaders from the business, government, and nonprofit sectors to work together to achieve impact.
Before he joined the firm, Shandal practiced law for several years in the New York offices of Cravath, Swaine & Moore and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. His legal experience includes both private and public company mergers, acquisitions, strategic alliances, and investments in a range of industries.
Sahandal is a board member of Capitalize 4 Kids, a nonprofit that aims to solve the toughest challenges in children’s brain and mental health.

Thomas Baker joined Boston Consulting Group’s San Francisco office as a consultant in 2011. A core member of the firm’s Energy practice, he has worked for clients in the utility and renewables industries. He is the global topic leader for distributed energy resources at BCG and is a leader of the firm’s green energy and environment sector in North America.

Tom has worked on clean-tech and other power topics with a variety of clients, including utilities, technology, industrial goods, and public sector companies, as well as clean-tech pure-players. He has rich experience across the US and globally, including project work in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

Tom is a scientist with experience and expertise in energy and clean technology—specifically solar photovoltaics (PVs) and other renewables, as well as energy efficiency. He has been a featured speaker and panelist at many industry conferences.

Among Tom’s projects are a rooftop-solar investment strategy he developed for a US utility—and a strategy he devised for a PV manufacturer to enter the distributed energy space (energy efficiency, energy storage, demand response). He also helped a US utility transform its business to integrate more renewables and offer new customer solutions.

Before joining BCG, Tom worked in strategic marketing at First Solar and also as a researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with renewable technologies, such as lithium-ion batteries and hydrogen fuel cells. Tom has contributed to several BCG publications on the energy sector.

In his graduate work at Harvard University, Tom focused on computational solid-state physics applied to heterogeneous catalysis and PV.

White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

Michael Waldron is an energy investment analyst in the economics and investment office of the International Energy Agency. He was previously the project leader and lead author of the IEA’s Medium-Term Renewable Energy Market Report, which assesses market trends of renewables in the electricity, transport and heat sectors. At the IEA he has also worked as an oil demand and biofuels analyst. Prior to joining the IEA, Waldron worked as a senior energy markets analyst at Lehman Brothers in New York and London. Waldron obtained his Masters in International Energy Policy & International Economics at Johns Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) and his Bachelors degree in Economics & Government at Cornell University.

Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

Sven Gentner is Head of Unit for asset management in the European Commission’s Directorate-General for financial stability, financial services, and capital markets union.

He started his professional career in the private sector before joining the European Commission in 2004 where he has served in various positions at its Brussels headquarters and abroad. From 2004 to 2006, he was responsible for the coordination of the EU-US Financial Markets Regulatory Dialogue and in the latter period, he served as a member of the private office of Commissioner Charlie McCreevy. From 2007 to 2011, he was Executive Assistant to the Director General of Directorate-General Internal Market and Services with a particular responsibility toward financial services. From there he was seconded to the African Union Commission in Addis Ababa to advise the AUC on building an African internal market, before spending the next year as head of unit for human resources and planning in DG Internal Market and Services. From 2013 to 2015, Sven was a counsellor in the Economic and Financial Affairs Section of the Delegation of the European Union to the United States. He dealt with EU-US regulatory issues and TTIP negotiations in financial services.

Sven holds Master’s degrees in economics from Johann Wolfgang Goethe University, Frankfurt, and the University of York, UK.

Janine Guillot is chief executive of the Value Reporting Foundation. As CEO, her priorities are to increase use of Integrated Thinking Principles, the Integrated Reporting Framework and the SASB Standards by companies and investors around the world and to advance progress towards a globally accepted comprehensive corporate reporting system. Guillot was CEO of SASB before becoming CEO of the Value Reporting Foundation.
Prior to joining SASB, she served as chief operating investment officer for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS). She has held senior leadership positions at Barclays Global Investors and Bank of America. At Barclays Global Investors, she served as chief operating officer for BGI’s European and global fixed income businesses. At Bank of America, she served in chief financial officer and chief administrative officer roles for retail and commercial business units. A graduate of Southern Methodist University (SMU), she began her career as a technical accountant and auditor with Ernst & Young.
In recognition for her leadership at the intersection of sustainability, accounting and finance, Guillot was selected as a 2020 NACD Directorship 100 Honoree and named to the 2020 Business Insider’s 100 People Transforming Business list.

Carine Smith Ihenacho is responsible for the governance and compliance area, which includes ownership and responsible investment activities, control and operational risk, compliance and legal services.
Ihenacho was appointed chief governance and compliance officer in October 2020. She joined Norges Bank Investment Management in August 2017 as global head of ownership strategies and was promoted to chief corporate governance officer in January 2018.
Prior to joining Norges Bank Investment Management, Ihenacho was vice president legal and chief compliance officer in Statoil ASA. She has more than 20 years’ experience as a lawyer, working in both financials and the oil and gas industry, as well as in law firms. She also has extensive board experience.
Ihenacho holds a law degree from the University of Oslo, a Master of Law from Harvard Law School and a Master of Economics from the Norwegian School of Economics (NHH).cal engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

White is responsible for the content across all Conexus Financial’s institutional media and events. She is responsible for directing the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium which challenges global investors on investment best practice and aims to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal, and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes. She is the editor of conexust1f.flywheelstaging.com, the online news and analysis site for the world’s largest institutional investors. White has been an investment journalist for more than 20 years and has edited industry journals including Investment & Technology, Investor Weekly and MasterFunds Quarterly. She was previously editorial director of InvestorInfo and has worked as a freelance journalist for the Australian Financial Review, CFO, Asset and Asia Asset Management. She has a Bachelor of Economics from Sydney University and a Master of Arts in Journalism from the University of Technology, Sydney. She was previously a columnist for the Canadian publication, Corporate Knights, which is distributed by the Globe and Mail and The Washington Post. White is currently a fellow in the Finance Leaders Fellowship at the Aspen Institute. The two-year program consists of 22 fellows and seeks to develop the next generation of responsible, community-spirited leaders in the global finance industry.

William (Bill) Lee is senior vice president and chief investment officer for NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital (NYP), overseeing its $9.5 billion investment program including endowment, retirement and current assets, and managing the office of investments team responsible for all of NYP’s investment assets. Previously, Lee was chief investment officer and vice president of foundation and pensions investments at Kaiser Permanente. Beginning in 2005, he served as chair of Kaiser Permanente Retirement Plans’ investment committee and the Kaiser Foundation investment committee. He oversaw approximately $78 billion in defined contribution, pension and foundation assets. He managed interest rate and foreign exchange risk for Bank of America’s global proprietary desks in the 1980s, then left for eight years to work as a police detective. In 1994 he returned to Bank of America, where he helped develop equity and fixed income risk models before becoming senior vice president and chief investment officer for Bank of America’s retirement plan investments. Lee served as chief investment officer for the Levi Strauss Foundation and Red Tab Foundation assets as well as the Levi Strauss global pension plans. He is a chartered financial analyst (CFA) and a 2010 graduate of Harvard Business School’s Executive Leadership Program.

Michael G. Trotsky, CFA, is the executive director and chief investment officer of the Massachusetts Pension Reserves Investment Management (“PRIM”) board, the entity responsible for investing the $79 billion Massachusetts pension fund, which contains the assets of the Massachusetts Teachers’ and State Employees’ Retirement Systems as well as the assets of approximately 100 participating municipal and county retirement systems. Trotsky’s work at PRIM was preceded by a 25-year career in the private sector, most recently as senior vice president and portfolio manager at PAR Capital Management, a Boston-based absolute return strategy fund. Previously, he was a senior analyst at Greenberg-Summit Partners in Boston and also served as a principal and senior vice president at Independence Investment Associates (a John Hancock subsidiary), also in Boston. Trotsky began his professional career in 1985 as an engineer at Intel Corporation in California. He serves as immediate past chair of the CFA Society Boston as well as previously served as a member of the CFA Institute board of directors and as chair of the CFA Institute’s Asset Manager Code of Professional Conduct Advisory Committee. He currently serves as a governing trustee on the board of trustees at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. He is also a member of the Boston Economics Club. Trotsky received a BS in electrical engineering from the University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Tate has been an investment industry media publisher and conference producer since 1996. In his media career, Tate has launched and overseen dozens of print and electronic publications. He is the chief executive and major shareholder of Conexus Financial, which was established in 2005, and is headquartered in Sydney, Australia.

The company hosts more than 20 conferences and events globally each year and publishes three digital publications, including the global website and strategy newsletter for global institutional investors Top1000Funds.com, Professional Planner for financial planners, accountants and private bankers in Australia and Investment Magazine for Australian superfunds and institutional investors. One of the company’s signature events is the bi-annual Fiduciary Investors Symposium attended by global asset owners and hosted in the Americas and Europe.

Conexus Financial’s events aim to place the responsibilities of investors in wider societal and political contexts, as well as promote the long-term stability of markets and sustainable retirement incomes.

Tate served for seven years on the board of Australia’s most high profile homeless charity, The Wayside Chapel; and he has underwritten the welfare of 60,000 people in 28 villages throughout Uganda via The Hunger Project. In 2021 was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia (General Division) for significant service to the community through charitable initiatives.

Diane Griffioen CFA (1971) is, since September 2018 head of investments of ABP, the largest pension fund in the Netherlands. She is responsible for the investment policy that is carried out by our pension provider APG Asset Management in close coordination/consultation with ABP.

In the past, Diane served as managing director at ASN investment fund, managing director at Triodos investment management and head of investments at ING private banking and is a member of the investment committee of the Dutch Central Bank.

Additionally, she fulfills supervisory positions at pension funds Huisartsen en Hivos Triodos Fund and is a member of the investment committee of the Dutch Central Bank.

Diane has a degree in international financial economics, Erasmus program for commissioners and supervisors and is CFA charterholder.

Tom is the Commissioners’ chief investment officer, responsible for oversight of the investment function and management of the multi-asset portfolio. He previously worked as chief investment officer of RMB Asset Management after a number of years at Schroder Investment Management. He started his career at Royal Sun Alliance Investment Management and is an associate member of the CFA Society of the UK.

Fiona Reynolds is the chief executive of the Principles for Responsible Investment (PRI), the UN supported organisation, with 4,000 signatories which collectively represent over $100 trillion in assets under management. She is responsible for the PRI’s global operations.
Appointed at the beginning of 2013, Reynolds has 25 years’ experience in the financial services and pension sector. She joined the PRI from the Australian Institute of Superannuation Trustees (AIST), where she spent seven years as the chief executive.
She serves on the board of the UN Global Compact, she chaired of the Financial Services Commission into Modern Slavery and Human Trafficking (The Liechtenstein initiative) and is now a member of the Finance Against Slavery and Trafficking (FAST) Global Steering Committee. Reynolds is also a member of the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC), the Global Advisory Council on Stranded Assets at Oxford University, the advisory board for the Green Investment Principles for the Belt and Road, the global steering committee for the Investor Agenda on Climate Action and the steering committee for Climate Action 100+. She is also on the investment committee for Laudes foundation and the advisory board for BASF and the advisory council of Bloomberg Green.
She was named by Barron’s magazine of one of the 20 most influential people in sustainability globally and has twice been named by the Australian Financial Review (AFR) as of one of Australia’s 100 women of influence for her work in financial services and responsible investment.

Jie Lu is Head of Investments China in the Asia Pacific team. Before joining Robeco in 2015, he worked at Norges Bank Investment Management as a Portfolio Manager in Shanghai from 2011 to 2015, and as an Analyst in Hong Kong from 2009 to 2011. Prior to that, he worked at the M&A department of Morgan Stanley Asia. Jie started his career at Motorola in 2000 and is a native Mandarin Chinese speaker. He holds an MBA with Distinction in Finance and Marketing from Northwestern University in the US. He also holds a Master’s in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Illinois and a Bachelor’s in Biochemistry from Fudan University in China.

Professor Kotkin received his PhD from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, and has been a professor at Princeton since 1989. He is also a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.
At Princeton Professor Kotkin teaches courses in geopolitics, modern authoritarianism, global history, and Soviet Eurasia, and has won all of the university’s teaching awards. He has served as the vice dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and chaired the editorial committee of Princeton University Press. Outside Princeton, he writes essays and reviews for Foreign Affairs, the Wall Street Journal, and the Times Literary Supplement, among other publications, and was the regular book reviewer for the New York Times Sunday Business section for many years. He serves as an invited consultant to defence ministries and intelligence agencies in multiple countries. His latest book is Stalin: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 (Penguin, 2017). His previous book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.