2021 Advisory Board

Andrew Auslander has over 20 years of experience in the global financial markets. He has spent half his career as an enterprise risk manager experienced in developing risk frameworks to support overall business strategy for asset management, private banking, and investment banking. During this time, he managed market, traded credit, counterparty credit, liquidity, operational, vendor, and model risks. He has taught the benefits of risk culture in various countries. He is effective at communicating risks and mitigators to senior management, internal audit, and regulators.  Previously, Andrew was the Head of Risk Governance and Disclosure at AIG and led the risk management and trading teams at international banks and asset managers.

Andrew earned a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Merchant Marine Academy. He holds a Master of Science degree in Computer Science and Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and studied Finance at New York University's Stern School of Business. Andrew is a CFA Charterholder and a Financial Risk Manager (FRM) certified by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. Mr. Auslander holds FINRA Series 7, 24, and 63 licenses.

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.

Chris Callies has partnered with senior officers of major financial institutions to address growing complexity in the nature of financial risk and its propagation across geographic, asset class, market structure, and operational boundaries. After initially working with institutional asset managers, commercial and investment banks, and multi-family offices through the financial crisis that began in 2007–08, her professional domain later expanded to alternatives managers, insurance firms, non-bank lenders and regulators. Callies has advanced through a series of senior roles at Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch and Bessemer Trust, including chief investment strategist, chief strategist, head of market risk strategy, and acting chief investment officer, with oversight of more than $40 billion in traditional and alternative assets. She is a dedicated advocate for fully integrated, flexible, proactive risk analytics as a vital tool for effective capital planning, product development and sustainable returns. Callies holds a bachelors degree from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, with a sub-specialty in advanced applied mathematics.

David Schwed is an accomplished and results-driven cybersecurity and information technology executive and entrepreneur with broad based expertise leading organizational IT strategy, high-visibility projects and programs, and skilled technical teams, with experience gained supporting and growing business in a Fortune 200 environment. David is currently the Head of Digital Assets Technology for BNY Mellon.  He was the founding director and professor of the Cybersecurity Master’s program for the Katz School of Science and Health at Yeshiva University.  He also served as the chief architect of a full service digital assets merchant bank’s information security program, defining and revising all policies, procedures, and best practices. He’s been the primary researcher at a global fortune 200 financial services company for geopolitical threats, focusing on attacks originating from high risk regions; collected and compiled findings into reports providing insight and guidance to stakeholders on threats impacting the financial services industry. He also launched and managed a telecommunications network management company to reach $27MM in annual revenue, leading to an acquisition by Windstream Holdings in 2018. Relevant work experience includes tenures at Citigroup, Merrill Lynch, BNY Mellon, Marsh, MASS Communications, Galaxy Digital, and RTI Cable.

David is a Certified Information Systems Auditor, Certified Information Systems Security Professional, Certified Data Privacy Solutions Engineer, Certified Bitcoin Professional, Certified Ethereum Professional, Certified DeFi Expert, and also the recipient of the SmartCEO Executive Management Award (General Counsel). David is a member of the New York Bar and graduated Magna Cum Laude from Hofstra University School of Law where he was an associate editor of the Hofstra Law Review.

Fabrice Fiol is a Managing Director and Deputy Head of the Enterprise Risk Management Americas division. In this capacity, he co-manages a team responsible for risk appetite statement and reporting, risk identification, enterprise wide stress testing and governance including regulatory oversight for the Americas.

He was previously in charge of the market risk cross-asset team overseeing regional limit framework, Market Risk Stress Testing and various regulatory market risk initiatives. His prior role was heading the Equity/Fixed Income/Commodity market risk teams for SG in the Americas, including NY, Canada and Brazil trading platforms.

Fabrice Fiol joined Societe Generale NY in 2009. Prior to SG, Mr. Fiol was a Senior Vice President at Natixis-NY in charge of Trading Risk Management on a U.S Agency MBS portfolio.  Prior to Natixis, Mr. Fiol was a Vice President at the reinsurance company SwissRe-NY where he was in charge of front-office quantitative pricing and subsequently joined the U.S Rates Derivative Desk trading.

He graduated from ENSAE (National School of Statistics and Economics) in 1998 and holds an Advanced Studies Degree (DEA) from Paris VII University. 

Fabrice Fiol has participated as a speaker and panelist at various risk conferences (Bloomberg, Risk.Net, Cefpro) . He has co-authored an article in the RMA Journal in 2017 “Risk Appetite: How Banks are responding to risk in a new regulatory environment”, and in 2019 published “Enterprise Risk Management: Towards a comprehensive yet practical enterprise risk function” in the Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions.

Marco Ossanna is Chief Risk Officer of HSBC Securities USA Inc. and Chief Risk Officer for the US Swap Dealer of HSBC USA N.A. In his role he leads the risk practice and liaise with multiple Government Agencies and Industry groups.

Marco has worked as subject matter expert of Central Clearing Counterparties (CCPs) at HSBC since June 2014 advising the firm on establishing risk appetite and managing exposure towards Clearing Houses, Clients and Products.

From 2011 to 2013, Marco was Executive Director at Chicago Mercantile Exchange, in charge of Clearing Membership, Risk Management and Default Management for Over-the-Counter Derivatives and Clearing Member Risk Assessments.

From 2000 to 2010, he was Executive Vice President and Global Risk Officer of Structured Equity Derivatives at Intesa Sanpaolo, supervising teams in New York and London. During his tenure he assembled a tech and quantitative team to tackle risk management of complex derivatives: such project culminated with the creation of a grid based application to price and compute risk metrics of multi-asset exotic derivatives.

In 1990's Marco worked in the Research Department of Banca Commerciale Italiana in Milan, Italy, publishing market wide bank sector analysis and bank's strategic papers.

Mr. Ossanna received a Laurea in Economics from the Universita' degli Studi di Pavia, Italy in 1991, he is a Certified European Financial Analyst and graduated as Chartered Financial Analyst at the Italian Association of Financial Analyst (AIAF).

Dr. Chen is the Head of Alternative Alpha Research at Robeco. In this role, he is responsible for leading the research and development of innovative alpha insights and solutions for use across Robeco. He started in this role in March 2022. Dr. Chen’s current research interests are in the areas of quant sustainability, machine learning/NLP, and alternative data, and has published a number of journal articles on these topics.

Previously, Dr. Chen was the Head of Sustainable Investments at PanAgora. In that role, he led the research and development of sustainable investment solutions across PanAgora, and the commercialization of PanAgora’s ESG offerings. In addition, he is responsible for model research and development in the Equity Division while participating in the daily management of the firm’s portfolios. While at PanAgora, Dr. Chen developed and applied for a patent for a framework to construct sustainable portfolios based on dual objectives of alpha and sustainability outperformance.

Prior to joining PanAgora, Dr. Chen was a Portfolio Manager at BlackRock’s Scientific Active Equity (SAE) team, where his responsibilities include portfolio management and research into alpha insights for use across the entire SAE platform. While at SAE, Dr. Chen won the “Signal of the Year” award for a signal he researched and developed.

Dr. Chen started his career at Morgan Stanley in New York where he traded and managed a portfolio of exotic US rates derivatives. While at Morgan Stanley, Dr. Chen researched, developed, and patented a framework that allowed for the pricing of derivatives based on two rate curves with dynamic multiplicative spread, one of the first such models on the street. 

Dr. Chen graduated from the University of Illinois in 2005 with a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering. During graduate school, he published in leading academic engineering and applied mathematics journals and had been invited to talk at numerous academic and industry conferences.

Nick Silitch was recently senior vice president, chief risk officer of Prudential Financial, Inc. In this role, Silitch oversaw Prudential’s risk management infrastructure and risk profile across all business lines and risk types. Under his direction, his team developed models, metrics, frameworks and governance to manage risk, and works with internal corporate partners and business groups to identify, assess and prioritize risk across the company. He was chairman of the organization’s Enterprise Risk Committee that evaluates current and emerging risks relevant to the company, and is a member of Prudential’s Senior Management Council.

Silitch also worked with external stakeholder groups to forward industry interests. He was head of the International Affairs Committee for the North American Chief Risk Officers’ Council, and a member of the Advisory Council for the International Association of Credit Portfolio Managers.

Silitch joined Prudential in 2010 as chief credit officer and head of investment risk management, overseeing Prudential’s general account and other proprietary investment risks globally, as well as maintaining and approving Delegations of Authority and Investment Policy Statements.

Prior to joining Prudential, Silitch held the position of chief risk officer of the Alternative Investment Services, Broker Dealer Services and Pershing businesses within Bank of New York Mellon. He also served on the Pershing Executive Committee.

Silitch joined Bank of New York Mellon in 1983 as a credit trainee. Throughout his career at the bank, he held senior positions in client management, investor relations, risk management, loan restructuring, credit portfolio management and Basel compliance.

He received a bachelor’s degree in economics from Colby College.

In June 2021, Pooja Rahman was named Chief Risk Officer at Protective Life Corporation. She is responsible for leading the Company’s Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program and overseeing implementation of the Company’s strategic risk appetite.

Prior to joining Protective, Ms. Rahman served as Head of Financial Risk at New York Life. Prior to New York Life, she worked in international policy and analysis at the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. Ms. Rahman’s previous experience also includes Director & Senior Corporate Counsel at Aviva, In-house Counsel at Iowa Insurance Division and Lead Technical Analyst at Principal Financial Group.

Ms. Rahman earned her JD from Drake University Law School, her MBA from the University of New Orleans, and her Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Mumbai.

Rama Chirayathumadom is Chief Model Risk Officer of GS Bank and global head of model validation for consumer, credit risk and compliance models at Goldman Sachs. Over the last five years as Chief Model Risk Officer of GS Bank, Rama has overseen the model risk management of the bank’s retail expansion through notable product launches including Marcus loans and Apple Card.

Over his 16-year career at the firm, Rama has held roles in model development and validation across Global Markets, Controllers and Risk divisions.

Rama holds an MS in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras.

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.

Dr. Eugene Shuster, Managing Director, and Head of Risk Management, joined Nomura Asset Management U.S.A. Inc. in December 2012.  Previously, he was Head of Quantitative Analytics within the Market Risk Management Group at PNC, where his team was responsible for providing a centralized solution center for all quantitative modeling efforts, research, development, documentation, and implementation across all the asset classes, products, and books that Market Risk Management oversees.  Prior to PNC, Eugene spent 5 years with Deutsche Bank as a Fixed Income Portfolio Manager leading a small team which invested in a large spectrum of fixed income assets using both quantitative and non-systematic strategies (i.e., black box semi-automated Treasury bonds book, new issue Agency and Corporate bonds book, bullet and callable relative value strategy, etc.). Prior to Deutsche Bank, he spent 3 years as a Fixed Income Quantitative Analyst at Putnam Investments creating predictive, pricing and risk, term structure and default, and portfolio construction models for asset classes ranging from Treasury and Agency bonds, to IG and HY bonds, to structured securities such as MBS, ABS, and CMBS.  Dr. Shuster earned his Bachelor of Science degrees in Physics and Theoretical Mathematics and his Ph.D. degree in Theoretical Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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.