Dr. Ron D’Vari  is the CEO of NewOak Capital. He has over 30 years of experience in finance, academics, and engineering. He is an expert in portfolio and risk management, fundamental and quantitative credit, structured finance, portfolio alpha strategies and innovative structured solutions using a Quandamental™ approach. He is responsible for advising NewOak clients in matters throughout the structured products and fixed-income asset lifecycle. Prior to forming NewOak, D’Vari was an executive at BlackRock in charge of Structured Finance business.  Prior to acquisition by BlackRock, Dr. D’Vari worked at State Street Research (SSRM) for 12 years and he was part of the Fixed Income executive team. D’Vari is advisor to Chair of PRMIA Education Committee and was previously the chairman. D’Vari serves on the Editorial Board of Journal of Structured Finance. Ron D’Vari has previously been on the Board of Boston Security Analyst Society and Advisory Board of American Securitization Forum. D’Vari has taught at UCLA, Brandeis University, and Boston University and has published in numerous publications. D’Vari holds B.S., M.S., Ph.D., and MBA from UCLA and is a CFA charter holder and has FINRA Series 24, 53, 7, and 63 licenses.

Kristen Dardia is Director of Insurance Analytics at Verisk. She started her career at ISO in 2005, where she focused on actuarial pricing and customer relationship management before joining the commercial lines team. She graduated from James Madison University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics and went on to earn a Masters degree in Statistics at Columbia University. She is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society (FCAS), a Member of the American academy of actuaries (MAAA), and a Chartered Property Casualty Underwriter (CPCU) and holds the following institutional designations: AU, ARM, APA, AIAF, ARe, IR, ARC, AIS, ANFL, API, RMPE, ARM-P&E and ERM. She has published statistical research in the Journal of Modern and Applied Statistics.

Kevin Kwok is Vice President of ESG Fixed Income at MSCI, where he drives the development of ESG Fixed Income Research at MSCI. He is responsible for producing fixed income research, enhancing methodologies, and developing new products to support client efforts in integrating ESG factors into fixed income investments. MSCI ESG Research is the largest provider of ESG Ratings and analytics to global institutional investors. Prior to joining MSCI, Kevin was most recently an Associate Director in S&P Global Ratings’ Energy, Materials, and Commodities practice and a member of its ESG initiative. Kevin is currently an Earth Institute Sustainability Management Fellow at Columbia University. He received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) in Energy Finance, Business Modeling, Entrepreneurship from The University of Houston, C.T. Bauer College of Business and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from The University of Texas at Austin. Kevin was also a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer from Mali, West Africa.

Moderator:

Ronnee Ades is a Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers Business School in the Department of Finance and Economics. She is best known for teaching a popular, proprietary graduate course titled, Indexing & ETFs; a modern finance course focused on the study of indices and Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) and their application in investment management. For the previous five years she has also been the Director of Career Management for the Master of Quantitative Finance Program guiding students on strategies and tactics for advancing their careers in the finance industry. Ronnee is the founder of RAA Consulting Services, an independent consulting firm focused on providing intelligence and direction on commercialization strategies involving Index-based portfolios and ETFs . Prior to joining academia, she served as Head of U.S. Index Business Development at Markit, where she managed Fixed Income Index and ETF business development and the commercialization of indexes and related data products working with clients including asset managers, banks, ETF Sponsors, Hedge Funds, Liquidity Providers, Market Data Vendors and Exchanges. In 2009 she led a strategic new business development initiative at Bloomberg in the Data Solutions Group. Ronnee was previously Global Head of the Alternatives Business Unit at Index Provider FTSE Russell and a Senior Director at Dow Jones Indexes, where she led the Equity Institutional Business Development team targeting pension funds, foundations and endowments, and Taft Hartley Funds, and the consultants serving them. Throughout her career she has participated on industry panels focused on passive investment strategies and has moderated a variety of panels on trending topics including Machine Learning Applications in Finance, The Developing Role of the "Quantatmental" and Cryptocurrency as an Asset Class.  

Ronnee received a bachelor’s degree (with high honors) in economics from SUNY Stony Brook and an MBA in finance from the Fox School of Business at Temple University.