David A. Shore
David A. Shore, PhD is a former Associate Dean at Harvard University where he continues to teach and lead executive education seminars. He is on the External Advisory Board of McKinsey & Company focused on the implementation of innovations. Shore is Adjunct Professor of Organizational Development and Change, School of Business, University of Monterrey (Mexico) and the former Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Change, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (China).
Marcus A. Burnett
Marcus is a former interest rate derivatives trader and recognized LIBOR Transition industry leader in the United States and United Kingdom assisting industry working groups, trade associations and financial market participants in planning and execution of LIBOR transition programs. Marcus holds degrees in Philosophy and Finance as well as executive leadership certifications from Harvard and Columbia Universities respectively. Marcus founded SOFR Academy to help build leaders in a SOFR-based financial ecosystem for clients, businesses and communities.
Chris Babu
Chris brings 19 years of experience in financial services, most recently as Managing Director and Head of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities trading at Deutsche Bank. Previously a derivatives trader at Bank of America, with experience in whole loans, ABS, and nonagency mortgages. Chris is a speaker and published author through Permuted Press/Simon & Schuster. Chris earned a BS in Mathematics from MIT.
James Sanford
James is 30-year veteran of financial services having held Managing Director positions at both JP Morgan and Credit Suisse USA. James possesses deep knowledge of global debt and credit products as well as the Commercial Real Estate finance market. James is a contributing columnist to TheStreet and has appeared on CNBC.
Jorge A. Cosano-Martinez
Jorge is a former technology and consumer goods executive and McKinsey & Company consultant turned venture capitalist who specializes in identifying new business opportunities and models that disrupt traditional industries. Jorge previously held leadership positions at L’Oreal, LVMH and IBM. Jorge earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Timothy G. Massad
Timothy Massad is a Senior Advisor at SOFR Academy and a Research Fellow at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, as well as the Director of the Center’s Digital Assets Policy Project. He is also a consultant on financial regulatory and fintech issues.
Mr. Massad served as Chairman of the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission from 2014-2017. Under his leadership, the agency implemented the Dodd Frank reforms of the over-the-counter swaps market and harmonized many aspects of cross-border regulation, including reaching a landmark agreement with the European Union on clearinghouse oversight. The agency also declared virtual currencies to be commodities, introduced reforms to address automated trading and strengthened cybersecurity protections.
Previously, Mr. Massad served as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Stability of the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In that capacity, he oversaw the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), the principal U.S. governmental response to the 2008 financial crisis. During his tenure, Treasury recovered more on all the crisis investments than was disbursed. Mr. Massad was with the Treasury from 2009 to 2014 and also served as a counselor to the Treasury Secretary.
Prior to his government service, Mr. Massad was a partner in the law firm Cravath, Swaine & Moore, LLP. His practice included corporate finance, derivatives and advising boards of directors. He managed the firm’s Hong Kong office from 1998 to 2002 and represented governments and corporations on transactions throughout Asia. Mr. Massad was also one of a small group of lawyers who drafted the original ISDA standard agreements for swaps.
Robert B. Litterman
Robert Litterman is the Chairman of the Risk Committee, Chairman of Climate Policy, and a founding partner of Kepos Capital LP. Prior to joining Kepos Capital in 2010, Litterman enjoyed a 23-year career at Goldman, Sachs & Co., where he served in research, risk management, investments, and thought leadership roles. He oversaw the Quantitative Investment Strategies Group in the Asset Management division. While at Goldman, Litterman also spent six years as one of three external advisors to Singapore’s Government Investment Corporation (GIC).
Litterman was named a partner of Goldman Sachs in 1994 and became head of the firm-wide risk function; prior to that role, he was co-head of the Fixed Income Research and Model Development Group with Fischer Black. During his tenure at Goldman, Litterman researched and published a number of groundbreaking papers in asset allocation and risk management. He is the co-developer of the Black-Litterman Global Asset Allocation Model, a key tool in investment management, and has co-authored books including The Practice of Risk Management and Modern Investment Management: An Equilibrium Approach (Wiley & Co.).
Litterman earned a Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Minnesota and a B.S. in Human Biology from Stanford University. He was inducted into Risk magazine’s Risk Management Hall of Fame and named the 2013 Risk Manager of the Year by the Global Association of Risk Professionals. In 2012, he was the inaugural recipient of the S. Donald Sussman Fellowship at MIT's Sloan School of Management. In 2008, Litterman received the Nicholas Molodovsky Award from the CFA Institute Board as well as the International Association of Financial Engineers/SunGard Financial Engineer of the Year Award. Litterman has served on a number of boards, including Commonfund, where he was elected Chair in 2014, Options Clearing Corporation (OCC), Resources for the Future (RFF) and the Sloan Foundation. He also chaired the CFTC Climate-Related Market Risk Subcommittee, which published its report, “Managing Climate Risk in the U.S. Financial System,” in September 2020.
Litterman is currently on the boards of the Niskanen Center; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; Ceres; World Wildlife Fund; Woodwell Climate Research Center; the Climate Leadership Council (CLC), where he serves as co-chair of the Board; UCAR (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research).
R. Martin Chávez
R. Martin Chávez is a Senior Advisor at SOFR Academy, and a Partner and Vice Chairman at global investment firm Sixth Street, where he serves on the firm’s Executive Committee and leads research and development initiatives focused on advanced software, artificial intelligence, and healthcare technology partnerships. Mr. Chávez also serves on the Board of Directors of Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL). He currently serves as a member of the board of directors of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, the Stanford Medicine Board of Fellows, and the Los Angeles Philharmonic. He previously served as President of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University.
Prior to joining Sixth Street, Mr. Chávez served in a variety of senior roles at Goldman Sachs, including Chief Information Officer, where he oversaw the firm's 9,000 engineers; Chief Financial Officer, and global co-head of the firm’s Securities (now Global Markets) Division. Mr. Chávez was also a partner and member of the Goldman Sachs Management Committee. Mr. Chávez was one of the first developers of SecDB, an early platform that transformed the trading business into a software business. He retired from the firm in 2019.
Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Chávez was the CEO and co-founder of Kiodex, and Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Quorum Software Systems.
He holds an A.B. magna cum laude in Biochemical Sciences and an S.M. in Computer Science from Harvard, and a Ph.D. in Medical Information Sciences from Stanford.
Thomas Pluta
Mr Pluta spent the majority of his career at JP Morgan, trading and managing global trading teams across the Rates, Foreign Exchange and Emerging Markets businesses. Leadership roles included Co-Head of Global Rates Trading, Global Head of Linear Rates Trading, Global Head of Short-Term Rates Trading, and Co-Head of Latin America Rates and FX Trading. He also was the Corporate and Investment Bank lead for JP Morgan’s firm-wide LIBOR transition program. In 2022, Tom joined Tradeweb Markets, where he served as President and a member of the Executive Committee for two years. He also served on Tradeweb’s Board of Directors for seven years. His areas of expertise include fixed income markets and technology, electronic trading, strategic investments, market structure and regulation.
An active voice in global markets and market structure, Pluta has served on the CFTC’s Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC), the Federal Reserve Bank of New York’s Treasury Markets Practices Group (TMPG), and SIFMA’s Board of Directors and Executive Committee, including a year as Board Chair. He currently serves on SIFMA’s Advisory Council.
Pluta received a bachelor of arts in Economics from Yale University and an M.B.A. in General Management from the Harvard Business School.
Alex Roever
Alex Roever is a Senior Advisor to SOFR Academy. Alex previously worked at J.P. Morgan Securities for over 25 years. For nearly a decade, he was Managing Director and Head of US Interest Rate Strategy. Alex was selected multiple times to top positions on Institutional Investor Magazine’s All-America Fixed Income Research Team for his work in the US Rates Strategy, US Fixed Income Strategy, and Short Duration Strategy. While at J.P. Morgan, Alex was active in USD benchmark reform efforts.
Separate from his advisory work for SOFR Academy, Alex is a Senior Director with the CFA Institute, helping to develop learning content for the CFA exam and related professional education programs. Alex is a CFA Charterholder, and earned an MBA from Emory University, an MA from Georgia State University, and a BA from Vanderbilt University.
Alexander J. Matturri
Alexander J. Matturri, Jr. is the retired CEO of S&P Dow Jones Indices. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of CBOE Global Markets, the Advisory Board of The Index Standard along with being an advisor to several data and analytics firms. He has extensive experience in index and data intellectual property and regulatory issues, ETFs, index/quant investment management and global capital markets. Alex previously served as Senior Vice President and head of index portfolio management at Northern Trust Global Investments, Director and Index Strategist at Deutsche Asset Management and Vice President and head of the Special Investment Products Group at The Bank of New York. Alex graduated with a BS in Finance with Honors from Lehigh University in 1980 and a JD from Syracuse University College of Law in 1983. He is admitted as an attorney in New York and New Jersey along with having earned his CFA.
Xiaoyan Zhang
Xiaoyan Zhang is the Chair Professor of Finance and Associate Dean of the People’s Bank of China School of Finance, Tsinghua University. Her research focuses on international finance, empirical asset pricing and applied econometrics. Her work has appeared in many leading finance journals. She is also the Deputy Dean of Tsinghua University National Institute of Financial Research and Tsinghua Fintech Research Institute and a member of the World Economic Forum’s network of Global Future Councils. Professor Zhang holds a B.A. in Economics from Peking University and Ph.D. in Finance (with honor) from Columbia Business School.
Alex Edmans
Alex Edmans is Professor of Finance at London Business School where he has taught since 2013. He holds a PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Fulbright Scholar, a BA from the University of Oxford, and was previously a tenured professor at The Wharton School and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley. Professor Edmans has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos, testified in the UK Parliament, and given the TED talk ‘What to Trust in a Post-Truth World’ and the TEDx talk ‘The Social Responsibility of Business’ with a combined 2.4 million views. He is a member of Royal London Asset Management’s Responsible Investment Advisory Committee and was named Professor of the Year by Poets & Quants in 2021.
Joel Shapiro
Joel Shapiro is a Professor of Financial Economics at the Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. He is an expert in the regulation and governance of financial institutions. Joel has published in leading international journals on reforming LIBOR, credit ratings, corporate governance and financial regulation. His work has been cited by regulators such as the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, and the European Commission. He has also worked extensively with financial organisations including the Bank of England and European Security Markets Authority (ESMA), sharing his expertise and advising on policy matters. He has a PhD in Economics from Princeton University.
David A. Shore
David A. Shore, PhD is a former Associate Dean at Harvard University where he continues to teach and lead executive education seminars. He is on the External Advisory Board of McKinsey & Company focused on the implementation of innovations. Shore is Adjunct Professor of Organizational Development and Change, School of Business, University of Monterrey (Mexico) and the former Distinguished Professor of Innovation and Change, Tianjin University of Finance and Economics (China).
Chris Babu
Chris brings more than 20 years of experience in financial services, most recently as Managing Director and Head of Residential Mortgage-Backed Securities trading at Deutsche Bank. Previously a derivatives trader at Bank of America, with experience in whole loans, ABS, and nonagency mortgages. Chris is a speaker and published author through Permuted Press/Simon & Schuster. Chris earned a BS in Mathematics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Marcus A. Burnett
Marcus Burnett is Founder and Chief Executive Officer of SOFR Academy. The firm's mission is to enhance the efficiency, transparency, and stability of financial markets. Before founding SOFR Academy, Mr. Burnett consulted for Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank and Bridgewater Associates. Prior to this, he was an interest rates derivatives trader at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. He is a member of the American Australian Association established by Sir Keith Murdoch in New York City in 1948, and the United States Studies Centre. Mr. Burnett who was born in Australia, earned a B.A. with a concentration in Philosophy from the University of Sydney, and a Bachelor of Business from the University of Technology, Sydney. Mr. Burnett resides in New York City.
Jorge A. Cosano-Martinez
Jorge is a former technology and consumer goods executive and McKinsey & Company consultant turned venture capitalist who specializes in identifying new business opportunities and models that disrupt traditional industries. Jorge previously held leadership positions at L’Oreal, LVMH and IBM. Jorge earned his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.