Our People

At SOFR Academy, our people are our greatest asset. Our team is a combination of academics from leading Universities and highly experienced Financial Services professionals.
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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).

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence H. Summers

Lawrence H. Summers is the Charles W. Eliot University Professor and President Emeritus of Harvard University. During the past three decades, he has served in a series of senior policy positions in Washington, D.C., including the 71st Secretary of the Treasury for President Clinton, Director of the National Economic Council for President Obama and Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank.

He received a bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1975 and was awarded a Ph.D. from Harvard in 1982. In 1983, he became one of the youngest individuals in recent history to be named as a tenured member of the Harvard University faculty. In 1987, Mr. Summers became the first social scientist ever to receive the annual Alan T. Waterman Award of the National Science Foundation (NSF), and in 1993 he was awarded the John Bates Clark Medal, given every two years to the outstanding American economist under the age of 40.

President Bill Clinton said that Larry Summers “has the rare ability to see the world that is taking shape and the skill to help to bring it into being.” He has been recognized as one of the world’s most influential thinkers by Time, Foreign Policy, Prospect and The Economist magazines among many others. In his speeches, regular newspaper columns in The Financial Times and public commentary, Dr. Summers continues to move forward the debate on national and global economic policy.

Dr. Summers is currently the Charles W. Eliot University Professor at Harvard University and the Weil Director of the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business & Government at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He and his wife Elisa New, Host and Director of PBS’s Poetry in America, reside in Brookline and have six children.

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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); Climate-related Financial Risk Advisory Committee (CFRAC) of the Financial Stability Oversight Council and the CDC Foundation.

Alex Roever

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

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.

Samim Ghamami

Samim Ghamami

Samim Ghamami is a senior researcher at NYU and UC Berkeley and an adjunct professor of finance at NYU. Ghamami has been a senior economist at Goldman Sachs, a senior economist and managing director at the Financial Services Forum, an adjunct professor of economics at Columbia University, an associate director at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Financial Research, and an economist at the Federal Reserve Board. He has been an advisor to the Bank for International Settlements and the Financial Stability Board on a number of post-2008 finance and economic policy reform programs. Ghamami serves on the advisory board of the graduate finance program at NYU Courant institute. He has also served on National Science Foundation panels on mathematics and finance. Ghamami holds a PhD in Finance and Operations Research from USC.

Xiaoyan Zhang

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

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.

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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-shore

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 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 Burnett

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 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.

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