Archives: Ambassadors

Herb Blank is a Senior Consultant for Global Finesse LLC, heading the product strategy practice.  He provides ESG, ETF, enhanced indexing and alternative data expertise.

During the past 35 years Herb has been involved in quantitative risk management, ESG modeling, ETF product development, portfolio management, product strategy, and business development. He served as Portfolio Manager for the Deutsche Bank CountryBaskets, the first ETFs launched on the NYSE, and assisted in planning the launches of iShares, GLD, and CountryBaskets.

Herb is a frequently published author and a well-recognized name from his 22 years helping to guide QWAFAFEW, a global society of investment quants.  He holds an MBA from NYU Stern and a BA in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.

Nell Minow has worked in the field of corporate governance and shareholder advocacy for more than 30 years, currently as Vice Chair of ValueEdge Advisors, and previously as co-founder and board member of GMI Ratings (formerly The Corporate Library), which was sold to MSCI in 2014.

Before GMI, she was a principal in the governance investment firm LENS (where Business Week online called her “the queen of good corporate governance” and Fortune called her “a CEO killer”) and general counsel and president of Institutional Shareholder Services.

She is co-author with Robert A.G. Monks of three books, including five editions of the leading textbook on corporate governance, and she taught MBA students at George Mason University for five years.  In 2008, she received the highest award in the field from the International Corporate Governance Network and in 2013 she received a lifetime achievement award from Corporate Secretary Magazine.

Her past service on non-profit boards includes the advisory council and board of WETA, Washington DC’s public television and radio stations, and as a board member of Reading Is Fundamental, a national literacy organization and the Center on Media and Public Affairs/STATS, the leading organization monitoring the media’s political coverage and assisting journalism organizations with statistical reporting.

She was a columnist for the Huffington Post and wrote the Risky Business column for BNet (owned by CBS) and continues to write for a number of outlets on business and culture.

Ms. Minow is a graduate of Sarah Lawrence College and the University of Chicago Law School.

Dan Solin is the New York Times bestselling author of the Smartest series of investing books.  Dan’s books have been enthusiastically endorsed by The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Vanguard founder John Bogle. Kiplinger’s listed The Smartest Investment Book You’ll Ever Read on its top ten list of the financial books every investor should read. He also writes a popular newsletter for investors, another newsletter for investment advisors and has a YouTube channel for investors.  Dan blogs weekly for Advisor Perspectives.

A former securities attorney, Dan graduated from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.

Dan is the President and founder of Solin Strategic, LLC, which coaches investment advisors all over the world.

He is also the President and founder of Evidence Based Advisor Marketing, which provides marketing and web design services to advisors.

Dr. Ashby Monk is the Executive and Research Director of the Stanford Global Projects Center. He is also a Senior Research Associate at the University of Oxford and a Senior Advisor to the Chief Investment Officer of the University of California.

Dr. Monk has a strong track record of academic and industry publications. He was named by aiCIO magazine as one of the most influential academics in the institutional investing world. His research and writing has been featured in The Economist, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, Institutional Investor, Reuters, Forbes, and on National Public Radio among a variety of other media.

His current research focus is on the design and governance of institutional investors, with particular specialization on pension and sovereign wealth funds.

He received his Doctorate in Economic Geography at Oxford University and holds a Master’s in International Economics from the Universite de Paris I – Pantheon Sorbonne and a Bachelor’s in Economics from Princeton University.

David H. Webber is the author of The Rise of the Working-Class Shareholder: Labor’s Last Best Weapon, published by Harvard University Press in April 2018. Webber has toured extensively for the book, and has published op-eds about it in theNew York Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, In These Times, and elsewhere. The book has been reviewed or otherwise covered in the New York Review of Books, twice by the Financial Times, Publisher’s Weekly, Bloomberg Radio, CSPAN’s BookTV, Forbes, Nightly Business Report, NPR’s Marketplace, the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, the Harvard OnLabor blog, Cornell University’s ILR Review, Rorotoko, de Volkskrant, Calcalist, the Majority Report with Sam Seder,the David Pakman Show, Knowledge@Wharton Business Radio, Splinter News, Dissent, Agence France-Presse, Reuters, and others.

Webber co-edited a second book, Research Handbook on Representative Shareholder Litigation (Elgar), published in November 2018. He has published scholarly articles including “The Use and Abuse of Labor’s Capital” in the New York University Law Reviewand “The Plight of the Individual Investor in Securities Class Actions” in the Northwestern University Law Review, with additional work forthcoming in the Vanderbilt Law Review and elsewhere. Webber has presented his research at the Harvard Stanford Yale Junior Faculty Forum, the Conference on Empirical Legal Studies, and the American Law and Economics Association conference, among others.

Webber is the winner of Boston University School of Law’s 2017 Michael Melton Award for Teaching Excellence. He also co-teaches the Pensions and Capital Stewardship course for the Harvard Trade Union program at Harvard Law School. He is a graduate of Columbia and NYU Law School, where he was an editor for the law review.

Gary N. Kleiman is a pioneer and recognized expert in the field of global emerging economies and financial markets. He founded the first consulting firm dedicated to providing independent analysis and advice to public and private sector clients in 1987, and research coverage and firsthand experience reached seventy-five countries in all developing regions. For three decades the company provided written reports and verbal briefings to banks, fund managers, institutional investors, and corporations to guide portfolio allocation and risk management. The firm also offered technical assistance and training to government and international lending agencies on financial sector and capital markets strategy and development. Mr. Kleiman was simultaneously responsible for content delivery, business outreach, and thought leadership, and his multifaceted entrepreneurial and substantive skills can apply to complex board assignments.

He was chosen as the overall financial sector strategist for the IMF-World Bank’s original First Initiative strengthening program, and was involved in private sector industry group formation such as the Emerging Markets Traders Association.  In Washington he advised government bodies on global economic and financial vulnerability issues for twenty years, and has been an expert witness in international sovereign debt cases. He has spoken at dozens of professional conferences and events worldwide, and is often cited and featured in the media. He has been a regular writer and commentator throughout his career, launched a website blog in 2008, and contributes to international outlets including Asia Times, BNE Intellinews and Financial Times.

Mr. Kleiman was an adjunct professor and developed an emerging market finance course for the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service, where he graduated magna cum laude, and has been a longtime student mentor. He also completed advanced studies at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (Paris) and the London School of Economics, and worked in Asia and the Middle East prior to starting his firm in New York before relocation to Washington. He is a senior member of non-profit advocacy groups like the Bretton Woods Committee, where he led specific poor country and refugee support efforts, and served on project task forces for the Council on Foreign Relations and World Economic Forum.  Mr. Kleiman is conversant in several languages, and has been an active political campaign volunteer and policy adviser, and competitive runner with age group placement.  He is listed in “Who’s Who in America” and has been married to Elizabeth Morrissey, who co-founded Kleiman International Consultants, for twenty-five years and has a teenage son Dylan.

Website: www.kleimaninternational.com