Nick Spencer is a senior consultant and sustainability risk specialist in the Milliman Life and Financial Services practice based in London. He is a Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries and past Chair of its Sustainability Board and a past Council Member. He has written extensively on the integration of climate risks into actuarial work as well as on natural capital, biodiversity and broadly on aspects of the climate transition.

Our sweeping discussion starts with risk, which, as an actuary, has been the backbone of Nick’s career – analyzing it, measuring it, mitigating it. We look at the challenge of sustainability through a risk lens, and ask whether carbon should remain at the forefront of the discussion or whether it is more critical now to expand the list of priorities.

Staying on the topic of risk we speak about standards, reporting and mitigation, and circle into adjacent areas such as the challenge of biodiversity loss, renewable agriculture and the hydrology cycle.

Naturally, some of these seem to be at times insurmountable challenges, and we assess the right mindset for staying in this industry long term.

Nick suggested the following resources - see fiftyfaceshub for more details.

Sustainability Accelerator - Chatham House

https://donellameadows.org/systems-thinking-resources/

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/final-report-the-economics-of-biodiversity-the-dasgupta-review

https://global-tipping-points.org/resources-gtp/

Planetary Solvency – Finding Our Balance with Nature and Planetary Solvency Dashboard ;

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.

With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.

In Part 1 of this special series focused on our brain power and whether we are losing our minds, we addressed the slide we are reported to be experiencing in terms of attention span and critical thinking capacity.

Now In Part 2 we ask what we can do now to address slide. We are joined again by Carolina Pacheco-Punceles. She is a Behavioral Economist, AI Survival Kit Creator, Executive Function Strategist and her Linked In bio states that she is Equipping Humans with the Skills to Think Clearly, Lead Wisely & Thrive in a Disrupted World

We suggest that the first step is acknowledging the problem – we then discuss the idea of training our minds and “going to the mental gym”, and look at strategies from those discussed by Niall Ferguson – creating an analogue study system where books are read in paper form and discussed without the use of electronic devices, to hybrid strateiges that encourage us to harness AI without relying it on exclusively.

If you enjoyed this short podcast series please send us your ideas for addressing the slide in our cognitive capacities.

Kristen Van Gelder is Partner and Co-CIO at Evanston Capital Mangement, where she has spent her entire career since college.

We begin our conversation with the roots of Kristen’s career, which corresponds quite closely with the roots and growth of Evanston Capital Management from the Northwestern University Endowment Management Team. Her career has spanned a significant period in the evolution and use of hedge funds in a portfolio and we spend some time on this, given the enduring focus on Evanston on this particular asset class.

Kristen’s view is nuanced and original and it is particularly interesting to probe beneath the headlines to assess the true state of affairs for this still significant asset area.

Finally we reflect on advice she internalized in recent years (from a unique source, it must be said) to be secure in “running her own race”. We discuss this as advice for the next generation.

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.

With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.

Are we slipping in our intellectual abilities? Have we lost the ability to read, reason, analyze, and more importantly pay attention?

Over the past decade we have seen a deluge of challenges – from Covid and its disruptive effect on education, to the rising use of screens and smart phones to the more recent threat from LLMs and an increasingly proficient set of AI tools that threaten to compete with and ultimately replace humans in almost every dimension. Each of these threats is nuanced and subjective, but we are starting to see patterns emerge in terms of the impact on our attention span, and ability to think critically and absorb new information.

I’m delighted to welcome Carolina Pacheco-Punceles to the podcast. She is a Behavioral Economist, AI Survival Kit Creator, Executive Function Strategist and her Linked In bio states that she is Equipping Humans with the Skills to Think Clearly, Lead Wisely & Thrive in a Disrupted World.

We connected over linked In when responding to a post by Jonathan Haidt about the erosion of attention spans and the ability to pay attention, and shared experiences about how we could address this slide.

In this special two-part series we first look at some of the data and recent findings around the erosion of our attention spans and ability to reason and process complex data.

Part 2 then will set out various techniques that we have found to try to address this slide.

Here in part one we talk about the problem – and discuss this article from the Financial Times that triggered our discussion Have humans passed peak brain power? https://www.ft.com/content/a8016c64-63b7-458b-a371-e0e1c54a13fc We ask if intelligence is a capacity to understand and question why performance in reasoning and problem solving tests is declining.

We look at another article which reveals that the percentage of fourth graders who score below basic in reading skills on the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests is the highest it has been in 20 years.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/10/opinion/education-smart-thinking-reading-tariffs.html?smid=li-share

Our discussion continues into the general slide in literacy in cognitive function and set up for Part 2, when we discuss some of the potential ways to address this.

Artemiza Woodgate is Founding Partner at Integrated Quantitative Investments LLC, based in Seattle. She has spent most of her career in the quantitative investment arena, including close to 5 years with Numeric, Man Group, and over 11 years with Russell Investments.

Our conversation opens with the 3Ms that Artemiza says define her – she is a mother, a mathematician and a lover of mountains. We return then to her roots, she grew up in communist Romania and how that impacted her and her approach to risk, money and outlook. She completed a PhD in finance at the University of Washington and following a career in quantitative investment and ultimately launched her own firm. We dive into her focus within the quantitative investing sphere – and discuss in particular her focus on asset pricing, earnings management, and price momentum, emphasizing the importance of minimizing estimation error and integrating risk and alpha.

Turning to career Artemiza stresses the challenges of balancing motherhood and career, the importance of networks, and the role of emerging manager programs in fostering innovation in asset management.

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.

With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.

Henry Song is a portfolio manager for Diamond Hill, a asset manager headquartered in Columbus Ohio with approximately $30 bn in AUM. He joined the firm in 2016. Prior to joining Diamond Hill, Henry was a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan Asset Management from 2005 to 2016. He specializes in securitized credit.

Our conversation races Henry’s somewhat unorthodox background and path into running money in fixed income. We discuss the interviews conducted in asset management firm and question whether they are optimized for the right characteristics and strengths. We look at how they might be done differently and how that would improve the cognitive mix within firms. We spend a little time on personality types, especially as assessed by the various psychometric tests that are conducted on teams, and note how certain traits are under-represented.

Returning to his own career path we reflect on the importance of living through financial crises and the invaluable petri dish that presents and then discuss market conditions in fixed income today and how investor needs are evolving. In the reflection section we turn to the importance of humanistic approaches in finance, understanding the counterparty, and not making irrational decisions based on fear and greed.

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.

With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.

Jo Kempton is Head of Lincolnshire Pension Fund, where she has spent most of her career in various roles, including as the manager of an internal UK equity portfolio. She is an active participant on the local government pension scheme circuit.

Our conversation starts with Jo’s early career and how she ended up pursuing a role in pensions. We speak about her work on the stock picking side, and discuss whether the market backdrop has changed since then for UK equities. We ask then whether this stint in internal equity investing has informed her approach to other active asset managers and the challenges they face today.

Moving now to the whole fund oversight that Jo provides, we discuss the future of pooling, and its benefits as well as the importance of collaboration and knowledge sharing, particularly in light of the challenges facing all public funds today.

Finally we reflect on a career of public service and the wisdom gathered over those years.

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.

With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.

Stuart Dunbar is a Partner at Baillie Gifford, based in Edinburgh, where he has worked since 2003. He previously held a range of institutional marketing roles, but before that there were some unexpected interests and pursuits.

We start there, with his move to Hong Kong and some of the cultural differences that he perceived when working overseas more broadly, much of them to do with self-confidence and presence in the workplace. We move then to discussing the evolving shape of institutional investing and how asset managers can adapt to changing investor needs.

We speak about predicting the shape of future demand, seeing where the puck is moving to, and changing how asset managers work with clients.

Some of this is the consultative approach, some of this is simply adapting to changing needs. We also discuss the future of active asset management more broadly.

Thank you to GCM Grosvenor and Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. for sponsoring Series 3 of 2025.

GCM Grosvenor is a global alternative asset management firm with a longstanding commitment to supporting small, emerging, and diverse investment managers. For over 30 years, the firm has developed expertise in funding and guiding these managers as part of its broader activity across alternative investments.With over $20 billion in AUM dedicated to small and emerging managers and $16 billion in AUM dedicated to diverse managers, GCM Grosvenor leverages its experienced team, broad network, and proprietary sourcing capabilities to support their success. Through the Small, Emerging, and Diverse Manager Program, the firm creates opportunities for investors to access a wide range of talent while seeking to drive strong returns and impact. For more information, visit www.gcmgrosvenor.com

Resolute Investment Managers, Inc. is a diversified, multi-affiliate asset management platform that partners with more than 30 best-in-class affiliated and independent investment managers. Its unique platform delivers strategic value through a full suite of distribution, operational and administrative services available to affiliates and partners.