Group Overview
The Career Development Thought Leadership Group develops programs to help members excel during all stages of their careers and adjust to changes in the financial industry. Through events such as investment professional employment outlook conferences, the Career Development group helps members meet fellow professionals and learn helpful tools for enhancing individual careers. Group programs explore the widely varied career choices within the financial services industry.
Midyear Investment Professional Employment Outlook
Randall Thomas, is the founding partner of Calice Group, a business development consultancy based in New York City that focuses on Frontier Market projects. He is a board member at Dale Capital, a Mauritius based investment holding company. He has worked on projects in agribusiness, infrastructure, and other industries in the SubSaharan African market since 2011. Previously, Randall co-founded a financial software company called Firmview in 2001 within the nascent “cloud services” arena and sold it in 2005. He remained at the combined company to grow Firmview and matching trade accounting software across 12 broker/dealers and over 1000 institutional investment managers. His entry to institutional brokerage was 2 years at BNY Convergex. Prior to that, Randall was at Barclays Capital for 7 years – 5 of which was in credit risk and portfolio management. Randall holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and is a member of the CFA Institute.
Ira Kaplan, CFA, has 15 years of institutional portfolio management experience. Currently Director of Investments at Prosperity Life He was previously with Swiss Re as head of US Admin Re® Portfolio Management and with MetLife’s Investment Department where he was responsible for managing assets within an ALM framework and driving the incremental income of the insurance company’s general account with AUM totaling of up to $75+ billion. Mr. Kaplan has managed assets supporting both retail and reinsured liabilities within diversified, primarily fixed income, portfolios. He was a member of Aurora National Life Assurance Company’s Board of Directors as well as the Swiss Re’s Admin Re® management team. Mr. Kaplan is a CFA® Charterholder and earned a MBA in finance from the New York University Stern School of Business and a BS in Statistics & Biometry from Cornell University.
Thomas Brigandi is an analyst in the Global Project and Infrastructure Finance Group at a Credit Rating Agency (CRA), where he serves as a lead analyst for 34 power, toll-road, airport, port, water, wastewater, natural gas pipeline and project finance credits. Brigandi also serves on a CRA’s public pension steering committee, ESG Americas working group and formerly served on the veteran recruiting sub-committee. Brigandi previously worked at the ~$180bn NYC Pension Fund, where he focused on energy and natural resources and reported directly to the chief investment officer. Brigandi is a Board Director of the +11,000 investment professional member CFA Society New York (CFANY), the largest CFA Institute Society globally. Brigandi, the CFA Institute Inaugural Global Outstanding Young Leader and CFANY’s 2016 Benjamin Graham Distinguished Service Award recipient, has organized 69 CFA Society conferences that were attended by +12,800 investment professionals, in addition to over 475 asset owner, investment consultant and buy-side investment professionals speakers who collectively and directly oversee or advise on +$50 trillion. Brigandi, the founder of CFANY’s Asset Owner Series, Emerging and Frontier Market Series, Investment Employment Outlook and Professional Development Series, Putting Beneficiaries First Series and Global Infrastructure Conference Series, leads a team of +450 investment professional CFA Society volunteers globally. While serving as the Director of Global Volunteers of the American Foundation for African Children’s Education, Brigandi organized the NASDAQ Closing Bell Ceremony on September 23, 2011, hosted for the President of Sierra Leone. Brigandi maintains over 12,000 connections on LinkedIn and holds a Bachelor of Science in Finance, Accounting and Economics from the Macaulay Honors College (MHC) at the City University of New York. Brigandi received the college’s inaugural Alumni Pioneer Award and serves on the MHC Foundation Board of Directors.
