J.P. Morgan Asset Management has announced a new sustainability-focused growth private equity investment team and has hired Tanya Barnes as Co-Managing Partner. Barnes joins from Blackstone Group where she was head of the Blackstone Impact platform, and previously was a Managing Director in the Merchant Banking Division of Goldman Sachs focused on executing direct private equity investments. J.P. Morgan’s Senior Climate Scientist and Sustainability Strategist, Dr. Sarah Kapnick, who joined J.P. Morgan in 2021 from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (GFDL), will serve on the team’s investment committee.
WisdomTree Investments, an exchange-traded fund and exchange-traded product sponsor and asset manager, has appointed Harold Singleton III, an executive with more than 30 years in the investment management and financial services industry, to its Board of Directors. With this appointment, the Board expands to seven directors, six of whom are independent. Singleton was most recently Vice President, Managing Director/Head of Manager Selection and Portfolio Construction of Lincoln Financial Group.
R.J. O’Brien & Associates (RJO) has promoted Amber Wright to Executive Director, Global Head of Fixed Income Rates and E-Trading Sales, with responsibilities across RJO’s operating affiliates. Based in London, Wright is leading two key global initiatives – a significant expansion of the firm’s institutional fixed income product breadth and a new algorithmic trading capability across multiple asset classes. Wright has served as RJO’s Senior Director, Global Sales since early 2021, after joining the firm as Director, Global Sales in July 2019.
RQD Clearing has expanded its executive leadership team with the addition of Lisa Bridgeford as Chief Compliance Officer. In this role, Bridgeford will use her extensive industry experience directing compliance and operational processes to spearhead the company’s compliance activities. Bridgeford is based in Omaha, Nebraska and will report directly to CEO Michael Sanocki. Bridgeford comes to RQD with more than 20 years of experience in the securities industry, most recently as CCO for Axos Clearing.
Amanda Olear has been appointed the Director of the Market Participants Division at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Since 2018, she served as Deputy Director for Registration and Compliance. In addition, Rob Schwartz has been named General Counsel. A 10-year veteran of the CFTC, Schwartz has been the agency’s Acting General Counsel since January 2021.
KX has recently welcomed Malcolm (Barry) Johnson and Charles Gregory to its Product Strategy team for Financial Services as Business Development Strategist and VP of Product Management, respectively. Johnson joins the team with more than 20 years of experience in financial services and software with an anti-financial crime specialty. He spent the past 13 years at BAE as a consultant and analyst. Gregory has worked with numerous global banks in Europe, playing various roles in the Treasury and FX businesses. Most recently he was a Product Manager for Nasdaq Trade Surveillance.
Transcend has named Tom Garley as Senior Product Specialist. He joins a rapidly growing Transcend team to identify and design product innovations that address challenges and inefficiencies in the collateral management space. Garley was most recently Product Manager for Integration Services and Post-Trade Solutions for new Dealer-to-Customer (D2C) e-trading platforms at the CME.
Coalition Greenwich has hired Audrey Blater as a Senior Analyst on its Market Structure & Technology team to cover risk and capital markets regulations. Blater joins Coalition Greenwich from Aite-Novarica Group, where she served as research director of the firm’s capital markets team.
Jeff Bolke has just joined Eventus Systems as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), based in Austin. Bolke has more than three decades of experience, including executive and sales leadership roles at major cloud-based, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) firms. He joined Eventus after serving since May 2017 as Executive Vice President, Sales of Planview. Reporting to Eventus CEO Travis Schwab, Bolke will drive the firm’s aggressive global expansion strategy and oversee the sales, marketing, business development and account management teams.
Baton Systems has hired David Ornstein as the company’s first Chief Operating Officer (COO). Ornstein was previously COO of Global Markets at Barclays Investment Bank. Prior to joining Barclays, he held roles with Deutsche Bank, where he was COO of US Credit Markets, as well as at Bankers Trust. Most recently, he has been working in an advisory capacity for several growth companies, providing counsel to CEOs and founders actively scaling their businesses.
The Federal Reserve Bank of New York has named Michelle Neal Head of the Markets Group. In this role, she will also be a member of the Bank’s Executive Committee. Neal will join the New York Fed in March 2022. She is currently Chief Executive Officer of U.S. operations at LedgerEdge, a distributed ledger technology-powered trading platform initially focused on corporate bonds.
