Joy Zhang is a Managing Director and head of Securitized Products Credit and Climate Research at MSCI . Her team is responsible for research and model development in non-agency securitization , Securitized Products factors , financed emissions, and physical risk .   

Previously, Joy was a Director at Credit Suisse, responsible for mortgage collateral modelling and regulatory modelling for securitized products trading desk . Joy and her colleague’s work was ranked by Institutional Investor as All-American Research Team for Prepayments Strategy. Prior to Credit Suisse, she worked as a senior developer at Goldman Sachs responsible for developing a firm-wide risk management system.

Joy has a M.S. in Computational Finance from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Kansas .  She received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Science and Technology of China.

Maggie Wang is a Managing Director and the Global Head of CLO and Private Credit Strategy at Citigroup. She launched her financial career at J.P. Morgan in 2007 as a research analyst, leading the US CLO and CDO research team before joining Citigroup in 2014. Maggie advises over 900 global institutional clients—including banks, insurers, pension funds, hedge funds, private equity firms, and family offices—on fixed-income investments. A top-ranked analyst in the All-American Institutional Investors survey since 2007, she is frequently featured in Bloomberg, the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, and Barron’s, and regularly speaks at major global conferences.

Wenzhe Zhao is an Economist at Progressive Capital Management, helping manage a $60 billion total return-driven fixed-income investment portfolio. Before his tenure at PCM, he was a Director and a senior Global Economist at Credit Suisse. Recognized for his profound and distinctive research, Wenzhe provides valuable insights to the bank's core clients across various asset classes and geographic regions. His research interests include monetary policy, financial economics, interest rates, inflation, semiconductors, manufacturing supply chains, labor market, and economic development. His research is frequently cited by leading financial media outlets.

Before relocating to New York, Wenzhe lived in London. He received a Master of Philosophy in Economics from Cambridge University and a First Class BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics. He is the President-Elect of TCFA.

Shawn Fan is the Head of Solutions and Research at Legal & General China, responsible for developing the company’s business of cross-board investment and pension asset management in China. Before transferring to the China team, Shawn had worked as a fixed income Portfolio Manager at LGIM America, a US affiliate of Legal & General Investment Management (LGIM). Before joining LGIM America, he was a director at Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) Group where he led a quantteam to do research on margin models and build up quantitative analytics. Prior to CME, he was a desk quant at UBS for Latin America’s emerging market structured product trading and interest rate derivative trading. Shawn also worked briefly in Bear Stearns/JPMorgan on risk management.

Dr. Fan is currently the chairman and board director of the Chinese American Financial Association (TCFA). Under his and his team's joint efforts, TCFA's global membership has increased from 8,000 to nearly 10,000 in two years, and it has also successfully held nearly 15 online and offline events during that time. The 2022 annual conference hosted by Dr. Fan attracted over 160,000 online and offline viewers in total.

Dr. Fan will begin a 7-month program at Harvard Business School's Senior Executive Leadership Program (SELP) in December of this year. Dr. Fan holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Master of Financial Mathematics from the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences at New York University. In 2022, he published an article entitled " A financial ecosystem for retirement and pension in an aging society" in the Tsinghua Financial Review, and translated the classic financial engineering textbook "Monte Carlo Methods in Financial Engineering," published in Chinese by Higher Education Press in 2013.

Partner of Wisdom Advisory LLC, which provides advisory service on capital and growth strategy and execution to institutions and entrepreneurs. Ms. Zhao has been a seasoned C-Suite executive and independent Board member/committee chairs for public and private companies across multiple industries. She serves as a Board/Audit Committee member for Jaguar Global Growth Corp I (Nasdaq: JGGC), a property tech focused special purpose acquisition company(“SPAC”), and a Board member of a fintech SaaS company Urban FT. Most recently she was Chief Financial Officer of AlTi Global Inc. (Nasdaq: ALTI), a global wealth management and alternative asset management company with $67B assets under management across 11 countries. She also served as Chair of Governance and Nomination Committee and member of Compensation

Committee for biopharma company BeyondSpring Inc. (Nasdaq: BYSI), Director & CFO for Edoc Acquisition Corp (Nasdaq: ADOC), a healthcare-focused SPAC, and Chair of Audit Committee for D&Z Media Acquisition Corp. (NYSE: DNZ), a media and education tech focused SPAC. Previously she served as Chief Financial Officer for two large PE-backed growth-stage companies, including a pre-IPO logistics technology company which later priced its initial public offering in NYSE at over $3 billion valuation. Prior to this, she was a Managing Director in Bank of America Merrill Lynch and an Executive Director in JPMorgan, where she held senior positions in headquarter and global corporate and investment banking units, across a broad spectrum of functional areas including Treasury, liquidity, capital, risk management, and regional CFO/COO in transaction banking and corporate banking units. She also worked at American Express in various capacities including corporate strategic planning and venture investing. Early in her career she worked in investment banking at Goldman Sachs and in corporate finance/corporate development at FedEx. She has worked in New York, London, Singapore, Hong Kong and China, and has managed teams across four continents.

Ms. Zhao is a recipient of the Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business award in 2023 by Asian American Business Development Center. A Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA), Ms. Zhao holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a B.S. in Economics with distinction from Fudan University in Shanghai, China. She is a Board member of several non-profit organizations, including Volunteers of America - Greater New York, founded in 1896 and one of America's largest faith-based social service organizations, the Chinese Finance Association (TCFA) with over 7,000 members worldwide, and Asian Pacific American Advocates (OCA) Westchester & Hudson Valley Chapter.

David Wang is currently a professor in Virginia Tech's Department of Economics.

He served as the Head of Asia (ex. Japan) Economics and Chief Economist for the region at Credit Suisse from 2018 to 2023.

Prior to joining Credit Suisse, David was an economist in the research department of International Monetary Fund (IMF), primarily responsible at various times for macroeconomic forecasting of Asian countries and the Eurozone countries. Before the IMF, David was a researcher for BlackRock’s Multi-asset Solutions team, specializing in tactical asset allocation, country, and sector rotation within the equity and commodities spaces. David started his career in the financial industry as an analyst at Morgan Stanley, focusing on convertible debt underwriting and equity derivative valuations.

David holds a PhD in Economics from Stanford University and received his undergraduate education at the University of Chicago, during which he also functioned as a research assistant at the Chicago Federal Reserve. During his spare time, David enjoys playing basketball, weight training, conduct academic research, and movie watching.

Hui Shao is a Director in Quantitative Strategy Group in the equity Global Market of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The team is mainly responsible for the quantitative solution development and financial engineering in equity sales and trading business. Previously, he was a Director in the Global Risk Analytics of BofA. The team is responsible for the development of models and system for fair value adjustment, counterparty risk management, regulatory capital calculation, stressed testing. Before BofA, Hui worked as a Senior Manager in the Quantitative Advisory Service in Ernst and Young and quantitative analyst in Moody’s Investors Service. Hui holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Physics from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University

Jing is currently the Director of Quantitative Execution Services at a quant fund in NY. She got her M.S. degree in Operations Research from Columbia University, B.S. in Biology from Tsinghua University and B.A. (double degree) in Economics from Peking University. Since May 2021, Jing has also served as the president of Tsinghua Alumni Association of Greater New York.
 
Being extremely enthusiastic about contributing back to the communities, Jing has been volunteering in various NGOs. In particular, Jing served in Tsinghua Alumni Association of Greater New York for more than 8 years, and was elected to be the president in May 2021. From Jing's work and volunteer experience, she is well connected in the industry, and has accumulated years of experience organizing events. Jing has been participating in TCFA events since 2014 and shares the values of the organization. She is looking to contribute to the organization.

Dr. Kun Gao is the Founder and Chief Investment Officer of Sherbrooke Park Advisers, a quantitative hedge fund actively applying innovative algorithms to invest in global markets. Sherbrooke Park Advisers exists at the intersection of finance and technology, combining the deep industry knowledge of quantitative researchers with the technical prowess of software engineers. It leverages the collective expertise of its team to seek new investment opportunities, control risk, and provide useful services to its investment partners.

Prior to founding Sherbrooke Park Advisers, Gao was the Head of Quant Equity Research at AIG Investments, the asset management arm of the insurance giant. Building the trading business from the ground up, Gao recruited and retained high performers, instilled a culture of excellence, and integrated sophisticated infrastructure to drive results. Under his leadership, the business delivered strong audited track records each year since inception. Before joining AIG, Gao was a senior portfolio manager at leading U.S. hedge funds, including Tudor Investment Corporation, Balyasny Asset Management, and WorldQuant. Gao started his investment career at Morgan Stanley’s proprietary trading group.

Gao is a long-term trustee of The Chinese Finance Association (TCFA). He is also a co-founder and trustee of The Youth Fund, a nonprofit organization that connects Asian-American youth with industry leaders to assist in their career development. He contributed a book chapter about quantitative equity trading for Financial Engineering (Wiley, 2011).

Gao received a B.S. in Statistics from Peking University and a Ph.D. in Statistics from Yale University.

Devoting into financial industry for 12 + years , Wen Li is currently a Senior Director and global head of securitization content at Moody’s Analytics. Her group is responsible for creating content and analytics for securitization professionals in RMBS, ABS, CLO, CMBS and Esoteric asset classes. Moody’s Analytics Structured Finance Solution is a leading provider of data, software, cashflow services , research and advanced analytics in global structured finance market serving nearly 500 domestic and global institutions and over 2000 indirect and direct clients via third party partners .

Previously , Wen worked in Citi Group Global Market New York before join Moody’s . Wen is a CFA Charterholder and also actively serving as a mentor of Women’s BRG and Pan-Asia BRG in Moody’s .

Wen has a M.S. in Finance from SUNY at Buffalo and a B.S. in Economics from University of International Business and Economics (UIBE)

Howard Zhu is the Head of Analytics for the Americas at MSCI, where he leads business development for the analytics product line across all client segments. Before relocating to New York, Howard served as the Head of APAC Analytics Products in Hong Kong. Throughout his tenure at MSCI, he has been instrumental in helping global investors integrate analytics tools into their investment decision-making processes.

Before joining MSCI, Howard was a Client Portfolio Manager at ING Investment Management APAC, where he spearheaded the growth of systematic investment strategies across the region. Howard also worked as a Research Analyst at Investment Technology Group (ITG) in Boston, where he developed portfolio analytics products, including risk models, transaction cost models, and fair value models. His research on the capacity of liquidity- demanding equity strategies was published in the Journal of Portfolio Management.

Howard holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science with a focus on Artificial Intelligence from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in Biophysics from Fudan University in China. He pursued doctoral studies in statistics at the University of Washington and holds a patent on Creating a Turnover Efficient Frontier for an Investment Portfolio.

Dapeng Hu, PhD, CFA, Managing Director, Global Head of Aladdin Sustainability Analytics in BlackRock. He is responsible for the research and development of sustainability, climate and energy analytics within Aladdin, BlackRock's portfolio management and enterprise risk management system. Previously Dapeng was a Co-Head of Financial Modeling Group (FMG) and Head of Structured Finance Research and Modeling (SFRM) team. He was responsible for defining and execution of all financial models in Aladdin  with a focus on mortgage modeling, security valuation models, simulation, data science and overall FMG infrastructure and technology. Prior to joining BlackRock in 2003, Dr. Hu was with Wells Fargo as a Director of financial modeling from 2001 - 2003. From 2000 - 2001, he was with Citigroup as Vice President of empirical modeling. From 1998 - 2000, Dr. Hu was a member of the research faculty in the Real Estate Department at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Hu earned a BS degree from Peking University, an MS degree from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Yiwei Liu is a Fixed Income trader at a hedge fund where she is responsible for investing in US interest rates and derivatives products. Previously, she was a Vice President at Credit Suisse, where she worked at both XVA management and Securitized Products group.

Yiwei holds a Master Degree in Financial Engineering from Columbia University; and a dual Bachelor Degree in Applied Mathematics and Economics from Peking University.

Placeholder

Yigang (Sam) Zhang is a Senior Software Engineer at Zhejiang Metals And Materials Co, a Fortune 500 company which distributes steels, oil and wood products. Sam plays a pivotal role in spearheading the company's digital transformation efforts which enhance operational efficiency while mitigating risks. Previously, Sam was a Senior Software Engineer at Bloomberg. He and his team crafted a latency monitor platform for the global equity and option market, leveraging cutting-edge big data technologies like Spark, Hadoop, Kafka and Scala. This groundbreaking platform revolutionized the monitoring and optimization of the global information distribution and trading network. Sam's contributions left an indelible mark on Bloomberg's ability to provide speedy and reliable services in the competitive financial landscape. Sam's academic journey includes an M.S. in Computer Science from Columbia University and a B.S. in Computer Science from Zhejiang University of Technology.
From 2022 Sam served on the core team of TCFA. He used his technical strength to solve problems and optimize processes to ensure the success of every single event . His work includes email notification, events registration, online and in-person conference broadcasting, website maintenance, fixing and improving many other technical issues.

Ningxin Wang is a quantitative market lead at Affirm Inc, where she works on quantitative modeling and analytics for the company’s capital structuring deals. Before joining affirm, she worked at BofA Merrill Lynch and Citibank in quantitative modeling and credit analytics roles. She also worked in Pricewaterhouse Coopers, where she provided auditing service for high-tech clients.

Ningxin holds a MS degree in Financial Mathematics from The University of Chicago, and a BA degree in Financial Engineering from Nanjing University