RMIT-Q Group-CFA Melbourne Society Finance Symposium 2021

Berowne Hlavaty has over 20 years of machine learning, big data, quantitative, risk and investment strategy experience. He has consistently ranked top-3 in the Peter Lee surveys in Australia. He regularly engages with industry, regulators and academia contacts through a series of quarterly ‘Quantferences’ giving clients access to the latest research and markets insights. Berowne has a bachelor’s degree in Materials Engineering and a master’s degree in Information Science from the University of NSW. He is passionate about applying Machine Learning techniques to diverse financial investment problems while drawing on his experience and network of industry and academic contacts.

Mary is the Head of Impact for HESTA and has been with the fund since early 2013. She has held senior roles in financial services organisations for over 15 years and is passionate about progressing responsible investment practices and gender equality. HESTA is one of Australia’s largest superannuation funds with $57bn under management and over 850,000 members.

Mary is a 2015 Churchill Fellow awarded for the completion of international research on equity for women in pension systems.

Mary is the Chair of the Ministerial Advisory Council for Gender Equality in the State of Victoria.  The Council’s role is to advise the Minister for Women on the Safe and Strong equality strategy. Mary also sits on the Advisory Board for the McKell Institute.

Mary is a former Mayor and Councillor of the City of Glen Eira.  Mary is also a Board Member of The Emergency Services Telecommunication Authority and an advisory panel member for the State Government, she is a past Chair of Reclink Australia, a National Not for Profit organisation offering sports and recreation opportunities to break the cycle for disadvantaged Australians.

Mary holds a Master of Finance (Corporate Advisory) and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Anne Molyneux, is a Director of CS International, a global consulting firm in ESG practices. She is an experienced director, former trustee of pension funds and is a Chartered Accountant. She advises in corporate governance and corporate reporting, and in banking and securities regulations. She is the former Vice-Chair of the International Corporate Governance Network (ICGN) – the global investor community, with $54 trillion under investment.   

Mrs. Molyneux has developed public and private sector corporate governance and sustainability practices, including for companies, banks, regulators and stock exchanges. Her work includes the development of corporate governance codes, board policies and practices on governance and sustainability.  She undertakes board evaluations, audit and risk committee advice and support, scorecards on ESG for national and company assessments, capacity building in sustainability and corporate governance and regulator monitoring and enforcement mechanisms. In addition to private company (large and small) and state-owned enterprise clients, her clients include the OECD, the World Bank, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), and the Asian Development Bank (ADB). She has wide experience in Asia, South Asia, Africa, Australia and Europe.

She is a business representative and contributor to the OECD Corporate Governance Steering Committee.  She is an invited member of the OECD Asian Corporate Governance Roundtable.  She represented the global investor community (ICGN) on the IFRS Advisory Council (IFRS), the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board (IAASB) Consultative Advisory Group, the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants (IESBA) Consultative Advisory Group and represents ICGN on the International Integrated Reporting Council (IIRC).  She is a fellow member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors and has a Master of Management.

Jonathan A. Batten is Professor of Finance at RMIT University Melbourne. Prior to this position he worked as a Professor in Finance at the University Utara Malaysia, Monash University, Australia, the Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, and Seoul National University, Korea. He is the managing editor of Elsevier’s highly ranked Emerging Markets Review and Journal of International Financial Markets Institutions and Money, and co-editor of Finance Research Letters. Jonathan’s published research crosses several disciplines: firstly, in the business area on insider trading and market manipulation, bond pricing and corporate foreign exchange risk management in journals; secondly, in energy and applied mathematics on complexity in financial time series and on stock, gold and energy market integration; and thirdly, in economic policy on financial market development and the societal impacts of foreign direct investment. His current research involves assessing the impact on banking and financial markets of the expected worldwide shift to renewable energy; portfolio adjustment to the effects of climate change; and the roles of multinational corporations in international capital markets. He has published in leading business and science journals including Chaos, Energy Economics, Journal of Banking & Finance, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis and the Journal of International Business Studies.

Philip Naylor is a Principal Consultant at Frontier Advisors and is a senior member of their Investment Strategy team. Philip has over a decade of senior experience, much of that in currency and fixed income trading roles with the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) in both Sydney and New York, and as the RBA’s representative on the G20 Investment and Infrastructure Working Group. Philip has also worked as a consultant to the World Bank in Washington DC and as an Economist at Macquarie Bank. Immediately prior to joining Frontier, Philip was the Economic Advisor to the Treasurer of the Northern Territory. Philip holds a Bachelor of Business (Honours) in Economics and Finance from RMIT University along with a Master of Public Administration (MPA) in Economic Policy Management from Columbia University in New York. Philip also holds a CFA