The Research Advisory Committee’s (RAC) mandate is to advise the GRI team. This includes advice on proposed and current funded research, research output, and global financial risk research directions.
GRI’s RAC members include internationally renowned financial risk researchers and senior industry leaders with a keen interest in financial risk research.
Sonia Baxendale is President & CEO of Global Risk Institute (GRI). In this role, Sonia brings together leaders from industry, academia and government to focus on emerging risk issues.
Sonia has extensive experience as an executive and non-executive in the financial services industry globally.
Sonia is an active corporate director who sits on the boards of Laurentian Bank, Definity Financial Corp., and Intermediate Capital Group (ICG). She is past Chair of the Board of SickKids Foundation. In 2023, she was appointed to a three-member investment committee overseeing the $23.4 billion First Nations Child and Family Services settlement fund.
Prior to joining GRI, Sonia held senior roles at CIBC, including Senior Executive Vice President and President of CIBC Retail Markets, where she led the Retail & Commercial Banking and Wealth Management businesses. She played a key role in developing strategy and direction for CIBC. Prior to CIBC, she held various positions with American Express Canada and Saatchi & Saatchi.
Sonia is a graduate of the University of Toronto, where she was named the Victoria College Alumni of Distinction in 2017. She was named one of the “Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada” for three years in a row and then joined the ranks of the Top 100 Hall of Fame in 2010. In 2000, she was recognized as one of Canada’s Top 40 Under 40.
Agostino Capponi is a Professor in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research at Columbia University, where he is also a member of the Data Science Institute, and the Founding Director of the Columbia Center for Digital Finance and Technology. His current research interests are in financial technology, machine learning in finance, market microstructure, systemic and liquidity risk, climate finance, energy markets, and economic networks.
Agostino’s research has been funded by NSF, DARPA, DOE, IBM, GRI, INET, Ripple, Stellar, and the Ethereum Foundation, and has been recognized with the 2018 NSF CAREER Award, a JP Morgan AI Research Faculty Award, and the UBRI Innovator Award. His work has been covered by various media outlets, including Bloomberg and The Financial Times.
A Fellow of the Crypto and Blockchain Economics Research Forum, Agostino is also an Academic Fellow of Alibaba’s Luohan Academy. He is a Finance Department Editor of Management Science, a Co-Editor of Mathematics and Financial Economics, Area Editor of Operations Research, and holds editorial positions at several other major journals.
Agostino is former Chair of the SIAG/FME Activity Group and of the INFORMS Finance Section, and is currently a member of the Council of the Bachelier Finance Society. He is Co-Editor of the book Machine Learning and Data Sciences for Financial Markets: A Guide to Contemporary Practices, listed as an Amazon bestseller in banking and finance.
Dr. Bruce Choy is an Adjunct Professor at Rotman School of Management in the specialized field of risk management and governance, and Chair of the Risk Committee of the Board for Shinhan Bank Canada, the Canadian subsidiary of Korea’s Shinhan Financial Group.
Formerly Managing Director of Research for GRI, prior to this, Bruce was General Manager with the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, leading their market risk and balance sheet management functions, and a Partner and Risk Consulting Practice Leader with PwC. These corporate roles followed from an earlier tenure-track academic career that specialized in environmental risk management.
Bruce was awarded a doctorate from the University of Sydney (Australia) for his research on the mathematics for risk management. He is a University and R.A. Priddle medalist from the University of Sydney’s Faculty of Engineering, a Sloan Fellow from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, and has a Corporate Director designation from the Institute of Corporate Directors/University of Toronto.
Dr. Michel Crouhy is Head of Research and Development at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, a subsidiary of Groupe BPCE. He has the bankwide oversight on all quantitative research and the development of new products and applications supporting the trading and structuring businesses. He is also the founder and president of the Natixis Foundation for Quantitative Research, which promotes and supports academic research and world-class events in the area of mathematical finance.
Formerly, Dr. Crouhy was senior vice president, business analytic solutions, in the Risk Management Division, at the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. He was responsible for the development of risk measurement methodologies and models for market, credit (corporate and retail), operational risk and economic capital attribution, as well as customer behavior analytics. His responsibilities also included the approval of all pricing, balance-sheet, risk and capital-related models. He was also in charge of the RAROC (economic capital attribution) and operational risk groups.
Prior to his career in the industry, Dr. Crouhy was a professor of finance at the HEC School of Management in Paris, where he was also the founder and director of the M.S. HEC in international finance, the first MS program in financial engineering. He has been a visiting professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and at the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Crouhy is a founding member of PRMIA (the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association) and a member of the PRMIA Blue Ribbon Panel, and a member of the Credit Risk Committee of the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE). He is the author and co-author of several books, the most recent ones being Risk Management (McGraw-Hill – 2001), The Essentials of Risk Management (second edition, McGraw-Hill – 2014); and he has published extensively in academic journals in the areas of banking, options, risk management and financial markets. He is also associate editor of several academic journals. Dr. Crouhy holds a PhD from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and has a Doctoris Honoris Causa from the University of Montreal.
Blair Feltmate is Head, Intact Centre on Climate Adaptation, University of Waterloo, where he is also Associate Professor. The Intact Centre is an incubator for research and knowledge mobilization, with an aim to limit the negative impacts associated with climate change and extreme weather events in Canada. The Intact Centre was made possible through the generosity of Intact Financial Corporation.
Previous positions Blair has held include Vice President, Sustainable Development, Bank of Montreal; Director, Sustainable Development, OPG; Partner, Sustainable Investment Group/YMG Capital Management; and President, Sustainable Systems Associates. His early career began by developing the sustainable development programs for such companies as Noranda, Falconbridge, Placer Dome, Barrick Gold, Consumers Gas and the American Chemistry Council (Washington). Blair has written textbooks on Sustainable Banking (University of Toronto Press), and Aquatic Ecology (CAB International).
He is generally interviewed by TV/radio/newspapers 100-150 times per year, primarily on the subject of how to address climate change. He speaks regularly to governments (nationally / internationally) and industry sectors on the need and means to adjust to a changing climate. He is Chair, Federal Government of Canada Expert Panel on Climate Adaptation and Resilience Results. He is also Chair, Electricity Transmission and Distribution Adaptation Standard, Canadian Standards Association; he serves on other flood mitigation Standards committees for CSA. He is former Chair of Pollution Probe, and he was Chair/Founder of the Sustainable Electricity Program, Canadian Electricity Association. Blair was an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellow (University of Waterloo); he holds a Ph.D, Theoretical and Applied Ecology (University of Toronto); M.Sc., Zoology (U of T); M.A., Sustainable Development (Wilfrid Laurier University); Hon. B.Sc., Geography.
Dr. Michael A. Goldberg has been Board Chair at Low Tide Properties, a privately-owned Vancouver developer, since 2019. He is Dean Emeritus and a former Professor at the Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia (UBC). His global academic career has spanned over four decades of research and public service, with leadership roles in world-class academic institutions in North America and Asia.
Michael was Associate Vice President (International) for UBC, and HR Fullerton Professor of Urban Land Policy and Dean of UBC’s Sauder School of Business. Author of nine books and over 200 academic/professional publications, Michael’s research specialization is on the economics of land use, real estate and infrastructure. He is a former Board Director for CPPIB, along with numerous other institutional asset management firms in North America, Asia and Europe. He holds an MA and PhD in Economics from UC Berkley and a BA in Economics from Brooklyn College.
James (Jim) C. MacGee was appointed Managing Director of Economic and Financial Research (EFR), effective January 2, 2019. In this role, Mr. MacGee works with the managing directors, research directors and relevant teams within the Bank to develop and execute leading-edge research to support the Bank’s policy functions.
Previously, Mr. MacGee was Associate Professor of Economics at Western University, where his research interests included consumer credit and macroprudential policy, monetary economics, the adoption of technology, and international trade. He was the recipient of the 2013 Bank of Canada Governor’s Award for his research on consumer bankruptcy. He was a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland in 2008–09.
James (Jim) C. MacGee was appointed Managing Director of Economic and Financial Research (EFR), effective January 2, 2019. In this role, Mr. MacGee works with the managing directors, research directors and relevant teams within the Bank to develop and execute leading-edge research to support the Bank’s policy functions.
Dr. Daniel Moore is an independent Director and Chair of the Risk Committees of the Board for Deutsche Bank (USA) Corporation and Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas, and CEO, RiverRun Ventures. He is also an independent Director and Chair of the Risk Committee for Export Development Canada.
Daniel is former Group Head and Chief Risk Officer for Scotiabank, where he was responsible for the global management of risk, including enterprise, credit and market risks. He has extensive global experience, with stints working for the bank in Asia, Europe and North America, in addition to in depth knowledge of Scotiabank’s South American markets. He has a doctorate from Oxford University in Theoretical and Mathematical Physics, and a Bachelors of Science in Theoretical Physics from Queens University.
Gops Narayanan is Senior Vice President and Head of Retail Risk for RBC, and Chief Operating Officer for RBCs Global Risk Management function. In this role, he leads teams overseeing risk management for RBC’s Personal Banking division, ensuring the alignment of risk management strategies with RBC’s business objectives and long-term growth vision.
At RBC, Gops has held progressively senior roles across operations, sales and risk management. Before joining RBC, he worked with Fortune 500 companies in the U.S. and India. He has an MBA from the Indian Institute of Management, and a Masters in Biosciences and a Bachelor’s Degree in Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, India.
A successful Risk and Portfolio Management Technology firm serving multi-asset hedge funds, asset managers, banks and regulators across the world, R2 was originally incubated at the Fields Institute, and then acquired by S&P Capital IQ in 2012, where Dr. Rosen served as the Managing Director for Risk and Analytics until 2015.
In addition to working with numerous financial institutions around the world, he lectures extensively on financial engineering, portfolio management, enterprise risk and capital management, credit risk and market risk, valuation of derivatives and structured finance. He has authored numerous risk management and financial engineering publications, including two books, and several patents, and serves in the editorial board of several industrial and academic journals, including Quantitative Finance, Journal of Risk Management in Financial Institutions, Journal of Credit Risk, and Esotocastica. Dr. Rosen was inducted in 2010 a Fellow of the Fields Institute for his “outstanding contributions to the Fields Institute, its programs, and to the Canadian mathematical community”.
He currently serves in the Board of Directors of the Fields Institute, as well as in the Advisory Boards of Canada’s Institute Innovation Platform (IIP), the International Association of Quantitative Finance (IAQF), and the Center for Advanced Financial Studies at the University of Waterloo. He is one of the founders of the Professional Risk Management International Association (PRMIA), where he served as regional director in Toronto, and of RiskLab, an international network of research centers in Financial Engineering and Risk Management, initiated at the University of Toronto. He was also a member of the Fitch Academic Advisory Board and the Oliver Wyman Institute. Prior to starting R2 in 2006, Dr. Rosen had a successful career over a decade at Algorithmics Inc., where he started in 1995 as a Financial Engineer, and lead the company’s financial engineering and research, strategy, products and marketing. As part of the senior management team, he was responsible for developing the strategic direction, as well as new products, business initiatives and alliances. He also led the research, design, positioning and application to industrial settings of analytical tools including: credit, market and operational risk; counterparty risk, economic and regulatory capital management; new insurance and asset management solutions; advanced simulation and portfolio optimization.
He holds an M.A.Sc. and PhD. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Toronto, and was a Post-Doctoral fellow and Research Associate at the Centre for Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship (CMTE). His B.A.Sc. is in Chemical Engineering from the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, in Mexico City, where he was also later awarded in 2015 the recognition of Distinguished Alumni.