LAUREN CALDWELL, Client Relationship Manager, is responsible for establishing and maintaining client relationships. This includes client onboarding, reporting, meetings, and all client communications. Ms. Caldwell also coordinates regular communications with consultants and prospects, supports the maintenance of contact management databases, and schedules KCM’s participation in various conferences and events. Lauren started at KCM as an intern in 2011 and sits on the firm’s Charitable Giving Committee. Ms. Caldwell formerly served as President of the St. Louis Women in Investments Network (STLWIN). Lauren earned a B.A. in International Business and Spanish from Westminster College and an M.B.A. from the University of Missouri – St. Louis.
Kristen Carloni, CFA Global Head of Business Proposal Team
Aladdin by BlackRock
Kristen Carloni, CFA, Director, leads the global Business Proposal Team for Aladdin Sales & Marketing at BlackRock. Her responsibilities center around ensuring an impactful RFP & DDQ process for the Aladdin and eFront product lines while making business processes scalable. She has extensive experience implementing innovative technologies such as third-party proposal management tools and AI capabilities in order to create winning proposals.
Lauren Colonna is the founder of Ovis Creative, a leading creative and strategic marketing communication agency focused on serving the alternative asset management industry. With over 24 years of direct experience in the financial services sector, Lauren has designed and produced a wide range of award-winning corporate communication programs for leading asset management and wealth advisory firms. Before founding Ovis Creative, she served as Vice President and Director of Creative and Client Solutions at Synergy Graphics, where she led the creative development of all marketing communication projects and established the firm’s financial services practice.
Prior to Synergy, Lauren was a Senior Art Director at Morgan Stanley, where she executed and led the creative design and production of high-level communication programs for both the Investment Banking Division and Individual Investor Group. Lauren’s background also includes creative and strategic roles at Prudential Financial and Lord Abbett & Co., where she designed and produced print and digital communications for the investment management, wealth advisory, mutual fund, annuities, and managed account divisions. She earned a BA in Corporate Design and Digital Imaging from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Danielle Corey is Associate Director, Manager, Institutional Consultant Relations Analysts MFS®. In her role, she is responsible for managing the Global Consultant Database Team and partnering with the Global Consultant Relations Team Directors. She oversees the consultant database process and implements efficiency processes for the MFS Global Consultant Relations Database Team.
Danielle joined MFS in 2004, previously working at New England Financial.
Danielle graduated from Emerson College with a bachelor’s in science (BS).
Zahra Foradi is an RFP Lead Analyst at MFS Investment Management (MFS), where she leads the development and optimization of the company’s RFP content management and project workflow tool, as well as other technology. In her role, she explores the use of AI, system integrations and system capabilities to streamline workflows and create a seamless user experience for all stakeholders involved in the RFP process. Zahra currently manages a content management senior specialist, and her team oversees a comprehensive library of responses where they are focused on creating new content as well as ensuring content consistency and quality.
Since joining MFS in 2018, she has held roles including RFP Analyst and RFP Senior Analyst.
Zahra is based in Toronto and earned her BA degree in Applied Economics from Queen’s University.
Alexandria Jenkins is a Senior Manager, RFP at Invesco based in Atlanta. In this role, she oversees a team of RFP writers who focus on Requests for Proposals and Due Diligence Questionnaires with the goal of providing accurate and timely responses to all client requests.
Alexandria joined Invesco in 2018. Prior to joining the firm, she served as an RFP Specialist at Virtus Investment Partners, a global investment management firm. While at Virtus, Alexandria covered RFP’s and Database updates for both Fixed Income and Equity asset classes. Prior to Virtus, Alexandria served as Marketing & Client Service Manager at Herndon Capital Management. In that role she worked to support the client sales team.
Alexandria earned a BBA degree from Georgia State University and an MBA from Kennesaw State University.
Item 17 Director of Marketing and Investor Relations
Global Credit Advisers
Sari J. Mayer, CAIA, is Director of Marketing and Investor Relations at Global Credit Advisers, LLC ("GCA"), a manager of long/short credit funds specializing in research, trading, and portfolio management in primarily high yield corporate credit. The firm AUM was approximately $830 million as of March 1, 2024.
Before joining GCA, Sari was Director of Marketing at Boone Capital, manager of an event driven hedge fund. Before entering the hedge fund space, she was a sell-side Latin America Telecommunications equity analyst at Salomon Smith Barney for which she received several industry awards including high rankings as determined by Institutional Investor, and was the Latin America telecommunications investment banking Director at Credit Suisse in New York. Sari earned her BA cum laude in Mathematics and Spanish from Amherst College, and received her MBA in International Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business, and was selected to and participated in the International Management Program at ESADE in Barcelona, Spain.
Sari is a member emerita and past Vice President of the Horace Mann School Alumni Council, a founding member of the Alumnae Council of New York University Stern School of Business, and an active member of 100 Women in Finance and Financial Women’s Association. Sari lives in New York City with her husband and three daughters.
Tiffany is a vice president and manager of the due diligence services (DDS) team at Nuveen. She is responsible for the oversight of the retention related work within the New Business & Due Diligence Services team. Her team is globally distributed and is responsible for the completion of recurring requests such as DDQs and RFIs, supporting Nuveen’s distribution partners and retaining existing business across the organization. The team completes approximately 4,500 requests annually.
Tiffany has more than 20 years in industry experience and began her career at Nuveen. She has held an assortment of roles across the firm and has worked in various departments such as trading, client services, marketing, and retail sales during her tenure.
Tiffany graduated with a B.S. in Political Science from the University of Southern California. She is finalizing her master’s in business administration (MBA) from the University of South Carolina. She holds the Series 7, 66 and 24 securities registrations.
When not studying, Tiffany enjoys spending time with her husband and two young children. In addition, she enjoys traveling, exploring new restaurants and getting lost in a paranormal fiction novel.
Jared Spann is an Associate Director, RFP for Principal Asset Management, overseeing new client business initiatives through the completion of proposal requests. His team supports the global distribution and sales teams, as well as the individual investment teams throughout the organization. His duties include developing and implementing scalable processes and metric tracking, finding solutions to increase the efficiency and quality of proposals, as well as the training and development and day-to-day oversight of his team. Jared joined the firm in 2018 as a Proposal Content Editor, covering the firm’s fixed income boutiques, before taking over management responsibilities for the RFP team. Prior to joining Principal Asset Management, Jared worked as a Registered Client Associate with RBC Wealth Management for 6 years. He is a graduate of Iowa State University with majors in Finance and Marketing and currently holds his FINRA series 7 and 66 licenses.
Nancy Vailakis has 19 years of alternative asset management industry experience as a business development, marketing and investor relations professional, and over 20 years of experience in financial services overall.
Previously, Ms. Vailakis was a Business Development Director at IQ-EQ, a Vice President of Investor Relations at Cerberus Capital and a Sales + Client Relations Specialist at BlueMountain Capital, among other roles.
She earned her MBA from the New York University Stern School of Business and her BA in English Literature from Binghamton University. Ms. Vailakis continues to serve the Stern community as an Alumni Advisory Board Member of the Stern Private Equity / Venture Capital Club.
Ms. Vailakis is engaged with many non-profit and professional organizations in New York, including, but not limited to Women in Funds, Portfolios With Purpose, 100 Women in Finance, and Binghamton Women in Business.
