Hosts & Speakers

Professor George Calhoun bridges technology entrepreneurship and academic finance at Stevens Institute of Technology, where he directs the Quantitative Finance program, the Hanlon Financial Systems Research Center, and serves as Managing Director of CRAFT—the National Science Foundation-backed Center for Research Toward Advancing Financial Technologies. His work focuses on the intersection of technology and markets, preparing the next generation of asset management talent and fintech leaders.

Before joining academia, Professor Calhoun spent 25 years as a technology entrepreneur and executive, co-founding InterDigital Communications Corporation (NASDAQ: IDCC) and serving as Chairman and CEO of Illinois Superconductor Corporation. He has extensive experience in capital markets, leading public offerings, private financings, M&A transactions, and due diligence assessments for major private equity and hedge fund firms.

Professor Calhoun is author of Price & Value: A Guide to Equity Market Valuation Metrics (Springer/Apress) and a Forbes contributor covering markets, technology, and financial innovation.

Paul Das is Founder and CEO of ProFundCom, the leading digital marketing platform for asset managers and hedge funds. Since founding the company in 2003, Paul has built an integrated platform that unifies email, data, web, and social media activity in one integrated system. The result: digital engagement analytics that drive sales and marketing effectiveness for fundraising and measurable AUM.

Paul remains hands-on in leading product development and client teams while setting company strategy with the executive board. Over two decades, ProFundCom has become the industry standard for how fund managers leverage digital marketing to attract and retain investors.

Previously, Paul founded eMiddleware, which was acquired by Oracle, and serves as founder and board member of Clearview Financial Media. His software expertise was honed at AT&T, Microsoft, and Apple in both the UK and USA.

Paul holds a first-class degree in Electronic Systems Engineering from Kingston University, where he won the Cadence Design Prize for his final year project.

Art Silva is Senior Vice President and Head of Digital Engagement & Martech Solutions Fidelity Institutional® (FI). Fidelity Institutional is a division of Fidelity Investments that offers investment insights, strategies, and solutions, as well as trading services to a wide range of wealth management firms and institutional investors.

In this role, Mr. Silva is responsible for achieving business results for Fidelity Institutional, Institutional Wealth Management Services, and Asset Management through world-class modern marketing strategies and differentiated digital customer experiences that generate brand awareness, engagement, demand, and retention with current and prospective clients in the wealth and investment management industry.

Prior to assuming responsibility as the head of Digital Engagement, Mr. Silva joined Fidelity in 2019 and served as vice president of Campaign and Content Marketing for Fidelity Institutional. Before joining Fidelity, Mr. Silva was the vice president of Marketing at Honeywell, leading all marketing functions for the safety and productivity business unit.

Mr. Silva earned his bachelor of science degree in industrial technology management with a minor in communications from Rhode Island College. He has also received executive leadership program certifications through UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, and the Financial Industry Executive Leadership Program through SIFMA and the Wharton School. He also holds the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Series 7 and 24 licenses.

Ashley Cheretes is Prudential Financial's first Director of Generative AI, where she pioneers the strategy and implementation of generative AI tools and technology across one of the world's leading financial institutions. In this groundbreaking role, Ashley leads enterprise-wide AI initiatives that transform customer experiences, redefine marketing strategies, and unlock growth opportunities across creative development, sales enablement, and customer experience.

With deep expertise in large language models, AI agents, and responsible AI deployment, Ashley ensures that emerging technologies deliver measurable business value while maintaining regulatory compliance and ethical standards. Her work is setting new standards for how Fortune 500 financial institutions can successfully navigate the complexities of AI adoption at scale.

Prior to leading Prudential's generative AI initiatives, Ashley served as Marketing Director for Digital Strategy at Prudential Advisors, where she drove digital transformation initiatives supporting 3,000 financial professionals nationwide and generated significant growth in advisor recruitment and client acquisition.

Ben Hunt is co-founder of Perscient, an AI research firm that pioneered the use of language models and unstructured data analysis for investment strategies. He founded Epsilon Theory in 2013, a newsletter and website read by more than 100,000 professional investors and allocators for its application of narrative and game theory to market dynamics.

Ben has managed a billion-dollar hedge fund and served as chief strategist and chief risk officer for a $13 billion asset manager. He has researched narrative and unstructured data for more than 30 years, beginning with his doctoral work at Harvard University. Before entering finance, he was a tenured professor of political science and has co-founded three technology companies built on his research.

Paul Magnone leads global strategic alliances at Google, building partnerships across artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and emerging technologies. With over 30 years in the field, he has a track record of translating complex technology into business impact.

Co-author of Decisions Over Decimals: Striking the Balance Between Intuition and Information (Wiley, 2022) and Drinking from the Fire Hose: Making Smarter Decisions Without Drowning in Information (Portfolio/Penguin, 2011), Paul and his co-authors developed "Quantitative Intuition" (QI), a framework for combining data science with executive judgment.

At IBM, he launched four global consulting practices that generated over $1 billion in new revenue. He also held leadership roles at Deloitte Consulting and several startups. Paul holds four patents and has mentored in the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program.

At Columbia Business School, Paul teaches courses on data-driven decision-making and quantitative intuition. He serves on the Management Board of Advisors for Stevens Institute of Technology's School of Business, where he earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering and M.S. in Technology Management.

His work has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, and at industry conferences worldwide.

Richard Kerr is a partner at Haynes Boone, where he is a member of the Asset Management and Investment Funds practice group. Richard focuses his practice on counseling registered investment companies, including mutual funds and exchange traded funds, investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other financial institutions.

Richard's practice encompasses the spectrum of corporate, regulatory, and compliance matters affecting client operations, marketing, and distribution due to SEC, FINRA, NSCC, bank, and state regulation. Additionally, Richard frequently advises ETFs, investment advisers, broker-dealers, and other financial institutions regarding the US federal securities law implications of their cryptocurrency, digital assets, and blockchain related activities.

Richard also has significant boardroom experience, including providing counsel to the independent directors of mutual funds and exchange traded funds clients, and the boards of directors of banking clients. Richard earned his J.D. from Suffolk University Law School, cum laude, and his B.A. from Boston University.

Rick Lake is founder of Narrative Alpha, a consultancy that builds thought leadership, digital distribution strategies, and communications programs for asset managers and alternative investment sponsors. He is the creator of the Promptwright™ framework and the 7 Prompt Archetypes, tools that help financial professionals harness generative AI to accelerate growth.

Rick co-founded Lake Partners Inc., one of the early alternative investment consulting firms, growing it from startup to over 5 billion in advisory assets. He co-launched one of the first daily liquid alts fund-of-funds, achieving a 5-star Morningstar rating and more than 550 million in assets. He has testified at the SEC Hedge Fund Roundtable and co-edited a foundational reference book on private equity and venture capital.

Rick has lectured at Boston University's Digital Business Institute and spoken at the Morningstar Investment Conference, LinkedIn, MIT, Yale, and the London Business School. His work has been featured in Barron's, Bloomberg TV, and other national media.

A Harvard graduate in Folklore & Mythology, Rick studies how narrative patterns and oral tradition inform modern AI architecture, recasting timeless storytelling frameworks as practical tools for the age of AI.