Rowena Rothman is a Senior Vice President within the Funds Management group of BBH Investment Management (“IM”) responsible for the BBH Luxembourg Funds (“UCITS”) in a relationship management capacity acting as the primary interface with its various key stakeholders and service partners including the UCITS’ Board, Management Company, central administrator, 3rd-party marketers, etc. In this capacity, Rowena leads / coordinates the implementation of mission-critical initiatives and projects (e.g., exploration of new investment vehicles, marketing channels, jurisdictions, new service provider onboarding, sub fund launches, etc.). and strives to ensure the timely, effective and cost-efficient delivery of IM solutions to clients. Rowena has recently assumed (in 2022) oversight responsibility for BBH IM’s pricing team which involves oversight of 3rd-party pricing vendors for fixed income and equity asset classes and fair value responsibilities.

Rowena is an active member of IM’s ESG Oversight Committee which monitors IM’s ESG integration activities, regulatory developments, industry best practices and data research tools with the objective of continually enhancing IM’s overall ESG program. The committee also facilitates ESG knowledge-building through team training sessions and ensures that IM’s ESG initiatives are appropriately reflected in its engagement with other industry participants, marketing collateral and client reporting frameworks. 

Rowena is also a member of IM’s Valuation Oversight Committee, a Co-Chair of BBH’s Women’s Network (NY Chapter) and a member of IM’s Diversity and Inclusion Committee. 

Prior to joining BBH IM in June 2016, Rowena served as the Assistant Treasurer of the US “40Act” funds, Controller for the private real estate funds and Conducting Officer for the then self-managed UCITS. 

Rowena joined BBH in September 2009. Prior to that she was a finance consultant for The Siegfried Group, a Corporate Banker for Citigroup and had a long career in internal audit. 

Rowena graduated from the University of Santo Tomas in Manila, Philippines (Bachelor of Science in Commerce) and held a CPA license in the Philippines (no longer active).

Gildas Blanchard is Head of Industry Affairs of ALFI, the Association of the Luxembourg Fund Industry, specialized in risk management and digitalisation. He joined the association in December 2021. Before joining ALFI, Gildas was Senior Manager at Deloitte Luxembourg within the Capital Market department of the advisory practice, responsible for risk management advisory and quantitative solutions for the investment fund industry. Prior and aside to these mandates, Gildas is from an academic background in empirical quantitative research. Gildas teaches at several higher education institutions financial economics related modules and holds a Master degree in finance from the University of Durham (UK) and obtained a Ph.D degree from the University of Maastricht (NL) for his applied research on risk management and option markets which has been published in international academic journals.

Michael Derwael is Senior Director and Independent Risk Officer for MFS Investment Management with multi-jurisdictional coverage and Conducting Person in charge of Risk Management and Valuation for the Luxembourg-based management company. He has been with MFS since 2019. He has 20+ years’ experience in the financial industry and, prior to joining MFS, helped build up risk practices at Lombard Odier Investment Managers, Luxcellence, Amundi and Quintet. Michael is an ALRiM board member and co-chair of the ALFI Liquidity Risks working group. He is an adjunct professor at the University of Luxembourg, trainer at House of Training and holds the FRM and CEFA certifications.

Mr. Yurtkap is the Conducting Officer responsible for Risk Management at AllianceBernstein (Luxembourg) S.à r.l. since February 2022. Prior to his tenure at AllianceBernstein, Mr. Yurtkap was the Head-of-Risk at Franklin Templeton Luxembourg and a risk officer at Andbank asset management Luxembourg. Mr. Yurtkap holds a BA in Economics from the University of Rennes and a Msc in Finance from the University of Strasbourg.