Adrian Craciun, External Representative

Adrian is a Vice President at PIMCO in the Risk and Controls group where he manages the firm's  global forensic testing program as well as other firm strategic projects. Previously, Adrian was part of PIMCO's Advisory team where he worked on the Commercial Paper Federal Funding (CPFF) mandate.  Additionally, he also supported with the launch of PIMCO's equity business. Adrian started at PIMCO as an Analyst in the Portfolio Compliance team, overseeing 40-Act client relationships. Prior to PIMCO, he worked as a research analyst for Powers Capital Investment, conducting equity analysis and assisting with portfolio management duties. In addition to his professional and educational development, Adrian is committed to giving back to the community. He serves on the board of two California-based non-profit organizations - Project Access and Future Leaders of Our Community. Adrian graduated from Chapman University in 2000 with a B.S. in Business Administration and an emphasis in Finance.

Ryan Hughes, Co-Chief Investment Officer

Ryan graduated from the University of Southern California in 2007 with a B.S. in Business Administration and an emphasis in Entrepreneurial Studies. He began his career at Merrill Lynch as a Junior Partner for a corporate retirement advisory team where he created and implemented a multi-faceted marketing strategy that ultimately resulted in $8MM in net new assets. In October 2008, Ryan transitioned into Private Wealth Management by working with high net worth individuals at Morgan Stanley. He eventually accepted a position at Charles Schwab in 2010 as a Vice President - Financial Consultant where he managed over $300MM in assets and was a Circle of Excellence recipient for his outstanding performance in client service and productivity. Prior to working in finance, Ryan completed two deployments to the Persian Gulf as a Second Class Petty Officer in the United States Navy. He was a Visit, Board, Search, and Seizure (VBSS) Team Member and a recipient of the Letter of Appreciation for the safe transfer of 15 alleged Al-Qaeda detainees and confiscation of 2800 pounds of contraband.  

Mahyar Kargar, Co-Risk Manager

Mahyar received an M.S. degree from the University of Southern California and a Ph.D. degree from the University of California, Irvine both in electrical engineering. He is currently pursuing his MBA degree at the UCLA Anderson School of Management with a concentration in finance. During his time as a PhD student at UCI, he joined ClariPhy Communications in Irvine, CA and worked on the first state of the art monolithic DSP-based optical transceiver enabling data transmission over multimode optical fiber links. After completing his Ph.D. degree, he joined Broadcom Corporation in Irvine, CA as a staff analog circuit designer and worked on various projects for the Infrastructure and Networking business unit. He is currently a senior staff scientist at Broadcom leading engineering teams responsible for designing various high-speed transceivers for 40G-100G optical communication standards. After graduating from Anderson, he intends to leverage his strong quantitative background to begin a career in the investment management industry.

Doug Longo, Vice-President

Doug began his career as an Associate for Bear Stearns & Co. at its world headquarters in New York City, where he completed a three-year Fixed Income Management Training Program. During the three-year program, Doug gained experience across all credit markets to include corporate, municipal, mortgage-backed and government debt.  His ultimate destination was as an Associate on the U.S. Treasury and Agency Security trading desk.  In November 2006, Doug joined Bear Stearns's Century City office and later transitioned to Merrill Lynch in April 2008.  With his experience in the fixed income markets, Doug develops and manages a fixed income portfolio with approximately $400 million in assets.  Prior to working on Wall Street, Doug was one of the youngest Sergeants in the history of the United States Marine Corps, and was awarded a Navy Achievement Medal for leading his platoon on multiple operations in the Middle East.  Doug earned a B.S. in Finance on an academic and athletic scholarship at C.W. Post.

Felix Lorenzo, Guest Speaker Coordinator

Felix is a full-time MBA student at UCLA Anderson focusing on finance. Prior to enrolling at UCLA Anderson, he spent four years in portfolio management and equity research at LarrainVial, the biggest Chilean Investment Bank.  During his time there, his investment team was the most awarded in the mutual fund industry and their two funds were rated five stars by Mornigstar. He managed long only and long-short equity funds totaling $340 million (USD). Previously he worked for BBVA Bank in Equity Research covering forestry and mining sectors. His first working experience was as an investment analyst for a mining company.  He holds M.S. in Engineering and a Civil Industrial Engineering degree from Pontificia Universidad Catolica of Chile.

Ryan Moore, Internal Representative 

Ryan completed his undergraduate degree in Managerial Economics at UC Davis, where he also played four years of college basketball.  After graduation, Ryan spent a year playing professional basketball in Mexico's Liga Nacional de Baloncesto Profesional and also spent time playing in Argentina.  He then went on to pursue a career in the financial industry at Merrill Lynch, where he was a financial advisor for 5 years.  Ryan currently works at The Capital Group since 2011 in fixed income trading.  In his spare time, he enjoys playing basketball, fly-fishing, and spending time with his wife.

Austin Myers, Co-Chief Investment Officer

 Austin is VP of Fixed Income Sales for Wells Fargo Securities in Los Angeles.  His primary responsibilities include marketing fixed income securities to institutional investors including banks, investment managers and insurance companies and helping buy-side clients find securities that exploit their macro views.    Austin specializes in structured products, including residential MBS, consumer ABS and high grade and high yield credit.  Austin has been with Wells Fargo Securities for 7 years, previously holding Associate and Analyst roles in the same group.   Austin Myers is a graduate of UC Santa Barbara with a degree in Business Economics.  Austin also holds the CFA designation and is pursuing an MBA at the UCLA Anderson School of Management with a specialization in Finance.

Farshid Poursartip, Firm Visit Coordinator

Farshid is the portfolio manager and lead Risk manager for ASAM F-score strategy fund. He is currently working on his MBA at UCLA Anderson.  He is a Certification/Project Manager with over 10 years' experience managing and consulting in Aerospace/Defense industry with wide analytical skills and capable to identify problems and effectively implement solutions. He has achieved Federal Aviation Administration Designation in age of 27, which is the highest recognition and designation in Aerospace & Aviation industry. As a portfolio manager for F-Score strategy fund, he is in charge of due diligence and finding undervalued and out of favor companies using quantitative and fundamental bottom up approach and assessing acquisition viability. He controls the risk of the portfolio using forward looking implied volatility and forward looking beta from derivative market. He has strong analytical and quantitative skills to analyze complex risk assessment problems and synthesize creative solutions. He has a passion for financial markets and strong interest in value investing.

Farshid received a Master Degree in Computer Engineering from University of Southern California and holds a B.S in Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering from Sharif University of Technology.

Carl Rodrigues, Buffet Visit Coordinator 

Carl graduated from Tufts University in 2006 with a B.S. in Electrical Engineering. After graduating, Carl joined Lockheed Martin as a hardware design engineer for the PAC-3 project.  He also earned an M.S. in Electrical Engineering in 2008 from Tufts University while working full time for Lockheed Martin.  In 2008 he left Lockheed Martin to join Goldman Sachs in their Prime Brokerage Operations group, and in 2010 he was promoted to the front office as a Client Service Representative in the Securities Division.  This past summer, Carl interned with the Business and Valuations Group at OneWest Bank.  While at UCLA Anderson, Carl has focused on applying his quantitative skills to Finance.

Julian Serafini, Co-Risk Manager

Julian graduated from Worcester Polytechnic Institute in 2003 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering and from the University of Southern California with a M.S. in Systems Engineering in 2007.  Julian has held a variety of roles while working at Northrop Grumman for the past 8 years; he is currently a section manager for 13 employees and works in business development.  While at UCLA Anderson, Julian is focusing on developing his finance skills and is currently a CFA Level II Candidate.  For the past 10 years, Julian has successfully managed his personal portfolio and actively trades futures.

Brian Sterz 

Brian has nearly 10 years of experience in the investment management industry which has included derivatives trading, institutional investment consulting, and for the past four years, fixed income portfolio management at EP Wealth Advisors in Los Angeles. Brian attained the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation while working at Callan Associates, an investment consulting firm in San Francisco, after graduating from UC Berkeley. He completed an Ironman Triathlon as a member of Team-In-Training, while fundraising to support the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. Brian was born in Santa Monica.

Tom Tarnacki, VP of Marketing

Tom graduated from The University of Dayton in 2003 with a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering.  He immediately went to work as a rocket sled test engineer and analyst for the United States Air Force at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico designing multi-million dollar missile testing programs.  In the middle of his time working for the Air Force, Tom graduated from The University of Michigan in 2005 with an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering concentrating in control theory.  After another year and a half in New Mexico, he moved to San Diego and began working as a design engineer for Hewlett-Packard, designing multi-million dollar printing systems.  During his time at UCLA Anderson, Tom has worked to leverage his strong quantitative background and focus on developing a career in investment management.  He currently a CFA Level II candidate and lives in San Diego with his wife.

Andy Yin, President

Andy currently works at PIMCO as a Project Manager in the Business Solutions Group focused primarily on process improvement and implementation of long term technology initiatives. He joined the firm in 2008 as a Portfolio Compliance Analyst and was instrumental in developing a security downgrades database as well as other critical firm-wide compliance initiatives. Prior to that, he worked as a Business Analyst at Countrywide Capital Markets in the Trading Analytics department where he worked alongside traders, quantitative modelers, and developers. He has prior experience in mortgage servicing rights valuation at Indymac Bank and also worked as a Research Analyst at William O'Neil + Co. He graduated from UC Riverside with a bachelor's degree in Business Administration with a minor in Economics. He is also the Investment Finance Association FEMBA 2013 Director.  He is currently a CFA Level II Candidate.

Ksenia Yudina, VP of Recruiting

Ksenia is currently running her own Real Estate company, Exodus Real Estate, which specializes in short sales of distressed properties. Prior to launching her own business, Ksenia was a Loan Officer at Finance Connection where she was responsible for performing a desk top underwriting and presenting loan packages to residential lenders. In addition, she is managing $700,000 portfolio of mutual funds and ETFs incorporating top-down fundamental analysis and market research. Ksenia is a CFA Level II Candidate and Director of Investment Finance Association at UCLA.

Bin Zhou 

Bin is a full time MBA student of class 2013. Prior to Anderson, he worked at a joint venture of Citi Bank & Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, where he started from Management Associate program. After two years rotation in all business functions, he moved to risk management, focusing on credit policy analysis and quantitative modeling. At the same time, he also acted as compliance manager, monitoring all the process within the department. He is a candidate of Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) Level III. After graduating from Anderson, he plans to begin his finance career in investment management industry. Bin earned his B.E. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Nanjing University of Technology and M.A. degree in Economics from Peking University in 2006.