Leadership Advisory Group

Managing Director, Head of the Retirement Group, BlackRock

Anne Ackerley, Managing Director, is Head of the Retirement Group at BlackRock. Anne leads the firm’s US defined contribution business, serving millions of retirement investors through their 401(K) or other workplace savings plan. Together with the retirement insurance business, her team aims to tackle the industry’s toughest challenges. She is one of the founding members of BlackRock’s Women’s Initiative Network and the Financial Inclusion Network and was recently recognized by Barron’s as one of the 100 most influential women in finance for the fourth year in a row.

Over her 30 years in the financial services industry, Anne has held numerous leadership positions and has been with BlackRock since 2000. She has a proven track record of integrating teams and businesses, including three critical acquisitions made by BlackRock. Anne is a recognized leader and frequent speaker and writer about retirement readiness and women's leadership. She is a member of the advisory board for the Aspen Institute Forum on Retirement Savings, serves on the World Economic Forum’s Longevity Economy Steering group and is a board observer for Human Interest. Outside the industry, she is a trustee of the Mosaic Mental Health Association.

Anne has an MBA and a BA from Harvard University and resides in New York.

Chief Investment Officer, Raytheon Technologies

Diamonte joined Raytheon Technologies (RTX) as Chief Investment Officer in December 2004. She is responsible for overseeing Raytheon’s $115+B in global retirement assets. This includes $44B in domestic pension plans, $5B in foreign and non-qualified pension plans and $48B in the defined contribution plan. Diamonte serves on RTX’s Finance Leadership Team and their Global DE&I Advisory Board.

Prior to joining Raytheon, she spent thirteen years with Verizon Investment Management. She served as Managing Director of Global Investments, responsible for asset allocation and management for their $40B pension plan.

In 2013, Robin was appointed by President Obama and served as a member and chair of the Advisory Committee for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation for six years. Ms. Diamonte has been an Independent Director of Morningstar, Inc. since December 2015. She also serves on the board for the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets (CIEBA), representing more than 100 of the country’s largest private sector retirement funds on fiduciary and investment issues in Washington. Robin also serves on the board of Miss Porters School where her daughter attends. Diamonte earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering and her MBA in finance from the University of New Haven.

CEO and Founder, FinHabits

Carlos Armando Garcia is the CEO and Founder of Finhabits, a Latino-focused investment platform. Carlos is passionate about making financial services more accessible and inclusive with the use of technology and education. Carlos has been the founder of 3 fintech companies and he was named by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2020. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.

Executive Vice President of Public Policy, Retirement Clearinghouse

Renée Wilder Guerin is Retirement Clearinghouse’s Executive Vice President of Public Policy, focused on advancing retirement savings public policy matters that preserve retirement savings and increase retirement security for all Americans. Wilder Guerin is also a member of the firm's Executive Leadership Team.

Prior to joining RCH, Wilder Guerin was Director, Office of Enterprise Planning for the Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board, responsible for driving the vision, strategy and execution for the Thrift Savings Plan (TSP), the nation’s largest defined contribution plan. Under her leadership in multiple roles, Wilder delivered results that improved the quality of life for millions of people, while managing strategic operations and overseeing dozens of development initiatives from their conception through to their implementation.

Prior to joining the TSP, Wilder Guerin was the Executive Director & CEO of the National Tax-Deferred Savings Association, an organization focused on §403(b) and §457(b) retirement markets. During a career with Metropolitan Life, Wilder Guerin was an Officer in MetLife Resources, where she was responsible for product development, marketing and communications in the healthcare, higher education and non-profit sectors. Before joining MLR, Wilder Guerin worked in MetLife’s fixed income investment management subsidiary as a product manager and in the Corporate Investment department as an investment manager and analyst.

Wilder Guerin received her BA from Duke University, and MBA from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University

Principal
Groom Law Group

Michael Kreps is Co-chair of Groom’s Retirement Services & Fiduciary Group, and he works with a wide variety of clients on complex retirement and health plan issues. His firsthand experience with the legislative and regulatory process gives him a perspective that is often instrumental in helping clients develop and implement effective compliance and advocacy strategies.

Michael advises many of the country’s largest benefit plans and service providers on issues related to plan governance, administration, funding, and restructuring. Michael is an expert on benefit plan recordkeeping and the development of complex financial and insurance products. He also serves as fund counsel to some of the largest benefit plans in the country, including public retirement systems and VEBAs. Michael helps clients address complex pension funding challenges for both single employer and Taft-Hartley (multiemployer) plans, and he has been involved in over a dozen distress terminations before the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC).

As a zealous advocate, Michael routinely represents clients before regulators and Congress. He has successfully navigated dozens of Department of Labor (DOL) investigations, including a large number of service provider “book of business” audits. Michael also has secured federal legislation on behalf of clients to, among other things, change the pension funding rules for community newspapers, facilitate retirement plan participation by homecare workers, and provide pension funding relief to a national non-profit.

From the 111th through the 114th Congresses, Michael served as the Senior Pensions and Employment Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions. He managed all aspects of the Committee’s retirement agenda and had primary staff responsibility for pension legislation.

Michael is a graduate of the George Washington University Law School (JD with honors), the University of Colorado (with distinction), and the Sorensen Institute Political Leaders Program.

Founder and CEO, OfColor

Yemi Rose is the founder and CEO of OfColor. Through its digital financial wellness platform, OfColor supports workers of color with fintech saving and budgeting tools, in-person financial coaching and therapy, and expert financial literacy content produced by a team that understands their lived experience.

Yemi has spent almost two decades at the intersection of financial services and communications focused on financial wellness, most recently as Vice President of Financial Wellness Enterprise Initiatives in Prudential Financial’s Global Communications group. In that role, he led the development of Prudential’s “Financial Wellness Census” research project, as well as “The Cut,” which focused on underserved consumers. He writes and speaks extensively on the racial wealth gap, and his writings on the subject have been published in Time Magazine, Black Enterprise, TechCrunch, BenefitsPro, The Root, Blavity, Employee Benefits News, and Money.com. After beginning his career as a Capital Markets Intelligence Associate for Thomson Financial, Yemi served as an Investor Relations Director for several top-tier financial communications agencies before moving to in-house roles. He has served as a senior executive at KPMG and BlackRock Inc., where he helped them maximize the value of their acquisitions and fintech ventures. Yemi holds a bachelor's and master’s degree from Cornell University. He was born and raised in Jamaica, and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Vice President, Head of Retirement Strategy for Morningstar

Jim Smith is Vice President, Head of Retirement Strategy for North America for Morningstar’s retirement solutions. In his current role, Smith works closely with research and product development to address service needs of Morningstar clients in North America around retirement planning, fiduciary services, retirement income and retirement plan needs.

Prior to joining Ibbotson, Smith was Vice President of client services at ABN AMRO Asset Management, where he managed a team of relationship managers who provided recordkeeping and investment management services to plan sponsors. He has more than 20 years of experience in the field of retirement plan administration, retirement services, and investment management.

Mr. Smith holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Minnesota.

Vice President
Head of Product Strategy and Solution Delivery
Empower

Anne Thibeault is the Vice President and Head of Product Strategy and Solution Delivery for Empower. In her role, she focuses on workplace solutions that enable financial freedom for individuals and create better outcomes for institutions sponsoring and supporting workplace plans. In addition to developing an overarching product and financial wellness strategy, her leadership spans customer and market strategies, acquisition-driven product integration initiatives, and product deployment capabilities.

Anne joined Empower in 2022. Prior to joining Empower, she worked at Prudential Retirement, where she led digital product capabilities, overseeing strategy and delivery of individual and institutional digital platforms. Anne also served as head of Financial Wellness Deployment across Prudential’s U.S. institutional businesses, enabling employers to improve the financial well-being of their employees through new capabilities, solutions, and insight-driven strategies. She led change and drove results across a variety of functions, including service, product, and distribution, in addition to serving as Chief of Staff to the President of Prudential Retirement.

Anne serves as Executive Chair of the Connecticut Insurance and Financial Services Executive Committee and is a member of the Stonehill College President’s Advisory Council.

Retirement Program Director
RetirePath Virginia
Peter S. Thompson is the Program Director for RetirePath Virginia, the Commonwealth of Virginia’s automatic-enrollment, state-facilitated retirement savings program for private sector workers. RetirePath is designed to expand access to retirement savings and provide more Virginians with a path to economic security. State legislation directs Virginia529 to establish and oversee RetirePath.

Peter boasts 25+ years of public and private sector experience in the areas of defined benefit and defined contribution plan administration, insurance, investments and employee benefits.

Prior to joining Virginia529, Peter served as the Defined Contribution (DC) Plans Administrative and Services Supervisor with the Virginia Retirement System, one of the largest public or private pension funds in the U.S. As a member of the DC Plans leadership team, Peter supported agency leadership in executing on strategic initiatives and organizational performance objectives specific to the administration of eight defined contribution plans with an aggregate value of $7.3 billion as of June 30, 2021, including the Commonwealth of Virginia 457 Deferred Compensation Plan, the Virginia 401(a) Cash Match Plan, the 401(a) Optional Retirement Plan for Higher Education, and the VRS Hybrid Retirement Plan.

In the private sector, Peter brings to Virginia529 previous experience as an entrepreneur and business owner as well as work experience with several Fortune 500 companies, including UnitedHealthcare, Northwestern Mutual and Prudential. As a licensed insurance professional and registered representative, he previously held the Investment Company and Variable Contracts Products Representative (Series 6) and Uniform Securities Agent (Series 63) FINRA-administered licenses.

Peter earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Loyola University New Orleans.

He also completed the Executive Program in Financial Planning and earned the Certificate in Financial Planning from The Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.

President of Prudential Retirement Strategies, Prudential Financial

Dylan Tyson is president of Prudential Retirement Strategies, which delivers industry-leading retirement strategies for growth and protection to individuals and institutions. Retirement Strategies serves more than 2 million customers and provides retirement income of more than $15 billion annually. Tyson joined Prudential in 1995 and has held advancing leadership roles, most recently as president of Prudential Annuities. Previously, he worked in Prudential’s international businesses, where he served as president and CEO of Prudential of Taiwan and chief strategy officer for Prudential Life Insurance of Korea.

Before that, Tyson held leadership roles with Prudential’s retirement businesses, including senior vice president and head of Pension Risk Transfer, during which he led the breakthrough General Motors pension risk transfer transaction, among others. Throughout his career, he developed broad experience with guaranteed products, with overall accountability for Prudential’s Payout Annuities, Structured Settlement and Institutional Stable Value product lines. He also led business development for Prudential’s Institutional Investment Products. Tyson received his bachelor’s degree with high honors from Stanford University, and an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA. He is a CFA® Charterholder.

Head of Retirement Research and Inclusion Transformation, Bank of America

Kai began his career as an executive within the Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Investment Management organization and recently served as Enterprise Relationships Director. Kai also served as the National Director of Institutional Client Relationships and was responsible for coordinating the service and acquisition functions of the institutional and national client segment which maintained over $200B in assets and 4M accounts under management. Kai holds a B.S. in Mathematics from Gordon College and maintains certification in Economics from the University of Wisconsin. Kai also maintains his series 7, 66 and 24 registrations with FINRA. Kai is also and an acting member of the American Economic Association, Society of Human Resources and the Florida Council on Aging.

Karen Biddle Andres

Director, Impact Strategy and Partnerships
& Project Director, Retirement Savings Initiative at the Aspen Financial Security Program

Jack VanDerhei
Director, Retirement Center and Public Policy at Morningstar Investment Management LLC

Aron Szapiro

Head of Government Affairs at Morningstar Inc.

Pam Hess

Executive Director at the DCIIA Retirement Research Center

Lew Minsky

President and Chief Executive Officer of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association

Ida Rademacher

Vice President, Aspen Institute & Co-Executive Director, Financial Security Program

Kara Watkins

Inclusive Saving and Investing Initiative Lead at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program

Lia Mitchell

Senior Analyst, Policy Research at Morningstar, Inc.

Lisa Massena, CFA

Chief Operating Officer of the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association

Simone Lamont

Research Project Coordinator at the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association