Michael Nicks

Deputy CIO

Pepperdine University Endowment

Michael Nicks is the Director of Investments for Pepperdine University’s Endowment. He is responsible for the endowment’s hedge fund investments, including the portable alpha strategy and a diversifying portfolio of market-independent investments. In addition, he is responsible for modelling, quantitative analysis and special investment projects for the overall portfolio. In 2015, he was named one of Trusted Insight’s Top 30 University Endowment Investors in Hedge Funds. He began managing this portfolio in 2005, and has been with the University since 2003. In addition to his investment duties, Mr. Nicks has taught investments at Pepperdine, served on the curriculum committee and as a senior grader for the Chartered Alternative Investments Analyst (CAIA) designation, and is a current member of the Alternative Investment Management Association (AIMA) Investor Steering Committee. Mr. Nicks earned his B.S. and M.B.A. (Finance) from Pepperdine’s Graziadio School of Business, and holds both the CAIA and CFA charters.

Alan Weinfeld

Partner

Invesco Private Capital

Alan Weinfeld is a Partner at Invesco Private Capital. In this role, he shares responsibility for portfolio management, including sourcing, portfolio allocation, investment due diligence, as well as post-investment monitoring of partnership funds and direct investments. He is active in the group’s marketing and fundraising activities. Mr. Weinfeld is also a member of the Investment Committee.

Mr. Weinfeld joined Invesco in 2020. Prior to joining the firm, he was an investment partner at Gatewood Capital Partners, a private equity firm focused on seeding emerging managers, where he played a role in the origination and execution of private equity and private credit seed fund investments. In addition, Mr. Weinfeld shared responsibility for fundraising and marketing as well as the firm’s underlying fund relationships. Before that, he was a partner and managing director at GoldPoint Partners, New York Life’s private equity manager. Mr. Weinfeld spent 13 years at Franklin Templeton Investments, where he held several senior positions with a focus on private equity and investor relations. He has been in the industry since 1997.

Mr. Weinfeld earned a BA degree, magna cum laude, from Tulane University. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) charterholder.

Charlie Morris

Co-Founder

CMCC Global

Charlie is the co-founder of CMCC Global, a blockchain asset management company that manages three digital asset funds as well as the Liberty Bitcoin Fund. CMCC Global was founded in Hong Kong in 2016 and today has offices in Asia and North America. It has a particular focus on Fintech innovation in Asia. Charlie’s background as both a software engineer and management consultant allows him to combine a deep technical understanding of blockchain technology with the ability to evaluate its business implications.

Charlie’s involvement in the blockchain space has included advising financial institutions, developing blockchain applications and investing in companies and protocols. He has given keynote addresses at the CLSA Investor Conference, Franklin Templeton annual offsite and the Global Investment Forum. He has also presented to senior management at many large institutions including Fidelity, Putnam Investments and Wellington Management.

Dan Zuller

Portfolio Manager

Galaxy Vision Hill

David Pakman

Managing Partner

CoinFund

As a Managing Partner at CoinFund in New York, David focuses on early stage venture investing in crypto and blockchain technologies. He joined CoinFund in October 2021 after 13 years of venture investing at Venrock. His active investments include Dapper Labs, FLOW, Rarible, Running Tide and Simbe Robotics. His is also a Board Member of Arduino. He led both the Series A and Series B rounds in Dollar Shave Club and sat on the board until that company was acquired by Unilever for $1B in July of 2016. In April 2017, he was named the 55th top venture capitalist in the world by CB Insights. Spurred by his computer science background and entrepreneurial experience as co-founder of Myplay and then CEO of eMusic, David developed an early interest in mining Bitcoin and then building ethereum mining rigs. This led to his first crypto investment in 2017. He has been focused on layer one smart contract platforms, Web 3.0 infrastructure and has been particularly prescient on consumer adoption of NFTs. While much of his early venture career was focused on traditional tech investments, the last several years he has found more and more compelling investment opportunities in the broader crypto ecosystem, a trend that led David to more recently shift his focus entirely to the emergent technology. Before Myplay, he was Vice President at N2K Entertainment, which created the first digital music download service. He also was the co-creator of Apple’s Music Group and a product manager at Apple. Pakman is a graduate of and a former member of the Board of Overseers at University of Pennsylvania’s School of Engineering and Applied Science with a degree in Computer Science Engineering and is an active drummer. He testified in front of Congress regarding internet music streaming in 2012, 2016 and 2017. He is a Trustee of St. Luke’s School in Connecticut. David blogs at http://www.pakman.com and tweets at @pakman.