Advisory Board

Rob currently serves as the Chief Investment Officer at Integrated Financial Partners. As the CIO, he leads discussion of macroeconomic, capital market, and behavioral finance decision-making issues with clients, advisers, business partners, and the press. Rob directs the Integrated Financial Partners investment management department. In that role, he provides leadership for investment product development and evolution, asset management strategy, and prospective macroeconomic and capital market assessment, to assure that Integrated’s investment platform best supports its more holistic approach to wealth management and advice planning.

Rob is a senior level investment professional with over 3 decades of experience in portfolio management for large, sophisticated foundations, endowments, pensions, and the ultra-high net worth. Prior to Integrated Financial Partners, he held executive positions with United Capital, Genworth Financial, SEI, Envestnet, and the CFA Institute, where he directed the ongoing development of the educational curriculum for the CFA certification program and its examination.

During his tenure with United Capital, he directed the investment management department, a team that included 9 CFA® Charterholders who oversaw $18.6 billion. While at Genworth, Rob served as the Chief Investment Officer directing a $7.5 billion institutional portfolio of domestic and international securities. At SEI, he worked as the Managing Director of SEI’s Research Department that supported the wealth management needs of over $300 billion of pension, endowment, and foundation assets under advisement. At Envestnet, Rob served as the Chairman – Investment Policy Committee, Executive Vice President, and Senior Managing Director – Consulting Division for PMC International (later acquired by Envestnet), where he led the investment decision-making for a $3.3 billion portfolio. Rob also worked in the public sector, where he held the position of Chief Investment Officer for one of our nation’s larger state public pension plans, the Arizona Public Safety Personnel Retirement System.

Prior to joining the investments industry, Rob served as a Professor of Finance at the University of Colorado in Boulder from 1985 through 1989. During this time, he held a faculty position within the graduate school and taught students at the PhD, MBA, and undergraduate levels.

He is a member of the Financial Management Association and the Financial Planning Association. Rob has completed Six Sigma Quality Control training with General Electric and holds GE’s Green Belt process management designation. He also maintains his FINRA Series 7, 63, and 65 securities licenses.

Rob serves as an Editorial Board member for the Journal of Investing, Journal of Finance and Market, and International Journal of Economics, Finance and Management Sciences. His publications have appeared in the Journal of Derivatives and Hedge Funds, Journal of Investing, Journal of Investment Consulting, Pensions & Investments, FA Magazine, RIA Central, On Wall Street Magazine, Royal Alliance Associates Sourcebook, Bank Investment Consultant, Investment News Magazine, London Financial Times, Financial Planning, Financial Advisor, Journal of Finance and Market, and Journal of Financial Planning.

Professor Becker has over 24 years’ experience working in high technology and quantitative asset management industries. Before joining academic as a fulltime professor of finance practice in 2014, Professor Becker was a managing director and a senior management group member of State Street Global Advisor, where she was leading a global team using advanced technologies to research, develop, and apply quantitative investment strategies on hundred-billion dollars of global equity asset under management. Many of these models and strategies have been and are still applied on managing billions of US dollars for institutional clients worldwide. She pioneered the US Dynamic Equity investment product that has been categorized as “the category king” and as the top 10% among similar investment products. Another hedge fund strategy Dr. Becker has developed based on Genetic Programming Methodology resulted in superior risk-return performance than a conventional active investment model. With significant investment practitioner expertise and many years of applied research experience, Professor Becker brings a unique blend of skills, knowledge, and industrial best practices to the education field.

Dr. Becker also serves as an independent director and senior consultant for a Hong Kong based hedge fund, and advises several Fintech startups.

Dr. Becker earned a PhD in chemical engineering from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in finance from Brandeis University. She also holds a BS and MS in chemical engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China. Dr. Becker’s research has been published in various peer-reviewed journals and books and is a frequent speaker at academic and practitioner conferences.

Michael A. Goldstein is a Professor of Finance at Babson College, where he holds the Donald P. Babson Chair in Applied Investments and serves as Faculty Director of the Master of Science in Finance program.  Dr. Goldstein’s research specialties are market microstructure and climate change and has published in major finance and science journals.  He is an Editor at Weather, Climate, and Society (a journal of the American Meteorological Association) and was recently chosen as the next Editor of The Financial Review, as well as being an Associate Editor at a number of journals.  Dr. Goldstein currently serves as Chair of the Financial Regulatory Authority (FINRA) Economic Advisory Committee, and was formerly Chair of Nasdaq’s Economic Advisory Board and was the Visiting Economist at the New York Stock Exchange. He is Chair of the Trustees and immediate past-President of the Eastern Finance Association.  He has also served as a member of US SEC roundtables on fixed income markets (2013), market structure (2010) and on decimalization (2000).  He has received three U.S. National Science Foundation grants on Arctic climate change.  Dr. Goldstein received a B.S., an M.B.A., an M.A., and a Ph.D. in Finance from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.