Dave Sekera is the Chief U.S. Market Strategist for Morningstar Research Services LLC. He has held several roles since joining Morningstar in 2010 as a senior securities analyst. Over the past 30 years, he has covered every part of the capital structure from equity to senior secured loans.

Before joining Morningstar, he worked in the alternative asset management space generating capital structure, risk arbitrage, and catalyst driven investment recommendations. His other prior experience includes identifying buy/sell and long/short recommendations for a proprietary trading book and conducting portfolio risk management. He graduated from Miami University and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst® designation.

Taek Lee is the Chief Financial Officer at Gallup. He joined Gallup in 2011 and has held numerous leadership roles globally. Taek is responsible for corporate financial governance and financial analytics to ensure Gallup’s growth. Additionally, he oversees Gallup’s digital and licensing channels. As Chief Financial Officer, Taek’s mission is to set Gallup up for short-term and long-term financial success and sustainable growth into the future.

Prior to his current role, Taek was a Regional Director, leading Gallup’s businesses across central U.S., Latin America, and global licensing. He has extensive experience in Asia where he led Gallup’s consulting group for southeast Asia. He also served as a strategic adviser to senior executives and leaders across numerous industries in Asia, applying Gallup science to help organizations improve business outcomes. Taek specializes in management-level consultancy using Gallup’s workplace and marketplace analytics.

Taek is a member of the CFO Coalition Leadership Group for the United Nations Global Compact, where he has actively engaged in driving global awareness for companies to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals. He is one of the founding members of the Diversity Advisory Council for Gallup. Taek received his bachelor’s degree from Long Beach State University and his master’s in business administration from the Graziadio Business School at Pepperdine University. He is currently a doctoral candidate in organizational leadership at Eastern University.

Mr. Brandt received his BA, Stanford University, 1985, Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. From 1987 to 1990, Mr. Brandt worked as a researcher analyst and writer at the Cuomo Commission on Trade and Competitiveness. From 1990 to 1993, he worked at Farley Capital. Mr. Brandt joined Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb in 1994. Over 25 years experience as a buy-side analyst at a NYC-based company that makes long-term equity investments. A generalist with broad interest and coverage but have an emphasis on conglomerates like Berkshire Hathaway and financial services firms.

Hendrik Leber, founded ACATIS in 1994 after having spent 5 years with McKinsey & Company and 5 years with private bank Metzler. Hendrik Leber received his university education in Saarbrücken, Germany, St. Gallen, Switzerland, Syracuse, NY and Berkeley, CA (on a Fulbright scholarship). He did his Ph.D. thesis in 1983 on Swiss banks in the US securities industry. Having read Warren Buffett's shareholder letters in the 1990s he converted from an efficient market believer into a value investor. ACATIS is a value investment boutique in Germany, offering mutual funds (equities, balanced, fixed income) based on a value approach to public and institutional investors with total assets under management now numbering 3.5 bn USD.

To quote German's eminent writer J.W.v.Goethe, Hendrik Leber is constantly seeking "what holds the world together at the core" using analytical tools from simple statistics to artificial intelligence.

At the Value Investor Conference some ten years ago, Hendrik Leber met photographer Michael O'Brien and commissioned him to take photographs of some of the world's leading investors and investment thinkers. William Green is the author of the accompanying investor profiles. The beautifully designed book "The Great Minds of Investing" will be first shown to the public at this conference.

Robert Beauregard is Chief Investment Officer for Global Alpha and is lead portfolio manager for its global small cap equity strategies. Robert is also responsible for global coverage of the energy and utilities sectors.

Robert brings over 20 years of financial and investment industry experience to the firm. Prior to founding Global Alpha, Robert was Senior Vice President and portfolio manager at Natcan Investment Management where he managed over $1.5 billion in Canadian and global small cap equities. Before joining Natcan, Robert managed a global high tech portfolio and co-managed the Canadian Small Cap Equity Fund for Caisse de Dépôt du Québec. He has held senior operational, financial and risk management roles with various multi-nationals, including Alcan, IBM and Grant Thornton.

Robert received a B.Admin. from the Royal Military College and an MBA from McGill University. He holds the CFA designation and is Chartered Professional Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Management Accountant (CMA). Robert is fluent in English and French.

Adam Seessel graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College and began his professional career as a newspaper reporter in North Carolina. Seessel won the George Polk Award for environmental reporting in 1990 and in 1995, Seessel took his research skills to Wall Street. He worked for Sanford C. Bernstein, Baron Capital, and Davis Selected Advisers before starting his own firm, Gravity Capital Management, which manages money for high-net worth individuals and institutions. Since beginning a record of stock-market performance while at Davis Funds in mid-2000, Seessel has beaten the S&P 500 index after fees. In addition to running Gravity, Seessel is a regular contributor for both Barron’s and Fortune magazines. Married and with one grown son who works as a software engineer, Seessel and his wife, an artist, live in Manhattan.

Mr. Ross Glotzbach, CFA serves as Chief Executive Officer, Head of Research, Principal, Director and Portfolio Manager at Southeastern Asset Management, Inc. Previously, Mr. Glotzbach served as President and Senior Analyst at the firm and has been with the firm since 2004. He served as a Corporate Finance Analyst at Stephens Inc. from the year 2003 to 2004. Mr. Glotzbach serves as a Director of Ballet Memphis Corporation. He has an extensive investment experience. He is a CFA Charter holder since 2006. Mr. Glotzbach received a B.A. in Economics from Princeton University in 2003.

Ms. Shannon founded Sionna in 2002 and has more than 35 years of industry experience. She is the president and co-chief investment officer at Sionna, and was previously chief investment officer and senior vice president at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers Canada. Kim serves as a board member with the Canadian Coalition for Good Governance and is the Chair of its Governance Committee. She is also on the board for the Brandes Institute, the Ontario Arts Foundation, United Corporation (a listed closed-end fund), a member of the C.D. Howe Institute’s National Council and the CFA Institute Board of Regents (she previously served as its chair). Kim is also a past president of the CFA Society Toronto. She was awarded Morningstar Fund Manager of the Year (2005), the RBC Canadian Woman Entrepreneur Award, the Women’s Executive Network’s Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award (2007, 2017), continuously listed as one of Profit Magazine’s Top 100 Female Entrepreneurs over the last several years and a recipient of the 2015 Rotman Women in Management Association Top 10 Awards (Entrepreneur Category).

Martin Bouchard is a successful serial entrepreneur, who revolutionized the web by founding Copernic Technologies in 1996, a leading search technology company that was later sold to a NASDAQ listed company.

Later, seeing the immense opportunity of cloud computing, he founded 4Degrees, one the largest data center complex in Canada and operated by Vantage Data Centers.

He is now president of QScale, a company that is developing a world-class clean-energy computing center purpose built for HPC, AI, and supercomputers.

A visionary entrepreneur, Mr. Bouchard has won numerous industry awards, including the prestigious Ernst & Young Emerging Entrepreneur Grand Prize, and has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Pioneers in information in Quebec after demonstrating exceptional leadership throughout his career.

About QScale
QScale develops environmentally responsible computing centers for applications such as high-performance computing and machine learning. QScale's technology infrastructures help meet the growing computing/IT needs of global companies while enabling them to achieve their ESG objectives.