The 2015 Hedge Fund Rising Stars: Anastasia Titarchuk

Talk about climbing the ladder. In February Anastasia Titarchuk was promoted to deputy CIO of the $183.5 billion New York State Common Retirement Fund. Previously serving as director of absolute-return strategies, she helmed the pension’s $6 billion hedge fund portfolio. Titarchuk graduated from Yale University in 1999 with a BS in applied mathematics and landed her first Wall Street gig that year with JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s emerging-markets capital markets department. Over the next seven years she tried her hand at short-term interest rate trading and equity derivatives marketing, always with a focus on institutional clients. In 2006 she left Chase for a job at Lehman Brothers Holdings overseeing a sales team built around volatility as an asset class and marketing global equity and derivative products internationally. Titarchuk braved the 2008–’09 financial meltdown that felled the investment banking giant and brought her department under the ownership of Barclays Capital. Leaving Barclays in 2009, she became a director of international derivatives sales for Bank of America Corp., where she stayed until 2010 before joining New York Common’s hedge fund team as a senior investment officer in 2011. Titarchuk took the reins of the hedge fund team in 2013, and under her guidance the absolute-return portfolio gained 9.8 percent during the 2013–’14 fiscal year, beating its benchmark by 423 basis points. As of last March the portfolio, which has sizeable mandates with Brevan Howard Asset Management, D.E. Shaw & Co., Och-Ziff Capital Management Group and Viking Global Investors, had 50 partnerships with hedge funds and funds of funds spanning a range of strategies, including long-short, macro, event-driven and structured credit. Hedge funds at New York Common generated a 5.9 percent return for the 2014–’15 fiscal year ended in March.

The 2015 Hedge Fund Rising Stars

Paul Alzapiedi Silver Point Capital Adam Bernstein Pagoda Asset Management Jennifer Bloom BTIG Robert Campion Canyon Capital Advisors Katherine Chan Anandar Capital Management

T. Troy Dixon Hollis Park Partners Curtis Gallagher Park Hill Group Brian Goldberg Aksia Geoffrey Keegan Creciente Partners Investment Management Brian Kelly Millennium partners

Robert Kennelley Rocaton Investment Advisors Ryan Kilstein Southpoint capital advisors Monica Lai Pfizer Leigh Lower Graham Capital Management Pooja Malik Nipun Capital

Jamie Mendola Pacific Grove Capital Bradley Neumeister Pershing Oleg Nodelman EcoR1 Capital James Oussedik Sidley Austin Amit Pardasani Owl Creek Asset Management

Putri Pascualy PAAMCO Courtney Powers University of texas Investment Management Co. Laura Roche Roystone Capital Management Harlan Saroken Perry Capital Richard Scarinci Blackstone Group

Randall Shu MetLife Samuel Siegal Senator Investment Group Nadine Terman solstein Capital Anastasia Titarchuk New York State Common Retirement Fund Christina van Beelen Secor Asset Management