Lori McKnight

Lori has more than 20 years of public and private equity institutional investment management experience.Before becoming a consultant in 2012, she spent more than 15 years with the 4th largest public pension plan in the United States, mostly serving as Compliance Officer.She led the implementation of compliance and oversight frameworks that continue to be used today.She has also served as an expert witness for equity investment class action cases.For the past three years, Lori has served as Director of Advocacy for the CFA Society Jacksonville.Lori graduated from Indiana University, and earned an MBA from Florida State University.

 

Familiarity with the day-to-day functions and challenges at a very large public pension plan is the foundation of Lori’s expertise.Knowing how large public pension plans interact within the wide web of service providers (broker/dealers, asset managers/ partnerships, custodial banks, consultants, software/hardware providers, etc.) further informs the base of core knowledge used to evaluate the effectiveness of a plan’s risk, investments, and compliance systems.Most importantly, Lori works to encourage and promote best practices such as adoption of the CFA Institute’s Asset Manage Code of Conduct, corporate governance and other guidance on investment topics put forth to the Securities and Exchange Commission and the wider investment community.

 

Lori’s area of focus included projects involving factor-based investing (aka smart beta), assessing special investment initiatives in the infrastructure sector, assisting investment providers on how to best approach clients with their products and public speaking engagements at institutional investment forums.

 

As a CFA and advocate for the CFA program, Lori is committed to the highest standards of professionalism, ethics and accountability of the investment profession.

 

Lori was part of the investment team selected to implement the defined contribution (DC) plan in 2001.Issues she worked on included asset allocation, compliance monitoring standards, vetting appropriate investment strategies and service providers, consultants, and platforms, as well as negotiating more favorable fee contracts to piggy-back on the existing defined benefit plan.

 

In her final three years with Florida, Lori served as the compliance officer of public and private equity asset classes, and the total fund statutory requirements testing

 

CFA – 2004 CFA Institute

MBA – 1992 Florida State University – Tallahassee, FL

BA/AS – 1985/1987 Indiana University – Bloomington, IN