Exceedance 2022

Karen White Chief Executive Officer, RMS

Karen White is the Chief Executive Officer for RMS. She is an accomplished leader in the technology industry, with a 25-year track record of leading, innovating, and scaling global technology businesses. Karen is an expert at bringing technology, innovation, data, and operations together to help drive digital transformation.

Karen started her career in Silicon Valley in 1993 as a senior executive at Oracle reporting to CEO Larry Ellison. Her global responsibilities included business development during a time of massive transformation in the computer industry. During her seven years at Oracle, the company’s revenue grew to $10 billion, profits increased nearly 65x, and the market valuation grew to more than $150 billion. Most recently, Karen was President and COO at Addepar, a leading fintech company serving the investment management industry with data and analytics solutions that are replacing decades old legacy systems with leading-edge tech. Addepar’s SaaS platform now supports $800 billion in total assets, and it counts some of the world’s leading global financial services firms as customers and partners. Prior to Addepar, Karen was CEO and Chairman of the Board at Syncplicity, a leading enterprise file sync and management SaaS business aimed at enterprises as well as the mid-market. She led the company from first product launch to 30,000 customers, culminating in the acquisition of Syncplicity by EMC in 2012. Previously, Karen led worldwide corporate and business development at SolarWinds, a top IT and network management software company whose customers included the Fortune 500. The company was listed on the Nasdaq with a successful IPO in 2009, valuing the business at nearly $1 billion.

Karen is currently on the Board of Directors at Varo Money, a mobile banking fintech that seeks to be the first fintech national bank in American history and has applied for a national bank charter.

Cihan Biyikoglu Executive Vice President, Product, RMS

Cihan Biyikoglu is the Executive Vice President, Product for RMS, responsible for product management across the full suite of RMS models and risk management tools. He has extensive experience of leading product management for innovative machine learning and big data analytics solutions at Fortune 500 companies over the last 20 years. As a former Vice President of Product at Databricks and Redis Labs, Cihan both developed the product strategy and road map for open-source technologies such as Apache Spark and Redis and respective enterprise offerings in the public and private cloud platforms.

Cihan also worked on products at Microsoft, Couchbase, and Twitter, where he focused on on-premises and cloud offerings in the data and analytics space. At Microsoft, Cihan focused on the incubation of the Azure Cloud Platform in its early days and the SQL Server product line, both of which have grown to multi-billion-dollar businesses for Microsoft.

Cihan holds a number of patents in the data management and analytics space, and he has a master’s degree in database systems and a bachelor’s degree in computer engineering.

Moe Khosravy Executive Vice President, Software and Platform, RMS

Moe Khosravy is the EVP of Software and Platform at RMS. He brings 20 years of software experience on products and platforms differentiated by data and applied machine learning.

Most recently, Moe was VP of Software at HP Inc., supporting hundreds of millions of connected devices and clients including platforms for big data, computer vision, and applied ML for the 2D and 3D printing businesses. Prior to HP, Moe was Head of Applications and SDKs at Intel, focused on building experiences differentiated by AI, NLP, and rich sensor technologies. Moe also brings experience from VMware as VP of Mobile and Cloud Data, from Microsoft with leadership roles across Cloud, Search, Windows, Server and Tools, and from Vital Images as an Architect in the advanced technologies group focused on CT/MR software solutions.

Moe has over 90 software patents pending or granted in the realm of distributed systems, AI, vision, and data platforms. He serves on the Board of Directors for Equbot, the first ETF built on machine learning, as well as on the Board of Directors for Delta v, MIT’s flagship startup accelerator.

Moe received his MBA from MIT and studied neuroscience/computer science at the University of Minnesota.

Rob Fauber President and Chief Executive Officer, Moody’s Corporation

Robert Fauber became President and Chief Executive Officer of Moody’s Corporation on January 1, 2021 and was elected to the Board of Directors effective October 22, 2020.

Mr. Fauber joined Moody’s in 2005 and has held multiple leadership roles at Moody’s. Until his appointment as CEO, he was Moody’s Chief Operating Officer and drove strategic initiatives across the company. He served as President of Moody’s Investors Service from 2016 to 2019 and was Head of Moody’s Investors Service’s Global Commercial Group from 2013 to 2016, overseeing relationship management, product development, and strategy for the rating agency. Mr. Fauber has also served as Head of Moody’s Corporate Development. Prior to Moody’s, he held roles in alternative investments, corporate strategy & business development, and investment banking at Citi.

Mr. Fauber earned his B.A. in economics from the University of Virginia and his M.B.A. from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. He and his wife have two children.

Michael Steel General Manager, RMS

Michael Steel is General Manager at RMS. Michael joined RMS in 2016 to bring innovations in modeling and technology to solve the key risk management challenges faced by insurers. He has more than 30 years’ experience in risk and capital management gained in the insurance industry. Prior to RMS, Michael was the Group Chief Risk Officer at AXIS Capital, following a career in reinsurance broking, including 12 years at Benfield (now Aon Benfield) where he led the ReMetrics team in addition to leading teams in the development of innovative solutions in the reinsurance and capital markets.

In addition to his role with RMS, Michael serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of Allianz Re Dublin dac. Michael previously served as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of Berkshire Hathaway’s international business, as an Appointed Director on the Casualty Actuarial Society, and as Chairman of the Geneva Association’s CRO Network. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in statistics and mathematics from Brunel University.

Robert Muir-Wood, PhD Chief Research Officer, RMS

Robert Muir-Wood is the Chief Research Officer at RMS. He works to enhance approaches to natural catastrophe modeling, identify models for new areas of risk, and explore expanded applications for catastrophe modeling. Recently, he has been focusing on identifying the potential locations and consequences of magnitude 9 earthquakes worldwide.

In 2012, as part of Mexico's presidency of the G20, he helped promote government usage of catastrophe models for managing national disaster risks. Robert has more than 20 years of experience developing probabilistic catastrophe models. He was lead author for the 2007 IPCC 4th Assessment Report and 2011 IPCC Special Report on Extremes, is a member of the Climate Risk and Insurance Working Group for the Geneva Association, and is vice-chair of the OECD panel on the Financial Consequences of Large-Scale Catastrophes.

He is the author of six books, as well as numerous papers and articles in scientific and industry publications. He holds a degree in natural sciences and a PhD in earth sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Mohsen Rahnama, PhD Chief Risk Modeling Officer and Executive Vice President, Models and Data, RMS

Mohsen Rahnama is the senior executive for RMS models and data products, as well as the Chief Risk Modeling Officer. He leads a global team of scientists, engineers, and product managers responsible for the development and delivery of all RMS catastrophe models and data.

During his 20 years at RMS, Mohsen has been the passionate and hands-on leader of the largest and most global team of catastrophe modeling professionals in the industry across over two dozen fields of study. He is the publisher of the RMS Horizons series of modeling papers, has authored numerous scientific publications, leads many research collaborations throughout the world, and is a frequent speaker at scientific and risk management industry events.

He has 30 years of experience in structural engineering, catastrophe modeling, and risk assessment. He holds a master’s degree and doctorate in earthquake and structural engineering from Stanford University.

Mark Carney Governor, Bank of England (2013-2020)

Mark Carney has spent his life in various financial roles, in both the public and private sector. His experiences as governor of the Bank of England (2013-2020), governor of the Bank of Canada (2008-2013), and now as UN Special Envoy on Climate Action and Finance, offer him a unique position to provide tangible action plans for leaders, companies and countries to transform the value of the market back into the value of humanity.

During his thirteen-year career with Goldman Sachs, Carney helped a series of emerging economies, including post-apartheid South Africa, gain access to international capital markets. Carney was appointed Deputy Governor of the Bank of Canada in August 2003. In November 2004, he left the Bank of Canada to become Senior Associate Deputy Minister of Finance, where he oversaw five budgets during a series of minority parliaments and represented Canada at the G7 and G20. He was appointed as Governor of the Bank of Canada during the midst of the 2008 financial crisis, taking immediate action, including pre-emptively restructuring the $200 billion CDO market, and reducing interest rates before most other countries and committing to hold them down for 12 months after, a groundbreaking move that supported Canadian credit markets and business confidence. As a result of Carney’s actions, Canada was able to return to prerecession levels of output and employment earlier than others in the G7.

In 2012 U.K. Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne stunned observers when he declared that Carney would succeed Lord Mervyn King as governor of the Bank of England, marking the first time that a non-Briton was appointed to the position. Carney quickly adopted the “forward guidance” strategy he had applied in Canada—navigating the United Kingdom through falling unemployment rates, rising interest rates, and Brexit. He is credited with focusing attention on modern challenges including digital currencies and climate change, launching the bank’s first climate-related stress tests. He stepped down as governor of the Bank of England when his term ended in 2020.

His new book VALUE(S): Building a Better World for All, is a meditation on his experiences that examines the short-comings and challenges of the market in the past decade which he argues has led to rampant, public distrust and the need for radical change.

Carney earned his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University, and went on to receive both a master’s degree and doctorate in Economics from Oxford University. He now resides in Ottawa, Canada.

Michael Steel General Manager, RMS

Michael Steel is General Manager at RMS. Michael joined RMS in 2016 to bring innovations in modeling and technology to solve the key risk management challenges faced by insurers. He has more than 30 years’ experience in risk and capital management gained in the insurance industry. Prior to RMS, Michael was the Group Chief Risk Officer at AXIS Capital, following a career in reinsurance broking, including 12 years at Benfield (now Aon Benfield) where he led the ReMetrics team in addition to leading teams in the development of innovative solutions in the reinsurance and capital markets.

In addition to his role with RMS, Michael serves as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of Allianz Re Dublin dac. Michael previously served as an Independent Non-Executive Director on the board of Berkshire Hathaway’s international business, as an Appointed Director on the Casualty Actuarial Society, and as Chairman of the Geneva Association’s CRO Network. He holds a bachelor’s degree with honors in statistics and mathematics from Brunel University.