Investing In Integrity

Pierre Sarrau is the Chief Risk Officer of BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, with more than $15.5 trillion in assets under management. He sits on the firm's Global Executive Committee, chairs its Enterprise Risk Committee, and leads the team responsible for keeping that capital safe for the firm and clients worldwide.In this episode of Investing In Integrity, our host Ross Overline and Pierre trace his path from a small town in rural southern France to Cambridge, the London School of Economics, and a risk desk at a French bank in London. From there: 25 years at BlackRock, where he helped build multi-asset risk analytics in Aladdin, spent a decade as CIO of Multi-Asset Strategies & Solutions, and returned to risk as CRO in January 2026.Having sat on both sides of the table, Pierre explains what "constructive challenge" looks like in practice and how to decide which risks to eliminate, mitigate, or deliberately embrace. Pierre mentions that innovation and risk management aren't opposing forces—they feed on each other, and standing still is often the biggest risk of all.They also cover leading through uncertainty with "positional chess," what sports teach about building high-performing teams, the personal board of advisors Pierre still relies on, and the values that have guided his career: curiosity, humility, hard work, and kindness.BlackRock is a founding partner of Scholars of Finance, and Pierre has become one of our strongest champions inside the firm. Whether you're a student preparing to enter the industry or a senior executive leading through AI and disruption, this episode is a must-listen.Meet PierrePierre Sarrau, Senior Managing Director, is the Chief Risk Officer and Head of Risk & Quantitative Analysis (RQA) for BlackRock. He is a member of the firm’s Global Executive Committee and chairs its Enterprise Risk Committee.RQA leads BlackRock’s risk management efforts by providing independent top-down and bottom-up oversight of BlackRock’s investment and enterprise risks. RQA provides tailored advice, quantitative analysis and constructive challenge to help ensure risks are properly understood and appropriately managed in order to drive better business and investment outcomes.Mr. Sarrau's service with the firm dates back to 2001, including his years with Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, which merged with BlackRock in 2006. Prior to assuming his current role in January 2026, Mr. Sarrau was the Chief Investment Officer and Global Co-Head of Multi-Asset Strategies & Solutions, the investment group at the heart of BlackRock's portfolio construction, asset allocation, and active management ecosystem. Before that, Mr. Sarrau was part of RQA where he oversaw all multi-asset activities at the firm. Mr. Sarrau also led the development of multi-asset risk analytics in Aladdin in partnership with leaders in that business. Prior to joining the firm, he was the head of risk for a French bank, where he began his career.Mr. Sarrau is on the editorial board of the Journal of Investment Strategies. He earned a Diplome d'Ingenieur from Ecole Centrale de Lyon combined with a diploma in mathematical statistics from Cambridge University and a diploma in accounting and finance from the London School of Economics.

The future depends on who leads it.For Episode 100 of Investing In Integrity, Ross steps away from the guest interviews for a solo conversation about a question he believes is becoming increasingly consequential for finance — and for society: Who is going to allocate the world's capital?Ross took inspiration from Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and thought deeply about the forces reshaping our economic system. Capital is increasingly concentrated. AI is transforming the work finance professionals do and may narrow traditional entry points into the industry. The bar for getting in, staying in, and ultimately leading is rising.For Ross, that makes the character of the people who earn those seats more important, not less.In this episode, he speaks directly to senior executives already allocating capital, mid-career professionals preparing to inherit greater responsibility, young professionals and SOF alumni in a transforming industry, and students working to earn their first opportunity. His message: Be the virtuous, wise leaders that our world desperately needs.Ross also shares some of the biggest developments at Scholars of Finance over the last six months: a $1 million challenge grant, a major innovation cycle the team is calling SOF V3, deeper investment in student leadership and professional development, and a vision for building connected communities of purpose-driven leaders inside the institutions shaping our economic system.One hundred episodes in, it’s both a look at where finance is heading and a challenge to everyone in the SOF community to play their part in creating a better future.

In this episode of Investing in Integrity, Ross Overline sits down with Mark Keating, EVP and Global Head of Strategic Finance at State Street — one of the largest financial institutions in the world, with roughly $50T in assets under custody and 15% of the world's daily financial transactions running through its infrastructure.Mark and Ross discuss what it means to build a career of lasting impact inside a globally systemically important bank, how AI is reshaping corporate finance, and the question Mark asks himself and his colleagues to keep them grounded: Do you like the person you've become?Meet Mark Mark Keating is EVP and Global Head of Strategic Finance at State Street, where he leads enterprise Financial Planning & Analysis, Real Estate, Procurement, and Financial Oversight and Planning for Operations & Technology, State Street Markets, Global Credit Finance, Wealth Services, and Corporate Functions. He also leads the firm's Finance Data and AI organization and Finance Transformation. He is a member of State Street's Executive Committee, the company's senior leadership team.Since joining in 1990, he has held a range of executive roles in finance, business, and strategy across the firm. He spent over a decade in Zurich, Luxembourg, and London, and served as CFO for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa and as International CFO for more than 15 years. During that time, he served on the Executive Management Board of State Street Bank International in Germany and held a Senior Manager Function designation under the U.K. Financial Conduct Authority's Senior Manager Regime. In 2025, he stepped in as State Street’s interim CFO.Mark also serves on the Board of Trustees of the Cathleen Stone Island Outward Bound School and is the executive sponsor of the State Street Veterans Network (VetNet).Mark holds an undergraduate degree from the Boston College Carroll School of Management and an MBA in international finance and economics from Babson College, where he graduated summa cum laude.

Our first-ever podcast guest, John Taft, returns nearly 100 episodes later. John is a Vice Chair of Baird. He was previously the CEO of RBC's U.S. wealth management business through the Great Financial Crisis, overseeing nearly 7,000 employees and almost $300 billion in assets. He chaired SIFMA, the leading securities industry trade association, and testified before Congress during the post-crisis reforms.John has spent more than 40 years in finance, but he didn't start there. He set out to be a newspaper journalist. Then, on a reporting assignment in Lowell, Massachusetts, he watched community leaders use the tools of finance to rebuild a burnt-out industrial city — and realized he didn't just want to write about that work; he wanted to do it.John wrote Stewardship: Lessons Learned from the Lost Culture of Wall Street, followed by A Force for Good: How Enlightened Finance Can Restore Faith in Capitalism. Today he’s helping oversee $560B in assets, writes the blog Finance for the Greater Good, and is one of three founding members of the Scholars of Finance Advisory Board.In this episode, John returns to discuss what he's seen happen to the industry — and where it needs to go next. He and Ross dig into the financialization of the economy, the "disease of grandiosity" infecting leaders across sectors, and why financial services have grown larger than necessary to serve the real economy. They get to the productive heart of finance — what John calls "helping real people in the real world solve real problems and achieve real goals" — and the speculative noise crowding it out, from prediction markets and zero-day options to leveraged inverse ETFs and much of the digital asset ecosystem. They also explore AI's coming impact on capital allocation, the widening gap between rich and poor, and why John believes the next ten years will demand more stewardship from finance, not less.Meet John John Taft is a Vice Chair of Baird and a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Earlier in his career, he was a managing director at Piper, Jaffray & Hopwood; president and CEO of Voyageur Asset Management; president and CEO of Dougherty Summit Securities; and a consultant at Deloitte & Touche. He currently serves on the boards of Riverfront Investment Group, Octavus Group, Baird Trust, and Sagard.John holds a B.A. magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, from Yale University, and a master's degree in public and private management from the Yale School of Organization and Management. He serves as Vice Chair of the Minneapolis Foundation, is an active member of the Itasca Project, and is an Executive in Residence at the Wake Forest University Center for the Study of Capitalism.He credits his family — including his great-grandfather, 27th U.S. President William Howard Taft — for instilling the core values that shape his definition of business success and his belief in the importance of treating every person with dignity.

Ben Choi has spent three decades across the technology ecosystem—as a product leader, founder, and venture investor—and today serves as a senior leader at Next Legacy Partners, where he helps oversee $3.5B+ invested across premier venture capital firms and early-stage startups.In this episode of Investing in Integrity, our host Ross Overline and Ben navigate the intersection of venture capital, philanthropy, and moral leadership. Ben shares how Next Legacy’s flagship model is designed to multiply capital—and then give it away.From there, the conversation goes deeper than mechanics. Ben outlines the values that shaped his leadership and why generosity is often driven not by one motivation, but by the shared joy of impact beyond yourself.Finally, Ross and Ben wrestle openly with capitalism—how it’s the best economic system ever tested at scale, it can still evolve to be even better, and what responsibility future finance leaders carry to make that a reality.Whether you’re a student trying to define success or a senior leader shaping institutions, this episode is a masterclass in using capital with clarity, humility, and purpose.Meet Ben ChoiBen Choi is a Managing Partner at Next Legacy. He manages $3.5B+ in investments with premier venture capital firms and directly into early-stage startups. His venture track record includes pre-PMF investments in Marketo (acquired for $4.75B) and CourseHero (last valued at $3.6B). He previously ran product for Adobe Creative Cloud offerings and founded CoffeeTable, raising venture financing before selling the company.Ben studied Computer Science at Harvard University and earned his MBA from Columbia Business School. He lives in Los Altos with his wife, Lydia, their three sons, and a ball python.