Blueprint 2024 Official Program Guide - Flipbook - Page 137
2024 Speakers
Managing Director,
Teacher Retirement
System of Texas
Kirk Sims heads TRS9 Emerging Manager Program. Since being established in
2005, TRS has committed $5.9 billion to one of the largest programs of its
kind. An additional $4.6 billion has been invested directly with EM Program
graduates. Each graduate was selected as a result of consistent
outperformance among a group of more than 218 EM managers. Sims joined
the Teacher Retirement System of Texas on March 1, 2019. Before joining
Texas Teachers, he was a Senior Investment Ofûcer for the Teachers9
Retirement System of the State of Illinois. Sims had oversight and
management responsibility of TRS9s Emerging Manager Program, a $750
million evergreen pool of capital designed to identify and invest in emerging
investment managers across all asset classes.
Partner, Infrastructure,
Fifth Wall
Alok Sindher is a Partner on the Climate Tech Investment Team at Fifth Wall,
where he leads the infrastructure investing platform. Prior to joining Fifth Wall,
Sindher served as a Partner at The D.E. Shaw Group's renewable energy and
infrastructure platform. He also previously worked for J.P. Morgan's Energy
Investment Banking group. He currently serves as an Advisor to The
Department of Defense's energy transition & decarbonization efforts at the
TomKat Center, a part of Doerr School of Sustainability at Stanford University.
Sindher is based out of San Francisco. He is a Computer Science and
Economics graduate of Stanford & he holds an MBA from Wharton.
Managing Partner,
JLL Spark Global
Ventures
Raj is the managing partner of JLL Spark Global Ventures, the corporate
venture capital group of JLL, focused on strategic PropTech investments.
Previously, he was interim co-head/managing director of investments at
JetBlue Technology Ventures, the corporate VC of JetBlue Airways. Prior to
that, Raj served as CEO and co-founder of London-based Sooqini, an ondemand economy task delegator for small businesses. Before that, Raj cofounded and led a Geneva-based consulting ûrm and worked with various
governments to foster entrepreneurship. As a general partner and co-founder
of Pervasive Technology Ventures4and also as a principal for the New Yorkbased VC arm of Investcorp4he was responsible for sourcing, negotiating,
and closing new investments in tech startups. At Booz Allen Hamilton (now
Strategy&), Raj led strategy and technology projects in ecommerce;
technology, media, and telecommunications; and ûnancial services. He also
held multiple positions at IBM at the start of his career.
Kirk Sims
Alok Sindher
Raj Singh
Writer,
Freelance
Patrick Sisson
Patrick Sisson is a Chicago expat living in Los Angeles who writes and reports
about the trends, technology, and policy that shape our cities. He9s covered
everything from the race to slash building emissions and drone technology in
police departments to housing policy and unsung modernist architects across
the United States. His work has appeared in Bloomberg CityLab, Fast
Company, and elsewhere
