Junior Economic Club of Chicago Winter Forum

January 23, 2021

The JEC Winter Economic Forum featured distinguished speakers in the fields of finance, academia, and entrepreneurship. It also offered the opportunity for JEC Chicago members to connect in the breakout rooms for an entrepreneurship competition with prizes!

Speakers included Bryan Cameron, Director of Research and Senior Vice President at Dodge & Cox, a fund management company that invests approximately $300 billion in publicly traded equities and fixed income securities on behalf of clients; Michael Chen, an investment analyst at Magnetar Capital, a leading multi-strategy alternative asset manager where he structures and analyzes complex investments in esoteric asset classes like aviation, film and intellectual property; and Ruby Zhang, a Pre-doctoral Fellow at Opportunity Insights based at Harvard University where researchers and policy analysts work together to analyze new data and create a platform for local stakeholders to make more informed decisions.

The entrepreneurship competition was led by Alden Richards, a lecturer at Yale and a special advisor to the entrepreneurship programs within Brown's School of Engineering. Mr. Richards has a vast degree of experience in risk management, insurance, and strategic investment. In 1991 he founded a startup risk management and strategic consulting company to the space industry called Space Machine Advisors. Starting with an initial $100,000, he led the company to annual revenue of $150 million five years later, closing a remarkable $4 billion deal with PanAmSat in 1998.

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Full speaker bios can be found below:

Mr. Cameron is the Director of Research and Senior Vice President at Dodge & Cox Investment Managers, where he has worked since 1983. Mr. Cameron received his B.A. degree in Economics from the University of California, Davis in 1980, and his M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1983. Dodge & Cox is headquartered in San Francisco and invests approximately $300 billion in publicly traded equities and fixed income securities on behalf of clients. Bryan was born in Boulder, CO, raised in Lafayette, CA, and resides in Menlo Park, CA. College Athletics leads the list of personal interests and he attends virtually all of Cal’s football and basketball games.

Mr. Cameron's leadership and philanthropic interests include the following organizations: Bryan Cameron Education Foundation, The Cameron Institute – Cal Athletics, Builder of Berkeley, UC Davis, Stanford Business School, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital, and Menlo Park Presbyterian Church.

Michael Chen is an investment analyst at Magnetar Capital, a leading multi-strategy alternative asset manager headquartered in Evanston, Illinois. As a member of Magnetar’s Alternative Credit and Fixed Income group, Michael structures and analyzes complex investments in esoteric asset classes like aviation, film and intellectual property. Prior to Magnetar, Michael worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in the Structured Finance group. He started his career at Nomura Securities on the Global Markets Structuring and Solutions desk. He has a Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from Cornell University and resides in New York City.

Ruby Zhang is a Pre-doctoral Fellow at Opportunity Insights. She graduated in 2019 from the University of Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in Mathematics, Statistics, and Economics (honors). Ruby has previously worked at the Center for the Economics of Human Development, where she analyzed the long-term health outcomes of early childhood care programs.