Transcript
I'm Michelle Noyes. I'm the managing director and head of Americas at Alternative Investment Management Association, or AIMA. I've been in this role now for ten years, which is pretty hard to believe, but I joined the association in 2012 when they first decided to open a U.S. office being a global trade body headquartered in London with offices in Asia and Canada.


It was only natural that we'd be here in the U.S. as well. Prior to AIMA, I most recently worked for a global asset manager in Sao Paulo, Brazil, so I was working with all of their non Brazilian investors and came across the AIMA DDQ. That was something that I needed as part of our fundraise. And through that process, and also as a volunteer with the Kenya Association, started getting involved with AIMA and building out a volunteer group there.


When I then came back to the US at that point I was just in time for Emma to open its U.S. office and I went from member to staff. So it was a great experience and really gave me a grounding in what the association was about before coming on and helping run it. So for those of you who may not be familiar with Emma or me just now, our DDQ it's really more than that.


We are the global not for profit trade association for the alternative investment industry, with about 2000 corporate members in some 60 countries. So when we say alternatives, historically that's been a hedge funds and that's really where we grew up when we were launched in 1990. So 32 years at this point. But as a hedge funds became a more expansive category, so did our remit.


So we added on private credit under the auspices of the Alternative Credit Council in 2014. And more recently, we followed our members down the digital asset rabbit hole and are spending more time in that space as well. But to sum it all up, we're we're on the more liquid side of alternative investing. So from hedge funds on through private credit, our role as a not for profit industry association is to serve as the voice of this industry along our advocacy, communication and education work.


So that really means, you know, to give you live examples. You know, the SEC has proposed a number of new rules which would drastically impact our industry over the past two months. So we are there working with our members to write responses, explain the potential consequences, make suggestions and really help them through the process. So that's what an industry advocate is all about, really representing the needs of the industry and also explaining what we do to an audience of policymakers, regulators, the media and public at large.


Because, you know, let's face it, hedge funds are pretty misunderstood. It can be quite technical and we have a story to tell. That's not all. We also have to be a practical resource because at the end of the day, if we are successful in her advocacy, it's everyone that benefits not just our members. So we want to make sure that we're really giving back to the members who fund our activities.


And that's really finding ways to help them grow their business and make money or save time and money by leveraging our resources in our community. So that can look like working with investor relations. And, you know, the things that I wish I had when I was in that seat to really lean on peers to understand the changing needs of investors, to meet them at conferences and industry events and really help one another on a peer to peer basis.


And of course there is that AIMA DDQ to be a key part of that marketing process on the saving time and money, it's really bringing together the CEOs, the CFOs with ego and compliance, all of the folks in the non-investment seats to understand what everyone else is doing. That's the age old question. We just want to know what are our peers doing?


What's the market, How can we orient ourselves? So, you know, the flip side of being so involved in that, that regulatory advocacy is we end up learning a lot about the process. So when it comes time to implement it, we work closely with our members to understand what they'll have to do to navigate that process. We're not there doing them for it for them.


We're not a lawyer giving them legal advice, but really very tangible, very practical resources, whether that's, you know, peer group discussions, webinars or sound practice library, you know, whole suite of due diligence questionnaires we have for betting cybersecurity in different vendors or what have you, or just, you know, one on one conversations with our knowledgeable staff. We're there to help, we're there to support, we're there to add value.


So what this looks like at the end of the day is we have over 250 events a year from small breakfasts to, you know, giant in-person conferences. We have a whole suite of due diligence questionnaires and some practice guidance. We have over 100 different working groups, peer groups, committees. We have the AIMA Journal and a whole suite of research publications that come out each year, really all targeted at adding practical value to our members while supporting the industry as a whole.

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