Russell Gao

Russell Gao has extensive work experience in the finance and insurance fields. Russell is currently serving as the SVP, Head of Investment Strategy and ALM at Fortitude Re since July 2021. Prior to this, they worked as the Interim Chief Life and Annuity Reinsurance Officer at the same company from November 2021 to March 2023. Before joining Fortitude Re, Russell held various roles at Goldman Sachs from May 2011 to July 2021, including Global Head of Strategic Asset Allocation; Portfolio Manager and Executive Director; Quantitative Strategist. Russell began their career as an Actuarial Associate at Towers Watson - Tillinghast Insurance Consulting from February 2007 to February 2010.

Russell Gao completed their Bachelor of Science degree in Actuarial Mathematics with High Distinction from Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Russell attended from 2004 to 2006. Following that, they pursued a Master's degree in Financial Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business, completing it in 2011.

In addition to their formal education, Russell has obtained several certifications. Russell is a CFA Charterholder, which they earned in September 2012 from the CFA Institute. Russell also holds the FSA (Fellow of Society of Actuaries) designation, which they obtained from the Society of Actuaries in December 2009. Furthermore, they have obtained various certifications through Coursera, including Convolutional Neural Networks, Improving Deep Neural Networks: Hyperparameter tuning, Regularization and Optimization, Structuring Machine Learning Projects, Neural Networks and Deep Learning, and Machine Learning. These certifications were earned between 2017 and 2018. Russell is also listed as a member of the American Academy of Actuaries (MAAA) and a Chartered Enterprise Risk Analyst (CERA), but specific dates of obtaining these designations are not provided.