Karyn Williams

Karyn Williams established Hightree Advisors following a nearly 20-year history of success in designing and implementing effective investment programs for a wide variety of organizations. Over her career, she gained a deep understanding of the benefits that can be achieved through investment programs focused on regaining and sustaining real dollar value improvements in investment performance, allowing organizations to achieve their purpose. This was the inspiration for Hightree Advisors and Karyn’s mission in founding the firm.

Prior to Hightree, Karyn was head of client solutions at Two Sigma, a leading systematic investment manager, where she led the development of a technology for institutional clients that enables understanding of the risk factors driving portfolios and strategies. Karyn previously served as the chief investment officer of Farmers Insurance Group, a Fortune 500 company, where she oversaw the effective implementation of insurance, pension and other retirement assets. Prior to that, she was a partner and managing director at Wilshire Associates, a global leader in investment advisory and consulting services. At Wilshire, Karyn created the firm’s risk management consulting practice and was head of Total Fund Analytics, developing risk measurement tools for institutional clients.

Karyn is an independent public company director, NACD governance fellow, and holds positions as finance chair, treasurer and trustee for public and private foundations, including KCRW and Research to Prevent Blindness. She is a founding advisory board member of the Master of Science in Financial Engineering program at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management. She is frequently featured as a speaker at investment industry conferences, has written and published papers and has been widely quoted in the press, including The Wall Street Journal, Institutional Investor, Pensions & Investments, FUNDFire and Milken Institute Lab Report. Karyn is a graduate of Arizona State University, where she earned a B.S. in Economics and a Ph.D. in Finance.