As a member of the firm’s portfolio specialist team, Phil focuses on our private market strategies. He is responsible for communicating our investment process and strategy, asset-class perspectives, strategy performance and positioning to clients. In addition, Phil works closely with investors on private markets research, education, and portfolio construction. Phil has more than 13 years of industry experience, including roles at Fort Washington Investment Advisors and Mercer. Prior to joining Calamos in 2024, Phil served as Principal, Private Markets at Mercer where he led coverage of private credit and helped manage the firm’s institutional private markets fund-of-funds offering. Before embarking on his corporate career, Phil played professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds organization. Phil graduated from Xavier University with a BA in Accounting. In addition to being a CFA charterholder, he holds the CAIA designation.

Mr. Houser is responsible for new manager research and due diligence analytics. He also assists the portfolio manager with the day-to-day management of the Funds, including portfolio monitoring, risk measurement and operations.

Prior to joining VanEck, he served as a Senior Associate with Federated Investors. Mr. Houser joined Absolute after serving for eight years as a Research Analyst for Shetland Investments, a Boston area family office. At Shetland he was responsible for sourcing and evaluating alternative investments including researching new strategies and allocation modeling. Mr. Houser received his AB from Bowdoin College.

Matthew Pallai is the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of Nomura Capital Management (NCM). Matthew has over two decades of financial services industry experience. Before joining Nomura, he was a Co-founder and CIO of Alterum Capital Partners LLC, a private credit focused investment management business. Prior to co-founding Alterum Capital Partners, he was an Executive Vice President at Harbor Capital Advisers, where, as Head of Multi Asset Solutions, he led the build-out of a new team and investment capability and served as a member of the Management Committee. Matthew began his career and spent 17 years at J.P. Morgan Asset Management as a portfolio manager focused on security selection, global market dynamics, asset allocation, and portfolio construction on a range of strategies across Securitized Products, Multi-Sector Fixed Income, and Multi Asset Solutions – most recently serving as a co-manager on a suite of Multi Asset Income strategies and Head of the Advisory Portfolio Solutions investment team. Before moving into the Multi-Asset space, Matthew was a portfolio manager in the Global Fixed Income, Currency & Commodity group, co-managing a suite of Multi Sector Unconstrained Fixed Income portfolios (income oriented, total return, and absolute return), and had lead responsibility for the securitized products investments within these strategies. Previously, he held portfolio management positions on both the Agency and Non-Agency Mortgage (RMBS) Teams. Matthew holds a Bachelor of Arts in mathematics from Boston College and a Master of Arts in economics from New York University.

Mr. Rakszawski joined VanEck in 2011 and serves as Director, ETF Product Development. He oversees and coordinates VanEck ETF product development focusing on strategic equity, hard assets and equity-income ETFs.

Prior to joining VanEck, he served as a Senior Associate with Federated Investors. Mr. Rakszawski is a frequent speaker and panelist in webinars, videos and at industry events. He has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and on Bloomberg TV. He earned a BS in Finance and Marketing from Slippery Rock University in Pennsylvania.

Keith Black, PhD, CFA, CAIA, FDP, CDAA, is an award-winning author and course designer specializing in making complex topics accessible to audiences of varying sophistication. He currently serves as the Managing Director of Education for RIA Channel®.

In his previous role as Managing Director of Content Strategy at the CAIA Association, he was a co-author of the second, third, and fourth editions of the level I and II CAIA curriculum on alternative investments.

Keith has also advised foundations, endowments, and pension funds on asset allocation and manager selection strategies in hedge funds, commodities, and managed futures. Prior experience includes commodities derivatives trading, stock options research and Cboe floor trading, and building quantitative stock selection models for mutual funds and hedge funds.

Dr. Black previously served on the Illinois Institute of Technology faculty and teaches courses on investment consulting and investing in cryptocurrencies at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

He has published sixteen refereed journal articles and contributed to eight books. He is the author of “Investing in Cryptocurrencies and Digital Assets: A Guide to Understanding Technologies, Business Models, Due Diligence, and Valuation.” Dr. Black was named to the Institutional Investor magazine’s list of “Rising Stars of Hedge Funds.”

Dr. Black earned a BA from Whittier College, an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University, and a PhD from the Illinois Institute of Technology. He has earned the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) and the Certified Digital Asset Advisor (CDAA) designations and was a member of the inaugural class of both CAIA and FDP Charterholders.