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The 2014 Pension 40: Robin Diamonte

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Robin Diamonte
Chief Investment Officer, Director of Pension Investments
United Technologies Corp.
PNR

Overseeing a $24.9 billion defined benefit plan might seem like a big job — but not to Robin Diamonte. In the decade since Diamonte became CIO of Hartford, Connecticut–based United Technologies Corp., she has worked to enhance retirement income security for the multinational’s 200,000 employees, while conducting a dialogue with federal pension officials on everything from the legality of pension changes to suggestions about rules and regulations (see “United Technologies CIO Is Changing the Retirement Game”). When UTC’s defined benefit plans, both traditional and cash balance, closed to new employees in 2003 and 2010, respectively, Diamonte beefed up the company savings plan. “We said as a group, ‘We need to make the defined contribution plan as much like a defined benefit plan as possible,’” she recalls. In 2012, with help from investment director Kevin Hanney, UTC was the first major corporation to launch a lifetime-income strategy as the qualified default option in its savings plan. Diamonte, 50, who holds a BS in electrical engineering and an MBA from the University of New Haven, chairs the Committee on Investment of Employee Benefit Assets, an organization of the top 100 U.S. pension funds, which regularly sends her to Washington to offer her views to lawmakers and regulators, and serves on the advisory committee for the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.

The 2014 Pension 40

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Bruce Rauner
Illinois
John and
Laura Arnold

Laura and John
Arnold Foundation
Randi Weingarten
American Federation of Teachers
Rahm Emanuel
Chicago
David Boies
Boies, Schiller & Flexner
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Randy DeFrehn
National Coordinating Committee for Multiemployer Plans
Damon Silvers
AFL-CIO
Laurence Fink
BlackRock
Chris Christie
New Jersey
Robin Diamonte
United Technologies Corp.
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Ted Eliopoulos
California Public Employees’ Retirement System
John Kline
Minnesota
J. Mark Iwry
U.S. Treasury Department
Gina Raimondo
Rhode Island
Phyllis Borzi
U.S. Labor Department
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Orrin Hatch
Utah
Abigail Johnson
Fidelity Investments
Ted Wheeler
Oregon
Caitlin Long
Morgan Stanley
James Hoffa
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
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Amy Kessler
Prudential Financial
Alejandro
García Padilla

Puerto Rico
Christopher Klein
U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Caifornia
Steven Rhodes
Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Michigan
Kevin de León
California
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David Draine
Pew Charitable Trusts
Jordan Marks
National Public Pension Coalition
Sam Liccardo
California
Joshua Rauh
Stanford Graduate School of Business
Karen Ferguson and Karen Friedman
Pension Rights Center
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Timothy Blake
Moody’s Investors Service
Kathleen Kennedy Townsend
Center for Retirement Initiatives, Georgetown University
Edward (Ted) Siedle
Benchmark Financial Services
Daniel Loeb
Third Point
Judy Mares
Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Labor Department
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Andrew Biggs
American Enterprise Institute
Andy Stern
Columbia University
Kenneth Mehlman
KKR & Co.
Teresa Ghilarducci
New School for Social Research
A. Melissa Moye
U.S. Treasury Department


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