< The 2017 Tech 40
20. Alfred Spector
Chief Technology Officer
Two Sigma Investments
Last year: PNR
In hot pursuit of computer science and engineering graduates to help fulfill their fintech ambitions, top financial companies are often competing against the Silicon Valley allure of Apple, Facebook, and Google. None have scored a coup quite like Two Sigma Investments' October 2015 hire of Alfred Spector as chief technology officer. He joined the data-science-driven hedge fund firm after nearly eight years as Google's vice president of research and special initiatives. But Spector, 62, had an impressive career even before Google. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University and was a member of the IBM-Carnegie Mellon team that in the 1980s developed the Andrew File System, a highly scalable distributed file system and precursor of cloud storage, which won the Association of Computing Machinery's 2016 Software Systems Award. He proudly describes the honor as "a big deal in tech."
Two Sigma, founded in 2001 and with $45 billion in assets, is presenting new challenges to Spector. "It is an enormously interesting problem to use all manner of information with the goal of optimizing economic outcomes," he says. Outside the world of computing, 23 years ago he set a goal of running 25,000 miles — approximately equal to one time around the earth — within 25 years. At the time of a recent conversation he had 1,785 miles to go and was on schedule to finish early.
The 2017 Tech 40
1. Adena Friedman
NASDAQ
2. Catherine Bessant
Bank of
America Corp.
3. Robert Goldstein
BlackRock
4. Jeffrey Sprecher
Intercontinental Exchange
5. Lance Uggla
IHS Markit
6. Shawn Edwards & Vlad Kliatchko
Bloomberg
7. David Craig
Thomson Reuters
8. Michael Spencer
NEX Group
9. Don Callahan
Citigroup
10. Elisha Wiesel
Goldman Sachs Group
11. Michael Bodson
Depository Trust & Clearing Corp.
12. Terrence Duffy
CME Group
13. Charles Li
Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing
14. Sean Belka
Fidelity Investments
15. Chris Concannon
CBOE Holdings
16. Guy Chiarello
First Data Corp.
17. Steven Lieblich
Citadel
18. David Rutter
R3CEV
19. Blythe Masters
Digital Asset Holdings
20. Alfred Spector
Two Sigma Investments
21. Neil Katz
D.E. Shaw Group
22. Lee Olesky
Tradeweb Markets
23. Richard McVey
MarketAxess Holdings
24. David Gledhill
DBS Bank
25. Seth Merrin
Liquidnet Holdings
26. Antoine Shagoury
State Street Corp.
27. Peter Brown &
Robert Mercer
Renaissance Technologies
28. Lou Eccleston
TMX Group
29. Peter Cherecwich
Northern Trust Corp.
30. Mike Chinn
S&P Global Market Intelligence
31. Chris Corrado
London Stock Exchange Group
32. Neal Pawar
AQR Capital Management
33. Gary Norcross
Fidelity National Information Services
34. Steven O'Hanlon
Numerix
35. Sebastián Ceria
Axioma
36. Brian Conlon
First Derivatives and Kx Systems
37. Tyler Kim
MaplesFS
38. Michael Cooper
BT Radianz
39. Robert Schifellite
Broadridge Financial Solutions
40. Jim Minnick
eVestment