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.
 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 |