Ziad Makkawi is the Founder and CEO of EQUIAM, where he also chairs the Investment Committee. With over three decades of experience as an investor, founder, and financial services executive, Ziad’s vast expertise spans Private Equity, Venture Capital, and Capital Markets.
Ziad started his career at JP Morgan in New York in 1986 as a currency and derivatives trader where, he spearheaded the banks systematic arbitrage activity in currency and interest rate derivatives markets.
He later founded, Algebra Capital an emerging markets manager where he served as CEO and CIO, and successfully sold in in 2011 to global asset manager Franklin Templeton in the US.
Ziad led Istithmar World a global $5bio Private Equity portfolio with assets in the US, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and Africa.
Ziad served on the boards of more than a dozen firms on four continents, as chairman, executive and investment committee member, director, and observer at companies such as Cirque du Soleil (entertainment – Canada), Barneys (retail –New York), IHI (hospitality – Malta), ISS (marine solutions – UK), Pension Corporation Group (insurance – UK), Istithmar P&O (real estate – UK), Dubai World Africa (hospitality – Dubai), Capital Management House (asset management– Bahrain), Algebra Capital (asset management – Dubai), Memorial Hospitals(healthcare – Turkey), David Morris (luxury retail – UK), as well as numerous other companies and funds.
Currently, Ziad sits on the Investment Committee and serves as an advisor the board of the Dubai Future District Fund, a $200MM Dubai Government Venture Capital initiative focused on growing the VC ecosystem in the UAE and GCC, as well as an Advisor to Playbook a $200MM Growth Equity Fund focused on India.
Previously, he served as CEO for both private and publicly listed financial institutions including Dubai Bank and Qatar First Bank which he took public. He also co-founded two emerging market focused investment bank and asset management firms MECG and SHUAA Capital.
Ziad holds a B.A. in Economics from Rice University, an MBA in Finance from NYU Stern School of Business, and a Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University. He also participated in several executive development programs including the Harvard YPO President University. He is a member and served as Chairman of both YPO Emirates Chapter as well as the YPO’s global Art Network.
John is a Founding Partner at EQUIAM. He currently oversees the execution of EQUIAM's investment strategy across the firm's three active funds. John has more than a decade of data science experience which he applies daily to the on-going optimization EQUIAM's proprietary G.E.N.I.U.S. model. John is a member of EQUIAM’s Investment Committee.
Prior to joining EQUIAM, John was hired as the 6th non-founder employee at Forge. While there, he facilitated $400 million+ of private tech equity transactions. He executed 500+ transactions across dozens of issuers gaining best-in-class knowledge of private secondary transaction mechanics, issuer-specific idiosyncrasies, and general private equity market dynamics. Additionally, John led various data analytics and special projects efforts at Forge developing the Tech30 Capped Index and creating a proprietary valuation model for private technology companies. John holds a B.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.
Arin currently shares responsibility for the execution of the investment strategy and ongoing optimization of the Equiam GENIUS model. Arin helps develop and maintain the optimal mix of proprietary signals underpinning the GENIUS model while adhering to goals, return objectives and risk tolerance constraints for the portfolio. Arin’s day-to-day duties include identifying the top companies for Equiam to invest in and building relationships with brokers and companies to acquire positions for the portfolio. Arin is a member of the Investment Committee.
Arin has over a decade of principal investment experience across Private Equity and Venture Capital industries. He has worked with a variety of early-stage and late-stage start-ups in an advisory capacity, investing family office capital of a pre-IPO Goldman Sachs partners. He was the 7th employee and Principal at the Kingfish Group, where he helped lead private equity co-investment and direct investing activities representing $1 billion+ of invested capital. He is a graduate of the Marshall School of Business Honors Program at the University of Southern California.
Joe is a Partner on EQUIAM's Investment Team. He has deep investment experience covering public and private equity and is a specialist in systematic quantitative approaches across global markets. Prior to joining EQUIAM, he was a Partner at Tribe Capital where he was an early member of the data science and investing team. While there, he helped scale Tribe’s quantitative approach to mid-late stage private firms and co-led Tribe's internal systematic crypto fund.
Previously, Joe was Investor at Bridgewater on the global equity team where he built systematic trading strategies, produced deep dive macro research for clients as well as frequent collaboration with the CIO’s.
Joe holds a Master’s of Financial Engineering (Cornell University), PhD in Theoretical Physics (University of Graz, Austria; visiting scholar at Stanford University)
Laxus, as part of the investment team is responsible for codifying and back-testing our proprietary algorithms, and working on new model optimization functions. He also focuses on our data gathering, ingestion, and insight derivations.
Laxus has extensive experience investing within in multi-billion AUM quant asset management strategies. His primary function was producing and applying quantitative research to drive investment decisions, predictive signal construction, and overall process improvement. Laxus is a data science, machine learning and optimization enthusiast. He has been programming since 9th grade and previously a professional gamer. He holds a Masters of Financial Engineering from UCLA Anderson, B.S. in Computer Science from University of Colorado at Boulder.
Yusef is the Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at EQUIAM. Prior to joining EQUIAM, Yusef was a Director and Senior Counsel at Allianz Global Investors, where he oversaw the hedge funds and the institutional accounts businesses. At Allianz, Yusef was also responsible for ensuring compliance with all regulatory developments impacting the North America region. Previously, Yusef was an associate at K&L Gates LLP in the investment management and corporate practice groups, where he counseled a broad range of financial industry clients on regulatory compliance, fund formation, and corporate transactions. During law school, Yusef worked as a regulatory intern at the Pacific Exchange (now NYSE Arca).
Yusef holds a B.A. from Howard University and a J.D. from University of California, Berkeley School of Law. He is a member of the California State Bar. Yusef also provides pro bono support to Bay Area non-profit organizations focused on child development and welfare.
Eric is Director at EQUIAM in the Operations function. Prior to joining EQUIAM, Eric was a Healthcare Services Associate at Guggenheim Securities, where he executed deals in the acute and post acute spaces, with additional analytical experience in HCIT. Previously, Eric was a Vice President at BNY Mellon where he supported the outsourcing of Bridgewater's existing back office infrastructure to BNY Mellon, built and advised on operational processing tools, and oversaw Bridgewater's daily equity/ETF operations.
Eric holds a B.A. from College of the Holy Cross, an M.B.A. from NYU Stern School of Business and is a CFA Charterholder.
Kirk has led the institutional outreach and distribution since 2020. He is in charge of qualifying and sourcing investors, strategic outreach initiatives, and managing the firm’s distribution partner relationships. He also manages several key broker relationships for the investment committee.
Kirk was formerly institutional equity sales at B. Riley Financial with a 10-year career managing institutional investor relationships globally. He worked with a variety of start-ups in an advisory capacity and has bootstrapped various projects in the Tech, Finance, & Real Estate sector. He is a web developer hobbyist and graduated from the University of Colorado Boulder, Quantitative Finance and Computer Science.
