The Team

Chauwei Yak is the Founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Investment Officer of GAO Capital. She is responsible for managing the business and affairs of GAO as well as being part of the Risk Management committee. She also oversees the day-to-day activities of the business, having direct reports from the heads of finance/accounting, operations, technology and legal/compliance. 

She has almost 20 years of investment experience and was previously Director of Research for Ortelius Capital in New York, where she was in charge of hedge fund selection and built the company’s portfolio allocation and risk monitoring system. Prior to that, she was in investment banking at J.P. Morgan and UBS, in New York and Tokyo. She is a Chartered Valuer and Appraiser (CVA) and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA), as well as a committee member of the Singapore Institute of Directors (SID). 

Chauwei graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a dual degree, B.S. in Economics with Finance concentration from the Wharton School and B. A. in Asian & Middle Eastern Studies from the College of Arts & Sciences. She also received a minor in Mathematics. She speaks regularly at conferences by EQDerivatives, HFM and CNBC, as well as being featured on publications including Bloomberg and Business Times. Chauwei has also lectured at the Business Families Institute of Singapore Management University and shares her thoughts regularly on www.linkedin.com/in/chauwei and https://thechauwei.blogspot.com/.

Yongjie Yi is the Lead Portfolio Manager at GAO Capital and he is in charge of portfolio allocation for our multi-manager, multi-strategy funds. His responsibilities include optimisation of trading operations, research and due diligence of relative value, macro and systematic strategies, implementation of hedging strategies as well as risk management.

Prior to joining the firm, he was a portfolio manager at Shidan Capital in Singapore, trading Nikkei and Topix futures and options. Before this, he was a top ranked trader at JPMorgan in Tokyo, where he traded fixed income exotics.

Yongjie graduated with a Bachelor degree (First Class Honours) in Electrical & Electrical Engineering from Imperial College of Science & Technology, and Master in Financial Engineering from Cornell University, New York. He is fluent in English, Chinese and Japanese. 

Terry Lim is in charge of operations and risk management at GAO Capital, including the integration of new statistical techniques and machine learning frameworks into the fund's investment strategy.

He has over 25 years of experience in GIC leading various middle & back office functions. Previously, he was also head of Investment Book Records (IBOR) & Portfolio Rebalancing Operations, as well as head of Performance Management, Management Reporting, and head of Global Markets Risk Analysis.

Terry graduated with a Bachelor of Applied Science in Computer Engineering at Nanyang Technological University.

Priya Joseph advises our India Public & Private Markets Strategy, driving GAO Capital's expansion into these areas through her local expertise and network. She heads talent management, maintaining an inclusive work environment at GAO where everyone has a voice and the opportunity to share their diverse opinions and variant views.  She also spearheads our ESG efforts to integrate sustainability into the firm's strategy.

Priya is on the board of Wonderla, a publicly listed recreational activities company she co-founded. She was previously in charge of the operations pertaining to food and beverages and human resources departments of the company, and also actively involved with the Corporate Social Responsibility related initiatives of the firm. She is also the founder of Adhyan, a foundation which empowers vulnerable women and children.

Priya holds a post graduate degree in public health from University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a certified NLP (Neuro Linguistic Programming) Life Coach.

Steve Jernigan advises on GAO Capital's PM selection, applies data intelligence to investment strategy, and ensures internal processes are of institution grade.

Steve is an authorized director of Renaissance Fund Management (ex-Kim Eng Asset Management Thailand) managing proprietary investment systems to serve institutional clients. Prior to that, he was data intelligence at Goldman Sachs, improving client experience across banking, asset management, and global markets. He has also consulted for hedge funds and asset managers such as Bridgewater Associates and Brookfield.

Steve holds a bachelor of science in Finance & International Business from Pennsylvania State University.

Michele Chitson boasts over 18 years of expertise in capital markets, quantitative research and trading. During her tenure at Citadel, she spearheaded the development, research and monetization of equity options market-making as well as algorithmic trading strategies.

Michele holds both a Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Science from Cambridge University and has worked for quantitative trading firms and global banks such as Goldman Sachs and Merril Lynch throughout her career. At Goldman Sachs, Michele was Vice President of Structured Products Trading. Prior to that, she was Assistant Vice President of Equity Derivatives Trading at Merrill Lynch.