BI Women in Finance: Fixed Income Halftime Report

Alix Steel is co-host of The Close on Bloomberg Television, and co-host of Bloomberg Intelligence on Bloomberg Radio.

Steel has interviewed numerous influential business leaders including Sam Zell, Ken Langone, Gary Cohn, Lloyd Blankfein, James Gorman, Lynn Good of Duke Energy, and most oil and gas CEOs in the business.

Prior to joining Bloomberg in February 2012, Steel was a senior multimedia reporter, anchor, and producer for TheStreet, where she focused on global markets. Steel also co-anchored a live trading show, “Morning Call,” for TheStreet and T3Live.com. She is a multiple SABEW Award nominee.

Steel graduated cum laude from Northwestern University, earning her bachelor’s degree in Communications, and has studied business journalism at New York University.

Michelle Neal is head of the Markets Group and a member of the Executive Committee at the New York Fed.

She has over 20 years of leadership experience in financial services organizations. She has been responsible for leading and transforming businesses spanning large geographical and regulatory domains as well as asset classes, with an emphasis on digitizing businesses dependent on scalable and resilient infrastructure.

Before joining the Fed, Michelle held senior executive roles including Head of U.S. Fixed Income, Currencies & Commodities at RBC Capital Markets and CEO of Markets at BNY Mellon. She also previously held leadership positions at Deutsche Bank, Nomura, Royal Bank of Scotland, and LedgerEdge.

Oksana Aronov, managing director, is head of market strategy for alternative fixed Income at J.P. Morgan Asset Management. In this role Oksana has investment strategy responsibilities as well as leads a team of strategists responsible for product management, portfolio oversight and client communication. Oksana also serves as a member of the firm’s Global Alternative Investments Operating Committee. Previously Oksana was global head of Fixed Income manager research at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Prior to re-joining the firm in 2007, she was a risk manager at Goldman Sachs Asset Management across traditional and alternative Fixed Income and Equity strategies. Oksana spent the early part of her career focusing on accounting and performance attribution for global tactical asset allocation portfolios at Blackrock and J.P. Morgan Investment Management. Oksana is a top-rated speaker at industry conferences and a featured guest on Bloomberg TV, CNBC, and other financial news outlets. Oksana earned her B.S. in finance and information systems from New York University Stern School of Business, and her M.B.A. in finance and marketing from Fordham University.

Amanda Lynam, CPA, is Head of Macro Credit Research within the Portfolio Management Group. In this capacity, Amanda leads original market research across a range of asset classes, including global liquid corporate debt markets as well as private debt, real estate and infrastructure lending.

Prior to joining BlackRock, Amanda spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs, where she was previously Managing Director and Senior Credit Strategist in Global Credit Strategy, within the Global Investment Research division. In this capacity, Amanda was responsible for published (sell-side) research covering the USD and EUR corporate credit markets (IG, HY, Loans and Private Debt). Amanda served as a voting member of the High Yield Investment Review Committee from 2019 to 2022, and was also the co-head of the Women’s Network for the Research division from 2018 to 2022. Earlier in her career at Goldman Sachs, Amanda was the lead sell-side analyst covering the Healthcare and Insurance sectors for several years. She also spent time in the Global Markets division as a senior fixed income salesperson to institutional clients.

Amanda began her career at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Audit practice and is a Certified Public Accountant. She earned a dual degree in Accounting and Economics from Villanova University in 2004.

Jennifer Welch is the Chief GeoEconomics Analyst for Bloomberg Economics, where her team focuses on the intersection of geopolitics and economics. She previously worked at the US National Security Council as the director for China and Taiwan, and before that served as the Vice President’s advisor on Asia and the Pacific. She is based in Washington, D.C.

Jeana Curro is Managing Director and Head of Agency MBS Research at BofA Securities, specializing in relative value across Agency pass-throughs, CMOs, mortgage derivatives and Hybrid ARMs. Jeana has held similar positions at Deutsche Bank Securities, RBS Securities, and UBS Investment Bank where she was part of the Agency Structured Products Research team consistently #1 by Institutional Investor Magazine. Jeana’s research and opinions have been regularly referenced by the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and HousingWire Magazine.

Prior to joining Bank of America, Jeana spent five years as Portfolio Manager and Subject Matter Expert at BlackRock, as part of the Financial Markets Advisory team.

Jeana graduated the University of Pennsylvania in 2004 with a Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics.

For more information about any awards cited, visit http://go.bofa.com/awards).

Erica Adelberg is the Chief Mortgage-Backed Securities (MBS) Strategist at Bloomberg Intelligence, a division of Bloomberg LP, and is based in New York City.

Erica started her career in MBS research and strategy at Kidder Peabody and Goldman Sachs. She spent the middle part of her career as a portfolio manager Goldman Sachs Asset Management and New York Life Investment Management, and then as a proprietary trader in MBS at KBC Bank.

Prior joining Bloomberg in 2021, Erica returned to the sell-side to head the MBS agency trading book at Seaport Global, focusing primarily on MBS derivatives.

Erica received her bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Chicago and is a CFA charterholder.