Investment Executive Committee

Simon was appointed Chief Executive of the wholly-owned investment management subsidiary of Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited (USS Investment Management Limited) in October 2019 to lead the team who manage the assets of USS, for both DB and DC sections of the scheme, investing across both Public and Private Markets. The majority of USS’s investments are managed in-house and USSIM has responsibility for selecting and overseeing third-party managers where these are used. USSIM is also the principal investment advisor to the scheme.

Simon started his career in asset management in 1987 at Morgan Grenfell before moving to Prudential in 1998, a year before it acquired M&G Investments. At M&G Prudential, he led the Fixed Income and Alternatives businesses for two decades before being asked to become Chairman of Real Estate with a combined team of over 500 employees and around £160bn in assets. He was also a member of the Executive Leadership Team. During his tenure at M&G Prudential, Simon championed innovation and pioneered new products in Europe, for example: Leveraged Finance, Infrastructure Private Equity, Commercial Mortgage Lending and, more recently, Specialty Finance and Impact Investing.

He has a degree from Cambridge University.

Angus Parker is Head of Equities at USS Investment Management, the investment arm of the Universities Superannuation Scheme. He is responsible for all of USS’s listed equities portfolios across developed and emerging markets. Angus has more than 30 years investment experience as a portfolio manager across a wide range of institutional and retail mandates. Before USS, Angus was Head of Developed Market Equities at HSBC Asset Management. He started his career at Lazard Asset Management working for them in London and New York.

Ben joined USS Investment Management Limited as Head of Fixed Income and Treasury in January 2020. He was previously at BlackRock where he managed the LDI business in EMEA and led the coordination of Integrated LDI across Global Fixed Income. In addition, he was the Chair of BlackRock’s Investment Oversight Committee and was responsible for $22bn active LDI clients. Prior to this, Ben worked with P-Solve as Deputy CIO, where he was the Chair of the Derivative Policy Committee and a voting member of the Investment Committee. Ben has an MSc in Mathematics from Durham University.

Ben is Head of Private Markets, overseeing the team investing across all private asset classes at USS.

Ben joined Private Markets in 2013 leading teams across the Strategic investment and Real Assets mandates. Most recently, Ben was head of the Private Credit and Alternative Income mandate, investing across the risk spectrum, both directly and through fiduciary managers. Ben has been a member of the Private Markets Investment Committee since 2010.

Prior to joining the Private Markets Group, Ben was Head of UK and European Equities at USS managing equity portfolios totalling £6bn. Ben began his career as an analyst at HSBC specialising in Utilities. He holds a BA in Business and Economics from the University of the West of England.

Jeremy re-joined USS as Group General Counsel in 2014, having previously worked as General Counsel for the Investment Management function between 2009 and 2011. His previous experience includes responsibility for various areas of the legal coverage for the EMEA business at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, Vice President at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers and Legal Advisor at the London Stock Exchange. Jeremy was also General Counsel and a main board Director at Martin Currie Investment Management.

Lesley is the Group Finance Director at USS. She is responsible for finance, tax, covenant monitoring, procurement and facilities management. Before joining USS, Lesley qualified as a Chartered Accountant with PwC in the UK, where she worked for 17 years, latterly as a director in the financial services external audit practice. Lesley held a number of senior finance roles at retail financial institutions including Co-operative Bank and Royal London Mutual Insurance before joining USS in November 2022.

Mirko joined USS Investment Management Limited in 2015 and has been in his current role as Head of Investment Strategy since 2019. He’s responsible for the design of our strategic asset allocation processes. Prior to this, Mirko was Head of Asset Allocation-EMEA at Russell Investments where he was responsible for designing model portfolios and reviewing the asset allocation of EMEA funds. Before his appointment at Russell, Mirko was Head of Strategic Asset Allocation and Multi-Asset Fund Manager at Aviva Investors. He was also a senior Investment Consultant at Watson Wyatt (now Willis Towers Watson). Mirko holds a PhD in Finance from Imperial College, London, an MSc in Economics from Universitat Pompeu i Fabra, Barcelona and a BSc in Economics from Università Bocconi, Milan.

Naomi joined USS Investment Management Limited in August 2012 as Head of Investment Product Management. Naomi has responsibility for the Fiduciary Management, Investment Product and Manager Selection teams. Additionally, Naomi has responsibility for the DC product, and was responsible for its design and implementation in October 2016.

Naomi joined USSIM from JP Morgan as Business Development Manager running front office projects across the scheme, she subsequently became the LDI & Treasury Manager, responsible for the external LDI mandate. Following that Naomi focused on the strategy solutions provision for the scheme within the Strategy Co-ordination team, helping to implement the schemes Reference Portfolio before more recently taking responsibility for the design and implementation of the new DC Product.

Naomi graduated from Loughborough University with a degree in English Literature and subsequently gained a 1st class degree in Finance from Oxford Brookes, additionally holding the ACCA & IMC qualifications.

Sandra joined USS Investment Management Limited in January 2024 as Head of Responsible Investment. Sandra has more than 20 years of experience in sustainable and responsible investment and has worked for three decades in the financial services industry, spanning capital markets, investment banking and investment management.

Before USS, Sandra was at Jupiter Asset Management where she has been Head of Sustainability. Prior to this, Sandra spent several years as Head of Responsible Investment at leading investment managers, including HSBC Asset Management and Newton Investment Management. She spent a decade at Citigroup in various senior global capital markets and banking roles and served as a PRI board member from 2016-2018.

Victoria was appointed as Chief Operating Officer of USSIM in April 2021, having served as the Deputy for that role since October 2019. She is responsible for the end to end USSIM support operating model, infrastructure and associated control framework, including oversight of group shared services providing support to USSIM. Victoria joined USS in October 2015 as Head of Governance and moved to be Chief Compliance Officer in September 2017. She started her career with Deloitte, where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2010 and worked in the financial services audit practice. Prior to USS, Victoria was at Martin Currie Investment Management for 4 years – initially in the compliance team, and then as Head of Governance/Company Secretary for the firm.