Kweku Obed, CFA, CAIA

Kweku Obed is a managing director forMarquette Associates and serves on the firm’s board of directors. An owner of the firm, Kweku has been with the company since 2014 and has 23 years of investment experience. Kweku chairs the firm’s defined contribution services committee and serves on the operations committee and diversity, equity, and inclusion committee. Kweku joined the firm from Mercer Investment Consulting, where he served as a principal and senior investment consultant in their Chicago office. His responsibilities included working with defined benefit and defined contribution clients on asset allocation, performance measurement and analysis, investment manager search, and investment policy development. Prior to Mercer, Kweku worked at Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (now part of BlackRock) as an assistant vice president in their tax-exempt fixed income research group. Kweku holds a B.S. with honors in economics from Queen Mary College, University of London, and an M.S. in development economics from SOAS, University of London. He is a recipient of the Bernard Corry Prize in Economics. Kweku is a CFA® charterholder and holds the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst designation. He is the author of The Stranded Fish: Decision-Making Through the Lens of a Fiduciary, and has previously contributed to the official CAIA textbook, CAIA Level I: An Introduction to Core Topics in Alternative Investments, Second Edition. Additionally, he has authored the children’s books Talking About the ABCs of Financial Literacy and Talking About the ABCs of Financial Responsibility. He has contributed two chapters on asset allocation and defined contribution plans to the IFEPB’s Trustee Handbook and he is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Kweku is a member of the board of trustees for Everyone Reading Illinois and for Vibrant Emotional Health and serves on the board of directors for the CFA Society of Chicago. He is also a member of the Economic Club of Chicago and sits on the board of directors for Working In the Schools (“WITS”).

As a GAPPT presenter, Kweku has received information regarding educational instructional methods and adult learning processes.