Yakov Shenkman, CFA, FRM, CAIA, Director, is the head of risk for the US Fundamental Equity. The risk team provides independent risk oversight on behalf of BlackRock and its clients, as well as partners with portfolio managers in their portfolio construction process to ensure the risks managed by BlackRock are deliberate, diversified and appropriately scaled.

Prior to joining BlackRock in 2013, Yakov was a senior risk manager in Global Portfolio Strategies (GPS) team at Bank of America where he was responsible for constructing, optimizing and hedging bank’s commercial credit loan portfolio. Yakov started his career in 2006 at Morgan Stanley where he was an equity risk manager at Morgan Stanley Investment Management transitioning later to a sell-side risk manager role covering Structured Credit Products trading desk.

Yakov holds an MS in Operations Research / Financial Engineering from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. Yakov is a CFA, FRM and CAIA charter holder and is a member of CFA Institute and Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP).