Frank Dornseifer is Managing Director of Bundesverband Alternative Investments e.V. (BAI), the German based cross-asset lobby association for the alternative investments industry, representing more than 250 stakeholders, including asset managers, service providers, consultants, investors.

He has been active for more than 20 years in various functions in investment management, capital markets and corporate law. He studied law at the universities of Bonn, Dublin (Trinity College) and Lausanne. After admission to the German Bar in 2000 he practiced various years as attorney in an international law firm in the field of corporate and securities law before joining the German Financial Regulator BaFin as deputy head of the policy unit within the investment management department. In this function he also represented BaFin in the Investment Management Committee of IOSCO. Mr. Dornseifer frequently publishes articles both on investment and regulatory topics including fund regulation, sustainable and digital finance and he is co-editor of legal commentaries on the German Investment Act and on the AIFM Directive. The finance committee of the German Bundestag, the EU commission and the European Parliament denominated him several times as expert on capital market law. Mr. Dornseifer gives frequently speeches at national and international conferences on investment and regulatory topics.

Paul Newsome, Partner Private Equity, is Head of Portfolio Management and a member of the Private Equity Investment Committee. He joined Unigestion in London in June 2002 as an investment professional covering European and US primaries, secondaries and direct co-investments. In 2005, he moved to the Jersey City office in the US to be responsible for North American investments, subsequently building the private equity team there. In 2009, he was appointed Global Head of Investments, responsible for the overall selection of fund investments, secondary investments and direct co-investments, and member of the Investment Committee, based in Geneva. He was appointed to his current position in 2019.

Mr Newsome began his career in 1995 as a Financial Analyst at Procter & Gamble. He then advised on public and private capital raising for technology companies at Quartz Capital and later was an investment officer at BancBoston Capital, making and managing venture capital investments in Europe.

Mr Newsome has a First Class Master's Degree in Engineering, Economics and Management from Oxford University, UK and is a Chartered Management Accountant.

Biermans (1974) is a partner at PROW Capital, where he is responsible for ESG, including for the Green Shipping Fund, a private debt fund aimed at speeding up the decarbonization of shipping. Before joining PROW Capital he worked at Rabobank, initially as Head of Sustainability Policy and subsequently as Global Head Sustainable Finance. Before this he worked as a strategy consultant, specializing in responsible investing in alternative investments. During this time he co-authored the PRI guide on how to integrate ESG in Private Equity. Maarten holds dual master degrees in Philosophy and Economics, both from the University of Amsterdam, where he also obtained his doctorate in Economics in 2012. While working on his dissertation, he was a visiting researcher at Stanford University. Maarten is a board member of the UN Global Compact Netherlands Network and a member of the human rights committee of the Advisory Council on International Affairs (AIV), an independent body which advises the Dutch government and parliament on foreign policy. He regularly teaches at universities and in the coming academic year will be teaching the course on Sustainable Finance and Impact Investing course at the Amsterdam Business School. He is also a dedicated fan of Bob Dylan.

Michele Giddens OBE co-founded Bridges Fund Management in 2002; she now oversees strategy, client development, talent development, public affairs and impact management as Co-CEO & Partner. She has played a leading role in the growth of the sustainable and impact investing sectors in the UK and worldwide over the past three decades, including in her capacity as adviser to the UK Treasury’s Social Investment Task Force, chair of the UK National Advisory Board on Impact Investing, among other roles.

Thomas Deinet was appointed Executive Director of the Standards Board for Alternative Investments (SBAI), previously known as the Hedge Fund Standards Board (HFSB) in September 2008. In 2007, Thomas joined the Hedge Fund Working Group to project manage the development of practice standards proposed by a group of 14 leading hedge fund managers that led to the establishment of the HFSB.

Before joining the HFSB, Thomas was a senior manager at Oliver Wyman, the management consulting firm, where he extensively worked with major financial institutions in Europe in both asset management as well as corporate and investment banking. He joined Oliver Wyman in 2002 after working as an analyst in energy trading for a major commodities trading firm.

Thomas is a regular speaker at hedge fund and regulatory conferences, and represents the SBAI at the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO).

He is a holder of a Master Degree in Industrial Engineering from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany and an MSc from Purdue University, USA. Thomas Deinet is a CFA charterholder.