Armen A.A. Avanessians
MS’83, P: CC’12 CC’17 SIPA’17; Chief Investment Officer, Goldman Sachs Asset Management (Retired)
Mr. Avanessians was the global head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s (GSAM) quantitative, rules-based, and indexing businesses, until retiring in the spring of 2022.
Prior to joining GSAM in 2011, Armen served as head of Strats, a global group responsible for the application of mathematical, quantitative, and algorithmic approaches to revenue activities in the Securities, Investment Management, and Investment Banking Divisions. In over two decades in this role, he was instrumental in developing the teams, practices, and platform (SecDb) that collectively drive the commercial application of analytics across most of the firm’s activities today. Armen also served on the Securities Division Executive Committee from 2003 to 2011. He joined Goldman Sachs in 1985 as a foreign exchange strategist and became a partner in 1994.
Prior to joining the firm, Armen was a member of the technical staff at Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill.
Armen is a trustee of Columbia University and chairs its Audit Committee. He is also co-chair of the Columbia University Data and Society Council. Armen is a member of the MIT Investment Management Company (MITIMCo) Board, MIT Sloan Finance Group Advisory Board, MIT Corporation Department of Economics Visiting Committee, and Steering Committee of the Masters in Financial Engineering Program at the University of California, Berkeley. He also serves as a board member of FAR (Fund for Armenian Relief) and NYC FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology).
Armen earned a BSEE from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1982 and an MS from Columbia University in 1983.