Our Partners
Mohit Sudhakar
Mohit is a corporate finance leader, strategic advisor, subject matter expert, and an expert witness with more than 25 years of consulting, management, and “practitioner hands-on” experience in capital markets, risk management, modeling, and valuation. He has a visible track-record of providing effective and durable solutions for liquidity, financing, risk-management created by regulations, markets, operations, and controls. He is skilled at collaborating with stakeholders, and his management skills and solid work ethic ensure consistently superior results.
His practitioner experience in financial strategy, portfolio management, market transactions, planning and analysis, quantitative modeling, risk management, operations, and governance developed over 20 years of front-line financial transactions work. Specifically, his experience includes issuing, purchasing, trading, and securitizing more than US $1 trillion of financial instruments, to include MBS, performing and distressed whole loans, CMOs, variety of debt structures, structured derivatives, fixed and floating preferred stock, liquidity products, and REITs. He has significant and deep investor relations experience in interacting with some of the largest mortgage and debt investors in the world, to include G-7 central banks and institutional investors.
From 1995 to 2015 at Freddie Mac, he served in a variety of strategy, execution, and leadership roles. He was Senior Director and head of their trading desks for Treasury and Liquidity, CMO Structuring and Investments, and Asset-Liability Management. In these roles, he supervised capital markets activities of issuing and repurchasing debt, managing corporate liquidity and term funding, trading mortgages and hedging them, and actively managing macro interest-rate risk of the aggregate portfolio with derivatives At the peak, the balance sheet was $800 billion investment portfolio (of MBS and whole loans) and US$ 2.2 trillion of securitized MBS. He has also issued new funding products that significantly improved Freddie Mac’s costs and volumes.
In 2015, he founded FIRM Advisors, a financial strategy and solutions consulting firm, headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. He currently leads their consulting practice for Mortgages and Capital Markets Strategy and Transformation. His consulting services include advisory for financial strategies and products, process improvement analytic frameworks and financial engineering capabilities, validation of quantitative models, and intelligent automation of processes to improve operational efficiency, risk-management, controls, and compliance.
He is a graduate of the Leadership and Strategic Impact Program by Tuck Executive Education at Dartmouth. He earned his M.B.A. in International Finance from the American University, his M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and his B.A. in Economics from University of Delhi.
Mohit is an Expert Witness with Eleven Canterbury. Mohit is an executive-advisor to Vikheda LLC, a rapidly growing company that provides blockchain and machine-learning services.
Brayton Li
Brayton is a seasoned investment and market risk management professional with over 20 years of experience in asset management, mortgage and fixed income management, and derivatives and risk management. Brayton has significant experience GSEs and major global insurance and retirement institutions, leading and implementing strategic changes in the areas of asset allocation, derivatives and market risk management and governance, development and implementation of investment policy and procedures, and system infrastructure development for controlled operations. His fields of expertise include strategic and tactical asset allocation, liability driven investing (LDI), mortgage and fixed income analytics, asset-liability management (ALM) and hedging, derivatives management, stress testing and scenario analysis, counterparty risk management and collateral optimization / management, and economic and operational implications on derivatives use by insurers under the Dodd-Frank regulatory requirements.
He has worked at ING/Voya Financial as VP and Head of Asset Allocation and Strategy, at Principal Financial Group as Senior Managing Director, Global Derivatives, and earlier at Farmer Mac, Freddie Mac and Bank of America. Brayton earned his M.B.A. in Finance from the University of California at Riverside, and his B.A. in Finance and Operations Research with minors in Economics and Computer Science from California State University, Stanislaus.
Brian Brandenburg, CFA
Mr. Brandenburg’s specialties include MBS trading and valuation, fixed income portfolio management, and origination through secondary marketing. Before joining FIRM Advisors, Mr. Brandenburg was a Principal of Stone Pine Group, a venture capital/private equity investor. Prior to joining Stone Pine in 2005, he worked at Freddie Mac for 18 years, most recently serving as the Vice President of Mortgage Strategy and Analytics. Mr. Brandenburg spent the majority of his career managing fixed-income investment portfolios and associated hedges in a leveraged portfolio at Freddie Mac. He built a multi-billion dollar mortgage conduit and its hedging function in addition to building and managing Freddie Mac's internal mortgage investment portfolio. Mr. Brandenburg also successfully developed a weekly client-directed research publication as the head of a major broker/dealer's research department. He is also the owner of Power Over Addictions, LLC since July 2013, and coordinator at S&I since April 2012.
Brian has the CFA designation; he earned his M.B.A. from Brigham Young University with emphasis in Finance and Investments, and his B.A. (Cum Laude) in International Relations with a minor in Korean also from Brigham Young University.
Usha Chaudhary, CPA, CGMA
Usha Chaudhary has transformed several organizations by establishing best-in-class operations focused on business growth, fiscal discipline, and operational excellence. She has senior executive and hands-on experience in strategy, finance, operations, risk management, M&A, technology-solutions, and innovation in both public and privately-held companies including financial services, media, global non-profit, and multifamily real estate investment, development and management. She has improved efficiency and scalability of several organizations and significantly increased their shareholder value.
Ms. Chaudhary most recently served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Kettler, a leading multifamily real estate developer and manager in USA, overseeing all aspects of the organization. Previously, she was SVP, CFO and Treasurer of The Pew Charitable Trusts, CFO of The Washington Post, and EVP and CFO of United Way of America. Earlier, she held key executive positions at Freddie Mac for finance, strategy, risk management, and corporate operations for its Investments and Capital Markets, Multifamily, Single-Family, and Risk-Management Divisions.
Ms. Chaudhary is a strong advocate for education and is a supporter youth betterment. She has served on many non-profit and trade association boards over the past 15 years and on a private corporate board last 6 years, as Treasurer, Chair, and member of many committees.
Ms. Chaudhary has received various awards and honors over the past decade, including as finalist in the March of Dimes ‘Heroines of Washington” in 2018; named as Washingtonian’s “Most Powerful Women in Washington” in 2017; Bisnow’s “Women of Influence in Commercial Real Estate” in 2017; Washington Business Journal’s “Women Who Mean Business” Honoree in 2016; The Women’s Center’s “Leadership Award” nominee in 2016; and named Washington’s “Non-Profit CFO of the Year Award for Innovation” in 2007.
Ms. Chaudhary is a graduate of Harvard University Graduate School of Design, and Stanford University Graduate School of Business. She's earned a World Executive MBA from The George Washington University and a BA in English Literature from St. Stephen’s College in New Delhi, India.