Our Senior Team
Our senior team members are highly experienced subject matter experts with a superior understanding of global capital markets, including their key drivers and systemic risks. Collectively, we have hands-on and supervision experience in managing Investment portfolios, Treasury & Liquidity, Asset-Liability risk, Counterparty-risk, and Securitization functions through a variety of financial market cycles. As a company, we have unparalleled knowledge of Eco-systems related to Fixed Income, Mortgages, CMOs, Debt structures, CDOs, Syndicated Loans, CLOs' Liquidity products, Interest-rate-derivatives, Credit derivatives, Preferred equity and other capital instruments.
Our senior team has developed and executed strategic and financial plans for several corporations; we have built innovative products, processes, and technology capabilities. Our senior team have governance experience of identifying and managing enterprise critical risks. We have designed, innovated, and transformed many business lines and re-engineered operations to improve organizational efficiency and scalability.
Mohit Sudhakar
Managing Partner, LIBOR Transition; Mortgages and Capital Markets; Strategy and Transformation
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, our financial strategy and solutions consulting firm, headquartered in Tysons Corner, Virginia. He currently leads our 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 and provides expert testimony for litigation cases for financial services clients. Mohit is an executive-advisor to Vikheda, a rapidly growing company that provides blockchain and machine-learning services.
Brayton Li
Partner, Quantitative Modeling; Investments,; and Financial Risk-management
Brayton Li 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, liabilitydriven 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 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
Partner, Fixed Income Portfolio Management; Secondary Marketing; Training
Brian 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.
Richard Johns
Executive Consultant, LIBOR Transition Strategy & Transformation, Capital Markets Risk-management
As a successful and strategic-minded financial executive, Richard Johns not only helps save global corporations during times of crisis but restructures them to ensure future growth. Having helped rebuild Structured Finance Industry Group (SFIG), Ally Financial, and Capital One, Johns is sought out by the C-Suite of companies under organizational or fiscal duress and rebuilds the foundation to support an industry-leading position. Representing all aspects of a solution—the industry, banks, issuers, and investors, Johns brings much-needed strategic alignment by applying structured financial solutions.
As SFIG’s first Chief Executive Officer, Johns rebuilt the former American Securitization Forum after its collapse. He dramatically increased the company’s membership and annual revenue and established lean and efficient financial, regulatory, and compliance systems and operations. He also created a yearly conference that is the largest in the global capital markets sector.
As the Global Funding and Liquidity Executive and Europe and Asia Pacific Treasurer for Ally Financial, Johns led all aspects of the funding and liquidity of $185B in assets. Johns developed the new Ally Financial international entities to be self-funded and no longer reliant on the parent company by establishing stability and autonomy for all 15 global offices.
When Johns was Head of Global Capital Markets for Capital One, he led the global capital markets group with $130B in corporate funding. He saved the bank more than $700M over two years during the financial crisis and positioned the bank to be among the strongest in the United States.
Johns has also established several non-profit initiatives, including a Women in Securitization program, a charity foundation that provides college scholarships to underprivileged adolescents, and a political action committee to support the structured finance industry.
Johns has testified before the U.S. Congress three times regarding market liquidity and mortgage reform. Johns is a member of the Institute of Charted Accountants in England and Wales and the Association of Chartered Accountants in the United States. He earned his Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the University of Manchester in the U.K.
Nazir Dossani
Executive Consultant, Quantitative Modeling; Portfolio Risk-management; Governance
Dr. Dossani worked for over twenty years with Government Sponsored Enterprises (Fannie and Freddie), starting as Director for Pricing and Portfolio Analysis at Fannie Mae and, before retiring was Senior Vice President of Investments and Capital Markets at Freddie Mac where he was responsible for managing interest rate risk and allocating capital for an over $600 billion mortgage portfolio. Prior to that he was a consultant in the field of applied economics and finance. He has conducted numerous public policy analyses in the fields of energy, environment, transportation and public investment.
Dr. Dossani has a BA (Economics Honors) from the University of Calcutta, an MBA (Finance) from the Wharton School and a Ph. D. (Regional Science) from the University of Pennsylvania. He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University where he teaches courses in Investments, Portfolio Management and Fixed Income Markets.
Scott McCarthy
Executive Consultant, LIBOR Transition Strategy & Transformation
Mr. McCarthy has over 30 years’ corporate treasury experience with senior management responsibility for the development, implementation, and management of a wide range of capital market and other finance functions. In those roles Mr. McCarthy was responsible for managing cross-functional teams to support corporate growth and diversification initiatives as well as meeting all regulatory and accounting compliance requirements. He has particular expertise in short- and long-term debt issuance, asset securitization, interest-rate risk management, liquidity risk management, derivatives, cash management, and foreign exchange risk management.
Most recently Mr. McCarthy was a Managing Director in Bank of America’s corporate treasury department with responsibility for managing the structuring, analysis, and debt issuance for credit card, auto, and other consumer asset securitization programs including US, UK, and Canadian asset pools. He was also responsible for overseeing conformance with all Dodd Frank, Reg AB, and other regulatory rules.
Mr. McCarthy’s experience also includes investor development and management, oversight of ratings processes, and participation on various industry association working groups.
Scott earned an M.B.A. in Finance and Investments from George Washington University and a B.S. in Finance from the University of Connecticut.
Sanjay Vatsa
Advisor to FIRM's Executive Team for Strategy Operations, Digital Transformation
Mr. Vatsa is an accomplished 25+ years C level career with deep expertise in building, digitally transforming, and running global operations and business models in top tier banks, asset management & servicing service providers, software services as well as consulting firms.
Mr. Vatsa’s career has spanned firms such as Blackrock, Citibank, Merrill Lynch, CAPCO & State Street as a senior executive he worked in various capacity in running & building sustainable capabilities globally and transforming them to be “better faster and cheaper”. His experience spans various functions and locations - building & implementing disruptive strategies, designing and executing transformation initiatives, building shared utilities, acquisition & de-conversion; interpreting & implementing regulatory change, big data design, initiatives & governance; and establishing risk and control framework. He has led various global change team focused on transformation, lean, EPMO, UAT; and managing global operations teams across locations. Sanjay has worked on various regulatory, risk & control initiatives globally and has interacted with regulatory agencies globally. He has been an advisor to many “start-up” companies and is active in building sustainable & effective social responsibility programs.
At Citi, Mr. Vatsa was Managing Director and Head of BPR, COE & Operations Strategy at Securities & Fund Services; and at Global Wealth Management. Prior to Citi, he was the Managing Director at BlackRock - Head of Strategy, Offshoring and Relationship Management. At Polaris he was Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer & Global Practice Head – Digital & Data. Additionally, he has held various senior leadership positions at Merrill Lynch, State Street, M&T Bank and was one of the initial pioneers at CAPCO.
Usha Chaudhary, CPA, CGMA
Advisor to FIRM's Executive Team
Partner (formerly), Business, Finance, Risk, Operations Transformation and Governance
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.
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.
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.
Mohit Sudhakar
Mohit Sudhakar has an accomplished 20-year career highlighted by his deep expertise in capital markets and risk-management. At Freddie Mac, he was Senior Director of their Treasury, CMO Investments, and Asset-Liability departments, over time. In those roles, he supervised capital markets activities of issuing and repurchasing several varieties of structured debt, and employing derivatives for hedging. He also led and executed initiatives for alternative asset-liability strategies and funding plans. In addition, he developed several new funding and hedging products that significantly improved Freddie Mac’s costs and volumes. He has also been a speaker at many Treasury and Asset-Liability conferences.
Mr. Sudhakar's knowledge of and experience in capital markets, trading fixed-income products, market-risk management, trade operations and administration, and compliance & supervision distinguish him. He has a visible track record of solving strategic and operational business problems of liquidity, financing, and risk-management that are created by regulations, market factors, or competitive forces. He is skilled at building consensus among myriad, cross-functional stakeholders on critical issues, and his superior management skills and solid work ethic ensure consistently superior results.
Mohit earned an M.B.A. in International Finance from the American University, an M.A. in Economics from the Delhi School of Economics, and a B.A. in Economics from Delhi University.
Brayton Li
Brayton Li is a deeply experienced investment and market risk management professional with keen strategic vision and excellent managerial and personal skills. He has an extensive background of over 20 years in insurance (life insurance and retirement products), asset management, and mortgage and fixed income management. He has worked at 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.
Mr. Li has significant experience in leading and implementing strategic changes at major corporations, specifically in areas of institutional investing, market risk management and governance, and system infrastructure development for controlled operations. His fields of expertise include strategic and tactical asset allocation, mortgage and fixed income analytics, asset-liability management and hedging, derivatives management of underlying asset classes including interest rate, credit, equity and FX, stress testing and scenario analysis, counterparty risk management and collateral optimization / management, and economic and operational implications on derivative use by insurers under the Dodd-Frank regulatory requirements.
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.