Virginia Reynolds Parker, CFA

President, Founder, and CIO 

Ms. Parker’s professional experience in the investment industry is broad, including research, portfolio management, and risk management. She has expertise in both traditional and alternative investment strategies, combined with a strong background in the structuring, administering, and management of multi-manager hedge fund portfolios, including those with principal protection guarantees. She also has extensive experience in currency risk and returns, and portfolio risk measurement and management techniques. Ms. Parker is well known for developing industry-recognized performance benchmarks for foreign exchange. Her research is widely published, and she is a frequent speaker at industry conferences. Ms. Parker edited Managing Hedge Fund Risk: From the Seat of the Practitioner, published in 2000. The book has been one of the best selling ever from Risk Books. The Japanese translation sold several thousand copies during its first two years in print. In 2005, Ms. Parker edited, wrote the Introduction and contributed a chapter for Managing Hedge Fund Risk; 2nd Edition, published in May 2005. Ms. Parker contributed chapters to two books published during 2003. The first is "Performance Measurement From the Allocator’s Perspective," Funds of Hedge Funds (London: Euromoney Books) in which she proposes a new methodology for measuring risk-adjusted returns for hedge funds. The second, is "Risk Management for Hedge Funds and Funds of Hedge Funds," Modern Risk Management: A History (London, Risk Books) in which she discusses the history and development of risk measurement, monitoring, and management for hedge funds and funds of hedge funds. Ms. Parker has been involved in investment management since 1981 when she began managing equity and fixed income investments. She has served as trustee and managed assets for a family office since 1984.

From 1988 until 1995, Ms. Parker was with Ferrell Capital Management, a company that she helped build from a start-up into a successful alternative investment and risk management firm. She was a partner, served as Managing Director of Research & Risk Management, and was a member of the Advisory Board. While at Ferrell Capital, Ms. Parker guided the company’s portfolio structuring techniques, asset allocation strategies, risk management, search for managers, and new product development. Since 1988, she has been conducting extensive analysis of alternative investment strategies using derivative instruments to complement U.S. and international portfolios. She built Ferrell’s proprietary database, directed the firm’s comprehensive market research and developed an industry-recognized performance benchmark, the Ferrell FX Index.

In 1995, Ms. Parker founded Parker Global Strategies to specialize in customizing multi-manager hedge fund strategies along with risk management oversight for institutions and their clients. She is Chair of the PGS Investment and Management Committees and a member of the Risk Management and the Portfolio Committees.

Ms. Parker is a Chartered Financial Analyst, a member of the New York Society of Securities Analysts, the CFA Institute, the International Association of Financial Engineers, and the IAFE’s Investor Risk Committee. She has been awarded the Certificate of Achievement from the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts for many of the years from 1993 through 2004. Ms. Parker is a member of the Board of Directors of the Foundation for Managed Derivatives Research. She is also a founding member and Angel of 100 Women in Hedge Funds. Her registrations include Series 3, 22, 39 and 63.

Ms. Parker graduated with an AB in Economics and Political Science from Duke University in 1980. She is a 2003 graduate of the OPM program at Harvard Business School.