David R. Shepard

Mason Street Advisors LLC (MSA) is a SEC-registered investment advisor headquartered in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The firm was founded in 2001 and is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. MSA provides professional portfolio management services for institutional investors by providing continuous investment advice and management based upon the individual needs and objectives of each client.

State Farm Investment Management Corp. (SFIMC) is a SEC-registered investment advisor and fund manager headquartered in Bloomington, Illinois. The firm was founded in 2002 and is wholly-owned by State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co. SFIMC provides investment supervisory services for, or arranges for, such services to the State Farm Mutual Funds.

IMCOR Pharmaceutical Co. is a development-stage pharmaceutical company focused on developing medical imaging pharmaceutical products. Currently, the company's core business focus has evolved from an operating entity conducting research and development, manufacturing and limited selling activities. The company was founded by H. Craig Dees and Eric A. Wachter on December 28, 1994 and is headquartered in San Diego, CA.

NWQ Investment Management Co. LLC (NWQ) is an investment advisory firm headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The firm was founded in 1982 and is a subsidiary of Nuveen NWQ Holdings LLC, ultimately held by Nuveen Investments, Inc. NWQ provides investment advisory services to a wide variety of retail and high net-worth individual and institutional clients, such as corporate and multi-employer plans, charitable organizations, educational institutions, trust accounts, estates, corporations or other business entities, banks and thrift institutions, insurance companies, governments and municipalities. Additionally, the firm provides investment sub-advisory services to affiliated and unaffiliated open-end and closed-end investment companies, CITs, and UCITS Funds.

Putnam Investment Management LLC (PIM) is a SEC-registered investment advisor and mutual fund manager headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts. Founded in 1971, the firm is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Putnam US Holdings I LLC and became an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Franklin Resources, Inc. (NYSE: BEN) in 2024. PIM provides investment advice across all asset classes to individuals and institutions worldwide through separately managed accounts and pooled investment funds.

Ernst & Young LLP engages in the provision of accounting, assurance, tax, transaction, and advisory services. It specializes in the actuarial, analytics and big data, cyber security, accounting compliance and reporting, center for board matters, international financial reporting standards, country tax advisory, global trade, tax accounting, and climate change and sustainability. The company was founded in 1989 and is headquartered in New York, NY.

Robert W. Baird & Co., Inc. operates as a wealth management, capital markets, private equity and asset management firm. It offers equity research, corporate restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, public financing and fixed income services. The firm serves individual, corporate, institutional and municipal clients. The company was founded by Robert Wilson Baird in 1919 and is headquartered in Milwaukee, WI.

Madison Asset Management LLC (Madison) is an independent registered investment advisor headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin. The firm was founded by Frank Burgess in 1974 and is a subsidiary of Madison Investment Holdings, Inc. Madison provides individual and institutional clients a range of investment strategies across mutual funds, managed accounts and customized investment portfolios.

Nuveen Asset Management LLC (NAM) is a SEC-registered investment advisor headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The firm was founded in 2011 and is a subsidiary of Nuveen Fund Advisors LLC, which is ultimately owned by TIAA Board of Governors. NAM provides investment advisory and sub-advisory services to a broad range of individual and institutional clients, such as open-end and closed-end investment companies and other pooled investment vehicles.

Enevate Corp. operates as a silicon Lithium-ion battery technology company. It focuses on silicon-dominant Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles and consumer mobile devices such as smartphones, tablets, and notebook personal computers. The firm?s HD-Energy technology, delivers significant performance improvement over conventional graphite-dominant Li-ion batteries. The company was founded by Steven Cardona, Rabih Bachir Zaouk, Chunlei Wang, Marc J. Madou and Benjamin Y. Park in 2005 and is headquartered in Irvine, CA.

ARCH Venture Partners LLC is a Venture Capital firm founded in 1986. The firm is headquartered in Chicago with additional office in Dublin.

Chroma Medicine, Inc. is a biotechnology company that pioneers a new class of genomic medicines using epigenetics to deliver precise, programmable single-dose therapeutics while preserving genomic integrity. The company is based in Cambridge, MA and has subsidiaries in Italy. The company's modular platform enables the development of medicines that can address a wide range of complex diseases, whether they require silencing, activation, or targeting multiple genes at once. Chroma Medicine was founded by the world's foremost experts in genomic research and is led by a veteran team of industry leaders and scientists with deep experience in genomic medicine, drug discovery, and development. Catherine Stehman-Breen has been the CEO of the company since 2020.

Vertex Ventures HC (Vertex Ventures) is a venture capital subsidiary of Vertex Venture Holdings Ltd founded in 2014. The firm is headquartered in San Francisco, California.

Part of Carrick Therapeutics Ltd., Carrick Therapeutics UK Ltd. is a clinical-stage biopharmaceutical company based in Oxford, UK. Carrick Therapeutics translates in-house and in-licensed assets to target the most aggressive and resistant forms of cancer, working in combination with existing oncology drugs to address unmet patient needs. The British company focuses on developing innovative therapies to improve patient outcomes in oncological therapy. The company's therapies have potential in advanced breast, prostate, and ovarian cancers, with further potential in pancreatic and Ewing's sarcoma. Timothy R. Pearson has been the CEO of the company since 2019.

Corbus Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is engaged in biotechnology services. The company is headquartered in Norwood, MA.

Verseau Therapeutics, Inc. provides immuno-therapy services. The company was founded by Daniel Anderson, Robert Langer, Igor Feldman, and Tatiana Novobrantseva in 2017 and is headquartered in Bedford, MA.

Promega Corp. manufactures enzyme systems. Its products include cell biology, nucleic acid analysis, drug development, molecular diagnostics, and lab equipment and supplies. The company was founded by William Alderman Linton in 1978 and is headquartered in Madison, WI.

Part of Thermo Fisher Scientific, Inc., Pierce Biotechnology, Inc. is a company that offers a range of innovative, high-quality products for protein biology research. The company is based in Rockford, IL. The company's products include Pierce antibodies, SuperSignal chemiluminescent substrates, Pierce BCA protein assays, and other research tools and reagents.

Part of Merck KGaA, EMD Pharmaceuticals, Inc. is a company that manufactures pharmaceutical preparations. The company is based in Durham, NC. The company was founded by Nancy J. Wysenski.

Novartis Oncology, Inc. provides healthcare solutions. The firm offers medicines, eye care and generic pharmaceuticals. It also offers patient declaration, patient support and assistance, and additional resources. The company is headquartered in East Hanover, NJ.

Tusk Therapeutics Ltd. operates as a immuno-oncology company, focused on discovering and developing therapeutic antibodies. It provides immune modulating cancer therapeutics. The company is headquartered in Stevenage, the United kingdom.

GRAIL, Inc. is a healthcare company. It engages in the development of a technology for early detection of cancer. The company was founded by Jeffrey T. Huber, William H. Rastetter, and Mostafa Ronaghi on September 11, 2015 and is headquartered in Menlo Park, CA.

KSQ Therapeutics, Inc. develops and deploys precision functional genomics to discover therapies that transform patient lives. The company was founded by Tim Wang and is headquartered in Cambridge, MA.