Investment Board

Sarah was appointed as Chair of USS Investment Management Limited on 1 September 2021 and has been a Director since 28 June 2021. Sarah was also a member of the Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited’s Investment Committee from 2013 and stepped down on 31 August 2021. Sarah has nearly 40 years' experience in the financial sector rising to senior executive roles in asset management (including joint Chief Investment Officer and Chief Executive Officer roles of Invesco’s UK institutional business), before starting a 20-year career as a director, trustee and Chair of various financial sector firms and pension schemes. Sarah has been a director and Chair of a FTSE 100 company (St James’s Place), and several other financial organisations including the Association of Investment Companies, JP Morgan American Investment Trust, Witan Pacific Investment Trust plc and Merian Global Investors.

Amongst her current roles, Sarah is Senior Independent Director of Alliance Witan plc, and Chair of the BBC Pension Scheme’s internal asset manager. Sarah is a co-founder of The Diversity Project (a cross-company initiative championing a more inclusive culture within the Savings and Investment profession).

Alain became a Director of USS Investment Management Limited and Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited on 24 January 2022. He’s also a member of Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited’s Investment Committee and Remuneration Committee. Alain is an investment and governance specialist with over 20 years of experience in managing portfolios on behalf of pension schemes, and in mitigating market, operational and regulatory risks. Since his transition from an executive career, Alain has built a diverse portfolio of non-executive director and investment advisory roles in the pension, private wealth and retail markets.

Prior to his board career, Alain was co-Head of Investments for BlackRock’s Client Portfolio Solutions and responsible for the oversight and the performance of £75bn of client assets in EMEA. Before his time at BlackRock, Alain spent 14 years at Goldman Sachs in various senior roles in asset management and investment research. Alain grew up in rural Brittany before moving to Paris to train as a scientist. He was awarded a doctorate at AgroParisTech in 1994 for his work on the modelling of drinking water quality in distribution networks.

Bronte joined the USS Investment Management Limited Board in January 2024 and is also Chair of the USSIM Private Markets Committee. Bronte has over two decades of experience in infrastructure and private markets, both key areas of interest for USS. As Head of Infrastructure Equity Europe at UBS Asset Management’s Real Estate and Private Markets, Bronte was responsible for originating and executing infrastructure transactions and managing infrastructure investments in a variety of jurisdictions across Europe. She also served as an investor director on a number of investee company boards.

Prior to her time at UBS Asset Management, Bronte was an executive director at UBS Investment Bank where she gained extensive experience as an advisor within the infrastructure sector. Bronte graduated with a Bachelor of Laws and Bachelor of Commerce from Murdoch University, Western Australia and a Graduate Diploma in Applied Finance and Investment from the Securities Institute of Australia.

Carol became Group Chief Executive Officer in September 2023. Carol’s career spans over 20 years across in-house and consulting roles and includes a decade as an investment consultant. Prior to joining USS, Carol was the Director of Reward & Employment at Natwest Group. She led the teams responsible for Reward, Pensions, Benefits, performance management, core HR employment policies, Employment Law, Industrial Relations, Business Acquisitions and Disposals and HR regulatory work. This included the flexible benefits programme for more than 60,000 colleagues, and DB and DC pension arrangements for around 300,000 members (over c.£55bn liabilities) worldwide. Carol is a CFA Charterholder and has served as independent trustee on a number of boards. She is a non-executive director of Pensions UK and has chaired PLSA policy councils and the CBI pension panel.

Richard joined the USS Investment Management Limited Board in January 2024. Richard is a senior financial services professional with over 30 years of international experience, specialising in Risk and Compliance. Richard is currently a non-executive board director and chair of the board of EFG Private Bank Limited. Richard was previously a non-executive board director and chair of the Risk Committee for Credit Suisse’s UK Private Bank and Wealth Management business. He also served on their Audit, Nomination, and Remuneration Advisory Committees.

Before embarking as a board director, his executive career spanned a number of permanent and interim senior Chief Risk Officer and COO roles at USS, LSEG, Standard Chartered Bank, UBS and ING. Richard is a Chartered Accountant and holds a BA in Mathematics from Oxford University.

Simon was appointed Chief Executive of the wholly-owned investment management subsidiary of Universities Superannuation Scheme Limited (USS Investment Management Limited) in October 2019 to lead the team who manage the assets of USS, for both DB and DC sections of the scheme, investing across both Public and Private Markets. The majority of USS’s investments are managed in-house and USSIM has responsibility for selecting and overseeing third-party managers where these are used. USSIM is also the principal investment advisor to the scheme.

Simon started his career in asset management in 1987 at Morgan Grenfell before moving to Prudential in 1998, a year before it acquired M&G Investments. At M&G Prudential, he led the Fixed Income and Alternatives businesses for two decades before being asked to become Chairman of Real Estate with a combined team of over 500 employees and around £160bn in assets. He was also a member of the Executive Leadership Team. During his tenure at M&G Prudential, Simon championed innovation and pioneered new products in Europe, for example: Leveraged Finance, Infrastructure Private Equity, Commercial Mortgage Lending and, more recently, Specialty Finance and Impact Investing.

He has a degree from Cambridge University.

Victoria was appointed as Chief Operating Officer of USSIM in April 2021, having served as the Deputy for that role since October 2019. She is responsible for the end to end USSIM support operating model, infrastructure and associated control framework, including oversight of group shared services providing support to USSIM. Victoria joined USS in October 2015 as Head of Governance and moved to be Chief Compliance Officer in September 2017. She started her career with Deloitte, where she qualified as a Chartered Accountant in 2010 and worked in the financial services audit practice. Prior to USS, Victoria was at Martin Currie Investment Management for 4 years – initially in the compliance team, and then as Head of Governance/Company Secretary for the firm.