Kathryn Wilkens has been involved in alternative investments education for almost three decades. After graduating from the University of Massachusetts with a PhD in finance, she joined the team that initially developed the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst (CAIA) Association’s curriculum. She now teaches a class on alternative investments for the Masters of Financial Analysis program at Rutgers University. She designed this text for the students enrolled in that class. The graduate course prepares them for questions on alternative investments on the Chartered Financial Analyst exam and includes an in-depth data analysis project.

Kathyn is the founder of Pearl Quest, LLC, a consulting firm focused on alternative investments education and machine learning applications in investments. Pearl Quest assisted in the development of the CAIA program on Wiley’s Efficient Learning platform, and separately, the Financial Data Professional (FDP) program curriculum. The FDP Institute provides education to financial professionals combining data science, machine learning, large language models, and financial data with finance applications. Pearl Quest created the forecasting engine that fuels the quant fund alpha generation at Empiric Institutional and is currently improving the explainability of the models.

Student Discount and Book Proceeds

Kathryn is also on the Board of Directors at the Coalition to End Homelessness in South Florida and serves as a family mentor and chairs its Client Services Committee. All proceeds of the textbook, when purchased using the student discount code, go to this charitable organization. Forty percent of the proceeds go to the coalition when the text is purchased at full price.