Mr. Picard has co-founded and built four multi-billion dollar hedge fund platforms at The Carlyle Group/Rock Creek, Optima Fund Management, RBC Capital Markets and InfraHedge/State Street. Most recently, Mr. Picard has been a leader at Lyxor Asset Management, Navigant Consulting’s FIRST Team and The Rumson Ridge Group, LLC (his own firm), as Managing Partner. Earlier, he was Chief Investment Officer and Partner at Optima Fund Management overseeing USD $6.5 Billion of hedge fund investments. Prior to joining Optima, Mr. Picard was a Managing Director at The Carlyle Group. At Carlyle, Mr. Picard built and managed the process and portfolio of a hedge fund platform for investing in alternative investments. Prior to joining Carlyle, Mr. Picard was Managing Director at RBC Capital Risk Advisors. The Group actively managed more than US $10 billion of Royal Bank's proprietary assets through arbitrage trading, hedge fund investments and structured private equity investments. In the early 1990s, he oversaw Global Equity Derivatives for Kidder, Peabody in Europe and worked for Bank Nomura (Suisse) S.A. trading and selling multi-currency Asian convertible and warrant products. Mr. Picard graduated from College de Genève and attended the University of Geneva School of Law