About Us
The firm was built by industry-leading quantitative analysts and model risk managers to solve the problems of quantitative analysts and model risk managers.
Designed to bring high-quality, cost-effective quantitative analysis, validation, development, and model risk advisory to the financial industry and beyond, the firm was built by “quants” for “quants”.
Our Team
Maia Berkane
Head of Analytics, Partner
Maia Berkane is partner and Head of Research and Analytics for KDOA. She has more than 25 years of experience in the Banking and Finance industry. She has led model development efforts in asset management, mortgage prepayments, market risk management and in compliance with a focus on fair lending analytics. She has developed innovative approaches recognized as effective by the CFPB for fair lending analysis and review as well as techniques for handling missing data and regime shifts in market data analysis. Maia holds a Ph.D. in Mathematical Statistics from Paris VI-Sorbonne.
Modeling Experience: fair lending analysis, mortgage prepayments, derivative pricing, VaR
Amul Sagar Bhatia
Head of Product Development, Partner
Amul Bhatia is a partner and the Head of Product Development for KDOA. He previously founded Complify where he developed a model risk management platform and validation reporting system, RMSE, which maximizes efficiencies and is suitable for any institution that requires model management services. KDOA acquired Complify in January 2024. Prior to founding Complify, Amul served as Head of Model Risk Management at Varo Bank and Berkshire Bank and has experience in traditional banking, internal audit, and fintech. His experience building model risk management programs inspired him to create an automated solution to address the significant challenges in meeting model risk related regulatory requirements. Amul has a M.S. in Data Science from Northwestern University.
Andrea Di Giovanni
Senior Advisor
Andrea Di Giovanni, is an experienced financial risk management professional with 23 + years of proven leadership in risk advisory for the banking sector with focus on model risk management, credit/market/liquidity risk, credit products/capital markets, capital planning and reserves (CCAR/CECL), risk oversight and governance, and bank capital. He served Deloitte’s top banking clients, focused on model risk management, quantitative modeling, risk oversight, governance, and Basel 2, 3 regulatory capital and reporting for 20+ years, and previously worked at JP Morgan Chase in high yield research covering the paper and packaging and home building sectors. Andrea holds a MS in Financial Engineering from Cornell University and a BS in Industrial Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Andrea’s model risk management experience includes enhancing bank-wide MRM programs, developing MRM policies, procedures, inventory, performance metrics, and validation playbooks and leading model validations across a variety of model types. He has also developed a wide range of models including credit risk rating, PD/LGD/EAD, liquidity risk, market risk, economic capital / RAROC models, CCAR / stress testing, and CECL / Reserving models.
Julie Huffman
Chief Operating Officer
Julie Huffman, is the COO at KDOA. She has 35+ years of experience in the financial services industry. Throughout her extensive career she has held various senior roles showcasing her versatility and leadership capabilities. Notable early roles ranged across branch management, investment sales, change management and integration leadership. Her later roles were predominately in the risk management area, where she developed and implemented multiple risk management programs, primarily in Operational Risk and Compliance, to address regulatory requirements or criticisms. Leading transformational change at an enterprise level has been an area of focus throughout her career.
Damien Krklinski
Chief Technology Officer
Damien Krklinski, is the Head of Technology for KDOA. He is an accomplished IT professional with more than 15 years of experience in managing IT infrastructure. He holds a degree in Business Information Systems and has worked for Fortune 500 companies such as Johnson and Johnson and Checkout.com Damien's technical expertise lies in VMware, Windows Server, Office 365, and scaling start-up IT infrastructure. He is passionate about using technology to solve complex business challenges and has been instrumental in creating and maintaining KDOA’s system environments as well as helping KDOA to interface securely with its clients.
Kevin D. Oden
Founder and Managing Partner
Kevin D. Oden, Ph.D. is the founder and Managing Partner. He has developed, validated and published in a number of modeling areas, ranging from commodity, mortgage, credit decisioning to model risk management and measurement. He actively works with the risk management community through his collaboration with the RMA as the managing director of the RMA’s model validation consortium and as the co-director of the RMA/Wharton risk management program.
Diego Alvarez
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Diego Alvarez is an economist with 10+ years of experience in the financial industry. He has been focused on the validation of market and credit risk models with recent work on CECL, home mortgage and integrated stress models. He also has experience as a market risk specialist in charge of the end-to-end process of the interest-rate Value at Risk and Expected Shortfall models. Diego has been teaching Economics since 2007 and has a BS, MS in Economics from University of Buenos Aires and University of San Andres as well as a post-graduate degree in Quantitative Finance from University of CEMA.
Diego’s current focus includes QRM, ADCO, and other mortgage-related models; credit models including credit scoring; CECL; and capital stress testing.
Greg Brozak
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Greg Brozak is a quantitative finance professional with 25+ years’ experience in developing and validating financial and risk management models across a wide range of product types and risk factors. He has broad experience in model risk management and model governance. He has led Model Development and Model Risk Teams Risk teams at large financial organizations.
Greg’s areas of model expertise include Mortgage and Credit Models, Interest Rate/ALM modelling, Stress testing, Operational and Climate Risk models. Greg also has extensive experience setting up and overseeing model governance frameworks. Greg has a Ph.D. from Northeastern University, an MA from University of Buffalo, and a BS from Queen’s College CUNY
Estella Chu
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Estella Chu has provided a broad range of risk management services to large financial institutions related to risk governance, limits setting, financial instruments valuation, risk modeling, risk reporting and Basel II/III regulatory compliance services. Estella is specialized in quantitative modeling technical and data validation applicable for market risk, credit risk and counterparty credit risk and led many projects to help client to establish sound risk management and carry out model risk management and related internal audit programs.
Estella has a BE in computer science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University and an MBA in Finance/IT from Indiana University. Her recent areas of focus include ALM, CECL / IFRS 9, credit and prepayment risk, market risk, liquidity risk, operational risk and risk weighted capital models.
María Belén Lico
Quantitative Analyst
Maria Belen Lico has experience in US and European financial regulatory model risk management. She has 9+ years of experience validating and performing periodic performance review of statistical models for financial institutions as well as providing advisory to financial institutions regarding model performance ongoing monitoring best practices. Belen has validated and provided advisory over a wide range of models covering Asset and Liability Management, Credit Scoring, CECL/IFRS 9, and Capital Stress Testing. She has advanced knowledge of statistics, econometrics and financial risk regulations and is proficient in R/Python/SAS/Stata.
Belen holds a BS in Economics from the University of Buenos Aires. She is a candidate for a MS in Econometrics from the University of Torcuato di Tella.
Carolina Biagini Majorel
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Carolina Biagini Majorel is a seasoned economist with 17+ years of experience in the financial industry. Biagini’s expertise lies in model risk management, encompassing risk modeling, validation, and model governance. She has a strong background in both quantitative and qualitative models and hands-on experience in managing projects to ensure successful delivery of high-quality output compliant with regulatory requirements. Carolina has a BS in Economics from the National University of Rosario and a MS in Economics from the University of Torcuato di Tella. She also completed a post graduate certificate in Quantitative Finance from the University of CEMA (Center for Macroeconomics Studies).
Carolina is responsible for managing and overseeing model risk teams that perform econometric modeling, model validation, statistical and financial analysis, data analytics, and model documentation. She is skilled at validations of quantitative and qualitative models, credit risk and loss forecasting models (PD, LGD, EAD), pre-provisions net revenues and macroeconomic models. She has a strong background in regulatory frameworks including CCRA/DFAST and stress testing, Basel, CECL, and IFRS 9.
Pablo Macri
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Pablo Macri has 20+ years’ experience in the Financial Industry, Academia, and Research in Finance and Physical Sciences. In Finance, he has primarily focused on Risk Management, Risk/Derivative Pricing Systems and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence development. Pablo has recently led validation projects for Asset/Liability Management, Bank Secrecy Act/Anti Money Laundering and Fraud models based on Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, and other cutting-edge analytics. Pablo has a Ph.D. and MS in Physics from Balseiro Institute in Argentina.
Pablo has performed validations on a number of models in BSA /AML and Fraud with deep experience with NICE Actimize and Verafin systems, Asset Liability Management (ALM), and has extensive experience in Market/Counterparty Credit Risk and Derivative Pricing models.
Manu Maurette
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Manu Maurette, Ph.D., is an experienced validation team manager with 10+ years in risk management. After several years of research in Differential Equations, Manu started working in Quantitative Finance and Model Risk Management. During his years as an analyst, his work focused on the validation, development, and testing of pricing and risk models including curve building and volatility surface algorithms. Manu has a BS in Applied Mathematics and a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Buenos Aires.
For the last 6 years he has been leading talented teams in several areas of quantitiative finance focused on validating and developing models. In particular, he has focused on derivatives pricing, market risk, margin, qualitative and expert judgement credit models (including CECL/IFRS 9). He keeps a close bond with the academic world that includes more than 15 years of lecturing, coordinating post- graduate programs, and organizing quantitative finance regional conferences.
Leonard Mills
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Leonard Mills is a Senior Quantitative Analyst at KDOA. He has over 30 years’ experience in model development and validation. Prior to joining KDOA, he worked at the Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae, Wells Fargo as well as consulting with a variety of financial institutions. He has a BS in Mathematics from Hampden-Sydney college and Ph.D. in Econometrics from Tulane University.
Len has extensive experience with Credit Risk/CECL, ALM, Mortgage analytics and mortgage hedging validations as well as stress testing framework validations, including familiarity with ADCO, MCT, QRM, Moody’s analytics.
Richard Minkah
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Richard Minkah is a statistician with a passion for analyzing data and information in finance. His specialization is modeling and forecasting unusually large/small values (e.g. large price movements, large claims, market crashes) that can cause disruption in the financial markets.
Richard has a B.S. in statistics and computer science from the University of Ghana, a M.S. in financial mathematics from Uppsala University in Sweden and holds a Ph.D. is statistics from the University of Ghana. His recent areas of focus include PD, CRE, Pipeline Mortgage risk and Excess Service model validations. He is proficient in R, SPSS, MINITAB, Matlab and LaTeX.
Gaston Romeo
Senior Quantitative Analyst
Gaston Romeo has 15+ years of experience in quantitative solutions, mathematical modelling, numerical simulation, artificial intelligence, data science and programming endeavors for top tier financial institutions & global analytics companies, national councils, and scientific collaborations world-wide. He has led multiple projects within the banking industry as part of Model Validation, Corporate Model Risk and Front Office Group.
Gaston received a Ph.D. in High Energy Physics from University of Buenos Aires working for the Large Hadron Collider at CERN as part of the ATLAS Detector in Geneva, Switzerland. Gaston’s particular areas of model expertise are Credit risk models including CECL/IFRS 9 (various vendor models), ALM, Market Risk and Stress Testing.
Why Choose Us
We have decades of hands-on experience in model development, model validation, and MRM. Our team also strives to provide clients with cost-effective plans to address their problems. We do this by working with the right people and organizations.
How We Can Help
Our staff will work closely with you to develop the best answers to your problem. Whether it is about understanding the advantages of AI and ML for enhanced credit underwriting or improved fraud detection, we are here to assist you.
Core Values
We are dedicated to providing our clients with cutting-edge MRM services. To achieve this, we perform extensive research, find the most appropriate partnerships and tools in order to provide the best solution.