Heart of the Treasury

February 2020

New Directors Appointed to Investments Division and California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC)

California State Treasurer Fiona Ma fills two key positions with the appointments of Kristin Szakaly-Moore to Director of the Investments Division and Robert Berry to the position of Executive Director of the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission (CDIAC).

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Kristin Szakaly-Moore

New Investment Division Director

Kristin Szakaly-Moore is a 25-year veteran of the State Treasurer’s Office (STO). As Director of Investments she will manage the state’s Pooled Money Investment Account (PMIA), which invests temporarily idle surplus state funds to help the state manage its cash flow. In January, the PMIA portfolio held more than $85 billion. The portfolio includes a Time Deposit Program that deposits state funds in community banks headquartered in California. Banks can use the money to increase lending in their communities, supporting economic development. As of January, the Time Deposit Program reported deposits in 69 banks and credit unions totaling $4.7 billion.

Ms. Szakaly-Moore previously served as Treasury Manager of the STO Centralized Treasury and Securities Management Division (CTSMD), a position she held since 2008. There she developed long-range cash flow forecasts used by the Investment Division in planning investment strategies and managed staff overseeing the financial services and securities clearance functions of the State Treasury, which handles more than $2 trillion flowing through state accounts each year.

Prior to her role at CTSMD, she served as Director of Policy Research and Acting Executive Director of CDIAC, where she managed and oversaw the development of research products, educational seminars and reporting of data on state and local government debt issuance and public fund investments. In particular, she served as editor of CDIAC’s first Investment Primer and authored numerous articles on topical investment issues. She has extensive analytical experience, having conducted research and developed revenue forecasting models throughout her career. She also has published journal articles on public finance topics and on economic markets for pollution control.

Before working for the State, Ms. Szakaly-Moore worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at UCLA, teaching courses in statistics and political economy and conducting research on public finance issues. She received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Caltech and a B.A. in Economics from U.C. Berkeley.

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Robert Berry

New California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission Executive Director

Robert Berry, now Executive Director of the California Debt and Investment Advisory Commission, (CDIAC), was previously CDIAC’s Deputy Executive Director, a position he assumed in late 2010.

CDIAC provides information, education and technical assistance on public debt, investments and economic development financing tools to local public agencies and public finance professionals. It is the state’s clearinghouse for debt issuance information and compiles data from all municipal debt issuers in California. The data collected is available to governmental agencies and the public. CDIAC also organizes educational seminars on public finance matters, the debt issuance process and investment of public funds.

In addition to providing operational and administrative direction for CDIAC’s educational, data collection and research functions, Mr. Berry has assisted CDIAC’s research team in conceptualizing and carrying out some of its more extensive research projects, including those related to interest rate swaps, capital appreciation bonds, K-14 general obligation bond authorization and issuance, and debt management policies.

Mr. Berry was also instrumental in the development and adoption of CDIAC’s first ever set of regulations and ushering in the Treasurer’s first online data transparency site, DebtWatch. Prior to joining CDIAC, he was a manager in the Capital Markets Group of Panattoni Development Company, once one of the largest private merchant development companies in the country.

As a registered representative and manager of the company’s private equity placement program, Mr. Berry was responsible for placing investments of high net worth individuals across 29 US, Canadian, and Eastern European markets. Preceding his years in real estate finance, Mr. Berry worked for more than fourteen years in economic development as a business attraction and retention specialist with the State of California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics and a Masters of Business Administration from the University of California, Davis.