The Aspen Institute

Retirement savings is having a moment. New private and state-facilitated plans are on the rise, emergency savings benefits are helping employers promote short- and long-term saving, and leaders from C-suites, Congress, and academia have big ideas for a system overhaul. At the same time, journalists are critiquing how the retirement savings system distributes tax incentives, new data shows why plans don’t work the same for workers of color and women, and the specter of Social Security trust fund depletion looms large. What is the strongest path forward in this shifting landscape–and how can we use this moment to create the inclusive system Americans need and deserve? Hear new ideas from fresh voices about designing a retirement savings system that delivers financial security for everybody.

Speakers 

Yie-Hsin Hung, President and Chief Executive Officer, State Street Global Advisors

Yie-Hsin Hung is president and chief executive officer of State Street Global Advisors, the investment management arm of State Street Corporation. State Street Global Advisors provides disciplined investment exposures and solutions to many of the world’s largest and most sophisticated investors. Yie-Hsin is also a member of the Executive Committee, the company’s most senior strategy and policy-making team.

Prior to joining State Street Global Advisors, Yie-Hsin was Chief Executive Officer of New York Life Investment Management (NYLIM), a role she held since 2015. While at NYLIM, Yie-Hsin led a multi-boutique, global investment management business that provides a broad range of fixed income, alternatives, equity and ESG capabilities. During her tenure at the firm, Yie-Hsin led NYLIM to achieve a nearly four-fold increase in assets under management. Prior to assuming the role of CEO of NYLIM, Yie-Hsin held numerous senior executive roles including co-president and chairman of NYLIM International. Before joining NYLIM, she held leadership positions at Bridgewater Associates and Morgan Stanley.

In 2022, Yie-Hsin was featured on Barron’s list of the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance for the third time and was selected by American Banker as one of the 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance for the sixth consecutive year. In 2021, she was also named by Forbes to its list of 50 over 50. She is a member of the Board of Trustees of Northwestern University; the Chair of the Executive Committee and Board of Governors of the Investment Company Institute (ICI)C200; The Women’s Forum of New York and the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Yie-Hsin earned her Master of Business Administration from Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from Northwestern University. She received a Distinguished Alumni Medal in 2019, the highest honor granted by the Northwestern Alumni Association.

Edmund F. Murphy III, President and Chief Executive Officer, Empower

Edmund F. Murphy III is President and Chief Executive Officer of Empower, a leading provider of financial services for consumers that include retirement services, wealth management, advice, and asset management. He also serves as a Board Member of Empower Life & Annuity Insurance Company and as a Strategic Advisor to Diagram Ventures.

Ed brings decades of broad leadership experience to his role. He was appointed as the inaugural President of Empower upon its formation in 2014 and has led the organization through a period of strong and sustained growth, positioning the firm as the go-to provider of financial services for more than 18 million investors.

Under his leadership, Empower has grown into a national leader serving working Americans through all sectors of the U.S. economy and across the spectrum of wealth segments. Empower has completed several strategic acquisitions, including the retirement businesses of J.P. Morgan, Prudential, MassMutual, Truist Bank, and Fifth Third Bank. In 2020, Empower acquired Personal Capital, a registered investment adviser and wealth manager. Empower has assets under administration of more than $1.4 trillion and serves some 82,000 corporate, government, and not-for-profit plans.

A much sought-after thought leader as an advocate for investors and the defined contribution system, Ed is regarded as a driving force for industry innovation and public policy reform. He meets regularly with policymakers in Washington, D.C., and has testified before Congress, the Department of Labor, the Treasury Department, and the IRS.

Ed speaks and writes about financial topics ranging from retirement issues and public policy to investment advice and lifetime income strategies. He has been interviewed by CNBC, Bloomberg News, “MarketWatch,” “The Wall Street Journal,” “Barron’s,” “The Financial Times,” and many other media outlets.

Kathryn Anne Edwards, Economist

Kathryn Anne Edwards is an economist and freelance economic policy consultant who studies labor markets, public policy, and inequality. She has been an opinion writer for Bloomberg, and is a lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy.

Leigh Phillips, President and CEO, SaverLife

Leigh Phillips is the President and CEO of SaverLife, a national nonprofit and advocacy organization dedicated to improving the financial health of people with low-to-moderate incomes. Since joining SaverLife in 2015, Leigh led SaverLife’s transformation from a local direct service organization to a national nonprofit that launched the first ever financial health platform designed specifically to meet the needs of low-to-moderate income households. Today, SaverLife reaches over 650,000 members nationwide.

Prior to joining SaverLife, Leigh was the founding Director of the San Francisco Office of Financial Empowerment. Under Leigh’s leadership, the SF OFE spearheaded several “first in the nation” programs, including Bank On San Francisco, the first municipally led effort to bank the unbanked that became a national movement, and Kindergarten to College, the first universal and automatic college savings program for public school children. On the national level, Leigh was instrumental in the creation of the Cities for Financial Empowerment Coalition and currently sits on the Board of Directors of the CFE Fund.

Leigh served as Chair of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Consumer Advisory Board from 2021 to 2022. She previously served as Chair of the Board of the Mission Economic Development Agency and on the Advisory Board of the start-up Level Money, which was acquired by Capital One. Leigh’s work has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, the Economist, Time Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle, and on NPR and CNN.

Leigh received both her Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Social Sciences and a Masters of Economic and Social Sciences in Women’s Studies from the University of Manchester, in her native United Kingdom. She now lives in the Washington DC area with her husband and two daughters.

Yemi Rose, Founder and CEO, OfColor

Yemi Rose is the founder and CEO of OfColor. Through its enterprise financial wellness platform, OfColor supports workers of color with financial coaching and therapy, fintech saving and budgeting tools, and culturally relevant financial literacy content. He writes and speaks extensively on the racial wealth gap, and his writings on the subject have been published in The Washington Post, Fast Company, Business Insider, Time Magazine, Black Enterprise, TechCrunch, BenefitsPro, The Root, Blavity, Employee Benefits News, and Money.com. He was born and raised in Jamaica, and now lives with his wife and two daughters in Maplewood, New Jersey.

Ida Rademacher, Vice President, Aspen Institute and Co-Executive Director, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program

Ida is Vice President at the Aspen Institute and Co- Executive Director of the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, a leading national voice on Americans’ financial health. Ida combines her expertise in economic inclusion research and policy with her reputation as a collaborative and creative thinker to raise up a national conversation and solutions set around financial inequality and financial instability. Ida and her team are building a cross-disciplinary community of leaders and change agents who, together, are deeply probing critical financial challenges facing US households and shaping market and policy innovations that can improve the financial security and wellbeing of all Americans.

Prior to leading the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, Ida was Chief Program Officer at Prosperity Now (formerly CFED), where she created the multi-institutional team that led the CFPB’s Consumer Financial Well-Being Metrics Project, and also led the creation of Upside Down, a program examining ways the US income tax code generates disparate wealth-building opportunities and contributes to growing levels of wealth inequality. Earlier in her career Ida led research and evaluation projects at the Aspen Economic Opportunities Program and the Center for Behavioral and Evaluation Research at the Academy for Educational Development.

Karen Biddle Andres, Director, Impact Strategy and Partnerships, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program

As the Director of Impact Strategy at the Aspen Institute Financial Security Program, Karen works to create high-impact partnership projects across diverse issues and sectors that result in supply-side changes that accrue to the balance sheet of low-wealth households. In her role, Karen brings leaders from the cutting edge of financial services technology and infrastructure into dialogue and partnership with policy experts and advocates so that they may, together, shape the financial security systems of the future. A longtime believer in the power and potential of defined contribution retirement savings programs, Karen also leads the Retirement Savings Initiative at the Aspen Financial Security Program.

Before coming to the Aspen Institute, Karen spent over ten years at the Financial Health Network (formerly the Center for Financial Services Innovation). She began her career in the retirement industry as a bilingual 401(k) plan educator for both Strong Funds and Wells Fargo Institutional Trust Services.

Karen holds M.B.A. and M.P.P. degrees from the University of Michigan. She also holds a B.A. in Spanish and Art History, with a minor in Mathematics, from Indiana University.

---

Explore the Future of Wealth Discussion Series