Alexander S. Friedman

Alexander S. Friedman is the Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of UBS Wealth Management. Formerly, he was the Chief Financial Officer (CFO) of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and a member of the foundation’s management committee. Friedman joined the foundation following Warren Buffett’s historic gift and served as CFO during a period when the foundation more than doubled in size. Friedman also developed the foundation's strategy to leverage its balance sheet to make investments as well as grants, in support of its mission; he created and managed its 400-million-dollar program-related investment effort, the largest of its kind in philanthropy.

After leaving the Gates Foundation in March 2010, Friedman managed a private investment vehicle, Asymmetry LLC. He has also been a senior advisor to Lazard, the international investment bank, and a senior advisor to the board of directors of Actis, the global emerging markets private equity firm. Friedman is a member of the board of trustees of the Seattle Art Museum, where he is chairman of its investment committee and also served on the investment committee of the Gates-Cambridge Trust. Friedman was a judge of the Financial Times-Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Prior to the Gates Foundation, from 2002 until 2007, Friedman worked as an investment banker with Lazard. He also served as a White House Fellow and an assistant to the U.S. Secretary of Defense for special projects in the Clinton Administration.
In 1998, Friedman received a Juris Doctor from Columbia Law School, where he was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He received a BA degree from Princeton University in 1993.