Expertise in Investment Governance, Retirement Strategy, and Investor Decision-Making
Four areas run through Brian's research, writing, teaching, and advisory work. Each reflects the same underlying question: How do investment structures, institutional decisions, and human behavior combine to shape financial outcomes?
Investment Governance & Fiduciary Decision-Making
Investment outcomes depend on more than markets and manager performance. They also reflect how decisions are made, monitored, documented, and revisited. Brian's governance work examines how fiduciaries and institutional decision-makers establish objectives, evaluate investment structures, manage trade-offs, and create processes that remain defensible over time.
Retirement & Default Investment Design
Automatic enrollment and default investments have transformed retirement saving by making participation and diversification easier. But defaults are not neutral: they embed assumptions about risk, participant behavior, retirement timing, fees, asset allocation, and the appropriate path toward and through retirement. Brian's work examines those assumptions and how fiduciaries should evaluate them.
Institutional Investment Strategy
Drawing on two decades of institutional investment experience, Brian examines portfolio construction, manager structure, active and passive implementation, investment platforms, product design, and the interaction between investment strategy and the organizations responsible for delivering it.
Behavioral Finance & Decision-Making
Investors and institutions do not make decisions in a vacuum. Brian's academic research examines how information, incentives, defaults, and behavioral biases influence investor responses and financial outcomes. That perspective also informs his work on retirement-plan design and fiduciary governance.
Research, speaking, and advisory
Brian publishes academic and practitioner research and speaks to professional and public audiences, including the Chicago Fiduciary Forum (2026) and the Boston Fiduciary and Investment Lunch & Learn (2024 and 2025). He brings these perspectives to his advisory work.
Selected research
- Leite, B. J., & Uysal, V. B. (2023). "Does ESG Matter to Investors? ESG Scores and the Stock Price Response to New Information." Global Finance Journal, 57, 100851. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gfj.2023.100851
- Maloor, S., Sumsion, B., & Leite, B. J. (2017). "Using Regime-Based Analysis to Build a Resilient Glide Path." Fidelity Leadership Series.
- Leite, B. J., Taylor, K., & Shaw, A. (2016). "Effective Plan Design and Glide Path Choices Can Help Drive Better Outcomes." BenefitsPRO Magazine.
- Cohen, T., Nielson, D., Leite, B. J., & Browder, A. (2014). "Active Share: A Misunderstood Measure in Manager Selection." Fidelity Leadership Series.
- Google Scholar profile: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=WA6iHlkAAAAJ
Frequently asked questions
What is a target-date fund?
A target-date fund is a diversified retirement fund named for an approximate retirement year, such as 2045. It holds mostly stocks when that year is far away and shifts toward bonds and other steadier assets as the date approaches, following a preset schedule called a glide path. Many 401(k) plans use one as their default investment, so many participants hold one without ever choosing it.
What is a glide path?
A glide path is the schedule a target-date fund follows to move from growth-oriented investments to more conservative ones over time. It decides how much of your money is in stocks at 25, at 45, at retirement, and after. Two funds with the same target year can follow very different glide paths, which is why the year on the label tells you less than the path behind it.
Why can two 2035 target-date funds perform so differently?
Because the label only fixes the year. Providers make different choices behind it: how much they hold in stocks at each age, how much outside the U.S., how much is actively managed rather than indexed, whether managers can make tactical shifts, and what the fund costs. Small differences in those choices compound over decades into meaningfully different results.
What is a QDIA?
A QDIA, or qualified default investment alternative, is the investment a 401(k) or similar plan uses for participants who are enrolled but haven't chosen how to invest. It was created under the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and Department of Labor rules give plan sponsors a defined path for using certain defaults, including target-date funds, balanced funds, and managed accounts. Because many participants remain in the default investment, the QDIA can exert an outsized influence on their retirement experience, and the plan committee is responsible for governing it.
Let's Talk
Have a question about investment governance, retirement strategy, speaking, or media? Get in touch.