Head of Global Equity Research

Dr. Leila Heckman, PhD

Brown University
BA, Mathematics

Cornell University
MS, Operations Research, National Science Foundation Scholar

NYU Polytechnic University
PhD, Statistics and Operations Research


Dr. Leila Heckman is a highly regarded global strategist with over twenty-five years of experience. 

Dr. Heckman is the Founder of Heckman Global Advisors. Previously, she was the Managing Director for Lebenthal and led the International Equity teams at Roosevelt, Mesirow Financial, and Bear Stearns Asset Management.  Earlier in her career, she was Senior Managing Director of Global Asset Allocation at Citigroup Smith Barney, where she built a preeminent team that was ranked #1 or #2 by Institutional Investor’s annual global poll for four years in a row. She also served as a voting member of the Investment Policy Committee and Asset Allocation Committee of Salomon Smith Barney. During her career, Dr. Heckman also was Vice President at Alliance Bernstein, where she developed sophisticated strategic asset allocation models.

Currently, she is on the investment committees for Catalyst.org, a non-profit focused on women in the workplace, and for the International Rescue Committee (IRC). She serves on the Advisory Committee for Cornell University's Financial Engineering Program. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She served on the Sun Life Financial U.S. Board for nine years. Dr. Heckman has a B.A. from Brown, a M.S. in Operations Research from Cornell, and a Ph.D. from NYU Polytechnic (now NYU Tandon School of Engineering).

She resides in New York City with her husband and has two grown daughters.