A finance specialist since 1980, Adela Cepeda, managing director of Public Financial Management Inc. (PFM), advises municipalities on the structuring and execution of capital markets transactions. In 2016, she sold A.C. Advisory Inc. to PFM, the top-ranked municipal advisor in the United States. As a corporate finance executive at Smith Barney, Harris Upham for over 10 years, Cepeda developed a strong expertise in handling public and private debt and equity transactions. She then left Wall Street to build her own firm, A.C. Advisory, which she led to a national leadership position in municipal financial advisory services with over $150 billion in completed transactions.

Cepeda serves on the boards of the UBS Funds and the Pathway Mutual Funds and chairs the Mercer Mutual Funds. She is also a director of BMO Financial Corp., the U.S. holding company for BMO Harris Bank, with over 15,000 employees and 550 branches located principally in the Midwest. She serves as chair of BMO’s Capital Committee, charged with overseeing the successful execution of Dodd-Frank Stress Testing and the linkages between the bank’s capital management and business strategy. Cepeda previously chaired the Audit Committee of the board of Wyndham International Inc., a 20,000-employee, publicly traded company that owned and operated hotels and resorts in the United States, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean.

Cepeda is extensively involved in the community and serves on the Cook County Council of Economic Advisors and the City of Chicago Community Development Commission. She also serves on the boards of the Chicago Foundation for Women and Arrupe College. Until 2011, she served as an appointed executive committee member of The Chicago Community Trust, one of the nation’s leading community foundations. From 2011 to 2013, she served on the board of the Chicago Housing Authority, chairing its Audit, Finance, and Pension Committees. She was recently invited to join the Commercial Club of Chicago.

Cepeda is an honors graduate of Harvard College with a major in Economics and has an MBA from the University of Chicago School of Business.