The Active Share

Everyone can see the demand side of the AI boom. The harder question is what's actually constraining supply. In this episode of The Active Share, Hugo is joined by Siuchoon Koay, a research analyst covering large-cap global semiconductors at William Blair, for a technical walk through the AI hardware stack — from GPUs and high-bandwidth memory to substrates and rack-level power. Siuchoon traces how the industry's bottlenecks have migrated over the past two years, weighs Nvidia's and TSMC's strat

How can organizations build the cultural agility required to remain competitive? In this episode of SuiteTalk, Hugo is joined by Mariam Ahmed, co-founder and CTO of Menza, to explore how organizations can navigate fragmented data landscapes and harness AI for genuine decision-making advantage. Mariam brings a distinctive vantage point, having launched an AI platform after spending time as a founding engineer at a commercial large language model company and beginning her career in equity derivati

Five years after his last appearance, Jay Kannan, CFA, a research analyst on William Blair’s global equity team, returns to The Active Share to explore how technology has fundamentally transformed from software and services to infrastructure and hardware. Where Hugo and Jay’s 2021 conversation centered on e-commerce and cloud adoption, their discussion this time around focuses on the physical constraints powering AI—from semiconductor bottlenecks and substrate shortages to power grids and the ca

Emerging markets debt (EMD) has evolved from a niche corner of global fixed income into a broad, increasingly resilient asset class. In this episode of The Active Share, Hugo is joined by Marcelo Assalin, CFA, partner, portfolio manager, and head of William Blair’s EMD team, to reflect on how the asset class—and his own investment approach—have matured over the years. Together, Hugo and Marcelo discuss the expanding opportunity set in frontier markets, common misconceptions around risk and EMD,

Africa’s growth story has long been misunderstood. On this episode of The Active Share, Hugo is joined by Joe Studwell, author of "How Asia Works" and "How Africa Works," to unpack the forces shaping Africa’s economic trajectory. Studwell challenges common misconceptions about the continent’s development, arguing that agricultural productivity, population density, and education are the foundations of sustained growth. He and Hugo also discuss the complex role of China’s investment; lessons from

In a world where law enforcement faces unprecedented challenges, the role of leadership has never been more critical. On this episode of The Active Share, Hugo sits down with Kristen Ziman, Aurora, Illinois’ first female chief of police and now a sought-after leadership consultant, who shares her journey and the transformative power of effective leadership in policing. Kristen also reflects on how optimism, transparency, and courageous conversations can transform not just police departments, but