At age 19, Diana Amoa left her home country, Kenya to attend college in the UK. Her parents had raised her to feel at home in the world. “One of my flat mates was fascinated by me,” Diana remembers. “I was the first Black person they ever met. We ended up becoming the best of friends because they approached our connection from a place of curiosity.”
Her father served in the military for a time and she even lived briefly in Montgomery, Alabama. Diana raises her own children with the same curiosity and exposure to the world beyond their home. Her husband’s family is from Ghana and they have close friends and family in the US, Africa, Europe, and Asia. She brings this perspective to her career in global financial markets and her service on the board of Global Nomads.
As CIO for long-biased strategies at Kirkoswald, based in New York, Diana leads a new business focused predominantly in emerging and frontier markets across different asset classes. She combines macroeconomic and market analysis with non-traditional ESG data and is excited about green and sustainable bonds. Prior to this, Amoa was a managing director in the Global Fixed Income, Currency & Commodities group at JP Morgan Asset Management and has been the senior trader on the emerging markets rates desk at UBS AG. Diana has held roles at Societe Generale and Standard Chartered Bank. In 2021, Ernst & Young, LLC named Diana among 50 Leading Women in Hedge Funds.
“We increasingly face the same problems no matter where we live,” says Diana, who notes that Global Nomads is well-placed to accelerate its own growth and impact in these times. “The solutions to today’s problems are not going to come from one country—it will have to be a collaboration.”
Global Nomads welcomes Diana’s engagement and affirmation of its 20-year history nourishing bonds between young people worldwide. “We need kids to develop empathy early and work in a collaborative way across borders. A good idea can come from anywhere in the world.”
