Sonal Desai, Ph.D.
Executive Vice President, Portfolio Manager, Chief Investment Officer
- Location
- Ft. Lauderdale, Florida,
United States - Experience
- 32
- At Franklin Templeton Fixed Income
- 16
About Sonal
Sonal Desai, Ph.D. is the Executive Vice President and Global Chief Investment Officer for Franklin Templeton Fixed Income, which manages over $530 billion in assets globally. Dr. Desai leads all of Franklin Templeton’s public fixed income investment teams including Broad Markets, Global and Emerging Markets, Corporate Credit, Securitized Products, Municipal Bonds, Local Asset Management, Short-Term Liquid Markets, Western Asset, Brandywine Global, and Global Macro. In her role, Dr. Desai oversees the platform's integration of top-down macroeconomic views, bottom-up fundamental research, and rigorous portfolio construction processes. She is responsible for setting the macroeconomic view for the Franklin Templeton Fixed Income group and is a portfolio manager for several flagship strategies.
Dr. Desai is a member of Franklin Templeton Executive Committee, a select group of the company's top leaders responsible for shaping the firm's overall strategy and thematic investment direction. She also serves on the firm's Management Committee and chairs the Franklin Templeton Fixed Income’s Investment Management Committee.
Dr. Desai started her career in academia, as an assistant professor of economics at the University of Pittsburgh. She then worked at the International Monetary Fund in Washington D.C. before joining the private financial sector as a director and senior economist at an investment bank and subsequently a hedge fund. Dr. Desai joined Franklin Templeton Fixed Income in 2009 and served as Global Macro’s Director of Research and portfolio manager prior to assuming her current CIO role in 2018.
Dr. Desai holds a Bachelor of Arts in economics from Delhi University and a Ph.D. in economics from Northwestern University. She has been named to Barron's annual list of the 100 Most Influential Women in US Finance for 7 consecutive years since its launch in 2020, was selected by Forbes to its 2024 "50 Over 50" list and was honored as one of Pensions & Investments (P&I) 2024 Most Influential Women in Institutional Investing.