One might think that investment management would be the last thing on the minds of residents of Croatia.
Yet Don Lindsey, investment director at the University of Virginia Management Co., Charlottesville, recently was in Zagreb, Croatia, helping investment professionals there prepare for the chartered financial analyst examination.
Mr. Lindsey manages the fixed-income portfolio at the management company, which oversees the university's $1.3 billion endowment, and also oversees hedge funds and other hedged equity strategies.
He has clocked thousands of miles over the years, helping candidates prepare for the CFA examination in Japan, Europe and South Africa.
More than 65,000 candidates in 128 countries have enrolled in the CFA program, according to the Association of Investment Management and Research, Charlottesville, which administers the exam.
Mr. Lindsey got his first taste of international teaching when the University of Virginia's Commerce School was looking for faculty members to teach a one-week course in asset-liability management in Bucharest, Romania.
"I was fortunate enough to participate in that, and that was my first experience teaching overseas," he said.
Mr. Lindsey, who has an MBA and is a CFA, already had been grading the CFA examinations in the United States since 1992, so it was an easy step for him to contact a consulting firm that arranged for him to teach the review courses overseas.
And although it might seem like a distraction from his job, Mr. Lindsey said teaching investment management actually helps him stay on top of things.
"Staying on top of the academic material and the CFA curriculum helps a tremendous amount in keeping up with what is going on in the investment world. It is a nice blend of the theoretical side and the practical side," Mr. Lindsey said.
