Meet Natalia Gurushina, Chief Economist, Emerging Markets Fixed Income

I grew up in Moscow and my dad was a rocket scientist. He was in the space program. And this kind of had pretty profound implications for me and my life. First of all, it developed a lifelong interest in science fiction. And it also kind of steered me towards science and math in my studies, but also science fiction told me a very important life lesson, never underestimate a human factor.

So when the time came to select my studies, economics sounded like a good fit because it's both science, it's math, but it's also human behavior. So I started my studies in Moscow and then I was actually one of the first Soviet students to get a scholarship for postgraduate studies in Oxford.

Career Highlights

At the same time when I was studying in Oxford, there was a very interesting process when countries, especially in Europe, were going through this economic transformation, moving from planned economies to a free market economies. And that's, I think that's kind of caught my interest and after I finished my studies in Oxford, I was fortunate enough to get a job in Prague, in the Czech Republic in a think tank, which looked at economic transformation, economic transition. So in a sense, it kind of crystallized my interest in emerging markets, but it also kind of made me realize that maybe professionally I want a little bit more than academia, specifically something faster paced.

That's why I made the next career move. I started my job as economist in investment banking. And I start, my first job was at Bankers Trust. And a very interesting moment in time because it was literally a few months before the financial crisis of 97/98. So for me, it was a baptism by fire, in a sense, and looking back, it was probably a very good gift for young economists, you know, starting your career like this, dealing with defaults, devaluations, but also seeing how different countries address these challenges, how they deal with this, how they deal with these problems.

And a few years later, I moved from the sell side to the buy side and from Europe to United States, working in a hedge fund in San Francisco. And then I spent a few years working for Dr. Doom, Nouriel Roubini, where I expanded my expertise to G7 currencies, which actually became very relevant right now because emerging markets are getting increasingly advanced.

Joined VanEck in 2013

While I still was working for Nouriel Roubini, I was invited to participate in an emerging markets seminar in New York, where I met a certain Mr. Eric Fine. And the reason I remember that particular seminar is because Eric and I disagreed on literally each and every point. And so I was kind of a little bit surprised when a few months later, Eric got in touch with me and said that his team was looking for a person with expertise both in economics and macro but also in strategy and the challenge was accepted and I joined VanEck in the summer of 2013 as a part of Emerging Markets active fixed income team.

As investors, when you look at methodology, we want to have something consistent across countries, across regions, but at the same time, we understand that each and every emerging market is different. There are different developmental stages. There are different cultural issues, political history. Kind of marrying these two things in a profitable way, that's what kind of keeps me going.

“There's never a boring day in emerging markets… Emerging markets is the future”

There's never a boring day in emerging markets. There is also a policy swerve or a political upheaval or something happening. But I think for me, I've been looking at emerging markets for so many years. They grow, they mature. Emerging markets is the future. And that's what I really like about my job at VanEck dealing with emerging markets and investing in emerging markets. I think that's really is the key.