For 15 years, BlackRock’s Kirsty Craig has operated as a kind of “translator” inside the world’s largest asset manager, sitting between portfolio managers making big bets and engineers building the systems that help inform those decisions to get both sides aligned on driving returns.
This skill set is part of what earned Craig, head of research, data, and AI strategy for portfolio management tech, the title of Tech Fellow, one of the firm’s high technological distinctions, held by only two dozen of its thousands of engineers. Craig is one of five new fellows that the firm announced on December 16, recognized for supercharging the asset manager’s investment team. This year, she is the only woman and the only fellow who works outside of Aladdin, the lucrative spine of BlackRock’s investment technology.
When it comes to her impact on how $13.5 trillion money manager BlackRock uses AI, Craig said she’s especially proud of her role in Asimov, the agentic AI platform for the firm’s fundamental equity business. The “virtual investment analyst” was unveiled by Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein at the firm’s investor day in June.
It leverages AI to automate workflows and research, as many firms race to adopt the technology to speed up what were once monthslong investment processes.
Now, as a fellow, Craig is even more embedded in BlackRock’s efforts to stay ahead, as the firm continues to center on technological prowess.
‘Tip of the spear’
At first, Craig wasn’t sure she’d become a tech fellow, largely because her work is different than most of the other fellows who work squarely within BlackRock’s data analytics and risk platform, Aladdin. Her team of around 60 software engineers, data engineers, and data scientists “sits at the horizontal” across various investment capabilities to help drive investment research.
She found out about the honor at the beginning of the month when a meeting was added to her calendar.
When she heard the news, Craig started by telling the manager who had nominated her, her sponsor during the application process, her team, and her family, “but they’ve got no idea what it means,” she told Business Insider.
Nish Ajitsaria, BlackRock’s co-head of Aladdin product engineering and the co-executive sponsor of the fellows program, said that existing tech fellows knew Craig not only for her innovation with AI in investing, but for her collaborative efforts. He described Craig as an “AI native,” and added that her team is at the “tip of the spear” when it comes to applying AI to investment.
Craig’s time at different offices — Edinburgh, San Francisco, and now Philadelphia — has, she thinks, given her a strong foundation of horizontal leadership across teams.
“I am responsible for really trying to find the dial movers across data, AI, and technology that really help our investment pillars drive investment research,” she said of her work.
Craig has learned how to communicate with both investors and Aladdin technologists, and said that building deep trust with both groups has been key to her success.
“If you put both of those different personalities or personas together, quite often they’re talking above or below each other. They struggle to connect. So for me, it’s really been being able to translate both and then come up with a strategy in the middle,” she said.
Visible leadership
For Craig, being a woman in a position of visible leadership is “a huge honor.” Of the 24 tech fellows, five are women, including Craig. Women make up 43.8% of BlackRock’s global workforce and 33.1% of senior leadership, according to data from January 1, 2025, posted on the firm’s site.
Craig said being involved in BlackRock’s women and LGBTQ+ resource groups has informed her other work at the firm, especially in how they’ve taught her how to collaborate with people from across divisions and explain complicated topics.
“If anything has probably helped me with, one, building my network; two, softer presentation skills; and then three, around how to communicate with impact,” Craig said. With the title, she hopes to help more junior female technologists “lean in.”
For Ajitsaria, it’s also important to have a diversity of expertise in the program and ensure that fellows represent all arms of BlackRock.
Expectations beyond the title
When it comes to driving technology strategy itself, Craig said she’s excited to keep figuring out how to leverage AI in active investing. Right now, her team is thinking about how to expand the scope of agentic research, potentially to areas like fixed income and macro investing.
As she continues to soak up the news, Craig is also preparing for a very different big life change. Her partner is scheduled to give birth in early January, so, with the due date mere weeks away, Craig said they’ve kept all celebrating fairly tame so far.
“We did go out for a meal. Nothing has been purchased, apart from cribs and bottles,” she said. “Definitely some more celebrating will be done post January 6.”
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