Our team’s expertise runs deep, but we believe what truly sets us apart is the passion of our professionals. In this Q&A, we introduce you to Josephine Jimenez, CFA, Managing Director, Chief Investment Officer & Portfolio Manager of emerging markets at Channing Global Advisors.
Josephine brings a rare blend of global perspective, relentless curiosity, risk-taking prowess, and decades of experience to her role. In this Q&A, she shares the highlights of her journey—from building a life in the U.S. after emigrating from the Philippines to later pursuing a career on Wall Street. Discover how her roots, vision, and drive helped shape a distinguished career in global investing.
Breaking into finance as a woman in the late ’70s was not an easy feat. What fueled your ambition?
I graduated from NYU with a Bachelor of Science in Finance in 1979 and received a Master of Science in Management from MIT in 1981. I was one of the few women in the graduating class of Sloan School that year.
I used my personal background as an advantage in setting the course of my career, since being a woman and a minority 45 years ago on Wall Street was uncommon.
As an immigrant, I learned early on the value of hard work and perseverance and the importance of setting goals and accomplishing them.
Emerging markets investing was uncharted when you launched your career. How did you get your start?
Upon graduating from business school, I wanted to become a research analyst specializing in developing economies, a part of the world I naturally understand, but such opportunity did not exist then. I ended up becoming an analyst of U.S. equities. I was fortunate to be assigned as a generalist covering a variety of industries. That experience prepared me to become a portfolio manager later in my career.
Given my passion for international investing, I gravitated to understanding the foreign operations of the U.S. companies I followed. That curiosity, combined with the technical skills I learned in graduate school, my experience living in an emerging economy, and the knowledge I gained while traveling to Brazil and Argentina during the hyperinflationary years in those countries laid the foundation for my subsequent career in emerging markets.
In 1988, I joined Emerging Markets Management, a start-up firm in Washington, D.C., and one of the first in America to focus on emerging markets. I started as a research and operations associate and later became an analyst, then a portfolio manager. The former chairman of Montgomery Asset Management, R. Stephen Doyle, gave me the opportunity to broaden my expertise in the emerging markets and develop my hallmark style of Thematic Growth investing. I joined Montgomery in 1991 and served as a portfolio manager of emerging markets for 12 years until we sold the business to Wells Capital Management. When he recruited me to join as a partner at Montgomery, Mr. Doyle had the foresight to launch the Montgomery Emerging Markets Fund, which became the first fund on the Schwab platform and the largest EM fund on Wall Street by the mid-90s.
You’ve watched EM evolve over the past 37 years to become, as a group, the world’s largest economy. What shifts stand out most?
When I started, there was limited information available, making it necessary to amass information firsthand. That meant I stayed in a country at times for as many as six weeks, meeting with various companies’ management teams, visiting factories, collecting information, and learning from all sources.
Today, information is readily available and many countries have adopted IFRS1 accounting standards, making it easier to compare companies across geographies. The number of listed companies and trading volumes have increased, economies have expanded, and the middle class has increased.
You’ve traveled the world to conduct research. What does that kind of on-the-ground experience bring to your work today?
I have spent considerable time over the past 37 years in Asia, South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa visiting production plants, meeting with management teams, and observing what is taking place in the countries.
Some of those trips have been enlightening in special ways, such as the trips I took to Kashmir, Peshawar, Gaza, the Golan Heights, the Panama Canal, the Golden Triangle, Chiapas, and the Korean Demilitarized Zone to understand country risk factors. My curiosity even led me to Moscow shortly after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. The Russian formal stock market did not even exist at that time and Russia was operating the only system it knew, which was barter trade. I explored various oblasts in Russia and traveled to Siberia during wintertime. My travels also led me to the faraway lands of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan in the early 90s. I witnessed then the vast potential that awaits the then-newly formed republics not just in Central Asia but throughout Emerging Europe.
The insights I gained from traveling to flashpoint areas have been invaluable in shaping Channing Global’s sophisticated perspectives in interpreting economic, social, and political events. Furthermore, the lessons I have learned from investing in inflationary economies starting in the late ‘80s have helped my team at Channing Global navigate through market uncertainties.
What makes the long-term case for emerging markets so compelling?
Over 80% of the world’s population resides in the developing economies2. We believe this is a powerful driver of long-term economic growth. The collective GDP of emerging economies is larger than the U.S. economy. Given the underlying strong demand for goods and services, we expect emerging market economies to post above-average GDP growth. In that context, we expect companies to post strong earnings growth, which could lead to good share price performance over the long term.
You’ve referred to this moment “the opportunity of a lifetime” for EM. What’s fueling that conviction—and why now?
Valuation in the emerging markets relative to earnings growth is at an attractive level currently, in our view. This, combined with a weakening U.S. dollar, could serve as a powerful catalyst in reawakening investors’ interest in the emerging markets asset class after 15 years of underperformance.
Who helped shape your thinking—and what early lessons still guide you today?
I started working at age 17 when my family moved to America. In fact, I worked full time while in college to support myself and to save for graduate school. My life’s circumstances and experiences shaped my values and the way I think.
As a graduate student at MIT, I had the privilege of studying under the tutelage of Professor Franco Modigliani, who later won the Nobel Prize in Economics. He served on my master’s thesis committee and challenged me in ways that sharpened my analytical skills. Our collaboration continued for many years after I graduated. Professor Modigliani even served on Montgomery Asset Management’s Advisory Committee on emerging markets after I joined that firm in the early 90s.
You’ve built your career with deep focus and drive—what do you enjoy doing when you step away from work?
I became a single mom at 48 and my daughter Netanya has been the focus of my life outside of work. Before then, scuba diving became my hobby. I managed to log over 1,000 dives, which I did on weekends while traveling for work.
One of my most memorable diving experiences was when I joined a research expedition arranged by MIT 25 years ago on the coast of Hornby Island in British Columbia. I went in a three-person submersible 400 feet below sea level in hopes of seeing sixgill sharks. Unbeknownst to me then, the experiment involved maneuvering the retractable wheels of the submersible along the muddy seabed while collecting ecological samples. As a scuba diver, I was used to going as deep as 130 feet and never imagined what it was like below that level. On the expedition, we descended in full daylight, and by the time we reached 150 feet, it suddenly turned grey. As we descended deeper, it became pitch black. Everything that we saw—illuminated by the submersible’s lighting—through the concave lens of the vessel seemed smaller. It was an incredible experience shared by only a limited number of people on this planet!
My passion for scuba diving led me to try cage diving in the shark-infested waters of Cape Town, drift diving off Moyo Island in Indonesia, wreck diving in Subic, night diving in the Tubbataha Reefs, and diving an archeological site in Caesarea to explore the ruins of the harbor built by King Herod between 22 and 10 B.C.
These days, my interests are a little less adventurous. I am a fan of the opera and all types of music genre, including 60s rock and salsa. Having traveled to 70 countries, my idea of a vacation is to stay at home and catch up with my personal paperwork. I exercise regularly and go for long walks with our Golden Retriever.
1 IFRS, or International Reporting Standards, are a set of accounting rules and guidelines developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). They aim to create common accounting language for businesses globally, ensuring financial information is consistent, transparent, and comparable across different companies and countries.
2 UNCTAD. “Now 8 Billion and Counting: Where the World’s Population Has Grown Most – and Why.” UNCTAD, https://unctad.org/data-visualization/now-8-billion-and-counting-where-worlds-population-has-grown-most-and-why. Accessed June 24, 2025.
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