In November 2023, Thomas Park acquired a new responsibility at a company he already knew. Global X needed someone to lead it while it searched for a permanent chief executive. Park, a board member since 2018 and co-chief executive of Mirae Asset Global Investments (USA), took the interim assignment. The business had $39 billion in assets under management. The word “interim” was doing a remarkable amount of work.
It was a revealing turn in a career often described through transactions. Park had helped lead the acquisition of Global X for Mirae Asset. Five years later, he was responsible for running it through a change at the top. The distance between buying a business and managing one had narrowed to a single appointment.
Finance tends to give the deal a handsome photograph and the subsequent work a committee meeting. Park’s record invites a longer look at that second part. Across Canada, Australia and the United States, his involvement has included acquisitions, board responsibilities and corporate development. More recently, it has extended to portfolio management in a venture fund. Ownership, operations and investing keep appearing together.
A career with several departure gates
Park’s education took him to The American University of Paris for a BA and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business for an MBA. His early professional experience included consulting at KPMG Consulting, later BearingPoint, and investment banking at Goldman Sachs. The locations add another layer: Germany for consulting, London for banking. By 2017, his responsibilities at Mirae Asset included heading global business strategy and serving as chief representative in the firm’s Shanghai office.
Those are distinct jobs. A consultant is brought in to examine a business. An investment banker works on the financial decisions surrounding it. A corporate development executive helps decide which businesses an organization should own and how they fit together. Park’s subsequent appointments put him inside the institutions whose direction he was helping shape.
His career is easier to follow through those responsibilities than through the broad phrase “global investments.” The phrase covers a great deal of ground; the appointments show where he actually stood. They place him alongside management teams, on boards and, eventually, in charge of an operating business for a defined period.
There is a geographical rhythm, too. Paris and Chicago belong to the education chapter. Germany and London belong to the early work. Shanghai, Toronto and New York appear in the investment-management chapter. These places are part of the documented itinerary, with different institutions and assignments attached. A map can make the route look effortless. A list of job descriptions restores some of the complexity.
The Canadian connection that lasted
In 2011, Mirae Asset acquired Horizons ETFs in Canada. Park joined its board that year. In 2015, the company appointed him chief corporate development officer, identifying him at the time as an executive managing director of Mirae Asset. The appointment placed a continuing business responsibility beside his board position.
Horizons was changing its senior leadership structure as well. Steve Hawkins and Taeyong Lee became co-CEOs. Park’s corporate development appointment appeared alongside that change, as part of a wider management arrangement. The company’s next stage required a group of executives with different duties. His name was one among several, which is a useful corrective to the habit of describing every corporate story through one protagonist.
The Canadian relationship continued. In May 2023, Rohit Mehta became Horizons’ president and CEO. Park, then identified as a director and Mirae Asset’s US co-CEO, welcomed the appointment by emphasizing Mehta’s experience across investment funds, wealth and asset management.
“Rohit brings extensive and diverse experience in the investment fund, wealth and asset management sectors”Thomas Park, on Rohit Mehta’s appointment, May 2023
The emphasis was on what the incoming executive brought to the business. That is a modest but telling piece of Park’s public voice: specific experience, attached to a specific appointment. It also links two executives who would later sit together for a discussion about the relationship between a global organization and local knowledge.
By 2026, the Canadian business, now Global X Investments Canada, still listed Park as a director and chief corporate development officer. Its prospectus places him in New York. The sequence runs across fifteen years: a board appointment, an additional development role and a continuing connection to the Canadian operation. The acquisition date is only the opening entry.
Five years between the board and the chair
Mirae Asset completed its Global X acquisition in July 2018. At closing, the New York ETF provider had $10.1 billion in assets under management. Park joined the board that year. The transaction brought a US investment business into a network that already included Canadian and Australian ETF operations.
An ETF business offers a particular kind of access. Investors buy fund shares on an exchange, while the fund follows its stated investment approach. The business behind those funds has to develop products, manage portfolios and serve the people using them. Acquiring that business brings the buyer into those ongoing responsibilities. The purchase agreement can establish ownership; the organization has to make the ownership useful.
In November 2023, Global X announced that Luis Berruga was stepping down after ten years with the firm. Park would lead it temporarily while a search proceeded. He came to the assignment with an existing board relationship and a senior role at an affiliate of its parent company. Familiarity with the institution was built into the choice.
In February 2024, Global X announced Ryan O’Connor as its incoming CEO, effective April 8. O’Connor had led ETF product at Goldman Sachs Asset Management and previously worked at State Street Global Advisors. Global X reported $43 billion in assets under management and more than 80 ETFs at the time of the announcement.
Park’s interim chapter therefore has clear boundaries. It began with a departure and led to a permanent appointment. Calling him Global X’s current CEO would erase the succession that followed. The more interesting description keeps the temporary nature intact: a director moved into an operating role when the company needed a bridge between leaders.
A conversation across the same table
In January 2025, Park and Mehta recorded a conversation with Andres Rincon for TD Securities’ Buyside Views. Published in March, the episode paired Park’s global perspective with Mehta’s Canadian one. Product innovation, data and the culture shared by their teams were among the subjects.
The pairing gives a practical shape to the organizational question behind Park’s acquisitions. A parent company can bring resources and a wider network. A local team knows the market in which its products must work. The discussion put those perspectives together, with two executives whose Canadian business relationship was already established.
It is also a different view of Park from a leadership announcement. Here he shares the frame with the executive running the Canadian business and a host whose work concerns ETF sales and strategy. The setting fits the topic: several participants examining how investment businesses connect. Even the photograph resists the solitary executive portrait. There is room on the sofa for the people who have to make the arrangement function.
From fund businesses to venture portfolios
Park’s investment work reaches beyond ETFs. His disclosed experience includes growth and buyout investments in Impossible Foods, SpaceX, X, Ascend Elements, Cohere and Acushnet. The range runs from food technology and batteries to generative AI, social media, space and golf equipment. The golf clubs provide a welcome change of scale after the rockets.
That range should be read precisely. Participation in a company investment is different from founding the company, running it or holding its entire success in one’s hands. Park’s record establishes involvement in these transactions. It places him across several industries without making him the author of every business outcome.
A 2026 registration statement gives his venture work a more defined operating setting. It names him portfolio manager of the Global X Venture and Innovation Fund, a member of Mirae’s investment committee and co-CEO of Mirae. He also signed the April registration statement as the fund’s trustee and president.
The responsibilities connect the selection of investments with the institution holding them. Portfolio management concerns the fund’s investments; executive and trustee positions concern the fund itself. In August 2026, a further filing identified Thomas Jefferson Park as its president and principal executive officer. This is a continuing investment-management chapter, beyond the temporary Global X CEO assignment.
The appointment after the announcement
Park’s career has a recurring feature: his involvement continues after the moment most likely to generate a headline. The Canadian acquisition led into board service and corporate development. The Global X purchase preceded a board appointment and, years later, an interim management assignment. Venture investing now sits alongside responsibility for a fund.
These are different forms of work, with different colleagues and obligations. Together, they give his public story its shape. The transactions explain which businesses entered the picture. The appointments explain how he remained connected to them. For an executive whose work crosses markets and investment structures, that second list is especially revealing.
A deal has a closing date. A business has the next morning. Much of Thomas Park’s career can be found there.