Well-known for its unique benefits to institutional and retail investors, the $4 trillion municipal bond market also boasts another quality - providing strong career opportunities to finance's brightest young stars.

In recognizing the connection between municipal finance and top emerging talent, The Bond Buyer publishes an annual list of Rising Stars under 40, whose leadership and commitment to excellence are driving the industry forward.

This year, we are proud that The Bond Buyer selected Tozar Gandhi for its Rising Stars list.

An IHS Markit associate director with a decade of expertise, Tozar leads a pricing team that evaluates more than 100,000 high-yield municipal bonds each day.

Among his achievements over the last year, Tozar spearheaded an effort to bring greater automation to our municipal pricing process. He also led a project to enhance the depth and quality of our valuation data using Parsing technology to pull information from financial statements and public disclosures. Through machine learning, he helped to reduce the time involved in analyzing credits, performing credit surveillances and answering client challenges.

"Working with such a tremendous team, comprised of motivated and experienced individuals, makes it easy for me to love my job," Tozar says, commenting on his career progression. "When I was introduced to public finance and the municipal bond market, I became fascinated with how it is so closely tied to the overall U.S. economy, and is essential for infrastructure development and an integral part of the investment portfolios of retail investors. What I cherish most as a municipal bond evaluator is the opportunity to service clients and engage with market participants. Looking forward, I hope to volunteer more frequently and give back more to the community."

Tozar is an active member of the municipal finance community, and regularly engages colleagues at industry events and through his distribution of daily market updates. He has authored monthly municipal bond market reports, which highlight special events and the performance of tender option bonds.

As the next generation of leaders drive the industry forward, IHS Markit believes there will be an increased focus on innovation, diversity and transparency. For his part, Tozar is passionate about delivering leading-edge services and an excellent experience to IHS Markit clients, while bringing greater transparency to the bond valuation process.

To learn more about municipal bond pricing services from IHS Markit, click here.

S&P Global provides industry-leading data, software and technology platforms and managed services to tackle some of the most difficult challenges in financial markets. We help our customers better understand complicated markets, reduce risk, operate more efficiently and comply with financial regulation.

This article was published by S&P Global Market Intelligence and not by S&P Global Ratings, which is a separately managed division of S&P Global.