Archives: Ambassadors

Rohanna Wise is the founder and CEO of Wise Trading Technologies, and the creator of WiseRisk, a software platform that automates the implementation of currency hedging strategies. She has worked in buy-side trading and/or trading technology since 1996, starting with energy commodities before moving to fixed income (including currency), and focusing exclusively on currency from 2012.

 

In 2015, Rohanna launched Wise Trading Technologies to offer a low-cost solution for asset managers to systematically eliminate unwanted currency risk.

 

She is the author of Hedging Wisely: A Non-expert’s Guide to Expertly Hedging Currency Risk.

 

Rohanna holds a BA from the University of Rochester and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Thom Young, MBA, President, FARcapital, LLC – Mr. Young primarily responsible for strategic direction of FARcapital. Mr. Young’s emphasis is on sales and marketing to the largest US hedge fund management companies and their global institutional asset owner investor base.

 

Prior to joining the Company, he co-founded and managed Cambium Capital Management, a conservative Jones model US equity long/short hedge fund working for large institutional investors.  Before Cambium, Mr. Young worked as a Managing Director of Deutsche Bank in New York serving in several roles to include as a Global Relationship Manager and as Co- Head of Global Institutional equity sales.  In 1997 Mr. Young opened and managed Deutsche Bank’s institutional office in Atlanta, Georgia.  From 1983-1996 Mr. Young worked at The First Boston Corporation in New York and Atlanta. While in Atlanta, he covered the Southeast’s largest public pension plans, major endowments, and foundations.

 

Mr. Young has served on the Boards of the Mint Museums of Charlotte. Mr. Young is past treasurer of the Echo Foundation and past President of the Ne Ultra Society of Davidson College. Mr. Young earned his MBA from the University of Virginia Darden School ’83 and his undergraduate degree from Davidson College’ 78.

 

FARcapital provides design, implementation and administration of Fund Alignment Rights (FARs), an innovative incentive fee structure struck between global institutional Asset Owners and the US hedge fund Managers they employ.

 

Fund Alignment Rights (FARs) allow Asset Owners to secure multi year incentive fees, assuring the inherent outperformance over an annual incentive fee fund, without having to provide tax distributions to the US manager each year.

 

The US hedge fund Managers that offer a FAR share class will leave their annual incentive fee invested in the fund on a pre tax basis, rather than redeemed at year end and taxed as it is today. That invested fee is aligned with their investors’ capital, and compounds tax deferred until an agreed upon period, or longer if the Manager chooses. FARs accumulate greater wealth for the Manager than had the Manager paid taxes each year.

 

FARs are a transformative idea, the rare fee solution that provides a Win Win for both Asset Owner and US Manager.

Aaron Bernstein is the editor of Global Proxy Watch, a corporate governance newsletter for institutional investors.

 

He is also a non-resident Senior Research Fellow at the Pensions and Capital Stewardship Project at Harvard Law School. Bernstein left BusinessWeek magazine in 2006 after a 23-year career as an editor and senior writer covering workplace and social issues.

 

Aaron received a BA in Politics and Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz and did graduate work in Political and Legal Theory for two years at Oxford University. He is the author of a book entitled “Grounded: Frank Lorenzo and the Destruction of Eastern Airlines,” and the co-author of “In the Company of Owners: The Truth About Stock Options.”

Aivars is a global entrepreneur and Founder of IT Capital. Aivars is best known for his skills in identifying new business opportunities and re-engineering existing businesses to make them profitable. His ability to identify patterns in business cycles as they occur across the globe led him to start blogging in 2006 about global economics and he accurately predicted the 2008 financial crisis.  He is the author of three books on the future of global economics (available at aivarslode.blogspot.com). Aivars continues to identify best practices, people, processes and technology deployed elsewhere in the world and bring them to the USA.

 

In the early 2000s Aivars founded Avantce, a private equity firm, in order to invest in software companies. Aivars was instrumental in a number of investments including Robocom Systems International, Select, Radcliffe, ADT, Aviva Solutions and ROI. In addition to his own investments Aivars has been retained by private equity firms CVC Capital Partners, Golden Gate Capital, Bain Capital and Welsh Carson Anderson & Stowe to advise on their acquisition strategies in Software.

 

Aivars successfully participated in creating the strategies for companies like IBM’s EDI business, Inovis, Infor and Mincom. Further, Aivars created a consortium to acquire the major airline cargo space for optimization, this resulted in private equity firms Welsh Carson and General Atlantic investing in 3rd party logistics providers.

 

Prior to founding Avantcé, Aivars was Group President of Descartes Systems Group, a publicly traded supply chain solutions company, based in Canada.  As Group President, Aivars led the company’s global expansion efforts, achieving profitable growth as well as completing the successful acquisition and consolidation of two EDI businesses, TDNI and TranSettlements.

 

Prior to joining Descartes, Aivars was with Oracle heading up Applications Software for Australasia. He led the organization’s change from a direct aggressive customer relationship model to that of a consultative business partner.

Aivars first entered the technology industry in 1991, when he joined Dun & Bradstreet Software.  Prior to that he held various management positions, including COO, CFO and CIO roles in both public and private corporations.

 

Throughout his career Aivars has lived in Australia, Canada, Singapore, Hong Kong and has conducted business in most of the industrialized countries in the world.  Aivars holds a Bachelors of Business, Accounting from Swinburne University in Melbourne Australia.  Aivars is a past member of the Board of Directors at First Bank and Trust of Illinois.

Erik was a trader and portfolio manager from 1977 – 2001. Former head of equity trading at Northern Trust Co. in Chicago.

 

He is now a private investor, founder of a nonprofit investor advocacy firm, and private investing coach.

 

“It gives me great satisfaction to teach everyday investors (investors who don’t have millions of dollars at their disposal) the same skills and strategies that I used with my high net worth clients as a private wealth manager. It may be a cliché, but giving something back to the community is more rewarding to me than helping very rich people get even richer”

Joseph Hosler, CFA, brings 23 years of investment experience serving the needs of large institutional clients.

 

His background includes portfolio management and investment analysis, predominantly focused on domestic and international public companies. Prior to the founding of Auour Investments, Joe led investment activities within various sectors at Pioneer, Babson Capital, Putnam Investments, and Independence Investment Associates (IIA). While at IIA, Joe drove the effort to design, develop, and launch one of the first quantitatively driven tax efficient investment approaches focused on individuals and taxable organizations.

 

Joe holds an MBA from The Darden School of the University of Virginia, as well as, a B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Boston University. He is an active volunteer within his community and currently sits on the Boston Security Analysts Society’s Strategists/Economists Subcommittee.

 

Joe resides in Wenham, MA with his wife of 25 years, two children and three dogs (soon to be four).

 

Joe is also a member of the Transparency Task Force’s Americas Special Interest Group and a Transparency Task Force Ambassador.

Michael Erlanger, Founder and Managing Principal, of Marketcore.com, Inc (www.marketcore.com).

 

Michael spent the first 35+ years of his career on Wall Street as a top-ranked corporate bond broker, trader, institutional salesman and department head. Subsequently, he co-founded two profitable Wall Street broker dealers.

 

Michael is also Chief Visionary, Co-Founder and Director of GoKnown, LLC, a technology start up (www.goknown.com).

David M. Rowe is founder and president of David M. Rowe Risk Advisory, a risk management consulting firm. The firm is focused on risk management support for boards and senior executives of financial institutions, primarily banks and investment banks, with particular emphasis on capital market activities. It also advises on risk management technology strategy and vendor relationships. Dr. Rowe wrote the Risk Analysis column in Risk magazine for 16 years. He also is the author of An Insider’s Guide to Risk Management – Relearning the Lessons of the Global Financial Crisis.

 

From August 2013 to August 2015, Dr. Rowe served as Senior Strategist for Risk and Regulation at Misys Financial Software. Prior to that, Dr. Rowe was Executive Vice President for Risk Management at SunGard. In both positions, he provided strategic input to solutions for risk management and served as an external spokesman on risk management issues.

Prior to joining SunGard, Dr. Rowe spent more than 25 years in the banking and economic forecasting industries, most recently as senior vice president of the Risk Management Information group at Bank of America in San Francisco. In that role, Dr. Rowe had executive oversight and responsibility for the design, deployment, maintenance and operation of market and credit risk systems for the bank’s global FX, derivative and securities trading activities.

 

Dr. Rowe’s earlier positions include chief financial officer of Security Pacific Securities, Inc. (the broker-dealer subsidiary of the former Security Pacific Corp.); executive vice president and director of research for Townsend-Greenspan & Co. (Alan Greenspan’s economic consulting firm prior to becoming Chairman of the Federal Reserve) and president of Wharton Econometric Forecasting Associates in Philadelphia.

His industry positions have included:

• Board member of the International Association of Financial Engineers (IAFE)
• Board Member and member of the Finance Committee of the Professional Risk Managers’ International Association (PRMIA)
• Member of the editorial board of The Journal of Operational Risk
• Member of the Editorial Board of the GARP Risk Review

Dr. Rowe holds a Ph.D. in econometrics and finance from the University of Pennsylvania, an MBA in finance with a concentration in money and banking from the Wharton Graduate School of Finance and Commerce, and a BA in economics with distinction from Carleton College.

As Client Relations Manager and co-owner of Sentry Financial Planning, the most important part of Helene’s job is helping guide clients through the financial planning process.

 

The paperwork can be overwhelming and time-consuming and she is there to assist during each step of the process to help keep things simple and organized.

 

Whether she is scheduling appointments, answering questions, or collecting information, clients can rely on her to keep their affairs in order.

John Spoto is the President and founder of Sentry Financial Planning, LLC, a FEE-ONLY financial planning firm. He does not work for any financial institution, sell financial or insurance products of any kind, accept or pay referral fees or receive commissions.

 

He specializes in advising people on financial planning matters including retirement and investments.

 

Because of his commitment to financial literacy, John is known throughout several MA counties for his educational seminars focusing on retirement and investment issues at libraries, organizations and industry conferences.

 

He is also a financial planning columnist/contributor for several hard-copy and online publications routinely covering all aspects of retirement and investment planning.

 

John is a State Registered Investment Advisor and CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER™. He is a member of The Garrett Planning Network and the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA), both of which are nationally recognized financial planning organizations dedicated to providing competent, objective and professional Fee-Only financial planning services. John has an MBA from Boston College and a BA from Boston University.