New York, New York, United States
With over 28 years of executive leadership across the investment industry, I've held pivotal roles including CEO, COO, CIO, CTO, and board advisor at some of the most prominent and innovative hedge funds. My expertise lies in bridging the gap between technology and business within the Alternative Investment sector, empowering technical leaders to broaden their perspectives and significantly contribute to their firms' success. As the CEO and Co-Founder of AITEC (Alternative Investment Technology Executives Club), I helped establish this peer group in 2009 as a global, private community for technology leaders in the investment industry. What began with just 25 executives has grown to include over 500 technology leaders worldwide, along with 200+ of their key team members. AITEC’s mission is to create a secure platform for executives from buy-side and sell-side firms, Private Equity, Venture Capital, and family offices to exchange insights and best practices. The group promotes collaboration, cybersecurity education, vendor due diligence standardization, and much more. Members actively share knowledge through AITEC’s online platform and participate in regular virtual and in-person meetings across the globe. With members managing assets exceeding $4.2 trillion USD, AITEC offers a unique network where executives can leverage each other's expertise to drive operational efficiency, foster technological innovation, and support strategic decision-making within their firms. KEY ACHIEVEMENTS • Contributing author of The Insider’s Guide to Hedge Funds: Successfully Managing the Middle and Back Office • Founder of ΛITEC and ΛITEC Gives Back • A Technology Executives group with more than 500 members worldwide of the investment industry. Added a charitable arm that has raised over $4M for military veterans & inner city youth. • Ground up creation of two Technology firms • High intensity startups – The successful spin off of two winning Hedge Funds with outstanding growth and performance. • Turn around manager – redirecting misguided talent to fulfil itself usefully • Changed the negative perception of IT to a respected core business partner within a year. Transforming geek speak into business speak.
Co-founding AITEC in 2009 during the financial crisis stemmed from a natural need for peer collaboration and information sharing. I had two main goals in mind: 1. Cybersecurity Awareness: My focus was on raising awareness of cybersecurity risks and ensuring firms strengthened their defenses. This initiative aimed to protect investors, firms, and ultimately, our jobs. Out of this came the unified Vendor Cyber DDQ, which is now an industry standard. This standardized DDQ allows for better comparisons and simplifies the process for vendors, who can now fill out a single DDQ instead of numerous versions. 2. Business Education: I noticed that many technology executives were only focused on keeping operations running. Expanding their knowledge of the business side would increase their value to their firms, enabling them to provide insights on leveraging technology in various areas of the firm. This shift helped members add value to their careers by positioning themselves as business partners. I became AITEC’s CEO in July 2022. My focus has been on several key areas: • Upgrading the platform: I transitioned AITEC to a more social-media-oriented platform to engage the next generation of leaders. The new platform supports discussions via web, mobile, and email. • Enhancing member value: I worked to improve current events, add more virtual and in-person events, and increase regional gatherings. For instance, the Executive Winter Retreat was upgraded with sponsors, expert speakers, and member-driven roundtables. • Mentorship: A key goal has been to foster mentorship through the Jobs-Career forum, allowing members to share their experiences and offer guidance to future technology leaders. • Vendor partnerships: Introducing strategic vendor partnerships helps bring innovative technologies to our members, driving cost efficiency and faster data analysis—AI advancements being a prime example of how innovation is transforming the investment world.
Providing Vision When I took over this prime hedge fund, there was no coordination of the technology teams. I provided a clear vision of what could be accomplished in IT and united these teams to provide an integral approach to the back, middle and the front offices. Within a year, technology became a strategic business partner. From data to valuable information Teams moved many sets of disjointed data, and integrated these into a data warehouse. This allowed valuable insights into past, present and future trends. HTML5 apps allowed mobile phones to access real-time data. We also used the R language to mine vast amounts of registration, insurance and power usage data to determine investment patterns. Defence in Depth Successfully convinced senior management of the necessity for cyber defence. The mantra of “making it so difficult and costly for attackers that they will focus on other firms” led to the adoption a multi-layered defence strategy. Innovation/Transformation/Virtualization/Cloud We seek strategic partnerships to access greater resources to drive innovation if this saves money. We are one Although many work in open offices, there are invisible barriers that dampen performance. I break these barriers by introducing people, by breaking up cliques; by staging events such as beer-brewing contests and take on challenges such as participation in the Boston Fenway Spartan team.
Creative use of technology As a lover of adventure and endurance sports, I developed a concept to utilize GPS and geospatial mapping technologies to provide real-time athlete analytics. This allowed athletes to be closer to their families around the world by “being part of the journey” I partnered with Ironman and Ragnar Relay to build a client base that made the firm financially secure.
Jon Dawson planned for growth without a clear plan to get from its archaic systems to one that would handle the projected growth. I was hired to realise this vision, changing the software and more importantly, the way people thought. With the financial crisis in 2008-2009, I encouraged free discussion and built up employers' self-confidence. We developed strategies that allowed us to thrive in challenging times. As a result of leadership and empowering others, I was promoted to the role of Chief Operating Officer, in addition to keeping my technical responsibilities