The Inaugural WealthTech Americas Awards 2022

With more than 20 years’ experience in the financial sector, Amanda manages products and services tailored to the needs of ultra-high net worth families. She has responsibility for operational support and delivery, regional and national coordination, and management reporting. Her role further includes matrix supervision of all managing directors of client experience and specialized fiduciary services with the goal of achieving exemplary execution on behalf of Ascent’s clients. Amanda’s favorite quote from the writer and poet Maya Angelou informs her approach to client service: “People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.” Her aim is “to create an environment where clients are delighted and feel valued.”

The Rudin Group founder April Rudin is a widely acknowledged top marketing strategist for the financial-services and wealth-management sectors. Her firm designs bespoke marketing campaigns for leading wealth-management firms, fintechs, and family offices; campaigns that strengthen brand value and drive client acquisition. Recognized as an IBM “influencer,” she is a regularly-featured source of expertise, contributes to Capgemini’s World Wealth Report, produces the CFA Institute’s annual U.S. outlook, and often speaks about wealth, next-gen, and fintech. She’s been published extensively and judges the Family Wealth Report’s annual Wealth Management Industry Awards and is a member of their advisory board. Her two sons say she has always been an “influencer”.

Bill has spent his career advising founders, wealth creators, closely held business owners, and family offices across a wide range of wealth management disciplines, including investment management, taxation, estate planning, philanthropy, and wealth education. He joined SVB from Citigroup, where he was a managing director and head of the Family Office Group for Citi Private Bank. Before joining Citigroup, Bill was a managing director and head of the Ultra-High-Net-Worth (UHNW) and Family Office business for Credit Suisse.

Bill began his career in “Big Four” public accounting, where he spent a decade providing tax and related planning advice to clients. He left public accounting to run the family office of one of his clients, a Hong Kong–based family with 40 employees and operations in Hong Kong, San Francisco, and Vancouver. Bill was also a founding member of myCFO, an integrated wealth management and technology firm started by several well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. Shortly before the sale of myCFO to Harris Bank, Bill joined Merrill Lynch’s Private Banking and Investment Group and oversaw an integrated investment advisory practice for UHNW families and family offices ranging in net worth from $25 million to $2 billion. Bill earned a master’s degree in accounting from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in economics from University of California, Irvine.

A frequent author on wealthy families’ issues, Bill co-wrote “The Family Office: A Comprehensive Guide for Advisers, Practitioners, and Students,” published by Columbia University Press. He’s been quoted extensively in financial publications and was named one of Family Capital’s 100 Influencers – Consultants. In addition, he’s a lecturer in the Master’s in Wealth Management program at Columbia University School of Professional Studies, the chair of the advisory board for the Stanford University Global Family Office Initiative, and a co-founder of the UHNW Institute, an independent nonprofit that provides thought leadership and content helpful to families, family offices, and professionals.

Carole has more than 25 years of leadership experience in finance, investment management and business development. She's a forward looking, trusted advisor and advocate with a strong focus on growth, innovation, transformation and building productive strategic alliances. Her foundation of the CFA charter combined with professional experience as a public and private markets investor and tech CFO enables robust analysis and sharp decision making. She focuses on realigning family office structures and integrated asset management, including direct and co-investment in venture. She is a Fintech Expert, actively engaged in its complex innovation ecosystem of startups, investors, incumbent banks and investment firms, consultants, advisors and regulators, identifying industry trends and relevant opportunities.

Gregory is a passionate brand strategist who believes that in a crowded, seemingly commoditized investment and wealth management marketplace, there is great need for innovation; that the ever-increasing sophistication of the ultra-high-net-worth, their ever-expanding needs, and the ever-changing investment environment demand this. He is dedicated to creating and evolving the strategies, tactics, and implementations of those who seek to achieve a business imperative: differentiation in pursuit of deliberate and sustained growth. Across a career spanning more than two decades serving those who serve the UHNW, Gregory remains an optimistic agent of change, evangelist of “Show, don’t tell” and believer in magic.

Howard Geller is a strategic consultant working with family offices, individual investors, wealth managers, investment managers and private equity to assess, analyze and recommend solutions. He has over 20 years of diverse experience in the financial services industry with several notable financial organizations. His primary family office consulting focus has been on portfolio reporting system review and requirements development, best practices review, investment manager and outsourced service provider due diligence, and targeted project assessment and resolution. He functions as an internal consultant bridging the communication gap to solve problems, implement solutions and take advantage of opportunities.

Joe Calabrese is Chief Operating Officer at Key Wealth Management. He is responsible for overseeing the development, integrated delivery, and strategic development of a full range of financial planning, investment, fiduciary and banking capabilities for Key’s clients. He joined Key in 2016, and lends his knowledge and expertise to affluent individuals, families, business owners, and institutions. Before joining Key, Joe held a wide range of executive roles including President and CEO of Geller Family Office Services, and President of Harris myCFO, which focused on serving clients with a net worth in excess of $100 million. Joe graduated from McGill University with a joint honors degree in Economics and Finance and holds a Chartered Accountant designation. Joe actively serves on the advisory board of The UHNW Institute and the Gaples Institute for Integrative Cardiology.

Jon Carroll is an managing director in the Ernst & Young US Americas Family Office Advisory practice. His primary focus is advising family members, family business owners, trustees, and family office executives on how to grow and govern their single-family office. Jon has extensive experience advising families on the set-up and structure of their family office, strategic planning and implementation, leading practices, business and operational risk assess¬ment, and family office systems and technology search, selection, implementation and integration. Jon has over 26 years experience serving UHNW families, including seven years working in a family office as chief operating officer. Before joining Ernst & Young, Jon was president and CEO of Family Office Metrics.

Jonathan North, Head of Products for 4Pines Fund Services, has spent the past 20 years working with technology firms and family offices. Jon began his work with family offices at Financial Navigator where he learned about the market and software. He joined FundCount as one of the initial employees. He helped FundCount emerge as a software competitor in the US market while helping to expand it from a hedge fund product into a family office offering. More recently, Jon led the sales and marketing efforts for the Private Client business at SS&C and took over as Head of Private Clients North America for Alter Domus. With his current venture away from family office market it was a perfect time for Jon to lend his perspective to the FWR team.

Logan is the Managing General Partner and Founder of Fin VC where he is responsible for management of the firm, making investments, maintaining board responsibilities, and adding hands-on operating value with portfolio companies. Logan was most recently VP of SoFi Ventures, where he oversaw minority investments and corporate development. Logan has historically served in VC and Asset Management firm leadership roles as a Venture Partner at Light Street Capital, Partner at Formation Group, Managing Director at Invesco, SVP at City National Bank, and Director at PwC. Key firm investments led by Logan: Figure, SoFi, Neuro-ID, Greenlight, Avinew, Aiera, Nestio, Samcart, Netomi, BrainTrust, Numbrs, Onfido, Tradeshift, and DailyPay.

Mike Slemmer is Sales Director at Dynamo Software. Dynamo powers investment decisions of clients representing $4tn+ of assets and serves over 1,000 clients including pension funds, sovereign wealth funds, endowments and foundations, family offices, funds of funds, private equity firms, M&A teams, venture capital groups, hedge funds, fund administrators, prime brokerages, and insurance firms. Previously, he was a senior consultant at The Collaborative. Mike has deep experience in investment technology, having had many sales, marketing and leadership roles at SS&C, Thomson Financial/ThomsonReuters, FundCount and Chase. Mike earned his BA from the University of Delaware, an MBA in finance from the University of Houston and an executive degree from the Columbia University Graduate Business School. He is a CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) charter holder and a member of the CFA Institute and the CFA Boston.

Leading results-driven strategic planning for growth-focused organizations, Patti operates two distinct yet compatible consultancies. As Founder and President of Boyle Consulting Group, she applies her expertise in developing brand positioning, mission/vision/values and digital marketing to private equity-owned businesses, including those in WealthTech and FinTech.  Following an early career in global marketing agencies, such as JWT and FCB, Patti led SEI Investments’ UK-based Marketing Team for Private Banking. Patti is also CEO of an early-stage venture, Sapience Leadership, affiliated with The University of Pennsylvania.  In this role, Patti works with a team of inspiring educational leaders in the areas of Educational Equity, Diversity & Inclusion and Executive Coaching.  Applying business principles and leadership experience to Education brings a unique balance to Patti’s work and has resulted in dynamic growth for both of her client communities. She has been active with the FWR Awards, since its inception in 2013.

Stephen Harris is chief executive of ClearView Financial Media, publisher of global wealth management news sites WealthBriefing, Family Wealth Report and WealthBriefingAsia; as well as compliance, tax and remuneration-centred Compliance Matters, Offshore Red and Executive Compensation Briefing respectively. He has 25 years’ financial publishing experience, 17 years of which have been running growth companies.

Dr. Tania Neild runs InfoGrate, an information technology consulting company that supports family offices.  She supports all aspects of their technology from cybersecurity and data integration to vendor selection and performance reporting.  She served as the CTO and COO of Private Client Resources, an aggregation, reconciliation and client performance reporting platform and before that she served as CTO of Envestnet, where she built a separately managed account platform recognized by Forbes in 2001 as “Best of the Web.”  Co-founded by Dr. Neild, Envestnet went public in the fall of 2010.

Tom Burroughes is group editor of ClearView Financial Media, publisher of WealthBriefing, WealthBriefingAsia and Family Wealth Report. Tom has worked at ClearView since 2008, reporting on news stories, interviewing industry leaders, writing features and comment pieces, and has spoken at conferences in London, Guernsey and Vienna, among other locations. He has discussed the industry’s issues on Reuters television and the BBC. Previously, Tom was wealth management editor of The Business, the weekly UK magazine run by the Telegraph Group, from 2007 to 2008. Before that, he was a correspondent in various roles at Reuters, the global newswire. Between 1994 and 2000, he was a reporter for Market News International, a New York-headquartered newswire.

Tricia Haskins is vice president of Digital Strategy & Platform Consulting with Fidelity Institutional. With over 20 years of experience in financial services, Ms. Haskins leads the strategic team that is focused on helping wealth management firms thrive in an environment of transformational change. We devise and implement strategies to achieve help our institutional clients achieve their growth, client service and productivity goals, as shifting investor demographics, rapid technology innovations, and the advisor supply-demand imbalance provide tremendous opportunities for firms determined to lead the future of wealth management.

Vikram Chugh oversees the wealth management platform at Robertson Stephens and is responsible for firm operations, advisor due-diligence and onboarding, technology, marketing and business strategy. Vikram has 20 years of leadership experience working at BlackRock, Merrill Lynch and Capital One. Most recently, Vikram led the business development effort for BlackRock’s Aladdin Wealth business in the Americas region. He was instrumental in the build out and launch of BlackRock’s Digital Wealth platform including the Aladdin Wealth capability, iRetire solution as well as the acquisition of FutureAdvisor. Vikram earned a BTech degree from Indian Institute of Technology (I.I.T.), Delhi and is a CFA® charterholder.

Wendy has been a wealth management journalist, researcher and consultant for a decade, covering a huge range of international markets and sub-sectors over that time. Known as a technology and communications specialist, she has written an array of in-depth reports on issues affecting private banks and wealth managers, ranging from compliance and innovation trends through to client experience, branding and marketing strategies. As well as speaking at conferences in both the UK and abroad, Wendy also regularly consults for wealth and asset managers, including carrying out research projects among end H/UHNW clients for both internal and external purposes.

William Trout serves as Director of the Securities and Investments practice at Datos Insights, focusing on technology strategy and innovation in the capital markets. He has particular expertise in platform automation; data capture, storage and analytics; and portfolio management and optimization. Within the wealth and asset management arena, his interests include investment advisory and wholesaling and distribution services, as well as private banking and trust.

Will's research and consulting work is informed by more than more than two decades of industry experience. Prior to joining Datos Insights, Will led wealth and asset management in the U.S. and the U.K. at Celent, a division of Oliver Wyman, before launching separate advisor- and investor-focused research practices at Javelin Strategy & Research. Prior to those roles, Will spent many years in product and segment management at BBVA Compass, where he helped guide the introduction of a pioneering managed-accounts platform and the expansion of banking and investments services targeting high-net-worth and institutional investors.

An authority on digital advice delivery, Will has been widely quoted in the trade press as well as in publications such as the Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences and gatherings. In his spare time, Will is an avid runner and reader of history.

Will holds a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard College.