Prior to founding and developing Alpha Theory in 2005, Cameron worked as an equity research analyst for 10 years, covering primarily technology companies and supporting over $20B in transactions for firms such as Lehman Brothers, CIBC (NYSE: CM) and Credit Suisse First Boston (NYSE: CS) before joining Afton Capital Management, a $200M long-short equity hedge fund, in 2002. He currently sits on the boards of several funds and financial technology start-ups as well as the UNC-Chapel Hill Business School Investment Fund. Cameron earned his Business degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and became one of the youngest ever to receive the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1999.
It was on the buy-side that Cameron became aware of the avoidable mistakes investment managers were making causing lost performance and he vowed to solve the problem. When he told his grandmother why he was starting Alpha Theory, she looked at him and asked, "You mean they're not doing this already?" and he knew at that moment he had a responsibility to help bring about a change in the industry. Today, Cameron spends his time deepening his knowledge on important topics in behavioral finance, decision sciences, portfolio management and acting as a thought leader to investment managers on investment process "best practices" through direct communication
at conferences and seminars, on TV and Radio, and through the written word.
Cameron is an avid golfer, Citi-biker, runner, a technology early-adopter, magician (he taught his three year old and one year old daughters to love sushi) and a die-hard Tarheel fan.
Benn has focused on understanding and helping others understand portfolio risk, portfolio management and investment decision process "best practices" for the last 20 years. Most recently, Benn founded Axtell Consulting, a risk and portfolio management consultancy for alternative investment advisors and managers before merging Axtell with Alpha Theory. Prior to that, Benn served as the Head of Risk Management for the CR Intrinsic Investors unit within S.A.C. Capital Advisors. From 1999-2006 he was the Chief Risk Officer for Weiss Multi-Strategy, overseeing 14 different strategies and multiple asset classes. Benn received his undergraduate degree in Interdisciplinary Studies from Trinity College and was a University Fellow in the Department of Cognitive Science & Linguistics at Brown University.
For Alpha Theory's portfolio consulting practice, Alpha Theory Advisors, Benn acts as the outsourced Chief Risk Officer for a select group of multi-billion dollar, multi-asset class alternative investment firms, providing risk analysis, portfolio construction, performance attribution, product selection and decision process advice. Daily interactions with the investment teams at these firms keep Benn on top of the latest thinking and emerging issues facing investment managers and he uses insights from those interactions to inform product innovation for Alpha Theory's market-leading decision process and optimization software.
Benn suffers from an unusual form of obsessive-compulsive disorder that compels him to run extremely long distances every single day - often to the point of injury - training for a mountainous, 100 mile run in the Rocky Mountain West every year with visions of a masters podium in his head (which leads to the occasional top 10 finish). When he's not working or running, he's researching military schools for his 5 & 8 year old boys.
Tom has had a broad and successful career in investing, trading, and managing risk across multiple strategies, sectors and asset classes. Tom joined Alpha Theory from FNY Capital, where he was a proprietary trader. Prior to FNY Capital, he was a partner at Level Global Investors, a multi-billion global hedge fund, where he was the Head of Risk Management and Co-Manager of the Best Ideas portfolio. Tom generated consistent attribution and led several key initiatives, including constructing a macro/quantitative research process, instituting firm wide risk metrics, and building out a designated credit investing effort. Prior to Level Global, he held senior trading positions at Goldman Sachs and Montgomery Securities/Bank of America.
Tom is a Board Member of the Children’s Village and the Saint Andrew’s Golf Club. He is an avid golfer and skier, and he lives in New York City with his wife and three young daughters.
For 20+ years, Dave has managed, designed, developed and tested in all phases of enterprise-level software development, utilizing a variety of leading edge, vendor and open source technologies to transform complex processes into powerful and intuitive software. Prior to co-founding Alpha Theory, Dave led a sweeping software overhaul effort for the United States Department of Defense and multiple enterprise engagements with Computer Sciences Corporation, after graduating from UNC-Chapel Hill with a BS in Environmental Science and Engineering.
As the primary technical architect of the Alpha Theory platform, Dave spends his time collaborating with Alpha Theory's team and customers on ways to improve investors' decision-making. He employs Agile methodologies to ensure that the Alpha Theory platform is responsive to current and future needs. He provides leadership in managing the software, hardware, and network infrastructure to ensure that Alpha Theory will continue to provide the industry's most innovative Portfolio Management platform for investors into the future.
Dave enjoys spending time with his family, travelling, listening to live music, camping, mountain biking, trail running, and generally finding ways to get outside and away from all technology once in a while.
Mike is a technology professional with 15 years' experience in all phases of the software development lifecycle, focusing on improving information accessibility and systems integration. Prior to helping launch Alpha Theory in 2007, Mike co-founded Wazo Consulting, where he designed and developed a large web-based literacy tracking application that has been used in hundreds of schools nationwide and is still in use today. Prior to that, Michael was a Project Manager for the Association of American Medical Colleges and was a consultant with Computer Sciences Corporation Consulting and Systems Integration Division, where he worked on large projects for telecommunication firms and large government agencies. Mike is a graduate of UNC-Chapel Hill with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Political Science and Communication Studies.
At Alpha Theory, Mike's primary focus is ensuring the security, reliability and availability of client data and managing an ever-growing supply of third party data. When he's not worrying about client data, he steps into the client services team to help with client integration, support and building internal admin tools to help Alpha Theory analyze data to find new ways to drive value.
Mike is actively engaged in his local community as a member of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Board focused on leading teams to build and maintain walking and hiking trails. He is also an accomplished athlete having played basketball at UNC and is a 15-time Ironman triathlon finisher, a USA Triathlon All American, ultra runner and marathon swimmer.
Graham Stevens joined the Alpha Theory team after serving as the Vice President of Finance and Commodity Risk Management at ReCommunity, a recycling company he co-founded in early 2011. Graham helped to build the business into the country's largest pure play recycling company (1,500+ employees and more than $175 Million of Revenue). He served in a wide variety of executive roles at ReCommunity and has experience with business development, branding, operations, building out benefit infrastructure (401k, Insurances, etc.), developing IP, architecting long term strategy and managing a large derivative portfolio to stabilize commodity revenue.
Graham brings a wealth of experience in raising equity and sourcing debt to support rapid organic growth and acquisitions through his work at ReCommunity and in his previous roles in Finance at Casella Waste Systems (CWST). He helped to raise more than $220 Million from Private Equity companies to start and grow ReCommunity and has worked with a wide variety of banks to secure more than $500 Million of credit facilities including Term Loans, Revolving Credit, Bridge Loans, High Yield Notes and Unitranche Debt.
Graham is an innovator and holds two patents and several more which have been published but not issued. He loves to golf, hike and travel wherever mountains dominate the terrain. He loves to decompress by spending time with his family and reading biographies of the world's most interesting people. He has a BA from the College of Wooster and an MBA from Emory University.
Alex has led software engineering teams for the past 18 years, designing processes and software architectures that enable easy-to-use, scalable and high-performance products. Most recently, Alex was the Vice President at hedge fund firm, Millennium Partners, where he architected and implemented a real-time "golden tick" market data system and expanded the reference data systems for the Fixed Income group. Previously, Alex was Chief Architect at Weiss Multi-Strategy, managing the design and implementation of systems spanning real-time P&L, OMS, trade accounting, portfolio and risk modeling and algorithmic trading engines. Before that, Alex co-founded and led Opus360, a web based enterprise software company which went public on the NASDAQ in 2000.
Today, Alex spends his time thinking about high volume, low latency processing for real time and historical events, ensuring historical data quality and ease of reporting, and improving the Alpha Theory user interface, always striving to make it easier to use and better align with their workflows.
In his off hours, Alex enjoys reading Nanny Piggins and going to the playground with his children as well as watching Game of Thrones.
Kristine Muccigrosso comes to Alpha Theory with a background in direct sales, account management, sales training and operational positions for software and services firms, such as FactSet, S&P Capital IQ, FirstRain & Guidepoint Global. As the Vice President, Client & Sales Operations for Alpha Theory she develops and executes strategies to make our Client Service & Sales Team more efficient and successful in achieving their service and sales goals. Kristine is passionate about process improvement and developing their staff effectively and professionally. Kristine graduated with a BA from Loyola University in Maryland and has a MBA in Strategic Management from Pace University.
In her spare time, you can find her on the sidelines of a soccer field or in the bleachers at a little league baseball game cheering on one of her three sport-fanatic sons. Kristine enjoys skiing, traveling, cooking and entertaining friends and family.
Matt has 20 years of industry experience at large organizations engineering solutions for large scale projects and training/speaking on the topic of security and infrastructure implementation. Prior to joining Alpha Theory in 2007 as a partner and one of the Company's first employees, Matt was with IBM where he was a Senior Technical Support Engineer in the Research Triangle Park System X BackOffice. Previously, Matt held the position of Senior Support Analyst at AIG where he was responsible for rolling out the encryption system for all corporate laptops. At Honda Aircraft he led the RSA SecurID and DLP implementations, as well as leading the Windows/VMWare infrastructure team.
Matt has been deeply passionate about technology and computer security since the age of ten when he found the local university's dial-in bank, gained access, and started exploring the campus network and eventually this new thing called the Internet. This ignited a passion for networking and ingrained in him early on that security shouldn't be an afterthought. At Alpha Theory, Matt is at the center of ensuring that we place the security of our application and infrastructure at the forefront of all of our decisions, while also maintaining the agility and ability to innovate that helps define the company Alpha Theory as the market leader for Portfolio Management.
Matt spends his free time (trying) to stay in shape via Crossfit, enjoys riding his sportbike, reading and watching science fiction, is extremely passionate about emerging hybrid cloud technologies, and has been involved with Nexus Technologies for the past 10 years - a technology non-profit that helps other non-profits utilize technology more efficiently.
Jason has spent the last 15 years focused on developing high-value relationships to grow businesses. Most recently, Jason was a Business Development & Key Accounts Manager for PHOTON Consulting, the management consulting and primary research unit within the largest professional services firm focused on the global solar power sector, where he managed C-level and Vice President-level relationships for the largest value chain participants and buy-side institutions. From 2000-2008, Jason was a capital strategies and investor relations consultant to private venture-stage companies and small public issuers, initially with Yorkville Capital Partners and later through Presage Partners, the firm he founded. He started on the sell-side as a registered rep with Ladenburg Thalman & Co and was one of the youngest ever to receive his Series 7, 63 and 3 licenses. Jason graduated from Boston University and completed the Program for Leadership Development at Harvard Business School.
Jason spends every day thinking about and executing on how to deepen existing client and partner relationships and develop new ones. He also drives the company's marketing efforts and is instrumental in ongoing strategy development efforts.
Jason loves to golf, sail, reading, food and wine and has an unhealthy relationship with Seinfeld reruns. He tries to cram as many of those things into weekends as possible when he's not completely overwhelmed by 'the joys of home ownership'.
Ric has over 30 years' of hands-on expertise in User Experience (UX) design and leadership, across a wide variety of domains. Prior to joining us, Ric served as the Director of User Experience for Cablevision where he led the design of the company's customer facing web properties, including optimum.net.
Prior to Cablevision, Ric served as the global head of Thomson Reuters' Visual UX Standards for the company's high tier financial applications. In 2004 Ric was one of the founding members of the Reuters User Experience Group – a recognized "Center of Excellence", dedicated to the evangelization of User Experience best practices and global design standards throughout the organization.
Prior to Reuters, Ric led the design team at Muze Inc., creating immersive touch screen kiosk applications that assisted customers in the discovery of music, video and book content. Ric spent the first 12 years of his career as a software developer and has never lost his interest in coding.
In his down time, Ric has many creative pursuits. His passion is playing fingerstyle guitar and banjo. He is also an avid woodworker who has built a line of acoustic guitars and from time to time restores antique stringed instruments. Ric enjoys creating hyper-realistic portraits and other fine art, especially using an iPad. But most of all, he loves spending quiet evenings with his wife Deb and their two basset hounds Irene and Kyra.
Dan Zalika comes to Alpha Theory with 20 years of financial industry experience and 13 years in software development, including roles at Investor Analytics (currently StatPro), BNYMellon and Merrill Lynch. He has led client onboarding and service delivery teams for risk transparency and portfolio aggregation while owning the implementation and management of security master and market data systems including Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, Markit and SIX Telekurs. As Director of Client Integration, Dan ensures a comprehensive translation of each client's portfolio data and workflow requirements into their client environments. Dan is also driving job/file management system improvements and is a main contributor to Alpha Theory's security master projects. Dan graduated with a BA from Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Away from work, Dan enjoys family time and excursions of any kind, from day trips and nature walks to go-karting and theme parks.
Dr. Laffer is the Founder of Laffer Associates, an economic research and consulting firm. Dr. Laffer is considered the father of supply-side economics and is best known for the "Laffer Curve" which was made famous while he was a member of President Reagan's Economic Policy Advisory Board for both of his terms (1981-1989). He also advised Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on fiscal policy in the United Kingdom during the 1980s. His economic acumen and influence triggered a world-wide tax-cutting movement in the 1980s. During the years 1972 to 1977, Dr. Laffer was a consultant to Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and Secretary of the Treasury George Shultz. Dr. Laffer was a professor of economics at Pepperdine, University of Southern California and University of Chicago where he worked directly with fellow economics professors and Nobel Laureates Milton Friedman, Ronald Coase, George Stigler, Gary Becker, James Heckman, Robert Fogel and Robert Mundell. Dr. Laffer received a B.A. in Economics from Yale University, and an MBA and a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University.
Mr. Blount is currently the founder and CEO of DISCERN Analytics and currently serves on boards and committees for the National Academy of Science Committee on Forecasting Future Disruptive Technology in addition to others. From 1986 to 2007, Mr. Blount was an Institutional Investor All-American and Wall Street Journal All-Star Analyst covering internet, wireless, PCs, servers, storage, hard drives, telecommunications, IT distribution and environmental services companies for such leading Wall Street firms as Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse First Boston, Donaldson Lufkin & Jenrette, and CIBC Oppenheimer.
Mr. Frankel is currently the Managing Partner of the Slingstone Group, a management consultancy. Most recently he was President of EDGAR Online, originally joining the firm as its Chief Marketing Officer where he developed and implemented sales, marketing and product management strategies in order to refocus and reposition the then publicly listed and Bain Capital backed company for growth and eventual sale to R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company (NASDAQ: RRD) in 2012. Prior to that he was a member of executive team behind FirstRain, a VC backed search technology firm, Vice President of Sales at BNY Jaywalk, a division of the Bank of New York and, earlier in his career, held several roles of steadily increasing seniority, culminating as the Vice President of Content & Partnerships at FactSet Research Systems Inc. (NYSE: FDS). Mr. Frankel is a graduate of the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
Mr. Carmichael runs Carmichael Inc., a private equity firm which has invested in many early stage companies, including a seed investment in Motricity, which was backed by a large investment from Carl Icahn. Mr. Carmichael takes an active role in all of his firm's investments and draws upon considerable knowledge garnered through existing investments, extensive contacts, and founding and selling two businesses prior to starting his private equity firm. Mr. Carmichael started his career at First American Bank and is a graduate of Vanderbilt University.
