I am a former corporate executive and an academic with nearly 30 years of experience in financial services. I currently am an Executive In Residence in the Engineering Graduate and Professional Programs at Duke University and teach courses in technology, banking and capital markets. Starting as an equities and derivatives trader in 1985 I embraced technology in the financial markets early in my career, adopting electronic and later algorithmic solutions. My career advanced becoming the co-head of a large institutional trading firm and climbing to the positions of Co-President and Co-Chief Operating Officer when the firm was acquired by Reuters PLC. During the financial crisis I served as a Director in the Banking and Capital Markets practice at Price Waterhouse Coopers, working with buy and sell side clients to integrate mergers, foreign and domestic regulatory matters, and assisting outside counsel with litigation support. I later held the role of Chief Risk Officer and Chief Credit Officer at the third largest brokerage firm in the US and later as the head of technology risk and the head of predictive analytics. My professional career spans critical roles at major financial institutions, developing expertise in governance, regulatory compliance, and financial innovation. I did my undergraduate studies at the University of South Carolina, earned a Master of Science in Finance at Washington University in Saint Louis, and received my Doctor of Business Administration-Finance at Washington University’s Olin School of Business.

My experience with business and economic due diligence is extensive. Throughout my career in financial services, I have often been engaged with public offering selling groups. As a senior executive at Wells Fargo Advisors, I was a member of due diligence teams tasked with the review of possible corporate acquisition targets. As Chief Risk Officer, my responsibilities included evaluating offerings of equities, fixed income, structured products and funds to assess their suitability for the firm’s client base. This process often involved direct engagement with investment bankers like those involved in the current litigation to gain deeper insight into the various aspects of each offering, the questioning and challenging of assumptions (quantitative and qualitative), and providing input to illustrate or change the performance of offerings. Additionally, in this role I was also often engaged in reviews of the due diligence processes related to matters as broad as those mentioned previously to matters involving compensation schemes and the analysis of held assets, e.g. Auction Rate Securities. This position was charged with the development and management of risk measures for regulatory capital requirements, for example the DVo1 of proprietary portfolios for client facilitation that held an average of 5,000 publicly traded securities that turned over on average 800 positions weekly. In addition, regular scenario analysis was conducted to analyze the effect of macro-economic shocks on different portfolios and leverage effects. On many of these committees, e.g. Product, Compensation, Risk, etc. I held a veto vote which could not be overridden, this includes new offerings that I vetoed and were subsequently not offered to the firm’s clients. In other instances, I provided methodological and analytical changes to the due diligence approach that would need to be incorporated into the process before the offerings were made available to the firm’s clients.

I transitioned from corporate executive leadership roles into fulltime academia beginning in July of 2019. I developed and currently serve as the Lafitte Director of the Master of Engineering in Financial Technology at Duke University and am the Irene and Frank Salerno Visiting Professor of Financial Economics where I lead curriculum development and industry partnerships, and lecture on the intersection of finance and technology. The curriculum that I have designed and teach includes multiple graduate level courses focused primarily on the analysis of publicly traded investments including Quantitative Investment Analysis (FINTECH 590) and Asset Pricing and Risk Management (FINTECH 522) as well as Machine Learning for FinTech (FINTECH 540) and (Blockchain Technologies (FINTECH 564).

Experiences:

• Retained as an expert witness in Stichting Petrobras Compensation Foundation v. Petroleo Brasileiro S.A., et al. This case stems from a class action security fraud lawsuit based in the US against a major Brazilian state-run energy company. The case was ultimately settled, however, there remained disputes involving securities not covered by the settlement as they were purchased outside the US on the Brazilian Stock Exchange.
• Managed an engagement (on behalf of external counsel) in response to regulatory inquiries involving the analysis of historic trade data, pertaining to the market making activities of a major U.S. broker dealer. Risk analysis involved a complete review of multiple years of trade data, in order to establish the context in which client and proprietary executions took place. The nature of this type of engagement required daily status updates with the client and outside counsel. The creation of proprietary algorithms was coordinated and directed through the firm’s forensic group in order to filter and extract specific execution data from the multiple years of trade data analyzed.
•  Managed an engagement (on behalf of external counsel) in response to inaccurate regulatory filings, related to Reg. SHO and SH, of a large US based alternative investment firm. The firm was engaged to assess the current environment in order to understand the issues that caused the inaccurate filings and to present options to the firm to address future regulatory filing accuracy.
•  Formulated the risk matrix for a global investment bank to aid in the investigation of rogue trading activity requested by regulators for the Firm special committee. Created the tests to be used in the forensic review of trade data for all asset classes, which encompassed over twenty different proprietary and customer trading desks. Interpreted the results of the tests designed in order to identify and address all issues found.
• Assisted in-house counsel at a top five global banking firm with the identification of regional disclosure of interest reporting issues in response to regulatory inquiries. Required the identification of risks specific to instruments traded in multiple global regions. Situations identified were reviewed with head of regional litigation to determine possible causes and mitigating factors.
• Led an engagement (on behalf of external counsel) related to the activity of an in-house investment group at a global broker dealer in response to regulatory inquiries. This investigation required the team to coordinate daily activities with the outside counsel and be dynamic enough to incorporate new requests and findings into the engagement. In addition to domestic operations this engagement involved working with, and analyzing information from, international trading operations and exchanges.

TESTIMONY AS AN EXPERT WITNESS AT TRIAL OR DEPOSITION

Ianthus Cap. Holdings, Inc. v. Gary W. Roberts Irrevocable Tr. Agreement I, 2019 WL 6770335 (Fla. 4th Dist. Ct. App. Dec. 12, 2019).

Education: 

• Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri
  Doctor of Business Administration-Finance
  Dissertation:” A Traders Guide to the Predictive Universe- A Model for Predicting Oil Price Targets and Trading on Them”
• Washington University in Saint Louis, Saint Louis, Missouri
  Master of Science in Finance
• University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina
  Bachelor of Arts

Credentials:

LICENSES:
Successfully passed -FINRA Series 4,7,9,10, 24, and 63

PATENTS:

• US Patent 10572332-A1 – Failure Prediction System (Technology Systems)
• US Patent 20210150431-A1 – Computer Asset Management
• US Patent 10949863-B1 -System and method for account abuse risk analysis
• US Patent 20250029098-A1- Blockchain facilitation of asset transfers between computing systems
• US Patent 20220114602-A1- Dynamic Customization of a Customer Experience Based on Cognitive Computing