At Forum Financial Management, we help investors build, manage and preserve their wealth. It starts with a dedicated team of partners and advisors with decades of experience across portfolio management, retirement planning, estate planning, insurance analysis and income tax planning. With the foundation of this technical knowledge, we can spend more time on what we truly enjoy —getting to know our clients and their families. By understanding the hopes and dreams that reside at the center of someone’s financial life, we are able to design an investment plan that is built to achieve a client’s short- and long-term goals. That’s what we consider to be the real value of an advisor. Forum Financial Management, LP is a Registered Investment Advisor. The home office of Forum Financial Management is located at 1900 S. Highland Ave., Suite 100, Lombard, IL 60148 (www.forumfin.com, 630.873.8520). What I post on here is my opinion, not the opinion of Forum.

In this role, I help recruit DFA-aligned financial advisors to Forum Financial, either as an Investment Advisor Representative operating under the Forum brand or as a stand-alone RIA leveraging Forum’s platform and TAMP services.

I lead all strategy, product and sales efforts in the wealth management solutions market. Our cutting-edge machine learning technology creates projections of a client’s lifetime healthcare spending, personalized to their health and location. We offer both API and hosted solutions.The issue of funding healthcare expenses in retirement is a ticking time bomb for investors, as many have inadequate savings to fund this liability. Financial advisors need to build stronger relationships with their clients by embracing conversations such as financial planning, which needs to become more holistic and include topics like funding lifetime health care expenses. A financial plan that doesn’t accurately account for healthcare expenses simply doesn’t have a good chance of success. We enable advisors to help their clients save for retirement healthcare and long term care expenses, as well as make optimal Medicare elections.

Conduct monthly office hours with founders of early-stage start-up firms, advising them on business strategy and execution.

* Co-founded a Waldorf grade school, which opened in 2009. Waldorf schools engage the whole child—hands, heart, and head, and teach children a passion for learning and creative thinking. * School has grown phenomenally and currently serves 100 students.* Served on board from May 2008 - August 2010 and was active in strategy, finance and fundraising committees. * Began second term in September 2013 and chair the finance committee, where I have responsibility for the school budget. Developed long-term financial planning model. Won auction to buy former CPS school and arranged project financing.

HedgeACT is a sophisticated technology platform for hedge fund investing. HedgeACT sources boutique, alpha-generating alternative managers that financial advisors can blend into their model portfolios to improve the risk-reward dynamics of their models. As a business advisor, I helped the firm refine its value proposition and go-to-market strategy in the broker-dealer and RIA channels.

* Albridge is Pershing's premium technology affiliate, offering enterprise data management, wealth reporting, compliance technology, workflow solutions and business intelligence. * Member of executive committees at Pershing affiliates Albridge and Pershing Managed Investments. * Started a strategy and execution office. Managed strategic planning for the business, while working to drive execution of the strategy. My strategic philosophy seeks to develop a proprietary understanding of target customers and align product roadmaps and positioning with demand. * Developed strategy and value proposition for business focused on Data Excellence, Elegant Technology and Consultative Solutions that brought renewed clarity and focus to organization. Broadened understanding of where we compete, from performance reporting to Enterprise Data Management and Wealth Reporting. * Developed value proposition for associates that is improving associate engagement and retention. * Developed growth strategy that relies on new product development, new market entry, and an adoption program. * Developed business intelligence strategy that was a North American finalist in BNY Mellon’s innovation competition. * Business owner for marketing initiatives. Primary author and editor of marketing content because I combine excellent writing skills with subject matter expertise. * Frequent speaker at industry conferences.

* Recruited by the CEO to lead turn-around of Chicago swim-for-cancer event that raises money for early-stage cancer research at Rush University Cancer Center. The event had entered its 18th year in 2011, but was experiencing flat fundraising and participation, and a low 60% payout rate to the beneficiary. * Event raised more than $1 million in the three years under my leadership. Grew fundraising 89% in year one and an additional 33% in year two, by exhibiting strong leadership and focusing promotion within the swimming community. Launched a new corporate sponsorship program, and deployed tactical business intelligence to personalize fundraising coaching to participants, which helped increase average fundraising per swimmer by 54%.* Significantly reduced expenses and increased payout rate to beneficiary to 82% over my last 2 years (80% is the gold standard for non-profits). * Launched Swim Across Lake Michigan event in which 21 swimmers (including me) swam 43 miles in a relay format over 23 hours, raising $110,000. Swimmers thanked me for delivering a significant life experience.* Volunteered approximately 400-500 hours annually.* Personally raised $48,000 from my five swims.* From 2015 to present I've remained active in the Chicago event committee.

* Served two three-year terms for this non-profit organization that has been working for 45+ years to conserve and restore the world's largest freshwater resource through policy, education and local efforts.

* iNautix was the premium technology solutions division of Pershing that focused on driving operational efficiency at Pershing clients. It was merged into Albridge in 2011. We offered operational consulting and custom technology development, IT staff augmentation, and a range of SAAS solutions, including compliance monitoring, document management and workflow, data warehouse and business intelligence, compensation management, and data aggregation / performance reporting.* Responsible for sales in western regions. Built pipeline of more than 100 deals valued at more than $14 million. In 2010, closed nearly 20 deals worth more than $1.2 million.

* Recruited by a former client to become the 4th employee of a start-up with a technology that applies tamper seals to electronic records, enabling instant proof of authenticity. The business was creating a new market for data authenticity solutions. * Responsible growing the business in the financial services vertical. Leveraged my industry contacts to build a strong sales pipeline of 200+ financial institutions and channel partners. Data authenticity was an 1-2 year educational sale that required raising awareness of the issues and framing appropriate use cases and solutions. * Member of executive team, involved in angel and venture capital fundraising, marketing and product development.

* Created a new role at Morningstar in which I acted as an entrepreneur in residence, incubating new solutions for financial advisors that could drive business unit growth. * Led product development of Morningstar’s retirement income solutions for advisors, acting as subject matter expert and senior sales executive. Met with 100+ institutions to discuss retirement income initiatives, synthesize market demand, and validate our product development hypotheses. Led the team that launched Retirement Income Strategist, the industry's first income-focused planning tool. Hands-on in all aspects of user experience design, methodology, and requirements definition. * Part of our retirement income strategy was focused on educating investors about the unique risks they face in retirement. Authored educational content on retirement risks designed to drive clients nearing retirement to seek advice. The associated PowerPoint® presentation received an Excellence In Communications Award in 2007 from InvestmentNews and the Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA). * Acting as Morningstar's subject matter expert on retirement income, I became a frequent speaker at retirement industry conferences, and was an active leader in early years of the Retirement Income Industry Association. * Concerned that the regulatory reaction to mutual fund share class suitability would lead to a one-size-fits-all approach, I co-authored a white paper on mutual fund share class suitability that concluded that share class limits may hurt investors, and advisors should "do the math" on expenses when selecting the best share class. Led product development of a suite of mutual fund suitability tools for advisors, including share class suitability illustrations.* Made acquisition targeting recommendations and conducted due diligence into several acquisition candidates.

* Sold Advisor Workstation and Principia software to financial institutions that helped financial advisors improve sales, research, client management, and portfolio analysis.* Assigned virgin territory in 2002 which had never been prospected, and closed $1 million in business. Top salesperson in 2003 in the advisor business unit, closing $9.5 million, a sales record that represented 47% of the production of an 8 member sales team. * Won CEO's entrepreneurial award for suggesting several new business ideas.

* Co-founded a boutique investment bank that helped early-stage companies secure venture capital. Business model began with consulting, so that we could identify and build fundable companies that we could then bring to investors.* Wrote business plans for venture investors and advised on financing strategy and investor targeting. Advised on business strategy, product development, marketing, sales, execution focus, operations, organization structure, and recruitment.

* Recruited by the CEO to become the 5th employee of a start-up that sold web-based financial education and planning software to banks and insurance companies seeking to improve cross-sell, loyalty and customer acquisition costs. * Managed sales and marketing. Signed two Fortune 100 firms to LOIs worth $400k for our beta product. Built a strong sales pipeline, developed sales processes, marketing collateral, and pricing. * Developed financial model for the business plan. Advised the product and content development teams, ensuring quality and alignment with customer needs.

* The Cambridge Group is a high-end demand strategy consultancy that helps clients develop business strategies based on a deep understanding of target customer needs. * For P&C insurance company, helped develop the growth strategy to enter the credit card, auto finance, mortgage, and home equity industries. Conducted industry situation assessments to brief the client on industry dynamics and attractiveness. Helped develop a comprehensive mail panel survey of consumers, and analyzed segment-specific attitudes, decision drivers, behaviors, and brand imagery. Developed segment economic models and made targeting recommendations. Designed differentiated value propositions for new product concepts through 40 iterative focus groups with targeted consumers. * For a patient education software start-up, developed the implementation processes and organization structure required to support growth. * For a global telecom, analyzed the decline in the core long distance business by studying trends and needs of each customer segment. * For investment bank, managed a market-sizing analysis for an ECN trading system. * Managed firm-wide recruiting, achieving 100% yield on offered candidates.

Launched franchised Benny’s Bagels restaurant in Dallas while attending business school in Chicago. Raised $210,000 in capital. Despite sales in the top 20% of the chain, hyper-competition and unethical operating partners limited profits. Advocated for shareholders by selling the store to pay off senior debt and return 15% of capital to shareholders.

* Systems developer in the petroleum practice, working to implement upstream oil and gas accounting system, PREMAS. 

* Change management consultant and team leader on reengineering projects that designed new processes, organizational structures, and change implementation plans for petroleum clients. Synthesized firm-wide petroleum best practices.* Designed comprehensive performance metrics for CIO for managing PC provisioning and inbound call centers, which drove significant operational improvements.

* Developed automated testing scripts for unit, system and regression testing. * Graduated top of my class from EDS' renowned systems development training program, and acted as assistant instructor.* Highly regarded software developer in EDS' Dealer Systems group, specializing in COBOL and DB2. Given difficult assignment to develop an ad hoc query system that required me to design a completely new database structure.