Greg Ness Email & Phone Number

Naperville, Illinois, Us

In alignment with the firm’s strategic sales goals, I work with content stakeholders—sales specialists, product managers, and portfolio managers—to create, write, and manage marketing communications, including sales ideas, thought leadership articles, portfolio manager update blogs, and fund commentaries. In terms of process, my role entails the following:■ Gathering, researching, and writing or editing content sourced from stakeholder interviews, group discussions, and outlines/early-stage drafts.■ Coordinating with design, web, and social media colleagues to lay out and refine content.■ Reviewing content with the compliance team and incorporating disclosures in preparation for FINRA review.■ Coordinating content posting online or releasing final PDFs to the sales site.■ Referencing digital metrics and feedback from sales to surmise how well the content worked online and in the field with clients.■ Adhering to a tight editorial calendar to ensure a steady flow of new content within the marketing pipeline.My role also includes the following major responsibilities:■ Collaborating quarterly with the product specialists to write and edit dozens of commentaries for our mutual fund products and institutional strategies, which are used extensively for sales prospecting. Also entails close communication with the marketing production team to make certain the latest data and disclosures are incorporated.■ Producing annual report commentaries for all our open-end and closed-end fund shareholders.

Naperville, Illinois, Us

Produced communications that promoted the firm’s breadth of financial products, including mutual funds, closed-end funds, institutional strategies, and offshore funds. Communicated benefits of Calamos portfolios ranging from basic long equities to complex alternative offerings. During quarter-end updates, was solely responsible for writing, editing, data checking and producing dozens of product fact cards, investment team commentaries and institutional client reports.■ Worked with an outside vendor as well as multiple contacts within Calamos to develop a robo-writer that can generate account-specific performance, attribution and positioning commentary for our funds and dozens of institutional accounts. This initiative shaved days off our account reporting process and enabled us to deliver a customized summary to each client.■ When the firm migrated to a new data mart in 2017, collaborated with the graphic designers, web team and IT developers to ensure the smooth flow of data from the mart to fund fact card templates and website pages. By improving data delivery and automation of the fact card process, we pared back production by three days.■ Maintained a strong rapport with my marketing teammates, and also worked closely with product specialists, compliance, accounting and sales to produce well-honed, fully compliant, and client-centric product content.

Denver, Colorado, Us

Responsible for managing complex projects as a consultant and associate for the specialized needs of two subadvisor boutique firms: Perkins Investments (Value) and INTECH (Quantitative).■ Project managed and produced a 128-page quarterly fund guide which included profiles on all Janus/Perkins/INTECH mutual funds and thousands of data points. Worked closely with product managers, compliance and vendors to produce and release the guide to print within a tight two-week window each quarter.■ Automated the fund guide and fact sheets. Freed up dozens of hours each quarter, enabling our team to focus on other essential tasks and strategic initiatives.■ Collaborated with product manager to develop a sales idea that illustrated Perkins Global Value Fund’s defensive approach to global investing; widely used by the 50+ sales force.■ Worked with product managers and portfolio management to develop due diligence meeting presentations for Perkins and INTECH products; received high audience ratings on meeting surveys.■ Skilled at prioritizing and executing multiple jobs. At quarter-end, received numerous ad hoc requests from sales and investment teams for presentations; able to meet ambitious deadlines.

Responsible for providing copywriting and strategy development services to clients ranging from a regional graphic design agency to a global financial services firm, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, to a mutual fund company Janus Capital Group. ■ Key contributor to Bank of America Merrill Lynch’s Retirement Plan Relationship Excellence Program (PREP) service model. Merrill Lynch financial advisors used PREP as a means to introduce across-the-board best practices to address retirement plan sponsor clients’ priorities.■ Saved clients thousands of dollars in reprint costs by proofreading content before release caught everything from typos to serious data accuracy and consistency issues.■ Improved the clarity of client message, sped up throughput, and defined solutions relevant to customers.

Boston, Ma, Us

Naperville, Illinois, Us

Managed marketing campaign project teams for new product roll-outs. Wrote and edited fund shareholder reports’, executive letters, and investment team commentaries. Oversaw production of quarterly marketing materials, including fact sheets, sales presentations, sales ideas and website profiles for two dozen fund products. Collaborated with operations and compliance to release new content rapidly and accurately.■ Produced a suite of online and print marketing materials for a closed-end fund public offering that raised in excess of $1B in assets.■ Directed IT, operations and graphic artists in the redesign and automation of mutual fund fact sheets. New automation resulted in approximately $5,000 savings in production time quarterly.■ Developed a special report for financial advisors that led to the retention of assets in the firm’s flagship mutual fund product during the 2008 financial crisis.

Oversaw the deployment of marketing communications for equity products. Collaborated with product managers to produce mutual fund marketing content that enabled institutional, advisor and shareholder clients to evaluate performance, benefits and competitive advantages.■ Generated cost savings to the company through effective design of product print collateral.■ Worked with the chief investment strategist to produce an expanded commentary on the Enron scandal.■ Produced fund-of-funds product marketing materials that contributed to increased investor business.

Edited and produced Capital Ideas 50-page product reference guide for 13,000 financial advisors. Worked closely with product managers to develop content that aligned the firm’s sales strategies with the immediate needs of financial advisors. Managed a complex editorial calendar that entailed hitting a rapid succession of deadlines each month. Sales team members relied on this publication as their solutions bible when dealing with clients.

As Marketing Writer, wrote copy for direct-mail advertising, industry conference collateral, web articles and product literature. Worked closely with product managers to define the end-user benefits of PLATINUM’s highly technical software products. As Technical Writer, developed documentation and on-line help for Platinum Database Analyzer software, a $24M revenue generator in 1998.

St. Louis, Mo, Us

M.A., Film And Video

B.A., English