VERT ASSET MANAGEMENT - Key Persons
Job Titles:
- Advisory Board
- Gallagher Professor of Finance, Associate
Brad Barber is the Gallagher Professor of Finance, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs, and Director of the Center for Investor Welfare and Corporate Responsibility at the Graduate School of Management, UC Davis.
Professor Barber was the 2016 Vice President-Program for the Financial Management Association. He is Principal Investigator for the CalPERS Sustainable Research Initiative (SIRI) and founder of the annual Napa Conference on Financial Markets Research. He served as the finance department editor for Management Science from 2009-2012.
Professor Barber has been recognized as one of the fifty most-cited financial economists in the world (ranking 38th in on recent citation survey). See Professor Barber's Google Scholar page for links to his research.
Professor Barber's current research focuses on asset pricing, behavioral finance, and gender. He has written numerous scholarly articles, which have appeared in top academic publications including the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Political Economy, Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Sociological Review, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, and the Financial Analyst Journal. His research has been covered extensively in the financial press, including Business Week, Time, The Wall Street Journal, ABC News, NBC Nightly News, CNN, CNNfn, and CNBC.
Professor Barber received his Ph.D. in finance from the University of Chicago in 1991. He also received an MBA from the University of Chicago and a B.S. in Economics from the University of Illinois. At UC Davis, he teaches introductory finance to MBA students.
Dan Wheeler passed away on Feb 19 th, 2023 a couple weeks shy of his 78 th birthday. His passing is a huge loss for the world. Dan had a profound effect on people and on the financial services industry as a whole. He will not be forgotten.
I first met Dan in 1993 when he came to ski in Crested Butte, Colorado. He was a Marine Corp Vietnam veteran with ramrod posture and a firm handshake. I was a ski/climbing bum with long hair. We hit it off immediately. Dan was easily the most passionate guy I'd ever met and he also seemed to be having more fun than anyone else. Dan told me he was pushing at the forefront of a "twin revolution" in the financial advice industry. He was educating advisors to switch from "active" to "passive" management, and to abandon commissions in favor of fees. I didn't know much about finance at the time, but I was captivated by Dan's vision and passion and so when he offered me a job I leapt at the chance. I was fortunate to have Dan as a close friend and mentor for the past 30 years.
Dan was the first person we asked to join our Advisory Board. We launched Vert to help financial advisors do more sustainable investing - and nobody knew advisors better than Dan.
Dan was acutely aware of advisor challenges because he was one himself. In fact, he was a commissioned broker in the 1980s before "leaving the dark side" as he called it, to start out on his own as a fee-only advisor. When he saw how much better it was, for both the client and the advisor, he set out to convert thousands over to the new model. Dan had a vision of financial advice as a profession not an industry. He knew what true advice could and should look like, and how different it was from the sales business it was back then.
He had an optimism that was palpable, unflagging, and contagious. The fact that 98% of advisors relied on commissions did not stop him. He wasn't put off that advisors thought clients wanted expensive actively managed funds. It didn't faze him that the industry would fight back with lies about performance. Getting advisors to completely change their revenue model and buy "no-load" passive funds for clients wasn't impossible - it was the right thing to do. He truly believed the truth would win in the end, and he made you believe it too.
Dan changed the definition of what was possible. Having seen, firsthand, the revolution in financial advice that he spawned, I knew another revolution - this time toward sustainability - was possible. Without having lived it with Dan, I never would have considered starting Vert.
Vert benefited from Dan's character. He never wavered on honesty and integrity. His mantras became ours. Always tell the truth. Always do what you said you would. And always put the client first.
Vert benefited from Dan's perspective as an advisor. He was skeptical of the claims made by advocates of sustainable investing. He was our truth serum. He forced us to get better at accurately describing the trade-offs, the evidence, and what was known versus unknown.
Dan made friends with everyone, almost instantaneously. Once I asked him why he made such an effort to connect, even briefly, with everyone he encountered - the hotel staff, the security guard, the cashier, etc. He said, "everyone has an interesting story, and we can learn something from all of them."
Well, I don't know anyone with more interesting stories than Dan. And I've learned so, so much from them. Thank you for sharing Dan. Your stories and lessons live on in me, and in the thousands of people lucky enough to have met you.
Job Titles:
- Chief Compliance Officer for Key Bridge Compliance
Dennis Mason serves as a Chief Compliance Officer for Key Bridge Compliance. Dennis has worked in the financial services industry for over 25 years. Over the course of his career, Dennis served in roles relating to bank trust operations as well as financial reporting, treasury, tax and compliance for registered investment companies.
Prior to joining Key Bridge Compliance in April of 2021, Dennis served as Fund Compliance Officer at Apex Fund Services and Atlantic Fund Services where he worked to ensure the effective administration of fund service provider compliance programs and to build strong, personal relationships with clients. He also served as Chief Compliance Officer of several mutual fund series trusts including Forum Funds.
Dennis earned a B.A. in Mathematics from the University of Southern Maine. Dennis earned the Investment Adviser Certified Compliance Professional (IACCP ®)designation co-sponsored by the Investment Adviser Association and National Regulatory Services.
Job Titles:
- Director of Studies
- Investment Research
Franz is Director of Studies and a Reader (Associate Professor) in Housing and Real Estate Finance at the University of Cambridge and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. He is principal investigator on a number of international research projects and coordinates a team of doctoral and postdoctoral researchers.
I started working in the financial services industry in 2000 as a trainee financial advisor. Shortly thereafter, at the age of 20 I launched my own financial advisor business. In 2006 we became one of the first fee-only advisory firms in The Netherlands and an early adopter of holistic financial planning and evidence-based investing.
This early affinity with evidence-based investing led me to joining Dimensional Fund Advisors in 2012, where I worked closely with financial advisers, wealth management firms and family offices across the Northern European region for almost 10 years. In 2022 I left Dimensional to pursue my entrepreneurial and sustainability ambitions, both within and outside the financial services industry.
John Elkington is a writer and thinker, a serial-entrepreneur and an ‘advisor from the future'. He is Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Volans, a change agency, that aims to stretch leaders - towards "Breakthrough"; that is, to look beyond incremental change towards systemic challenges.
John is leading a 2-year program in partnership with the United Nations Global Compact (UNGC) focussing on the market opportunities around exponential sustainability, titled Project Breakthrough.
John is also Honorary Chairman of SustainAbility, and sits on an A-Z of some 30 boards and advisory boards. He has written 19 books, and his latest is co-authored with Jochen Zeitz, former CEO of PUMA and now co-chair, with Sir Richard Branson, of The B Team. The book, entitled "The Breakthrough Challenge: 10 Ways to Connect Today's Profits with Tomorrow's Bottom Line" comes full circle from John's 1997 "Cannibals with Forks", where he first introduced the Triple Bottom Line concept. John published The Stretch Agenda in 2015 - a dramatization spotlighting top team dynamics and conversations in the fictional boardroom of a major global company, and their exploration of the opportunity spaces in the decade running 2016-2025. Volans have labeled this period The Breakthrough Decade.
Job Titles:
- Advisory Board
- Member at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business
Judy McNary is a successful entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience launching companies in the software and financial services industries.
An avid scuba diver and skier, she has long been passionate about striving for balance between preserving the environment while supporting growth and prosperity for business. As Director of Corporate Responsibility at Mercer Advisors, she established the firm's award-winning program for sustainable growth and development based on the UN SDGs and led its effective ESG/Sustainable investing programs. Judy has published numerous articles on ESG reporting requirements, governance and risk, and how the effective integration of these issues across an organization can enhance company performance. Currently she is involved in research on companies leading their industries in transitioning to more sustainable business practices. She has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and has contributed to the WSJ, Kiplinger's, Money Magazine, and U.S. News & World Report.
Judy is an adjunct faculty member at the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business. She serves on numerous industry advisory boards, is a PADI scuba instructor, and is a member of the board of directors for the Coral Reef Alliance.
She received MBA and BA degrees in economics and geography from the University of Colorado/Boulder and an MS in Personal Financial Planning from the College of Financial Planning.
I am both an environmentalist and a capitalist. As a climber and a skier I am passionate about nature, enjoy spending time in it, and believe in defending it. As an investment professional, with 20 years of experience at Dimensional Fund Advisors, I became a staunch believer in the power of markets. Markets can be good at solving problems, provided they have the right information.
20 years ago, most investors lacked some basic information on investment advice. It was generally accepted that brokers sold investors expensive funds for high commissions. While at DFA, I worked at changing this. Our ‘twin revolution' advocated for lower cost funds, and commission free advice. At first, people thought we were crazy, but it was a better form of investment advice and the market eventually responded. Now investors in the US, UK, Australia, and across Europe can access lower cost funds, and not pay a commission.
Job Titles:
- Chief Sustainability Officer
- Co - Founder
I started in financial services at a boutique brokerage firm during the late 90s dotcom boom. I liked finance but wanted more academic grounding and I found this at institutional asset managers Dimensional Fund Advisors and GMO (Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo).
Thinking environmental issues would become pertinent for the next generation (but not knowing much about them) I studied human rights approaches to environmental protection earning two masters degrees in environmental law and policy. I worked with a handful of UK non-profit groups on environmental advocacy in finance including the WWF, Forum for the Future and UnLtd. Seeing a need for retail financial services to engage with environmental and social issues, I started a consulting firm educating financial advisors on sustainable and impact investments in the UK and US.