Broker Village Bios
Stuart J. Speckman,
CFA, CFP
Chairman
Stu is the "math guy"
of the group. He created the algorithms for our products, is a popular
public speaker, and the main writer of our promotional
pieces.
Stu has a broad finance background. He was an insurance agent,
sales assistant, mutual fund wholesaler, and director at several major
financial firms. Like Mike (below), he has a solid understanding of portfolio
theory and the financial sales process. But after too many long commutes to
lower Manhattan, he packed it in. At the height of the dot-com craze, he helped start
a dot-com: Broker Village. The next day, the Nasdaq hit an all-time high.
The "bubble" had burst. Most firms failed, but Broker Village survived.
We are one of the last dot-coms still standing.
From 1997 to 2000, Stu was Director of Fee-Based Programs at Oppenheimer Funds. From
1990 to 1997, he was at Prudential Securities. He rose to Director of Marketing, Wrap-Fee Programs, before becoming a top wrap-fee wholesaler.
He also worked at Shearson Lehman Brothers and Met Life, where he was a producing agent.
Stu received a B.A. in Chemistry from Cornell University and an MBA in Marketing from Syracuse University. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst
(CFA), Certified Financial Planner (CFP), and member of the NY Society of
Securities Analysts. He volunteers regularly in Temple and at public school,
and helps with Little League.
Tidbit:
Stu likes the outdoors, though he looks nothing like Grizzly
Adams. He lived for three days in an igloo, paddled his kayak
around the Statue of Liberty, and endured a 100-hour fast
(four days and four hours) while hiking 25 miles out of the
Rockies. This was all way before Man vs. Wild or Survivorman hit the airwaves.
Send Stu an Email
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Michael S. Rosen, CFA
Director of Strategic Development
Mike helped found Broker
Village in 2000. In the early days, he headed strategic
development and led many of our sales meetings. Today he helps
with high level strategy decisions, research, and securing
resources for us.
Mike may be well known to many advisors, particularly those who live in the New York tri-state area. From 1983 - 2000,
he was associated with The Rochester Funds, a hugely successful, multi-billion dollar investment management firm. Their specialty is investing in municipal bonds. He was a Managing Director and fixed income portfolio manager for almost that entire time. He was President of Rochester Fund
Distributors and then President of the Rochester Division of Oppenheimer Funds, as a result of their January 1996 acquisition by Oppenheimer.
Mike has a lot of credentials to his credit, including being named "Best Bond Fund Manager" by BusinessWeek in 1992. Further, from Lipper Analytical Services, he received a Performance Achievement Certificate for his #1 Rank for
the five Years ending in 1995 and five years ending in 1996.
He is now Chairman and Chief Investment Officer of
Context Capital Management, a San Diego-based hedge fund that
specializes in convertible arbitrage. He is a board member of a wireless technology
firm, the Jewish Federation of San Diego, and Black Cat Decisions.
Mike has a BA in economics, and an MBA in finance and marketing, from the University of Rochester. He is a Chartered Financial Analyst. He is a member of the CFA Institute and
the New York and San Diego Societies of Securities Analysts.
Tidbit: The
first names of everyone in Mike's family start with the letter
"m." There are four kids and two adults. For you
baseball fans, can you make the Vern Law connection?
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Shash
Patel
Principal and Chief Information Officer
Shash is the Chief
Information Officer of Broker Village. He does
hardware work, assesses our technology and information needs, and manages programmers as the
needs arise.
Shash has 16 years of experience in the technology arena. His particular
experience and expertise is as a CTO in the alternative assets area. He has the rare ability to understand business
requirements in the context of technological solutions.
In the end, technology is applied successfully to help firms achieve their goals...including
our goals!
Shash also is
the CEO of a boutique technology consulting firm. Previously, he was the
Chief Information Officer at a world-class hedge fund and venture
capital group. He oversaw network infrastructure, software
development, systems engineering, and information security. He also worked for a large
bank and for U.S. government defense agencies.
Mr.
Patel taught graduate courses in information security
at Fairfield University. He has a Master of Science degree in
software engineering from Fairfield University and a Bachelor of
Science in information systems from Central Connecticut State
University.
Tidbit:
We think Shash really is
James Bond. He's also our snappiest dresser. He cannot take one
step without some woman complimenting him on his appearance. Sean
Connery, beware!
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Douglas J. Weber
Director of Research and Client Services
Doug leads the research, communications, and sales efforts for our prospectus verification services.
That is the fastest growing part of our business. He covers fund firms and broker/dealers.
Doug is a twenty-year-veteran in advising
capital markets firms on their communications and marketing strategies, with a specialty in board and corporate liability issues. As Associate Publisher of Corporate
Leader and Dealmaker magazines, Doug founded the highly successful
Thought Leadership Forum. He also served as the publisher of Boardroom
Liabilities, Board Member Inc.'s annual review of listed company director
liability. Doug cut his teeth at the New York Times and then spent seven years at
The Economist Group.
Doug has a BA in English from Connecticut College. He and his
family live
in Westport, CT.
Tidbit:
Doug has a life-long interest in staying young
by listening to music that is popular with the college-age set. He is often one
of the oldest audience members at NYC's indie-music venues. He’s usually
accompanied by his elder daughter, who is frequently one of the youngest
audience members.
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Steve
Bowers
Senior
Programmer
Steve
is our senior programmer. He joined us in mid-2005. He does much of our math-related coding
and some design work. He works on new projects and is in charge
of maintaining and polishing our entire suite of decision-making
tools.
Steve also
is the president of Encore Web Works, Inc. Encore is an internet
development and consulting firm. Prior to founding Encore,
Steve was the IT Manager for Datacore Marketing, a successful,
fast growing firm. He supervised a team of 15 programmers
and database specialists.
Steve has thirteen years of IT industry experience. He’s worked with
internet technologies since the early days of the modern world
wide web. Since entering the tech arena, he's worked his way up
from the help desk, to programmer, to Senior Programmer, to
Manager, to Business Owner (where he started all over on the help
desk).
Tidbit:
When not working with technology, Steve plays bass guitar and
tours with regional recording artist Jodi Austin (who also happens
to be married to him). See www.JodiAustin.com.
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Steven S. Cohen,
CFP, CPA
Senior Advisor
Steve is an advisor to Broker
Village, focused on business development and marketing. He led our 529 efforts and
frequently effects introductions for us when we launch new products and enter new markets.
He is the CEO of Gold Coast Advisors, a NY-based independent
registered investment advisory firm focused on family wealth
management. He has twenty-plus years of experience building wealth management businesses.
As President and co-founder of eFrontiers, Steve built a
pioneering online wealth management platform for institutional and
high net worth investors. Prior to eFrontiers, he was an
executive with Morgan Stanley Institutional. He also was a member of the
management team at Prudential Investments and Lehman Brothers.
Steve has a BS from the University of
Buffalo and an MBA from New York University. His family lives on
Long Island.
Tidbit:
Steve is a very friendly and positive guy. Curiously, his favorite
word is "but" and his favorite phrase is "the only
problem is." Here's what he would say: "Yes, that super
model is interested in me...but I still wouldn't
date her. The only problem is that her IQ is only
140, not 150, which is not enough for Mensa."
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Mike
Mikytuck
Head of Investor Relations
Mike
has been with Broker Village since day one. He leads our overall
sales strategy and is the main contact on behalf of the Broker
Village investors. From assisting with sales calls to coordinating
the business of running an investor-owned firm, Mike has been very
capable at the helm.
Mike has
twenty years of senior Wall Street sales experience. He and Stu
have worked together since 1996. Mike's specialty is coordinating
the sales activities of institutional sales folks. His products
cover hedge funds, private equity, sub-advisory, managed accounts,
and mutual funds. Mike's deals tend to be very large.
Hence, his resume lists some very large firms where he was in a
senior sales capacity: Fiduciary Trust and Bear Stearns among
them.
Mike has a dual degree from
Rider University in finance and economics. He has an MBA from NYU
in finance and international business. Mike and his family live in
New Jersey.
Tidbit:
Can you say "Speed Racer"? Mike drives formula
cars in races across the country. His big hope is to win the
French Grand Prix. Keep your eyes peeled to the Speed channel on
cable.
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Christopher Prajzner
Software Developer
Chris is the architect of the original Broker Village HTML
calculators. He was a full-timer during our first few years. Now
he is a consultant to us, assisting our current programmers with
understanding the complexities of our code.
Chris's interest in software development began when he worked as a software salesperson. After selling software and software related services for four years, he switched gears and began anew as a technical
instructor. He taught everything from Windows to Visual Basic, and
everyone from administrators to CEOs. Technical training led to
a decision to turn toward full-time software development. Working
for himself and for firms both large and small, Chris has developed a wide range of software programs.
Chris received a BA in marketing from the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. He has several
certifications from Microsoft and has taught at the
University of California, San Diego Extension program.
Chris resides with his wife
and two children in Carlsbad, CA.
Tidbit:
By watching enough of the Golf Channel, he
hopes to one day qualify for the Senior Tour. If you've ever seen
him play, you'll know why Tiger Woods has nothing to fear.
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Brant
Johnson
Graphic Designer
Brant has helped
Broker Village since 2001. He designed and/or updated our logos,
PowerPoint presentations, marketing folders, business cards, and promotional
pieces. Only the
calculators escaped his touch.
Brant
is very accomplished and, unlike most "designers,"
actually received a degree in design. He graduated with a BFA in
graphic design from Paier College of Art in Hamden, CT. Soon
after, he was designing everything from t-shirts to catalogs to national
marketing plans for Starter Sportswear. Nine years later Brant
joined Ryan Partnership as a senior art
director. Currently, he is a full-time freelance designer. Visit
him at: www.brantjohnson.com.
Brant resides with his wife
and two daughters in Wallingford, CT.
Tidbit:
Brant is a huge American
motorcycle fan. He built a website dedicated to the creative folks
who build motorcycles. Maybe we'll see a Broker Village chopper
built on the Discovery Channel one day. The closest thing to one in his
garage, however, are his daughters' bicycles.
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The
Rest of the Crew
Lots of CPAs and Lots of Lawyers
At Broker
Village, we love math. That's no surprise. We also love tax and
law. Almost every day we work with a CPA or lawyer. These folks
are rightfully considered part of the team. They have logged over
a thousand hours on our projects, and for those of a separate
company, Decision Wisdom (which handles 529 work).
We
work with our CPAs on lots of very tax-intensive issues. For
example, we tackle issues
like the state income taxation of a mortgage refi. We also
codified the federal taxation of UGMA accounts (which was
exceptionally complex). On the legal side, our lawyers help us
with everything from contracts to issuing opinion letters. For example, Patricia issued the legal opinion on the
algorithms that underlie our Share Class Calculator. Then there are all the copyright, trademark, service mark, and
patent applications. That's mainly Andrew and Mike.
Nate
and Miriam handle most of the auditing of our code from a tax and
math perspective. Many of our tools are audited. Clients receive
an AICPA-compliant Attestation Letter. It states that our code
does exactly what it claims to do. Nate and Miriam work at
Capossela, Cohen, LLC (www.capossela.com)
in Southport, CT. They're a 30+ person, very high-end CPA and
consulting firm. Capossela is part of one of the biggest
accounting and consulting firms in the world: BDO
Siedman. BDO is currently ranked number five.
No
less than four law firms represent us. The firms are among the
largest and most respected in the country. For intellectual
property work, formation, and litigation, we use Fulbright &
Jaworski: www.fulbright.com.
For contracts and investor issues we use Foley & Lardner: www.foley.com.
For the legal opinion on the Share Class Tool, we use Patricia
Foster of private practice. For 529 work, we use the renowned IP firm Fross Zelnick
Lehrman & Zissu: www.frosszelnick.com.
Tidbit:
We make our lawyers go
gray...really fast. We make our CPAs lose their hair...well,
almost. Every document they write, every opinion they issue, and
every financial statement they create, we review with a fine tooth
comb. If it's written in legalese, we re-write it in English. If a
lawyer makes a typo, we catch it and correct it. If a CPA makes a
math error, we'll find it. And, yes, we all get along swimmingly.
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