Brian serves as the Chief Investment Officer and a member of their senior management team at Avestar Capital, which provides wealth management to entrepreneurs and their families. With over 30 years of experience across a wide range of investments, Brian began his career at JP Morgan where he spent ...more

Brian serves as the Chief Investment Officer and a member of their senior management team at Avestar Capital, which provides wealth management to entrepreneurs and their families. With over 30 years of experience across a wide range of investments, Brian began his career at JP Morgan where he spent 11 years gaining expertise in research, derivative structuring, and risk management. In 1995 he moved to the buy-side, joining Putnam Investments as Chief Risk Officer, later adding the responsibilities of Treasurer. Over his 4 years at Putnam, Brian established one of the first firm-wide, buy-side risk management functions, earning Putnam the accolade of Risk Magazine’s 1999 Asset Management Risk Manager of the Year. That same year, Brian joined Merrill Lynch Investment Managers (MLIM) as Global Chief Risk Officer, and was promoted to Chief Investment Officer of the Americas and to the Executive Committee in 2001. While responsible for the performance of $408 billion in client assets managed by over 300 investors, Brian’s led projects in alternatives strategy, structured products, the Quantitative investment team, and management of the Capital and Income Strategies portfolio. During his 7-yr tenure at MLIM, their mutual fund family rose from the bottom of Barron’s Annual investment performance ranking to among the top performers in 2006. From there, Brian rounded out his investment management experience as a Managing Director with international hedge funds manager Gottex, before co-founding the Unique Property Fund which used his proprietary quantitative investment approach for distressed residential real estate. In 2012, he became Chief Investment Officer leading the asset allocation, manager due diligence, and portfolio management at PGA, which Goldman Sachs purchased in 2015. Over the next 8-years at Goldman, Brian designed portfolio solutions, curated best-in-class investment offerings, oversaw portfolio construction, and managed client mandates as a Managing Director in the External Investing Group (XIG). XIG invests in leading private equity, hedge fund, real estate, ESG, credit and public market managers, investing as a limited partner, secondary-market investor, seed-capital provider, and co-investor. Brian has a B.S. in Commerce from the University of Virginia and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a CFA® charterholder.less