Our team
SENIOR LEADERSHIP
Ken Kroner, PhD
Ken Kroner is the Vice Chair of Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was Senior Managing Director at BlackRock, and the head of Multi-Asset Strategies and head of Systematic Active Equities. Ken also served on BlackRock's Global Executive and Global Operating Committees. Prior to BlackRock he worked at Barclays Global Investors (BGI), which was acquired by BlackRock in 2009. At BGI, Ken oversaw asset allocation, fund of hedge funds and client solutions businesses. He began his career as an economics and finance professor at the University of Arizona. Ken has a BSc in mathematics and economics from the University of Alberta and a PhD in economics from the University of California, San Diego. He serves or has served on several corporate, academic, and foundation boards as well as academic journal editorial boards. Ken’s research on forecasting volatility and asset returns has been widely published in both academic and practitioner journals.
Jonathan Cohen
Jonathan Cohen is CEO of Pluribus Labs and has been a board member since the firm’s inception. Previously, he was Head of Business Development and a Managing Director at Angel Island Capital (AIC). Prior to his role at AIC, Jon was Head of Investment Strategy for Incapture Investments, where he was responsible for product and client strategy and helped lead the investment team. Before joining Incapture, he co-led institutional product strategy for BlackRock Fixed Income, which he joined through its acquisition of Barclays Global Investors (BGI) in 2009. At BGI, Jon was Co-Head of US Fixed Income Strategy. Earlier in his career, he spent several years at Northern Trust Global Investments as both a Portfolio Manager and Senior Strategist. Jonathan has an MBA in finance and economics from the University of Chicago and a BA in political science from Grinnell College. Jon is also a Strategic Advisor for Climate Vault, a Foundation which leverages the power of trusted and verifiable, government-regulated compliance markets to fight climate change.
Wachi Bandara, PhD
Wachi Bandara is the Chief Investment Officer of Pluribus Labs. Prior to Pluribus Labs, Wachi was the co-founder and Chief Research Officer of the original Pluribus Labs entity, a data science and machine learning start-up that was acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2017. Previously, he was a Senior Quantitative Researcher at Mellon Capital, focused on fixed income and equity risk modeling. He holds a PhD and an MS in finance from The George Washington University, a MS in applied mathematics from the Florida Institute of Technology and a BS in pure mathematics from the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka. Wachi also holds the Financial Risk Manager certification from the Global Association of Risk Professionals.
Matthew Scanlan, CFA
Matthew Scanlan is a Director and Senior Advisor to Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was Chief Executive Officer of RS Investments as well as President and Trustee of RS Investment Trust and RS Variable Products Trust. Prior to RS Investments, he was President and CEO of Renaissance Institutional Management, CEO of Barclays Global Investors’ Institutional Business, and a Senior Portfolio Manager at The Northern Trust Company. Matt received his master’s degree in accounting and finance from the J.L. Kellogg School at Northwestern University and his BS from the University of Southern California. He is a CFA charterholder and served on the Board of Governors of the CFA Institute, and currently serves on the Board of the USC Marshall School of Business. Matt is also President of the Board of Trustees of the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco. He has been widely published in practitioner journals and was awarded the Jacobs Levy Award for Best Article in 2006 in the Journal of Portfolio Management.
PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT, RESEARCH AND INVESTMENT TECHNOLOGY
Sebastien Astie
Sebastien is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was a co-founder of the original Pluribus Labs entity, a data science and machine learning start-up that was acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2017. Prior to founding Pluribus Labs, he was Vice President of Global Trading Research for Nomura Securities, which acquired Instinet in 2006. Before his tenure at Nomura Securities, Sebastien was the Lead Software Architect for Moody’s KMV (now Moody’s Analytics). He holds a degree in electrical engineering and computer science from Institut Universitaire de Technologie de Montpellier (France). Sebastien is also a former member of the Google Cloud Advisory Board and advises multiple
firms on technology architecture.
Anshuma Chandak
Anshuma has previously worked as an AI Research Scientist at Accenture Labs in San Jose, California where she built AI/ML systems in varied enterprise areas such as CRM, Marketing Automation, Human Resource Management. While in this role, she also led the Responsible AI program in North America contributing to Accenture's thought leadership in ethical use of AI. She has authored 5 patents in the area of ML and NLP, and serves as a technical reviewer and program committee member at some of the top AI conferences such as KDD, ICLR,ACL, etc. Prior to Accenture, she has worked at Expedia, IBM, Reserve Bank of India, and Goldman Sachs. She holds a Master's in Statistics from Columbia University. She is a full-stack AI Scientist having experience in designing, building, and deploying AI backed applications.
Paras Fancy, CFA
Paras Fancy is a Portfolio Manager at Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was a Director at BlackRock where he served in various roles within the ETF and Index Investment Group and the Overlay Services Group. Paras lead a BlackRock team responsible for developing custom synthetic beta solutions, managing liability driven Investment portfolios, and managing equity index portfolios for institutional clients. He has a BS in managerial economics from the University of California, Davis and is a CFA charterholder.
Brandon Flannery
Brandon Flannery is a Researcher at Pluribus Labs where he develops language models to inform investment strategies. Previously, he worked at the original Pluribus Labs entity, a data science and machine learning start-up that was acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2017. Brandon has expertise in computational linguistics applied to investment insights at the intersection of machine learning and economics. He holds a BS in statistics from the University of California, Berkeley.
Bill Floyd, PhD
Bill Floyd is a Researcher at Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was a founding member of the original Pluribus Labs entity, a data science and machine learning start-up that was acquired by Golden Gate Capital in 2017. Bill joined the original Pluribus Labs after completing his PhD at Stanford, where he conducted research on earnings quality and the application of natural language processing to qualitative accounting disclosures. Before pursuing his PhD, he was an associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers in New York. Bill holds a BBA in accounting and BA in economics, both summa cum laude, from the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, and a PhD in accounting from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He is a licensed CPA in New York.
Jeremy Graveline, PhD
Jeremy Graveline is the Head of Portfolio Management at Pluribus Labs. Before joining Pluribus Labs in 2018, he was the Head of Research for BlackRock’s flagship multi-strategy hedge fund, and served on the finance faculty at the University of Minnesota. Jeremy’s research has been published in top academic outlets such as The Journal of Finance, The Review of Financial Studies, and The Journal of Financial Economics. He holds a PhD in finance from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Waterloo, and a bachelor's degree in applied mathematics and economics from Harvard University.
Kris Keltner
Kris Keltner is an Investment Technologist at Pluribus Labs. Kris brings extensive experience in both portfolio management and investment systems development. Prior to Pluribus Labs, Kris founded the financial technology consulting firm World Tree Technologies, LLC which designed and implemented next generation technology solutions. Additionally, Kris was a lead portfolio manager and quantitative developer in the Factor Based Strategy group at BlackRock, and portfolio credit analyst and quantitative developer for Koch Industries. He holds a BA in Mathematics and a BS in Finance from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a MS in Operations Research from Columbia University.
Rodolfo Martell, PhD
Rodolfo Martell is Head of Portfolio Strategy at Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was a Managing Director in AQR’s global stock selection group and the sole strategist on the firm’s Data Governance Committee. Before AQR, he was a Managing Director at QMA (the quantitative investment management arm of Prudential Financial) where he was a portfolio manager, global lead strategist and co-chair of the ESG group. Before QMA he was a Portfolio Manager and Strategist in BlackRock’s Systematic Active Equities group (which he joined through its acquisition of Barclays Global Investors (BGI) in 2009). Rodolfo earned a PhD in finance from The Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business and a BA in Economics from Universidad de las Americas-Puebla. His research has been published in the Review of Finance, the American Economic Review and the Emerging Markets Review. Rodolfo also serves as a non-executive director of Zentific Investment Management, a quantitative firm based in Hong Kong.
Zhan Onayev, PhD, CFA
Zhan Onayev is a Senior Portfolio Manager at Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was a Portfolio Manager at Lazard Asset Management where he oversaw US equity mandates. Before Lazard, Zhan worked as a Director of Research at Pelorus Jack, a long-short equity hedge fund, and prior to that he was a Director of Quantitative Research at Passport Capital, a global long-short equity hedge fund. Zhan graduated from George Washington University where he earned MBA and Ph.D. in Finance. His publications appeared in Journal of Financial Economics and Journal of Behavioral Finance. He is a CFA Charterholder.
Nicholas Phillips
Nicholas is a Software Developer at Pluribus Labs focused on infrastructure, application development and deployment. Previously, he was a Director at Gupton-Marrs Intl (GMI), where he designed and implemented collaborative work management applications in the areas of risk management and regulatory compliance. Before GMI, Nick developed commercial software applications in a number of areas including e-commerce, document imaging and banking. He has a BS in computer science from Marist College.
Len Rittberg, CFA
Len Rittberg is a Researcher at Pluribus Labs. Prior to joining Pluribus Labs, he was a Senior Vice President and Portfolio Manager at Adelante Capital Management. Len’s industry experience includes positions as an Associate Portfolio Manager in Jurika & Voyles’ fixed income department and as a mortgage-backed securities trader at Tuttle Risk Management. He began his career as an Analyst at First Union Securities (now Wells Fargo). Len holds an MBA in finance from the Yale School of Management and a BS in commerce from the University of Virginia. He is a CFA charterholder.
CLIENT RELATIONSHIPS AND OPERATIONS
Will Britten
Will Britten is a Senior Advisor to Pluribus Labs. He is also the Founder and CEO of Akindred, an investment management consulting and marketing firm. Will has more than 20 years’ experience in investment management in a variety of management and leadership roles. He was the Head of Business & Chief Operating Officer for Incapture Investments, where he was responsible for day-to-day non-investment management functions, including operations, legal and compliance, HR, and marketing. Before founding Akindred, Will was a Managing Director and Head of Credit Suisse Asset Management in Australia and APAC Distribution. he joined Credit Suisse in July 2011 from BlackRock Australia, where he was Head of Business following its purchase of Barclays Global Investors where he was Chief Executive Officer for Australia and New Zealand having spent over 12 years in various roles across the firm. Will holds a Bachelor of Business degree from University of Technology, Sydney.
Lauren DiCerbo
Lauren DiCerbo leads Investor Relations and also focuses on Business Development at Pluribus Labs. Previously, she worked in Investor Relations for Alternative Investment Management (AIM) where she was responsible for managing client relationships across the firm’s hedge fund and private equity portfolios. Prior to AIM, Lauren held roles in client service and human resources for multiple global organizations. She graduated cum laude from Vanderbilt University with a BS in human and organizational development. Lauren serves as co-chair for 100 Women in Finance, Northern California.
Jane Juan
Jane Juan is an Executive Assistant and Office Manager of Pluribus Labs. She supports the President, Chief Operating Officer and the Chief Investment Officer. Previously, Jane was an Executive Assistant at MUFG Union Bank, N.A., supporting the Corporate Banking team for five years. Prior to MUFG, Jane worked at Mellon Capital Management for seven years as an Associate for Business Operations. She holds an Associate in Applied Science degree in computer business administration from Heald College.
Greg Williamson
Greg Williamson is Head of Strategy at Pluribus Labs. Previously, he was Chief Investment Officer of The American National Red Cross, which he joined in 2015. Prior to the Red Cross, Greg was Chief Investment Officer and Director, Trust Investments of BP America Inc. He began his investment career at O’Connor and Associates and Petersen and Company. Greg has an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University and a BA from Northwestern University. He is a Board Member of and Investment Committee Chairman for the Terra Foundation for American Art, and is a member of The Economics Club of Chicago.