SALT Talks

Michael Vranos is the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Ellington Management Group, a firm founded in December of 1994 to capitalize on distressed conditions in the MBS derivatives market. Michael’s Wall Street career began in 1983 at a time when the Federal Reserve was opaque in its actions and long-term plans. “Keep more cash on hand to anticipate the panic of others.” Michael has taken t...

Panayiotis Lambropoulos is a Portfolio Manager at the Employees Retirement System of Texas, a $28 billion retirement plan located in Austin, Texas. His responsibilities include sourcing, analyzing and evaluating potential third party managers deploying all types of alternative investment strategies. “There is a lot of diversification and dispersion going on beneath the surface of the S&P 500.”...

David Dayen is the Executive Editor of The American Prospect magazine and the Author of Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power. He writes about the effects of power consolidation across technology, manufacturing and more. One company has no incentive to provide an exceptional product. Having one company responsible for large amounts of people and products creates severe supply chain risks...

Jim McKelvey is the Co-Founder of Square and Author of The Innovation Stack: Building an Unbeatable Business One Crazy Idea at a Time. Jim had the idea to start Square when he couldn’t take a customer’s credit card at his glassblowing studio. Square would go on to survive a major challenge from Amazon due to its Innovation Stack. “If you put yourself in a situation where the only solution is to cr...

Gabrielle “Ellie” Rubenstein is the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Manna Tree Partners, a private equity company focused on growth equity investments in companies that will revolutionize the food supply chain. In the COVID era, health and wellness can save your life. Only 12% of the United States population is metabolically healthy, and the Middle East has the highest rates of diabete...

Daniel Okrent is the prize-winning author of six books, most recently The Guarded Gate: Bigotry, Eugenics, and the Law That Kept Two Generations of Jews, Italians, and Other European Immigrants Out of America. He was also the corporate Editor-at-Large at Time Inc., and was the first public editor of The New York Times.  Daniel’s latest book covers the false science of eugenics, a set of practices...

Shelley Zalis is the Chief Executive Officer of The Female Quotient, a female-owned business committed to advancing equality. At the current rate of progress, it will take over 200 years to close the global gender pay gap and over 100 years to close the overall gender gap. Since 2013, Shelley has been working full-time to catalyze equality. How do we enact meaningful change? “We need to rewrite po...

Peter Mallouk is the President of Creative Planning, which provides comprehensive wealth management services to its clients. Peter is a pioneer of the Independent RIA model, with clients in all 50 U.S. states and abroad. Turning to active vs. passive management, he notes that the latter has indeed outperformed the former since 1980. “Large tech companies make up almost a fourth of the S&P 500,...

Jim McCann is the Founder & Executive Chairman of 1-800-Flowers.com, Inc., which he grew into one of the world’s leading floral and gourmet gifting companies. The company’s namesake was the result of a well-timed purchase during the 800-number craze. Jim ran St. John’s Home for Boys, a group home for teenage boys, for fourteen years. He also worked multiple side jobs: covering odd shifts at a...

Jim Sciutto is CNN’s chief national security correspondent and CNN Newsroom anchor. In his latest book, The Madman Theory: Trump Takes On the World, Sciutto looks at how a provocative approach to foreign relations, made famous by Richard Nixon, is today employed by President Trump on the world stage. Trump’s mindset around America's relationship with other nations is understood in one word: tr...

Alan Patricof is the founder of Apax Partners, leading global private equity advisory firm, and co-founder of Greycroft, a venture capital firm focusing on investments in the internet and mobile markets. With a 50-plus year career in venture capital, Alan Patricof has been instrumental in growing the venture capital field from a base of high net-worth individuals to its position today with broad i...

Ben Huneke is a Managing Director and Head of the Investments Solutions Group of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.   His responsibilities include product development, marketing and distribution of investment products. These include annuities and insurance, mutual funds, ETFs, hedge funds, private debt, equity and real estate funds, as well as individual equities, fixed income, and structured produ...

Douglas Monticciolo is the Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer & Co-Founder of Brevet Capital Management, a leader in helping government agencies to solve complex problems. Doug has now been leading Brevet for over 20 years. The COVID-19 pandemic has provided a significant opportunity for Brevet’s finance-as-a-service model. As a result of the CARES Act, Doug is partnering with r...

Stephanie Link is the chief investment strategist and portfolio manager at Hightower, a national wealth management firm that provides investment, financial and retirement planning services to individuals, foundations and family offices, as well as 401(k) consulting and cash management services to corporations. In this conversation, Stephanie discusses how the economic fallout from a pandemic is un...

Erika Nardini is the CEO of Barstool Sports. Known for its original takes and unfiltered view, Barstool Sports is a driving force in comedy, sports, entertainment and culture.  Under Erika’s leadership, Barstool Sports has experienced explosive brand and business growth as one of the fastest-growing companies on the internet. It is the 6th largest podcast platform in the world with the number one...

Chris is an author and has served as president of DMG Entertainment Motion Picture Group and GM of DMG North America, internationally orchestrating the creative and business activities of DMG—a multi-billion dollar global media company headquartered in Beijing.  Chris has also produced or supervised twenty-one films, grossing $2 billion in worldwide box-office. As an author, Fenton chronicled much...

Brad Thor is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of twenty thrillers, including: Near Dark, Backlash (One of Suspense Magazine‘s Best Books of the Year), Spymaster (“One of the all-time best thriller novels” – The Washington Times), The Last Patriot (nominated Best Thriller of the Year by the International Thriller Writers Association), Blowback (One of the “Top 100 Killer Thrillers of All Ti...

Kirstjen Nielsen is an internationally recognized expert and proven leader on critical security issues facing governments and institutions. She served as the sixth Secretary of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) from 2017-2019, directing widespread actions to increase the security and resilience of the nation against evolving threats across land, air, sea and cyber domains. In...

Richard Haass is the President of the Council on Foreign Relations, an independent, nonpartisan membership organization, think tank, publisher and educational institution dedicated to being a resource to help people better understand the world and the foreign policy choices facing the United States and other countries. ————————————————————————— To learn more about this episode, including podcast t...

Daniel Silva is the award-winning, #1 New York Times best-selling author of The Unlikely Spy, The Mark of the Assassin, The Marching Season, The Kill Artist, The English Assassin, The Confessor and A Death in Vienna. Daniel’s books are critically-acclaimed best sellers around the world and have been translated into more than thirty languages. Prior to his novelist career, Daniel became a journalis...

Ketan Patel is the CEO and the founder of Greater Pacific Capital, an investment firm focused on India and its links to international markets, and on technology, healthcare and financials and services. Greater Pacific Capital (“GPC”) has developed a distinctive platform that invests to support value creation in businesses through the application of strategy and ideas, thematic insights and capital...

Eric Daimler is a leading authority in Robotics and Artificial Intelligence. Eric served under the Obama Administration as a Presidential Innovation Fellow for AI and Robotics in the Executive Office of the President, with the sole authority for driving the agenda for United States leadership in research, commercialization and public adoption of AI & Robotics. “Don’t confuse a clear vision wit...

Jason Mudrick is the Founder & Chief Investment Officer of Mudrick Capital Management, an investment firm that specializes in long and short investments in distressed credit. Jason began his Wall Street career in 2000 as an associate at Merrill Lynch’s Mergers & Acquisitions Investment Banking group. Jason’s focus on the middle market and taking advantage of smaller opportunities has diffe...

Jerry Pascucci is a Managing Director of UBS Financial Services. He also serves as Head of Global Alternative Investment Solutions, where he is responsible for research, sourcing, underwriting, structuring, risk management, administration and distribution of all alternative investment products, as well as private equity, credit, real estate, infrastructure and impact offerings. The hedge fund indu...

Three leaders in the HealthTech space joined our roundtable to discuss their careers investing in healthcare, technology and wellness industries. Dr. Vishal Gulati is a partner at Draper Espirit, a leading European venture capital firm; Noor Sweid is founder of Global Ventures, a Dubai-based, growth-stage venture capital firm focusing on investing in emerging markets; and Vasudev Bailey, PhD, is a...