An Industry Leading Advisory Team

Ivar Eilertsen

Ivar is the Chief Executive Officer and Founding Partner of Harbor Capital Technologies. In this role, he works actively with financial technology firms as a board member and in some cases even as a part time executive. His focus is to scale companies through global growth strategies, recapitalizations, acquisitions and divestitures, strategic sales, partnerships and distribution agreements. He also advises financial and strategic investors on investments, mergers and acquisitions in the sector.

Ivar has more than 25 years of global experience in the financial industry. Prior to starting Harbor Capital Technologies, Mr. Eilertsen was Executive in Residence at a $20Bn private equity fund. He was a Managing Director and Senior Vice President at Thomson Financial – now Thomson-Reuters.

Ivar worked for a total of ten years at ADP Brokerage Services Group – now Broadridge in various senior executive roles, including CEO Americas of ADP Wilco; Managing Director, Global Bank and Brokerage Sales; and President/General Manager of StockVal Inc. (now owned by Thomson-Reuters). Prior to joining ADP, he served in similar capacities with WorldScope and Point Data Inc. He was a founding partner of Axess Information Services in Oslo, Norway.

In addition to his responsibilities at People Capital, Ivar currently serves in the following roles: Board Advisor and US Director to Dublin-based Information Mosaic; Independent Board Member of Fund.com; non-executive Chairman of Simplified Financial Information Inc., and a member of the Advisory Board for Kurtosys.

Ivar holds a BSc with majors in Mathematics, Computer Science and English from University of Oslo in Norway. He completed senior executive courses at Harvard Law School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He is a co-author of two university-level textbooks on information technology.

Back to top

Edward Emmer

Ed currently sits on the advisory boards of two other companies: Rapid Ratings, a quantitative based research firm serving hedge funds and other investors, and; ADV a private equity firm investing in the micro-finance sector in Latin America and the Middle East.

Ed was formerly executive managing director of Standard & Poor's Equity Research Services group. In this capacity, he had global responsibility for Standard & Poor's equity research activities. Ed first joined Standard & Poor's in 1969, as part of the equity research group, and he transferred to the Bond Department (now Credit Market Services) as a credit analyst the following year. While he was head of the Standard & Poor's International Finance group from 1978 to 1990, the company opened offices in London, Tokyo, Paris and Stockholm, and Ed was seminal in the firm's expansion of its global rating activities. After spending two years in London, Ed returned to the United States in 1990 and became responsible for Standard & Poor's ratings of financial institutions and for the industrial ratings group in 1992. He also took on additional responsibilities for public finance and sovereign/international public finance ratings, and subsequently, for financial services in 2000. In 2005, Ed assumed responsibility for Standard & Poor's Global Equity Research Services group.

He is a three-time recipient of the McGraw-Hill Excellence in Management Award and has served on the board of the Fixed-Income Analyst Society.

Ed holds a BA and MBA from Fairleigh Dickinson University.

Back to top

Udayan Gupta

Udayan is one of the senior most South Asian business journalists in the United States. He is editor of the new "Done Deals: Venture Capitalists Tell Their Stories" (Harvard Business School Press, September 2000).

He is the founder of biztrail.com, a multimedia news and information publisher. A small-business development and strategy consultant and freelance business journalist, he served as a Senior Special Writer for the Wall Street Journal for over a decade. Udayan was also a Walter Bagehot Fellow in Business & Economics Journalism.

Late in the 1970s, Udayan began developing an interest in the new technologies and in the entrepreneurial revolution that was taking place. He started writing for a startup magazine, Venture, and for a number of other national publications. In 1985, he joined the Wall Street Journal to cover venture capital and continued doing so until his departure in 1996. Between 1992 and 1995, The Media Guide recognized him as one of the leading business writers in the U.S.

Udayan graduated in Economics from Harvard University, then took up film-making and film criticism. He is the director of two documentary film portraits and has a Masters in Film from Boston University.

Back to top

Ken Kharbanda

Ken has 19 years experience in driving growth and transformational change in the Technology and Media industries. His unique blend of corporate strategy, venture investing and Wall Street experience provides a strategic perspective underpinned by an execution-oriented approach.

He is the former Head of Corporate Development for AOL where he completed seven acquisitions and engaged in virtually every aspect of the digital medium. He also worked with other Time Warner units to capitalize on web fragmentation and advertisers’ need to reach consumers at scale & with measurable results. His prior corporate development roles include Head of M&A at Reed Elsevier - LexisNexis, where he completed 12 acquisitions and divestitures globally and evaluated online, ad-supported revenue streams to enhance traditional subscription revenues. Previously, he was Head of Corporate Development and Strategy for Telcordia Technologies, where he led the corporate strategy to enter new markets, directed a new products incubator and ultimately led the sale of the company via an LBO to private equity sponsors.

Ken’s venture development experience spans over 8 years, where he helped build numerous technology companies. He was a Partner at VantagePoint Venture Partners where he established the New York office and worked hand-in-hand with the management teams of 10 portfolio companies to institute operational changes, restructure balance sheets and acquire distressed competitors. Prior to venture capital, Ken was an investment banker with Kidder, Peabody & Co. and he began his corporate career at Bain & Company, a global strategy consulting firm.

He is a Board member of NY Chapter of Association for Corporate Growth, the industry association for corporate development & private equity professionals.

Ken holds a BS and MS from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Back to top

Colbert Narcisse

Colbert was most recently Chief Operating Officer, Americas Investment Banking for Merrill Lynch where he was responsible for the business management, strategic planning and analysis, technology and risk management functions for a business that generated over $1 billion in annual revenues. During that time he also held a number of internal positions at Merrill including: Chairman, Committee on Environmental Sustainability; Chairman, Americas Clean Energy Group; Chairman, Environmental Sustainability Advisory Panel; Member, Merrill Lynch Retirement Plan Investment Committee.

Prior to this he was the Chief Operating Officer of Merrill’s Global Wealth Management division where he was responsible for managing the finance, operations, technology, risk, diversity and real estate functions comprising 5,000 employees for a division with annual revenues of approximately $14 billion and approximately 27,000 employees. Colbert also designed and managed the Office of Diversity to improve the recruitment, professional development and retention of diverse financial advisors. He also held the position of Managing Director, Investment Banking - Financial Institutions Group where he was responsible for new business development and execution of investment banking transactions for companies in the consumer, commercial and mortgage finance sectors. He began his career at Merrill as Director, Public Finance Group.

Before joining Merrill he was a Bank Examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he conducted on-site examinations to evaluate the overall financial condition of commercial banking institutions.

He is currently a member of the Executive Leadership Council and on the Investment Advisory Committee of the New York City Investment Fund.

Colbert holds a BS in Finance from New York University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Back to top

Richard Newman

Richard is currently a Managing Director for Andlinger and Company, a private equity firm mainly focused on business services, manufacturing and clean technology investment opportunities.

Prior to joining Andlinger, Mr. Newman was a Managing Director at East Wind Advisors, a boutique investment banking firm and a partner at Hart Capital, a private equity firm. In addition to his most recent private equity experience noted above, Mr. Newman has 20 years of experience in various financial advisory and operating roles.

He holds an MBA from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, a Master of Arts from the Stanford University School of Education and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Brown University.

Back to top

Clarence Schwab

Clarence founded and manages C. Schwab LLC, an investment and advisory firm, making growth debt and equity investments in middle market companies. Clarence originates debt and equity investment opportunities, evaluates risk/reward, makes go/no go recommendations, structures and diligences transactions, raises capital and works with companies as a board member.

Prior to founding his own firm, he established and oversaw The Shansby Group’s New York office as a Principal in the firm. The Shansby Group manages over $1.4 billion and is one of the most successful private equity funds investing in consumer brands in the US. Prior to that, he helped build a successful national junior debt platform at Golub Capital, a debt fund currently with over $2 billion under management. Clarence managed that firm’s marketing efforts, and originated, evaluated and executed aspects of various transactions. Prior to joining Golub Capital, he worked in Mergers and Acquisitions at Wasserstein Perella & Co and Corporate Development for Enron Corporation, investing in and advising electric utilities, natural gas distribution companies, independent power producers and software and hardware companies focused on energy efficiency. He also worked for Schering-Plough Corporation in sales and product management, helping launch Claritin allergy medication, the most successful launch in company history.

He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Freedom Prize Foundation, a prize founded in partnership with the Department of Energy to incentivize institutions and communities to reduce oil consumption.

Clarence holds a BA in Economics from Columbia College with an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Back to top

Karen Van de Castle

Karen is Senior Vice President, Global Market Analytics Leader at GE Capital Markets, Inc. She also serves on the Executive Committee for the Board of the Fund for William and Mary. Karen began her career in banking. She has more than 20 years of academic and practical experience in risk management, and has published on the topic in various journals and one book.

At GE, her team is responsible for providing market intelligence, primarily covering the leveraged loan market, to more than 2,000 people throughout GE Capital. Additionally Karen oversees the Rating Advisory platform she's established at GE. She's a member of GE Capital Americas' Thought Leader Council.

Prior to joining GE, Karen worked at Standard & Poor's (S&P), where she held positions in Corporate Ratings and Risk Solutions. While at S&P, Karen successfully launched “CreditModel” (credit estimate tool). This entailed creating the business plan, participating on product launch team responsible for designing front-end interface, serving on the Model Acceptance Committee and writing the “CreditModel” Library functional & technical requirements document.

She received a BBA from the College of William and Mary, an MBA from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and studied finance in the doctoral program at Rutgers University.

Back to top

Gregory Webster

Greg was named President of Fund.com Inc. in March, 2008 and then promoted to CEO of Fund.com in August 2008 where he presides over corporate strategy, business development and acquisition’s. Mr. Webster brings over 20 years of management experience throughout the financial services, brokerage and insurance industries with extensive global wealth leadership experience in North America, South America, Europe and Asia. In addition to serving as President and CEO of two large brokerage companies, Greg has successfully led and executed strategic mergers and acquisitions in the insurance and investment industries.

Prior to his current position at Fund.com, he was the President and CEO of HSBC Brokerage (USA) Inc., one of the largest banks in the world, where he was responsible for approximately $32.5 billion of client assets. In this role, Mr. Webster led the full merger of HSBC Brokerage (USA) Inc. and HSBC Securities (USA) Inc. to achieve massive operating power in the United States. He also resided on the Board of HSBC Asset Management (Americas) and served as Head of Securities of HSBC North America. As the Head of Securities for HSBC North America, he was a board of director and oversaw all of the wealth management advisory services of HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc. and Merrill-Lynch HSBC (Canada) Inc., and was responsible for trading and executing services for HSBC subsidiaries and international affiliates. During this time, Greg led the repatriation of Merrill-Lynch HSBC from HSBC PLC., (UK) to HSBC Bank (Canada) Inc. and the subsequent merger of Merrill-Lynch HSBC and HSBC Securities (Canada) Inc. In addition, he led the full merger of Republic National Bank’s broker/dealer, Republic Financial Services Corporation and HSBC Brokerage (USA) in Q1 2001.

Before joining HSBC in 2000, Greg led the Guardian Life Insurance Company in the formation and SEC Registration of a newly formed broker/dealer, Park Avenue Securities, LLC. Mr. Webster served as President of Park Avenue Securities, where he managed the securities operations, distribution of wealth management and insurance products through a field force of approximately 4,000 registered representatives across the country. Prior to Park Avenue, Greg was the Chief Operating Officer for NYLIFE Securities, Inc., a subsidiary of New York Life Insurance Company, where he managed the wealth management proposition for approximately 8,000 Registered Representatives nationally. He was previously a Director of Private Client Services at Dreyfus Service Corporation, a subsidiary of Mellon Bank. In 1994 Greg led the merger of InvestNet, Mellon Banks affiliate broker/dealer, with the Dreyfus Investment Services Corporations broker/dealer post the acquisition of Dreyfus by Mellon in 1993.

Greg holds a BS degree in Marketing from Arizona State University and an MBA in Finance from Long Island University.

Back to top

The platform is now open for registration.

Join now!

The Peer Advantage

For Borrowers
  • Superior methodology for assessing credit risk to facilitate funding — even with no credit history.
  • Better rates compared to credit cards with low limits, near-term pay-back requirements, etc.
  • Non-conventional loan sources packaged into tax-efficient options.
For Lenders
  • Robust functionality to search, filter and match borrowers on a variety of human capital, financial and educational metrics.
  • Create a unique portfolio of select student loans using benchmark income projections and similar data.
  • Human Capital Score&trade provides a superior way to assess borrowers' relative credit risk.
Bookmark and Share