Jason R. Escamilla, CFA, founded ImpactAdvisor in 2014 and leads it as CEO and CIO. MIT MBA, UC Berkeley, CFA charterholder since 1999.
Biography
I believe in the power of private enterprise to create positive change and built ImpactAdvisor to amplify those efforts.
In 2014, I founded ImpactAdvisor to help investors achieve outcomes that matter to them through fully customizable, tax-optimized wealth strategies at scale. Our initial product offering — personalized indexing (direct indexing) — provided an unprecedented level of customization. This innovation was driven by technological advances both at ImpactAdvisor and throughout the industry's value chain.
I started my career on the buy-side in 1995 at Seneca Capital, an institutional investment advisor (where Michele was Head Trader) that also managed customized portfolios for high-net-worth clients. I was responsible for equity trading, research, and portfolio management, including the design and implementation of our integrated portfolio trading and rebalancing software. This technology enabled us to scale assets under management 10x to $10B+ with only a 50% increase in headcount over five years, allowing our small team to manage a thousand portfolios, not only in sync with our investment strategy but also with customizations for impact, compliance, and tax-efficiency.
Other expertise: multiple hedge-fund styles — long, short, and quantitative strategies — with an emphasis on deep-dive equity analysis.
To balance the uncertainties in the markets, I strive for optimal tax strategy: a variable we can influence to boost net returns. I was a certified tax preparer at age 14. In my free time I build our tax bracket visualization tools and organize finance events for the MIT Club of Northern California. I live in San Francisco with Vesna and our three-year-old son, Milan.