PAT O'DONNELL — Chairman, Partner

From 1997 through 2003 Pat O'Donnell was the Chief Technology Officer of UBS Investment Bank. He is a senior Business and Technology executive with over 20 years experience and a proven record of delivering success within the Financial Services Industry. His expertise spans numerous global businesses including: Equity, Interest Rates, Derivatives, Foreign Exchange, Commodities, Energy and Corporate Finance. Pat was carefully selected to serve in numerous targeted and increasingly strategic management roles, in order to guide and drive a corporate strategy that continuously reinvented the company.

As the corporate-wide Chief Technology Officer, he was responsible for architecting and implementing a global technology strategy to service and support an international business with trading presence in 42 countries. He directly managed over 6,000 technologists with a $1.5 Billion annual budget. His leadership and expertise in managing organizational change, integration, and transformation was instrumental in leading the company through several key mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures including: O'Connor, Swiss Bank Corporation, Warburg, Dillon Read, UBS, PaineWebber, and the energy trading business of Enron which was purchased out of bankruptcy. Over his six year tenure as CTO, UBS moved from a third-tier investment bank to one whose successful M&A integration and growth is being widely emulated.

Pat's specific executive assignments included: Chief Technology Officer, UBS Investment Banking Board Member, co-chair of Bank-wide Technology Investment Committee, co-COO of Energy Integration Team, Operational Risk Committee Member, Audit Committee Member, Managing Director, and Member of various Senior Management and Corporate Governance bodies.

Prior to being named CTO in 1997, Pat was specifically selected to align the needs of the business development organization with the value of Information Technology. He utilized his in-depth knowledge of the industry as well as a hands-on understanding of how to leverage Technology to increase revenue while reducing costs. He systematically executed a series of technology initiatives that time and again resulted in significant market share gains and increased revenues. He sustained this process by recruiting, motivating and leading top tier staff to continue the implementation of a shared business vision.

Over the last couple of years Pat has been spending the majority of his time on various entrepreneurial endeavors.

DAVID ZARET — Chief Executive Officer, Founder

With 15 years experience in messaging and collaboration, Dave was the original architect and developer of UBS’s internal chat application. When UBS marketed this tool as its own product, Dave worked on the carve-out business plan and funding acquisition, ultimately becoming CTO of the new company — Parlano.

During 2.5 years as CTO, Dave helped Parlano’s active customer base grow beyond 20, including the largest sell-side institutions. When Divine acquired Parlano, Dave guided the transition, focusing on business development, partner relationships and sales, leading to Parlano’s subsequent acquisition by Microsoft.

As a consultant, Dave was Product Manager for Reuters Messaging, a hosted collaboration solution for the financial vertical, which today exceeds 100,000 active users across the buy and sell sides. His relationships with Reuters and Microsoft continue, with Dave recently engaged by Aditi (a close Microsoft partner that has taken over responsibility for customer support for, and ongoing development of, the Parlano code base) to design and architect corollary tools.

Dave is currently facilitating the integration of financial-specific functionality into the broader Microsoft OCS product. His strong contacts within Microsoft and Reuters provide him with detailed information on roadmaps, release timings, and APIs — knowledge which he brings to Symphono’s advisory engagements.

Dave has a BS in engineering from the University of Michigan.

DREW SHIELDS — Chief Operating Officer, Partner

Helping organizations adapt to meet new and challenging demands, Drew is a catalyst for change. During three years at Bank of America, he worked in a variety of roles for the derivatives technology organization. He has experience managing large-scale development projects, overseeing technical support teams, and serving as the technology liaison to business support and middle office.

Drew also managed technology and operations teams for Tyndale House Publishers, where he provided a variety of services to diverse departments across the organization, including systems administration, project management, human resources and distribution. Drew brings a unique skill-set to Symphono’s work in financial services, combining strategic thinking,  gifted communication skills, and a proven record of leadership and helping clients achieve strategic goals. Drew has a bachelor's degree in Theology from Moody Bible Institute and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

BOB SCHMITT — Chief Technology Officer

Collaboration systems and distributed transaction processing are just two of the many technology solutions that Bob has delivered, solving complex problems in the financial services vertical. With 13 years of financial knowledge from UBS and Bank of America, he provides leading designs of sophisticated financial trading systems, that support features ranging from xml trade processing to risk analysis.

Bob built and managed development teams during his tenure at UBS and Bank of America, where he held titles of Director and Principal respectively. His 2 years of experience as development manager at Parlano (recently acquired by Microsoft) expanded his breadth and depth of communications & messaging software design & development by delivering financial services driven chat software. His project management, change management, and governance skills helped deliver important features to ease the migration of legacy systems to modern architectures.

Bob has employed several software development life cycle processes in all of his solutions including Waterfall, Agile, Rational Unified Process, and Six Sigma. He has a bachelor's degree in Computer Science / Mathematics from the University of Illinois.