passion-Strategic Advantag-experience

At Symphono, we are passionate about software and have deep experience in helping our clients use it to turn their ideas into strategic advantage. We came together in 2002 when our founder, David Zaret, started our consultancy to work with large scale clients and projects.

His goal was to bring the collective experience that the Symphono team had gained from working closely with investment banks and trading desks to build the platforms and automated workflows needed to improve productivity and profitability, and apply this experience to our clients' challenges and strategic initiatives.

The bottom line - we love designing software and have a keen interest in the markets. Fortunately for us, the pace of change in capital markets creates new opportunities every day for our clients to profit from innovative software. Fortunately for you, we bring our passion and experience to the task of turning these opportunities into your profitable reality.

Over the years, the list of Symphono clients has grown to include some of the world's largest financial services, asset management, and proprietary trading firms. Our continued growth is the clearest indication of the power of our model and we're eager for the opportunity to help you use software to create your strategic advantage.

   

Management Team

Having held key positions in top financial institutions, our management team has the industry experience to assist with strategic planning and decision making and to execute in the most demanding domains.

David Zaret

Chief Executive Officer, Founder

Dave Zaret founded Symphono in 2002 and is an industry leader in financial collaboration technology.

Dave started his career at Swiss Bank/O’Connor in Chicago, developing real time arbitrage and risk management systems for the equity derivatives team. and soon led the firm in developing new technologies that leveraged local pockets of expertise to build a global enterprise. Specifically, Dave helped develop tools to allow thousands of traders globally to “share the book”, integrating the strength of collaboration systems (chat rooms, email, text messaging software) with both with both trade execution and compliance software.

Dave used his expertise in collaboration systems and his knowledge of the capital markets to start Symphono. Since 2002, Symphono has built a strong presence in the financial technology arena and continues to build on this success.

Dave holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Engineering from the University of Michigan.

Cynthia Clarke

Chief Operating Officer

Cynthia is the Chief Operating Officer at Symphono and is responsible for day-to-day operations, overseeing the engagement process from initiation through delivery, as well as the development of our firm’s human capital.

Cynthia started her career at Andersen Consulting in 1988 and joined O’Connor and Associates in 1990 to develop real time arbitrage systems and derivatives risk management systems. She filled a number of roles managing the equity product line during the global integrations of O’Connor and SBC.

In 1997, Cynthia joined Brinson Partners as the Chief Information Officer and led the organization through the technology aspect of the global integration of SBC and UBS that created UBS Brinson, a firm with over $200Bn [billion] under management.

In 2005, Cynthia joined the Northern Trust as Director of Investment Systems and ultimately moved to the Personal Financial Services division to handle initiatives in the wealth management space.

Cynthia holds a Bachelor’s of Science degree from the University of Illinois Engineering Computer Science program.

Bob Schmitt

Chief Technology Officer

Bob is the Chief Technology Officer at Symphono and oversees all client delivery. He is responsible for the continual development and enhancement of methodology to assure consistent, robust and timely delivery for all client products and services.

Bob specializes in delivering technology solutions that solve complex financial problems. Bob draws on his 13 years of financial knowledge, from UBS and Bank of America, to provide leading designs of sophisticated financial systems.

Bob's project management, change management, and governance skills help deliver important features to ease the migration of legacy systems to modern architectures. Bob has led teams through several software development life cycle processes including Waterfall, Agile, Rational Unified Process, and Six Sigma.

Bob holds a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science / Mathematics from the University of Illinois.

Drew Shields

Chief Product Officer, Partner

Drew is Chief Products Officer, leading Symphono’s product development efforts, bringing two industry-leading products to the market:

  • Symphono Analytics - a highly efficient and accurate options valuation solution
  • Symphono Trading System X (TSX) - an algorithmic trading platform that provides users exceptional flexibility and sophistication in their trading strategies

Drew started his career at Bank of America, holding multiple positions in interest rates and credit derivatives at Bank of America. During his tenure 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 holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in Theology from Moody Bible Institute and an MBA from the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Adam Weyeneth

Chief Financial Officer

Adam is the Chief Financial Officer. In addition to his duties as CFO, he is a key contributor to the development of Symphono products, innovating and validating market need that guide the strategy of the product suite.

Adam started his career at UBS, working with various risk departments, then moved to a team that researched emerging technologies for application in the UBS infrastructure, this role ultimately led to Adam serving the investment analysts in the investment banking unit.

Adam then moved to work at Barbary Coast Capital Management and also was the founder and COO of Fair Deal Credit, LLC, a proprietary investment partnership focused on making loans in the emerging peer to peer lending space.

Adam holds a Bachelors of Arts in Economics from Northwestern University and was the Class of 2005 Gary S. Becker Distinguished Fellow at The University of Chicago Booth Graduate School of Business. Adam received his MBA with Honors in 2005, with concentrations in Accounting, Statistics and Econometrics, and Analytical Finance.