Cetera Investment Management
Cetera Investment Management LLC is a registered investment adviser owned by Cetera Financial Group®. It provides investment research, portfolio and model management, and investment advice to its affiliated broker-dealers, dually-registered broker-dealers and registered investment advisers.
Cetera Investment Management LLC individuals who provide investment management and advisory services are not associated persons with any broker/dealer.
Craig Columbus
President
Craig Columbus is the President of Cetera Investment Management, an SEC-registered investment adviser owned by Cetera Financial Group. The firm, led by Mr. Columbus since its founding in 2006 as First Allied Asset Management, Inc., oversees more than $5 billion in assets for independent financial advisors and their clients. A frequent guest on financial television and a popular conference speaker, Mr. Columbus shares his macroeconomic insights across a variety of leading platforms.
Mr. Columbus spent the first 10 years of his career working for some of the largest information and research firms in the financial industry, creating buy- side research and innovative analytics. At Primark Corp., he served as the
Vice President of Research for the Financial Information Division and later the President of Primark’s Lancer Analytics unit, overseeing teams of analysts and researchers creating market commentary and building proprietary models for use by institutional investors. Later, Mr. Columbus was the founder and CEO of Scorelab, Inc., an international financial algorithm and research firm venture backed by Primark and ultimately acquired by Thomson Financial. He went on to serve as Executive Vice President and Chief Market Strategist for Thomson’s Wealth Management unit, overseeing research and analytic product development. Throughout these roles, Mr. Columbus became a recognizable Wall Street commentator, appearing as a special contributor every week on CNBC’s Power Lunch for seven years.
Mr. Columbus previously served as both a professor and department chair at Grove City College (Grove City, Pa.), a private liberal arts institution established in 1876. He has also been a research fellow at the Center for Vision and Values, a policy think tank committed to free-market principles. In 2007, Mr. Columbus received the Achievement Award by Penn State’s Smeal College of Business for contributions to the field of finance. He also co-authored the popular financial reform book, “God and Man on Wall Street: The Conscience of Capitalism” (BrickTower). He is an active member of the Pennsylvania bar.
Follow @craig_columbus on Twitter.
Steve Dunlap
Chief Executive Officer
Steve Dunlap is the Chief Executive Officer of Cetera Investment Management, an SEC-registered investment adviser owned by Cetera Financial Group. He is also Executive Vice President of Wealth Management at Cetera Financial Group. Mr. Dunlap is responsible for leading the strategic expansion of Cetera Financial Group’s comprehensive wealth management services, including investment research and asset management. As such, he defines the business strategy and vision for Cetera.
Before joining Cetera Investment Management and Cetera Financial Group, Steve was a managing director for Pershing, a BNY Mellon company, and served as president of the firm’s Managed Investments business and president & CEO of Lockwood Advisors. He was responsible for the advisory, asset management; relationship management, product strategy, operations and technology functions related to delivery of managed investment solutions to Pershing’s broker-dealer and registered investment adviser customers.
Prior to joining Pershing, Steve served as president of Finetre Corporation, a venture-funded technology startup. There, he positioned the firm as a leading provider of online annuity and life insurance transaction processing, workflow management and regulatory compliance platforms to major brokerage firms and insurance companies. Before that he was executive vice president at Thomson Financial, where he was responsible for managing the business unit that pro- vided mutual fund and annuity research and illustration technology to major broker-dealers and registered investment advisers. Steve began his career at First Virginia Bank and later was a broker at Legg Mason Wood Walker, Inc.
Steve is active with the Financial Services Institute and the Money Management Institute, where he serves on the Board of Governors.
Steve earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in philosophy and economics from the College of William and Mary. He holds series 7, 24 and 66 securities registrations.
Jeffrey Mindlin, CFA®
Executive Director & Co-Chief Investment Officer
Jeffrey Mindlin serves as Cetera Investment Management’s Executive Director and Chief Investment Officer. In this capacity, Mr. Mindlin is responsible for the portfolio management team and its efforts, including portfolio selection, trading, proprietary money management and product development. He helps oversee the investment committee and their commitment to delivering thought leadership on the economy, financial markets and investment strategies, as well as implementation and practice recommendations for advisors.
He served as Chief Investment Officer at First Allied Asset Management, which integrated into Cetera Investment Management in 2015. Prior to joining First Allied, Mr. Mindlin was the Director of Research and Co-Portfolio Manager of Greenbook Investment Management, Inc., where he was instrumental in the design of sophisticated, proprietary investment strategies. Before that, he worked as the Assistant Portfolio Manager and Senior Financial Engineer for Pinnacle Investment Advisors, LLC, which operated a hedge fund and a series of managed accounts for institutional and high-net-worth clients, and sub-advised a publicly traded mutual fund. Previously, Mr. Mindlin was the Manager of Financial Engineering at Camelback Research, leading the development of several successful institutional-grade quantitative products, including the popular MSN Money StockScouter system.
Mr. Mindlin also earned the Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) designation. He obtained bachelor’s degrees in economics and in finance from the College of Business Honor’s Program at Arizona State University, where he also received the prestigious Moore Award.
Brian Wright, CFA®
Senior Portfolio Manager
Brian Wright serves as a Senior Portfolio Manager, contributing his unique fundamental analysis skills to all strategies that utilize individual stocks. He also directly oversees our longest running strategy. He also served as Senior Portfolio Manager at First Allied Asset Management which integrated into Cetera Investment Management in 2015. Mr. Wright has more than a decade of industry experience. Previously, he served as a trader with Pinnacle Investment Advisors, where he helped oversee a family of hedge funds, institutional separate accounts, and a publicly traded mutual fund. Mr. Wright was also an Analyst with a boutique research firm where he focused on forensic accounting and earnings-quality-related research. He was one of the first analysts to raise questions about the accounting practices and viability of Krispy Kreme as early as 2003. Mr. Wright graduated magna cum laude from Boston University and later earned the Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) designation.
Lon Gerber
Chief Operating Officer
Lon Gerber serves as Chief Operating Officer for Cetera Investment Management. He also served as COO at First Allied Asset Management which integrated into Cetera in 2015. Previously, Mr. Gerber spent more than 10 years at Thomson Financial, a leading provider of information and technology solutions to the worldwide financial community. In this capacity, he was responsible for directing analytic product development for the wealth management division. During his time at Thomson, Mr. Gerber was highly regarded for his expertise in the area of insider-trading analysis and regularly appeared in the financial media, including The Wall Street Journal, Barron’s and Forbes, among many others.
Mr. Gerber began his career in the banking industry as a financial analyst for Citibank, where he was responsible for revenue forecasting for its U.S. consumer and commercial lending products. Mr. Gerber earned a Bachelor of Science in finance from Binghamton University and an MBA degree from Penn State University.