William Cline

William Cline is an experienced hedge fund and alternative asset executive. Bill was a co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of Clovis Capital, a multi-billion dollar long/short equity hedge fund. Prior to co-founding Arena Digital, he was a founding partner of Alcova Capital Management, a real estate lending business. Bill also was a Principal and Executive Vice President at Cramer Rosenthal McGlynn and had client and account management roles at Delaware Investment Advisors and Aetna Capital Management. 

Bill received his B.A. from Bucknell University.

John Culbertson

John Culbertson is a member of the Advisory Board at Ridgedale Advisors LP, Management Board of Context Business Lending, and serves as the Chief Investment Officer of its Parent Company, Context Capital Partners. John serves on the Investment Committee and Credit Committee of Context Business Lending. He brings to Context more than 28 years of experience in the areas of trading, venture capital, asset allocation and hedge fund portfolio management in a variety of settings, including a large family office, a venture capital fund and Cooper Neff and Associates, a quantitative proprietary trading firm later acquired by BNP Paribas.

John earned a bachelor’s degree in business and economics from Rutgers University and a Master of Liberal arts from the University of Pennsylvania. John serves as chairman of the board of directors at Urban Promise, an innovative urban youth organization headquartered in Camden.

Churchill Franklin

Churchill Franklin co-founded Acadian Asset Management LLC in 1986. Acadian is a $100 billion in assets under management quantitative institutional asset management firm with offices in Boston, London, Sydney, Singapore and Tokyo. He assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer on January 1, 2013. In December 2017, he became Chairman, stepped down as Chairman in March 2020 and retired.

Franklin is also an Executive Chairman at Intech Investment Management which is a private, quantitative asset manager investing on behalf of pension funds, governments, endowments, foundations, and other institutional investors worldwide.      

A graduate of Middlebury College, Churchill is an Emeritus Trustee of Middlebury, having joined the Board of Trustees in 1989. He served as an active board member from 1989 until 2004 as a Charter Trustee, and Chair of the Board from 2000 until 2004. After a mandatory year off, he became an Emeritus Trustee for life. He was and is still a member of the investment committee for the College’s $1 billion endowment. In May 2008, he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Middlebury College. 

Donald Putnam

Donald H. Putnam founded Grail Partners LLC in early 2005 and is Managing Partner. Prior to founding Grail he led Putnam Lovell Securities, which he founded in 1987. At Putnam Lovell he served as Chief Executive Officer, Chairman of the Board, and Managing Director in the firm’s investment banking group. Putnam Lovell was sold to National Bank Financial in 2002; until 2005 Mr. Putnam served as CEO and Vice Chairman of Putnam Lovell NBF.

From 1980 to 1986, Don held senior positions at SEI Investments. He was an Executive Vice President and Division President of SEI, founder and President of SEI Financial Services Company, and founder and President of its various mutual funds with assets under management in excess of $15 billion.

Don serves on the investment committee of Ripon College and the boards of Manifold Partners and Welton Investment Partners, as well as an Advisory Board member at Ridgedale Advisors LP.

Joe Scanlon

Joe Scanlon has strong and devoted ties to the world of asset management. Recently, Joe served as a Senior Advisor and focused on origination and distribution across the United States with MCP. He has over 40 years of experience in asset management, and was the Director of Investor Relations of Omega Advisors for five years.

Prior to this, he served as Vice Chairman and Member of the Board of Directors of Ark Asset Management for 22 years. Throughout his career, he has built institutional and marketing distribution organizations for firms such as Citibank Investment Management Division, Lehman Asset Management, Credit Research and Trading, Harbor Drive Asset Management and C.P. Eaton Partners. Joe received a B.S. in Finance and an MBA in Economics from St. John’s University.