CutterCast: Salesforce Asset & Wealth Management Usage

Gina McCafferty has 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. She served at Cutter from 1999 to 2011 as Principal and Managing Director of CutterResearch, and she was instrumental in growing that business. Gina returned to Cutter in 2017, and established and ran the company’s Wealth Management research division. In 2019, she was appointed to Head of Research, responsible for Asset Management and Wealth Management product development and delivery to over 200 member firms around the globe. Gina was previously at Investit Ltd., where she served for six years as head of the company’s research service. Prior to that, she held senior positions at DST International with product responsibility for their global accounting and performance measurement systems, and at SunGard as Vice President of Client Services for their securities trading products.

Cindy Castellano is the CEO of Cutter Associates and has over 30 years of experience in the investment management industry. She formerly led Cutter Associates’ Client-Facing and Wealth practices, advising asset and wealth management firms on their sales and distribution, marketing, product development, consultant relations, client service, and client reporting. Cindy has conducted system searches for CRM, marketing automation, portals, pitchbooks/client presentation, content management, client reporting, client onboarding, and RFP systems. Prior to joining Cutter, Cindy served as Vice President and Head of Operations for a division of Guggenheim Investments, where she led mutual fund accounting and administration; institutional accounting, billing, and client reporting; SMA operations, performance reporting (GIPS); and fixed income performance, attribution, and risk reporting. As Vice President and Head of Equities, Cindy led the firm’s investment team and supervised equity trading activities.

Cindy also spent 10 years as a Senior Portfolio Manager and Research Analyst, managing over USD 500 million in AUM for mutual funds and VITs using social awareness (ESG), large cap growth, and mid-cap growth investment strategies. She developed the investment process, directed research analysts’ day-to-day efforts, and created the firm’s social criteria and proxy voting guidelines. Cindy, a Chartered Financial Analyst, holds a bachelor’s of business administration from Washburn University. 

Dru Holmquist has over 30 years of experience in the financial services industry. He has developed expertise across asset management distribution, investment management, and wealth management technology and operations. Dru is a successful senior leader with a deep track record of collaboration initiation, strategy design, team building, program management and process innovation. He has conducted strategy programs for CRM, client mastering, data architecture, client reporting, client onboarding, trading, research, and portfolio management capabilities. His knowledge spans the equities, fixed income, municipals, commodities, private debt, private equity, real estate, farmland, agri-business, and timber management sectors, as well as the following vehicle types: Mutual Funds, Closed-end Funds, ETFs, UCITs, UITs, Institutional Separate Accounts, SMAs (traditional, dual contract and models), LPs, 529 Plans and REITs.

Prior to joining Cutter Associates, Dru served as Managing Director of Technology for Nuveen Advisory Services, the business organization responsible for delivering the investment and asset management expertise of Nuveen. Dru was responsible for all business applications and technology that supported the Sales, Client Service, Marketing, Product and Fund Administration business teams. He oversaw the deployment of Salesforce as a CRM application, that unified multiple investment manager affiliates by redesigning the lead generation process, sales pipeline stages, sales reporting, distribution analytics, marketing analytics, and client engagement model. In addition, Dru implemented a product and account master, and initiated the business case to begin a client master effort. He was the technology leader that owned the business transformation efforts for the advisory services organization.

Over 20 years of Financial Services technology expertise. Currently the leader of the Thrivent Mutual Funds/Thrivent Asset Management Sales, Marketing, Distribution, and Reporting technology teams. In this role my responsibilities include leading a team of marketing and reporting technical experts, as well as our CRM strategic functions. In addition to that I oversee an expansive suite of technical assets. My team provides run the business support as well as setting the technical/strategic roadmap and budgeting for the Adobe Marketing Cloud suite of products, Salesforce and DOMO, to name a few.

Tom Woodson is a Senior Technology Manager in the Client Services Group at NISA Investment Advisors, LLC in St. Louis, Missouri. He joined NISA in 2010 with a background in technology and finance. Tom and his team are responsible for client servicing, sales and marketing solutions including Salesforce and Pardot. These responsibilities span all aspects of the solution delivery process from prioritization and roadmaps to solution support and enhancements.

Jo-Ann DiSantis is a Director of Technology for PGIM Fixed Income focusing on CRM and Sales Technologies. Prior to joining the Firm in 2016, Jo-Ann was the Director of CRM at Lazard Asset Management where she managed the CRM platforms for both the Institutional and Retail asset management sales teams.
She started her career in technology at Morgan Stanley working with Institutional Sales and Trading. Jo-Ann earned a B.S. in Biology from Fordham University and MBA in Finance from Pace University.