CutterCast: Seismic Automating Material Production

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. 

Philip (Phil) Orlando is a Consultant at Cutter Associates and brings over eleven years of consulting, organizational strategy, client service, operations, accounting, and IT experience to Cutter clients. Phil has been involved with multiple Front, Middle, and Back Office strategy engagements covering accounting systems, portfolio management and trading, pre and post-trade compliance, risk management, and data management and governance. Phil also has extensive experience with client and sales management (e.g. client reporting, CRM).

Prior to joining Cutter Associates, Phil was an Organizational Strategy Business Analyst at State Street Bank where he worked on several large-scale projects including the implementation of an enterprise workflow tool and a new inquiry management system. He also guided a program purposed to transition complex cash, reconciliation, and trade tasks from the business units to centers of excellence (COEs).

Previously, Phil was an ETF Client Operations Account Manager at State Street Bank. He launched new ETFs & on-boarded new clients, managed relationships with several ETF sponsors, and crafted specifications for IT resources to continuously improve the accuracy, reliability, and efficiency of ETF processes.

Phil holds a B.S. in Finance from Stonehill College and is also a CFA charterholder.

Ms. Amado joined Polen Capital Management in 2020. Prior to joining Polen Capital, Ms. Amado spent eight years as a Marketing Associate at New York-based investment advisor Douglas C. Lane & Associates, where she developed Marketing initiatives to support the client relationship managers and portfolio managers. Ms. Amado received her B.A. in International Relations from Lehigh University, where she was a member of the golf team. She is fluent in Portuguese and Spanish and conversational in French.

Victoria Branson is an assistant vice president for T. Rowe Price International Ltd and Product Owner of Seismic Pitchbooks. As a member of Global Client Account Services, she is responsible for enhancements to the pitchbook production process, including data automation, disclosure automation and management and leads the internal technical support team for Seismic Pitchbooks. Prior to her current role, Victoria delivered a solution to automate data within PowerPoint, and incorporate the ability to output automatically into other European languages. Victoria joined T. Rowe Price in early 2016 and has spent 20 years working for leading financial services firms with a focus on Project Management, Presentation solutions and automation.

Jay O'Conor is an Assistant Vice President, and serves as the enterprise Product Manager of Seismic at T. Rowe Price Associates. Jay initially joined T. Rowe Price in 2013 as a technology analyst before making his way to Client Operations, and now works in Distribution Enablement. Prior to joining T. Rowe Price, Jay worked as a Consultant at Cap Gemini Sogeti in addition to working in higher education admissions and marketing. Jay earned a B.B.A. in Marketing and an M.B.A. from Loyola University New Orleans.

Neetu is the Sr. IT Product Manager at Capital Group, responsible for managing a global application portfolio that delivers print automation, across marketing and sales. Neetu leads a team responsible for working on data driven presentation automation technologies and cloud solutions that are used to produce critical marketing and sales materials that show up-to-date details around Capital Groups' products, services and results. Examples include New Business books, Client Review Books, Fund Fact Sheets, Attribution Reports and more. As part of her responsibility she oversees all aspects that come with developing software in the highly regulated financial services industry, including compliance & legal needs, requirements validation, architectural design, systems development, application security, production management, and technology governance. Neetu earned her BA in economics and is also a Graduate in Computer Science. She joined Capital Group in 2007 after a period as a consultant at Bank of America.

Eric Urquilla is a Sr. Business Systems Administrator at Capital Group where he’s responsible for managing the automation within Seismic across North America.  He leads the Seismic automation team that is responsible for development of LiveDocs and template automation for institutional marketing collateral. He has over 18 years of project management experience with BSA responsibilities, marketing content management and product development in the financial industry. Eric holds bachelor’s degrees in Finance and Organization Systems Management and an MBA. He earned his Seismic certification in 2019. He has been at Capital Group since 2017. Prior to joining Capital, he was a project manager for Investor’s Business Daily. Eric is based in Los Angeles.