OVERVIEW

In 2020, I founded Cambio Systematic LLC to continue my long-term focus on executive search for systematic investing and to formally expand into the research-based consulting services traditionally offered only to long-standing search clients.

I chose cambio, the Spanish word for change, to reflect my personal belief in the value of transformation. The ability to adapt has never been more important in this challenging environment for systematic investing.

Cambio Systematic will function as a successor to Scott-Bennett Inc., the company founded over twenty-five years ago by three partners with a shared goal: to build a search firm that upended the traditional high-volume model driving the economics of the retainer search industry.

At Scott-Bennett, we believed that clients were best served when all aspects of a search assignment were conducted by senior professionals with extensive and highly specialized experience. The philosophy worked, the firm was a success, and each partner developed an in-depth knowledge of the asset management industry. I chose Systematic Investing as my field of expertise, while Susan Taylor and Ellen Klein became specialists in Wealth Management and Fundamental Investing.

In 2020, Scott-Bennett Inc. was restructured. Cambio Systematic LLC was created, Susan Taylor founded Scott-Bennett LLC to focus on wealth management, and Ellen Klein retired.

ADVISORY COUNCIL

I have been quite lucky in my career. Early on, as I struggled to understand the academic literature that would become a critical component of my search process, many generous quants came to my rescue.

People like Mark Carhart, Sebastian Ceria, Richard Grinold, Roy Henriksson, Jim Scott, and Bill Sharpe provided invaluable feedback to shape my understanding of the industry and guide my search efforts.

The Advisory Council of Cambio Systematic will serve a similar function and will be an ongoing resource for the benefit of our clients. It is composed of former executives and thought leaders in the worlds of systematic investing and technology, many of the same people who over the past twenty-five years have played informal, yet instrumental roles as advisors to my search practice.

I am honored that these friends and colleagues have agreed to provide their expertise. They will function as an expert network augmenting the company's understanding of the key people, investment strategies and organizations that represent the future of the systematic investment industry.

Lightbulb moments guide the path to the future. One of my seminal moments occurred early in my career, during a search I was conducting for Marty Leibowitz’s Bond Portfolio Analysis Group at Salomon Brothers, a pioneering think-tank in the field of quantitative investing. 

This occurred after graduation from Columbia Business School and a stint in Management Consulting at what is now Ernst & Young. I was starting out in the search industry, trying to determine if I had a chance of succeeding in a field that seemed to place inordinate emphasis on business generation as a function of outside social activities, not one of my strong suits.

To my rescue came the quants, many of whom seemed to share my obsessive/compulsive traits, as well my research orientation, albeit with a different definition of research. The problem was that they seemed to speak a different language.