Event Speakers

Go Back

Philip joined RiverNorth in 2015 and serves as Portfolio Manager. Philip manages the firm’s marketplace lending strategies. He came to RiverNorth with 12 years of experience in investment management, capital markets, and investment banking capacities within structured finance, securitized products and real estate. Prior to joining RiverNorth, Philip was a Principal at Spring Hill Capital where he focused on the analysis and trading of structured credit, commercial mortgage and asset-backed fixed income investments. Philip began his career in the Mortgage Department at Lehman Brothers Inc. in New York, where he focused on non-agency residential mortgages and esoteric asset-backed securities. Philip graduated from Williams College with a B.A. in Economics and earned his MBA from Columbia Business School with a concentration in Accounting and Finance.

Vaughn Blake is the founder and managing director of Autochrome Ventures, a thematically-driven inception and seed stage venture capital firm. In addition to managing Autochrome's portfolio and investments, he is a portfolio manager at Echo Tree Capital, LP, a blockchain-centered investment fund. Previously, Vaughn held senior roles at a number of fintech startups, two of which were acquired (FlashFunders; CoinMkt). He is a graduate of Colorado College.

Aleksander Dyo is the president and co-founder of Token IQ. He became involved with the blockchain/crypto space right around late 2016. At that time, his objective was to perform thorough research and due diligence on this new asset class. Through this process he learned a lot about Bitcoin, blockchain, and distributed ledger technology, but he also became familiar with the concept of non-dilutional fundraising a.k.a ICO (initial coin offering). Coming from a traditional space of financial services, he immediately recognized the huge potential of what “tokenization” can bring to the traditional world of private and public capital formation, but he also spotted big holes in applicability of the term “utility token.” Fast forward, the birth of STO (securities token offering) was organic and a need for Token IQ - a compliant tokenization platform - was an opportunity. He became an STO advocate, contributor, and speaker at both blockchain and crypto conferences worldwide and financial services industry seminars (e.g. Blockchain Economic Forum, Digital Asset Investment Forum, Token Fest, Fintech Week NYC, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Cryptocurrency Blockchain, Advisory HQ, Eliances, Certified Financial Analysts, National Association of Insurance and Financial Advisors, etc.).

Prior to founding Stage Venture Partners, Alex managed a small hedge fund, later turned family office, for high net worth investors, employing a long-biased value strategy. Prior to launching his own fund, Alex was an analyst at Anthem Venture Partners, a venture capital fund in Santa Monica, CA. At Anthem, Alex worked on early stage investments including Myspace, TrueCar, and Android. Alex has been an active angel investor throughout his career, starting with co-investments in Anthem companies like RF Magic (merged with Entropic, later IPOd) and Planet ATE (acquired by Intersil). After Anthem, Alex was the first investor in Rentjuice (acquired by Zillow), MadeSolid (later a YC company), and Amino (still active, Series A Accel, Series B Charles River). Before founding Stage, Alex was an active board member at Los Angeles nonprofits. He was appointed by Mayor James Hahn to the Los Angeles Animal Services Commission. Later he served on the board of KIPP LA Schools for three years, and on the board of South Central Scholars for ten years. Alex has published op-eds in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, and has been quoted in dozens of publications on various investment topics. Alex is a 2002 graduate of Harvard University.