Professor Leslie McNew - Managing Partner

Leslie McNew is currently the managing director of N3Q, partner and advisory board chair of the MMspire Trading Company and Executive Scholar in Residence, Benedictine University. She has thirty years of experience in markets (financial and physical), including equities, energy, foreign exchange, interest rate (dollar and non-dollar), insurance, cash, derivatives (futures/options/synthetics) and exotica (such as life settlements). Her career has spanned roles in insurance, trading (investment banking, proprietary, partnership and hedge fund), risk management, consulting, and university professorships. She has also managed trading book positions (speculative and quantitative) in options and futures for investment banks and proprietary firms.

McNew has held senior risk management roles at five Fortune 500 companies in energy and soft commodities. She has chaired monthly Risk Management Committee for three energy companies (portfolio value over $2.5 billion), managed teams from five to forty professionals, covering credit and quantitative credit risk management, quantitative modeling (option and derivative pricing and hard asset real option modeling), deal back testing, raw data management, P&L, Value-at- Risk, simulation analysis, validation, and compliance.

Prof McNew has seventeen years experience as a Business School University/Adjust Professor/Scholar in Residence professor in finance with experiential learning applications in technology, quantitative modeling, trading and risk management across multiple commodities, fixed income, equities, derivatives, options, and exotica. She was awarded the 2004/5 President’s Award for Innovative Use of Technology in Undergraduate Teaching at Tulane University for this effort. Prof McNew developed innovative experiential learning classes using specialized financial software such as KIODEX, FXCM, BLOOMBERG, and CQG at the AB Freeman School of Business, Tulane, School of Business Administration, Hanley Center, University of Dayton and the Driehaus College of Business, DePaul University. She built the first student run proprietary foreign exchange funds (www.mmspiretrading.com) at the AB Freeman School, University of Dayton, DePaul University and Benedictine University, of which MMspire Trading is the only student-run leveraged real money currency portfolio in the nation. She is extensively published: two peer reviewed articles, three textbook chapters, over twenty-five industry articles, over twenty-five industry monthly columns, and have spoken at over twenty-five industry conferences.

Leslie McNew consults in the following fields and has been a NASD recognized expert witness in suitability, pricing, and portfolio management since 2004: commodities (FX, interest rate, energy), credit, risk methodology, risk modeling, pricing and portfolio management. She graduated from the University of Michigan with a degree in economics and a Masters from New York University in quantitative economics.

Coach Jonathan Markowitz - Partner

Jonathan Markowitz has been active in commodity and equity trading for over 30 years. He started his career as a member of the Chicago Board of Trade, trading U.S. Treasury Bonds. Markowitz has also traded at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where he served on the Financial Options, Foreign Currency, Market Data and Membership Committees and the Chicago Board Options Exchange.

Some highlights of Markowitz’s trading career were trading U.S. Bonds during the stagflation years 1982-1984 and trading S&P 500s during the stock market crashes of 1987 and 1989. After trading independently for two years, Mr. Markowitz joined SMW Trading Co. Inc., a proprietary trading firm and Futures Commission Merchant. As a partner and member of the senior management team Markowitz worked on systematic risk and strategic initiatives which have included developing programs to control risk at the company and at the trader level and investment rules that balanced opportunity, potential losses (volatility controls) and cash flow. As a member of the strategic planning committee, Markowitz tackled market development, company expansion, and trader compensation structures.

Markowitz was also in charge of developing new trading arenas, including products listed on the New York Mercantile Exchange, and trained many traders in the art of commodity options trading. In 2010, after 32 years of trading and being an integral part of the U.S. commodity markets, the principals of SMW retired. Mr. Markowitz joined Kottke Associates, as a partner, where he was the portfolio manager for the firm’s mutual fund and helped develop new arbitrage opportunities in corn and cattle. Markowitz retired from Kottke in 2013 and is an entrepreneur, trader, manager of agricultural properties, and a consultant to privately held companies where he helps them balance growth, risk, and general management skills. Markowitz received a B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, and graduated from Tulane University Law School cum laude.

In 1995, Jonathan became a member of Vistage International, an organization dedicated to improving the lives and skills of CEOs. His Vistage experience has helped him balance leadership, commodity trading, and risk, which has been known to have a dysfunctional relationship. On September 11, 2001, Jonathan was in the north tower of the World Trade Center on the 85 th floor, and showed great leadership and courage as he led his friends and colleagues from SMW’s New York branch safely out of the building. Mr. Markowitz is looking forward to being part of the Benedictine University community.