Jerry Michael (Past Speaker)

Smartleaf started in Jerry’s living room in 1999. The goal was to take high-end, niche investment offerings — direct indexes and UMAs — and leverage automation to make them mass-market products. Motivating us was the idea that ETFs, index funds and mutual funds were good, but direct indexes and UMAs were better. And, further, that low-cost direct indexes and UMAs would be best of all.

Jerry publishes a weekly blog on wealth management, is a frequent panelist at industry conferences, has offered commentary on Bloomberg TV and, dearest to his heart, once served as a guest speaker at Y-Combinator, a well-known silicon-valley tech incubator.