Nick Bartolo is the Founder and Managing Partner of Essential Partners. He has two decades of investment experience, most recently as a Managing Director at International Value Advisers (IVA) where he directly invested in global equities and fixed income. Mr. Bartolo was previously a Senior Vice President at Trust Company of the West (TCW) where he invested in domestic equities. Prior to TCW, he was in a management development program at the Capital Group, who owns and manages the American Funds. Collectively, IVA, TCW and the Capital Group invest over $2.5 trillion on behalf of individuals, financial advisors and some of the largest institutions globally including pension and endowment funds. Mr. Bartolo is also a managing member of Rational Capital, an early-stage venture capital partnership.
Mr. Bartolo received his Master of Business Administration (MBA), with Beta Gamma Sigma Honors and a Bachelor of Science in Accounting from the University of Southern California (USC). He was supported with academic scholarships for both degrees. Mr. Bartolo is a Chartered Financial Analyst Charterholder (CFA) and a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He is an Advisory Board Member at USC’s Center for Investment Studies and an annual guest lecturer for undergraduate and MBA courses, including the MBA Student Investment Fund. Mr. Bartolo is a Board Member of the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation and serves on the Finance Committee of the Village School in Pacific Palisades. He is married with three daughters and when he is not working, he can be found hiking and enjoying the outdoors with his family.
Advisory Board
Bill Strong
Bill Strong is President of CNM, LLP, a leading technical advisory firm that provides specialized advisory services to businesses ranging from startups to multi-national Fortune 500 companies. Prior to CNM, Bill spent over 6 years as Chief Financial Officer of Apeel Sciences, a Time Genius 50 Company. While at Apeel, Bill raised over $635 Million for the company, built the global team to 500+ employees across four continents, and commercialized the technology.
Prior to Apeel, Bill spent the prior 15+ years in various roles in growth and technology companies from founder to CFO. He began his career at Ernst & Young, holds a B.S. in Accounting from USC and is a Certified Public Accountant (inactive). Bill also founded the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, which helped fund an FDA approved treatment for Spinal Muscular Atrophy (SMA), a rare children’s disease. Bill lives in Santa Barbara, California with his wife and two daughters.
Scott Abrams
Scott Abrams is the Academic Director for the Full-Time MBA Program at the Marshall School of Business at USC as well as an Associate Professor. U.S. News & World Report ranks the USC Undergraduate Marshall School of Business 8th in the nation and the MBA program 15th. Scott specializes in corporate finance, financial analysis and valuation, and portfolio management.
Prior to joining the faculty at USC, Scott worked in the corporate finance groups at Sony Pictures and Warner Bros. Scott began his career at Deloitte and is a Chartered Financial Analyst Charterholder (CFA) and Certified Public Accountant (CPA). He received his MBA from the Marshall School of Business at USC with Beta Gamma Sigma Honors as well as a B.A. in Business Economics from UCLA. Scott lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two daughters.
Ryan Kirby
Ryan Kirby is the General Counsel of IOA, a national insurance company. Prior to IOA, Ryan was the Chief Legal Officer & General Counsel of Atlas General Insurance Services. While at Atlas, Ryan successfully negotiated a partial sale to private equity investors and led a complete sale of Atlas to publicly listed insurance company, Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.
Prior to Atlas, Ryan was a civil litigator and trial attorney at KNLH, LLP with material trial litigation experience in the courtroom. Ryan holds a B.A. in English from the University of Colorado at Boulder and a J.D. from the University of San Diego School of Law. Ryan is a California licensed attorney. He lives in San Diego, California with his wife, two sons and daughter.
Strategic Alliances
Charles Schwab
We understand that safeguarding your assets is critical. We chose to work with Charles Schwab because it is one of the world’s largest providers of financial services offering asset custody, brokerage, banking, retirement plan services, investment research and many other financial products and services. Charles Schwab has over $7 trillion in total client assets and brokerage accounts.
SS&C / Black Diamond
SS&C Technologies is a leading technology provider for financial services solutions with over $1.7 trillion of assets utilizing their technology. SS&C is publicly traded with an $18 billion market value. Black Diamond is SS&C’s proprietary wealth management technology platform. Black Diamond’s platform aggregates portfolio, market and client data to allow us to analyze and report on our client partners’ complete financial position. The Black Diamond technology platform works with leading family offices, wealth management firms and institutions that manage over $1 trillion of assets.
Fidelity
We understand that backup redundancy, choice and tax mitigation strategies are important to our client partners. We work with Fidelity to ensure limited disruption for client partners who join us from Fidelity while also giving us the ability to offer institutional tax mitigation strategies. Fidelity has over $8 trillion in total client assets and brokerage accounts with advanced services similar to Schwab yet is highly selective as they have 75% fewer firms relative to Schwab.