Hedge Funds & Digital Assets

As a member of the firm’s portfolio specialist team, Phil focuses on our private market strategies. He is responsible for communicating our investment process and strategy, asset-class perspectives, strategy performance and positioning to clients. In addition, Phil works closely with investors on private markets research, education, and portfolio construction. Phil has more than 13 years of industry experience, including roles at Fort Washington Investment Advisors and Mercer. Prior to joining Calamos in 2024, Phil served as Principal, Private Markets at Mercer where he led coverage of private credit and helped manage the firm’s institutional private markets fund-of-funds offering. Before embarking on his corporate career, Phil played professional baseball with the Cincinnati Reds organization. Phil graduated from Xavier University with a BA in Accounting. In addition to being a CFA charterholder, he holds the CAIA designation.

Kyle Ellicott leads the Stacks Asia Foundation as the Executive Director and is an Advising Partner for Bitcoin Frontier Fund. He is a seasoned executive, investor, and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience in the tech industry, having recently served as a Partner & Managing Director at Bitcoin Frontier Fund, a leading investor in 65+ Web3 startups on Bitcoin.

Brett is a Managing Director on the Pan-Alts team in the Americas and has over 14 years of industry experience. Brett works with Aksia’s global institutional clients on private markets portfolio strategy and construction and related investment advisory activities.

Prior to joining Aksia in 2023, Brett was the Associate Director at Marquette Associates, where he was a member of the Research Team, and led coverage of private credit, private equity, growth equity, and venture capital investments for the firm’s institutional clients. Prior to joining Marquette, Brett was a director at a New York City-based financial technology start-up. He previously held roles in the Institutional Groups at Invesco, Deutsche Bank, and Sentinel Investments where he led relationship development for the firm’s largest clients. Prior to embarking on his corporate career, Brett played professional baseball with Chicago White Sox.

Brett graduated from the University of Notre Dame with a BA in History and holds an MBA from Yale School of Management. He holds the CAIA designation.

Prior to joining Absolute in 2021, Daniel was a co-founding partner of Mohican Financial Management LLC, where he served as COO and co-Portfolio Manager for 19 years. During this time, Mohican managed assets in the convertible arbitrage space in both a hedge fund and mutual fund format. Daniel began his career on Wall Street as a bond broker at Murphy & Durieu and Fahnestock before becoming VP-Convertible Bond Sales at CIBC World Markets.

Daniel received his BS from LeMoyne College and his MBA in Finance from the University at Albany.

Prior to joining Absolute in 2021, Eric was a founding partner of Mohican Financial Management, a convertible arbitrage hedge fund which started in 2002, where he served as CIO and co-Portfolio Manager for 19 years. Before starting Mohican Financial Management, Eric was Director of Convertible Arbitrage Accounts at Citigroup where he was responsible for covering major hedge funds. Previous to covering accounts, Eric worked as an Institutional Trader in Convertible Securities for Salomon Smith Barney where he made institutional markets in all types of US convertible securities while running a large proprietary trading book. He also spent part of his career at Bear Stearns as Co-Head of Sales in Convertible Securities focusing on long only convertible investors.

Eric was awarded an MBA in Finance & International Economics by Columbia Business School and a BS in Agricultural Economics by Cornell University.

Matt Hougan is one of the world’s leading experts on crypto, ETFs, and financial technology. He is the Chief Investment Officer for Bitwise Asset Management, the world’s largest provider of cryptocurrency index funds. He was previously CEO of ETF.com and Inside ETFs, where he helped build the world’s first ETF data and analytics system, the leading ETF media site, and the world’s largest ETF conference. Matt is co-author of two publications for the CFA Institute Research Foundation: “A Comprehensive Guide to Exchange-Traded Funds” and “Cryptoassets: The Guide to Bitcoin, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies for Professional Investors.”

Mr. Houser is responsible for new manager research and due diligence analytics. He also assists the portfolio manager with the day-to-day management of the Funds, including portfolio monitoring, risk measurement and operations.

Mr. Houser joined Absolute after serving for eight years as a Research Analyst for Shetland Investments, a Boston area family office. At Shetland he was responsible for sourcing and evaluating alternative investments including researching new strategies and allocation modeling. Mr. Houser received his AB from Bowdoin College.

Mr. McNally is responsible for portfolio management for Absolute’s Finn Strategies Division which seeks to take advantage of the inefficiencies in the closed-end fund market. Prior to joining Absolute, he was a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Clough Capital Partners, LP. Previous experience includes Director of Closed-End Funds at ALPS Fund Services, Director of Closed-End Fund and ETF Research at Smith Barney, a division of Citigroup Global Markets, Director of Closed-End Fund and ETF Marketing at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter Discover & Co, an Analyst covering CEFs in the Mutual Fund Research Department at Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner, & Smith, Inc., and was Manager of the Closed-End Fund Marketing Department at Prudential Securities. BA – University of Massachusetts at Amherst, MBA (Finance) – NYU Stern School of Business.

Matt is a senior portfolio manager at Man Group, and part of the team responsible for the investment management and strategy development of multi-strategy portfolios. He has a particular focus on leading portfolio overlay strategies. Prior to joining Man Group in 2025, Matt was Head of Portfolio Management and Cross-Asset Strategies at Nomura Capital Management, where he served as Senior Portfolio Manager for a private credit interval fund and managed custom volatility overlays. Before that, Matt was Chief Investment Officer at Headwaters Solutions, where he was managing portfolio overlay strategies for institutional investors and was awarded “Global Overlay Manager of the Year” by EQ Derivatives. Matt has over 25 years of global multi-strategy portfolio and risk management experience. He holds a BA in History from Wittenberg University.

Ms. Santorella is Co-Portfolio Manager and head of trading for Absolute’s Finn Strategies Division. Previously she was a Managing Director and Head of Trading at Beryl Capital Management, LLC, and Vice President and Head of Operations at Clough Capital Partners, LP. BA (Finance and Insurance) – Northeastern University.

Rena Shah is the President & COO for the Stacks Endowment, the long-term treasury for the Stacks Ecosystem, where she invests in Bitcoin DeFi. She previously was COO of Trust Machines, a Bitcoin product studio where she contributed to Granite (Bitcoin Lending protocol) and Leather (Bitcoin wallet). Previously, she was the Head of Exchange at Binance.US, where she grew the exchange from $30M to $3B in daily trading volume within 18 months. Rena spent time on the commodities side and has a unique background as a drilling engineer. She spent her early career offshore on drilling rigs while spinning up Bitcoin mining pools. She frequently contributes to crypto media, writing about DeFi, Layer 2s, and stablecoins.