Wells Group of New York — Organizational Updates
Friends and family,
It’s been a crazy year (and change) for us all. I’ve connected virtually with many of you over the past year — and if we haven’t, I look forward to seeing you in person as the world begins to return back to normal.
At Wells Group of New York, we’ve gone through a series of organizational changes, and I wanted to reach out to update you on our continued growth. As many of you know, I have been full-time CFO of quip, an oral care startup, since January 2020. Serving as interim CFO at high growth businesses, specifically in the consumer internet and technology spaces, is my calling and passion. In the past year, I guided the company as we reached profitability and fundraised over $30MM.
It goes without saying that serving as full time CFO at quip has meant that I have formally stepped back from the day to day operations at Wells Group of New York. I am extremely lucky to have a business partner who has run WGNY so well that I have been able to give so much to quip. As such, I am thrilled to formally announce that Evan Zawatsky has been named President of Wells Group of New York. Evan has been functioning in this role for almost 2 years now and I am more than confident in his leadership. In this role, Evan runs the consulting firm’s day to day and also plugs in as fractional CFO and Controller of our clients, managing and overseeing each engagement in detail. I will remain Chairman and will continue to advise as necessary.
In addition to stellar leadership from Evan, I am excited to announce the hiring of Ike Newman as Vice President, Finance and the promotion of Emma Bendix to Director, Finance & Strategy. Ike comes to us from Frank, a financial aid startup backed by Chegg and Marc Rowan, where he previously served as Director of Finance, and he will continue to plug into startups in that capacity. Ike and I met while working at Kushner in the mid 2010s. Separately, Emma continues to perform at a high level and runs her own finance & strategy related projects. As such I am excited to announce her promotion to Director.
On the finance & accounting side of the business, Brett Handelman and Jason Lorenzo, both Senior Managers, serve as the primary day to day contacts for our Controller & FP&A engagements. They continue to excel as project leads on track to executive leadership. Working underneath them, I am proud to announce the hiring of 4 CPAs in the past year — Will Pappas, Marshall Monrad, Amie Jatana, and Keanna Virgil. Will, Marshall, Amie, and Keanna are classically trained in accounting and are excelling as FP&A ninjas. Separately, we have hired Tucker Bendix and Anthony Dabb as analysts. Tucker specializes in data & software whereas Anthony focuses on finance & accounting. Finally, outside of the New York based team, we also have a team of junior accountants supporting us on day to day.
As you can see, we have grown substantially over the past year. The team I have built has enabled me to fully step back from WGNY to pursue interim CFO engagements full time and more than anything, I thank Evan for leading the herd. Looking forward to the future and of course please reach out if we can support your needs in any way.
GW
