About Us – Valkyrie

Leah Wald

Chief Executive Officer

Leah Wald is an economist with an expertise in asset management focusing on value investing. As a direct report to the CEO of Vital Financial, Ms. Wald spearheaded investment strategies for multi-billion dollar asset managers on global macro strategy.

Prior, Ms. Wald was a Partner at Lucid Investment Strategies, an asset management firm specializing in cryptocurrency investments. Ms. Wald worked at the World Bank Group and co-founded Veterati, a mentorship platform assisting unemployed and transitioning US veterans to secure meaningful employment.

Ms. Wald is a contributing writer for Forbes and co-authored the book Hyperwave Theory: The Rogue Waves of Financial Markets. Ms. Wald has a BA in International Political Economy and a MSc in Management specialized in International Business from IE Business School.

She studied at University of Beijing, University of Haifa, and served as a research assistant to the Director of University of Cambridge's Lauterpacht Centre for International Law where she researched and coded algorithms for a dataset examining the role of arbitrator background for outcomes in international investment arbitration.

Steven McClurg

Chief Investment Officer

Steven McClurg is the Chief Investment Officer of Valkyrie Investments. He has considerable traditional finance and Fintech experience, ranging from insurtech and payments to blockchain.

Previously, Mr. McClurg was a Managing Director at Guggenheim Partners, where he was a portfolio manager and responsible for portfolio construction and strategy for fixed income and private equity. Most recently, Mr. McClurg founded Theseus Capital, a blockchain-powered asset management platform which was acquired by a merchant bank, Galaxy Digital, where he continued as Managing Director, building their asset management and public funds businesses. He also co-founded payments company, Paydrop. He also has experience in leadership roles in technology companies such as Electronic Arts and Crowdfunder. Mr. McClurg holds a Master of Science and an MBA from Pepperdine University, where he has served as an adjunct professor.

Lori Tiernan

Managing Director of Marketing

Lori Tiernan brings over a decade of experience launching and growing financial brands. Since 2013, she has run Innovative Asset Growth where she served in an outsourced CMO capacity to several emerging and niche asset managers and FinTech brands.

Prior to launching her own firm, Ms. Tiernan ran Marketing and Investor Relations for a long only equity hedge fund. She was an early employee in Institutional Distribution and Marketing at Guggenheim investments and helped the firm expand their footprint globally and raise billions in new assets.

Ms. Tiernan is a speaker and advocate for women in the technology and financial services sector and runs a non profit in New Hampshire that provides Pro Bono marketing service to local businesses. She is a graduate of the University of Richmond.

John Key

Managing Director

John is the Managing Director of Valkyrie Investments. Key is the Principal/Founder of Key Strategic Advisors, LLC, a strategic advisory and consulting firm specializing in advising asset managers on their growth strategies and corporate development initiatives.Most recently, John was a Senior Managing Director in UBS Investment Bank’s Global Financial Institutions Group focused primarily on working with asset management and related companies. He has extensive experience in the origination, structuring and capital raising of investment products on behalf of asset management companies, launching over 145 investment vehicles raising in excess of $100 billion in new assets. John was also head of the Fund Advisory and Shareholder Services Group that is responsible for providing clients and fund Boards with comprehensive market analysis.

John joined PaineWebber in 1992 and occupied a variety of roles in different areas within the Private Client Group before joining the Investment Bank.

John holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and History from Stony Brook University.

Nick Bonos

Head of Fund Operations

Nikolaos (Nick) Bonos has been in the financial services industry for more than 32 years. He has worked in various senior operational roles for State Street, JP Morgan Chase, Rydex Investments, Security Benefit Corp., Guggenheim Investments, and MUFG Investor Services (US), LLC.
He also has held various senior officer roles for the Rydex Funds, Rydex ETF’s, Rydex Specialized Products LLC, Security Funds, Guggenheim Funds, and Guggenheim ETF’s throughout the years.
He also assisted in the transaction of Rydex Investments to Security Benefit Corporation in 2006.
He was President of Rydex Fund Services when it was sold to MUFG in 2016.
Nick graduated with a BSBA cum laude from Suffolk University in 1986.

Kristen Flores

Operations Manager

Kristen Flores is a graduate of Pepperdine University with a degree in Business Administration. Having spent most of her career in project management in the accounting and finance industry, she understands the importance of teamwork and team synergy .Growing up in a family whose business is concrete, Kristen has been inspired by the large-scale projects built in Los Angeles. Having researched the best opportunities for participating in this market, Kristen joined BCPM with the goal of learning from the thought leaders of the residential construction industry.As a Project Coordinator, Kristen assists in developing the most influential and professional design and construction teams in the City and in the Country. She assists in the coordination of the day to day responsibilities of the project team, as well as apply her background in finance to oversee each project budget on a daily basis.

Sean Rooney

Head of Research

Sean Rooney graduated from Pepperdine University with a degree in Business Administration and an accomplished D1 volleyball career. After four All-American seasons and one NCAA championship, Sean joined the United States National Team and competed in two Olympic Games, earning a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. While playing professionally in Russia, Italy and South Korea, Sean became fascinated with analyzing, investing, and trading financial markets. Especially in the latter country where advanced smartphone and payment technologies were colliding with the fast-developing world of fintech and cryptocurrency. In 2014, Sean retired from volleyball due to injury and returned to Orange County, California where he helped launch a successful fitness startup as well as a family operated business in the floral industry. In 2015, Sean began exploring the crypto currency space while managing his own trades. He has continued his passion for the digital asset market and is thrilled to return to a fast-paced team environment with Valkyrie.

Jamie Jones

VP of Sales

Jamie began her career in the financial industry 8 years ago as an Investment Advisor before transitioning to investment product sales at JPMorgan Asset Management. She has comprehensive experience partnering with RIA and Independent Broker Dealer firms, with breadth of expertise in ETFs, mutual funds, structured products, alternative and digital assets. Jamie carries an MBA from the University of Arkansas and received her bachelor's degree from the College of Charleston where she played women's Division 1 tennis.

John Mulroy

Head of Capital Markets

John is a Senior-Level Capital Markets Executive with 25+ years of experience specializing in ETF creation and distribution, with more than 35 years of experience in the Financial Industry as a whole. After graduating Cum Laude from CUNY John Jay College of Criminal Justice, John began his career at Spear Leeds & Kellogg in 1982 managing the NYSE Major Market Index (XMI). In 1989 John joined Hull Trading Company/Goldman Sachs, managing the New York office and their trade operations, in addition to being the floor official on the American Stock Exchange. John is an experienced market maker in several options and ETF products including SPYDERS, DIAMONDS and QQQQ’S, in addition to advising and orchestrating the launch of Barclays iShares products. More recently, John managed the ETF team at Guggenheim Investments in Chicago and oversaw 77 ETFs including the BulletShares ETFs, raising $40 billion in AUM before selling the Guggenheim ETF franchise to Invesco in April 2018.

Shawn Singh

Legal Advisor

Mr. Singh is an experienced financial services legal, compliance, fintech and business professional with a proven track record of accomplishment and leadership demonstrated over the last 20+ years in the United States and Canada.

Mr. Singh has an in-depth understanding of the investment management space and brings a diverse transactional, securities, cybersecurity, corporate, compliance, regulatory and fund formation expertise to bear when providing strategic and commercial legal and compliance advice to both internal and external stakeholders. He has a thorough knowledge of the Investment Advisers Act, various securities laws and an in-depth knowledge of FATCA, CRS, FCPA, UK, Asia and European regulatory and securities regimes.

He is a trusted counselor to senior management and relied upon for his commercial judgment and valued for building integrated, solutions-oriented teams within a global asset manager.

He was the Chief Operating Officer, General Counsel and Chief Compliance Officer of a multi-billion dollar asset manager and was responsible for the Brevan Howard firm spin out in 2014-2015.

Previously he has overseen (from a Legal, Regulatory, Operations and Compliance perspective) advisers with assets under supervision in excess of $125 billion dollars and was previously an associate at Fried Frank, Dewey LeBoeuf, Norton Rose Fulbright and Bryan Cave.

Previous to his legal career he was a private banker for Bank of Nova Scotia, owned mKarma Productions - responsible for producing live shows and entertainment productions and consulting services for feature films. Mr. Singh is a recipient of the Commonwealth Leadership Award.

Donal Mastrangelo

Head of Distribution

Donal Mastrangelo is a 35 year Wall Street veteran with multi channel, multi product capital raising expertise. He most recently led iFunds Distribution for Mercury Capital Advisors, with multiple channels across the US. Prior to this he was with Guggenheim Partners, responsible for business development, client service and portfolio dialogue spanning product capabilities including, but not limited to, private funds, public funds, SMAs and ETFs. Before joining Guggenheim, he was the founding principal responsible for business development and client service at NorthRoad Capital Management.

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