About Us

Hello, I’m Alex, and welcome to our site! Bio pages tend to be a bit boring so I will try and mix it up a bit for your reading pleasure. Here goes…

I graduated from George Washington University with a doctorate in Clinical Psychology. During this time, I focused my research efforts on psychometrics (fancy way of saying “I worked on surveys") and was a research fellow for the National Institutes of Health. I created a questionnaire to assess how your health beliefs affect how you utilize medical services. It was well-received and set me up for an academic career.

Upon graduating, my research interests evolved to investments, and I sought a formal career in the financial industry. Staying true to my scientist-practitioner mindset, I joined McLean Asset Management and was able to publish a number of articles, and one went on to win a fancy award too! I also founded a financial planning software company to better serve the industry and our underlying clients.

Never one to sit still for very long, I became extremely disillusioned by the lack of assessment tools used in our profession that can help individuals determine their best path for retirement success. (This, by the way, is the largest understatement on this site.)

I took Wade’s framework for Retirement Income Planning (more on Wade later) and sought to quantify these concepts into a workable retirement income model. With the help of our Retirement Researcher community, we conducted a hugely successful investigation that delivered the RISA® right to your screen.