Phil is a chartered financial analyst (CFA) and has been a student of finance since 1978. His investment advisory track began as a financial analyst with Brown-Forman Corporation in Louisville, KY, where he helped complete major acquisitions for and a restructuring of the corporation. After Brown-Forman he was a shareholder and portfolio manager at Kingsley, Jennision, McNulty and Morse, an investment advisor in San Francisco. Before joining Equius in 1991, he was a partner and the director of Ernst & Young's West Region Corporate Finance Group.

Phil’s financial economics roots were formed at business school where he was exposed to luminaries such as William Sharpe, a Nobel laureate in Economic Sciences and one of the architects of Modern Portfolio Theory. Those roots grounded Phil with an appreciation of what factors account for risk and return in the capital markets and guided him as he built Equius with the goal of managing prudently diversified portfolios for clients all over the world as efficiently as possible. His exchanges with Professor Daniel Kahneman, the first psychologist to receive the Nobel Prize in Economic Science, helped him develop the concept of what we at Equius now call financial satisfaction in which we guide our clients to balance their wealth with what they value through the work (professional, personal and philanthropic) they pursue.

Phil is a board member of three organizations: Alchemia, a non-profit serving people with developmental disabilities through the arts, dance and theater; Project Redwood, a non-profit partnership formed by his business school class that applies a venture-philanthropy approach to funding, mentoring, and coaching individuals and organizations that provide solutions to alleviate the causes and effects of poverty; and the Equius Foundation, of which he is Chairman.

Phil is married and further blessed with three children. He is a master swimmer and serves on his team’s board. He has coached his local Special Olympics' swimming team. Unlike his Dutch ancestors, he has learned to limit his involvement in Tulipomania to growing bulbs, not trading them. He also collects wine and is committed to making sure his collection dwindles over time.