Chip Kispert – Founder & Managing Partner

Chip Kispert founded Beacon Strategies, LLC, in 2006. He has over twenty-three years of experience in the financial services industry. His background includes operations, account management, marketing, sales and firm management. Having worked for some of the finest securities and support firms on Wall Street Chip now delivers his own unique perspectives and strategies to the firms that work with Beacon Strategies.

“Our vision was, and is, to establish the leading Industry Consulting and Research Group with rich relationships including broker dealers, solutions vendors and clearing firms. Beacon is dedicated exclusively to the broker dealer channel. Our services cater to firms that are interested in better understanding their industry, peers, and themselves.

Our core strengths are to deliver innovative thinking with excellence in industry research, BD evolution, marketing and communications support, and business acquisition linking. Our client base ranges from Fortune 1000 companies to modest firms. As a trusted advisor we provided our clients with advances in thought, process and relationships that have added dollars to their bottom lines.
The output of our vision has been to export rich knowledge to our clients. Our perspective is unique because of the three roads that we can effortlessly walk; broker dealers, solutions vendors and clearing firms. With access to hundreds of c-level broker dealer decision-makers, most c-level executives at solutions vendors, and many senior managers at clearing firms our reach is broad and filled with complex interpretation.

Our interpretation takes each of the preceding groups, with their own unique perspective, and picks out the best of innovation while side-steeping the pitfalls. And in this way we take our position as being a ‘thought leader’ in the industry, and deliver thoughtful intelligence that impact our clients’ bottom lines.”

Marshall Levin – Partner

Marshall has more than 30 years of strategy & product development experience across the of financial services spectrum. He has successfully exploited technology to create significant business opportunities and substantial value propositions for customers in consumer credit, institutional trading, retail brokerage, securities clearing, and both life and health insurance. He has held Series 7, 24 and 63 licenses dating back to 1983.
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Marshall has held Series 7, 24 and 63 licenses dating back to 1983. He has achieved success in roles ranging from a P&L owner in Fortune 10 financial services organizations; Merrill Lynch, American Express, Dean Witter to C-level responsibility for venture funded start-ups. His innovative thinking received a US Patent in 1993 for a health insurance processing system.

For the four years immediately prior to joining Beacon Strategies, Marshall has focused his business acumen and entrepreneurial skills on developing a vision for how Broadridge can best serve the independent broker dealer market. This culminated in his leading Broadridge’s acquisition of Investigo and Marshall creating the Broker-Dealer Business Solutions unit of which he was General Manager. Marshall holds an AB from Franklin & Marshall College and an MBA from NYU.

Dale L. Jones – Director – Marketing Agency

Dale’s twenty plus years of experience across business-to-business sectors includes building successful businesses and leading award-winning marketing programs and teams for global technology brands as well as start-ups.

During his career he has worked in the majority of the world’s major markets and developed a reputation as a highly creative executive, marketing turn-around specialist, entrepreneur and authority on message development.

Dale is a highly experienced, skilled master of communications, branding and marketing, who utilizes strategic, creative thinking, and wide array of marketing capabilities for his clients. He cuts to the essence of difficult challenges, delivers successful marketing and communications solutions.  His responsibilities have included the management of critical client relationships and day-to-day account execution activities, the supervision of multiple teams of practitioners, new business development in key growth segments, and recruiting and mentoring of agency personnel.

Dale has received numerous awards including the Crystal Award; the Communicator Award of Merit from the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC); the Gold Pick Award from the Colorado Chapter of the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) and the Distinguished Communicator Award given annually by the International Association of Business Communicators. He holds B.S. degrees in business from Colorado State University, and an MBA in finance from the University of Denver.

Thekla Fagerlie-Madsen – Associate – Editor

Thekla will be responsible for content development and management, the delivery of The Beacon Report, and providing unbiased research and analysis to broker dealers. She brings 15 years of experience in technical writing, web content management, portal design, system documentation, quality assurance, and workflow management for the banking, financial services, e-business, municipal financing, and electric and telecommunications industries.

Recently while consulting to a large broker dealer, Thekla led the development and implementation of a field facing document management platform.  She has also worked on field facing projects for Wells Fargo and AgriBank, FCB. Her articles have appeared in national trade journals and she has assisted several start-up companies as Interim Communications Director. Thekla holds a B.S. degree from the University of Wisconsin-River Falls in Journalism and English.