People on the Move: Spotlight on Mark Schoenbeck

Mark Schoenbeck’s career - and his life – has come full circle.

The former investment advisor and CFP holder started at Denver-based Curian Capital, then became the chief marketing officer at Genworth Financial Wealth Management. He has returned to Curian, this time as its senior vice president and chief marketing officer, the company announced on Wednesday.

In his second tour of duty at Curian, Schoenbeck will essentially wear three hats in a very full job. He will oversee Curian Capital’s marketing, practice management and national accounts teams; implement and enhance Curian’s practice management programs, aimed at helping advisors build more efficient and profitable businesses; and he will lead the way in developing and maintaining Curian’s key strategic relationships with distribution partners across multiple advisory channels.

But that is what Schoenbeck likes about the job. It is all part of Curian’s bustling atmosphere and steady growth. “There are very exciting things happening at Curian now,” Schoenbeck said in an interview. “Management has invested money to grow the firm. The ability to come back and join a fantastic group of people and help them meet growth objectives and goals was an exciting one for me, professionally.”

He has mastered all of those functions in his former tenure at Genworth. There, he developed and carried out the firm’s marketing and, public relations and corporate events strategies. He penned a book, "Crossing the Sea,” an allegory about the importance of employing different strategies for investing, depending on market conditions. He also played a key role in Genworth’s practice management offerings. The experience from that will certainly come into play in the third component of his job at Curian, in which he hopes to forge strategic partnerships with large independent broker-dealer firms.

In any case, Schoenbeck said, Curian has a great team of professionals who have done a lot to develop the company’s brand. They have done custom marketing work for financial advisors, including developing logos and brochures and helping advisory firms re-brand themselves.

“We have a really solid team that delivers the content that helps advisors have a profitable and more rewarding practice,” Schoenbeck said.

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Kendall Borchardt, a regional director with Lindner Capital Advisors, based in Marietta, Ga., has been elected president of the Financial Planning Association of Georgia. The FPA of Georgia is one of the Denver-based Financial Planning Association’s, 96 chapters nationwide, and is frequently awarded the group’s “Gold Status.”

Joseph I. Laganza has joined Los Angeles-based Griffin Capital Securities as its managing director of national accounts. He had been senior vice president of National Accounts at Lightstone Securities.

Curtis Stefanak has joined the law firm SNR Denton as counsel in its corporate group. There, he will advise registered and unregistered funds and advisors, business development companies and independent directors of mutual funds on various matters relating to compliance with the Investment Company Act and Investment Advisors Act. Previously, Stefanak was counsel at Bingham McCutchen.

The Securities and Exchange Commission appointed Eileen Rominger as director of investment management. In that role, which she begins in February, she will oversee regulatory activities for the investment management industry. She previously worked for 18 years at Oppenheimer Capital, where she was a portfolio manager, managing director, and a member of its executive committee.

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