Ken is a veteran and innovator in higher education finance with more than 25 years spent managing start-up through Fortune 1000 companies, helping them create meaningful change and improvement in their delivery of financial services.  During his tenure at Goal Financial, from 2003-2007, the company originated more than $8 billion in student loans and became a top 10 student-loan provider.

After the company’s exit from the lending space in 2008, Ken spearheaded the reinvention of Goal Financial into Goal Investment Group, a family of financial technology companies which serve the consumer finance market. Through its services affiliate Goal Solutions, the company services and manages over $26 billion in consumer assets for originators and financial investors. Since 2013, Goal Investment Group has been active investor, deploying $240 million of its own capital in 44 separate transactions.

Since 2015, Ken has also served as CEO of Ascent Funding, a student focused originator which seeks to revolutionize the way students pay for college.

Education:

University of Massachusetts, B.B.A | Columbia University, M.B.A

Ryan is a 20+ year veteran of the consumer finance industry and currently leads Ascent Funding’s capital markets and business development initiatives. Ryan has led or has been involved in structuring over $15B of asset-backed securitizations, warehouse financings and forward flow agreements across student, auto, credit card, solar and home improvement asset classes over his career. Ryan is a skilled leader in building teams in rapid growth financial operations which include Goal Solutions, Capital One and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Ryan also serves as the CFO of affiliates Goal Solutions, Ascent Funding and Goal Investment Management.

Education:

University of Utah, B.S. / Brigham Young University, M.B.A.

As President of Goal Solutions and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Matt leads a vertically integrated services business that manages $26b in unsecured and secured consumer loans, providing primary servicing, backup servicing, master servicing, collections, SPV management, investor reporting, valuation, analytics, data visualization and forecasting. Goal partners with over 120 clients including traditional banks, insurance companies, investment banks, credit unions, hedge funds, fin tech originators, schools and other financial stakeholders.

Prior to being President of Goal Solutions Matt served as the Chief Operating Officer for Goal Solutions and Ascent, a sister company of Goal Solutions that originates student loans. As a founder of the Ascent business Matt built out the credit risk, operations, product, as well as technology functions and developed the original underwriting scorecards for its proprietary loan products. Over his nearly 15 years at Goal, Matt also built and ran the Asset Management group, led performance analytics, designed and executed niche securitization programs, and sat on the Investment Committee where he sourced and negotiated whole loan acquisitions

Prior to joining Goal in early 2007 Matt worked at GE Capital in credit risk for 6 years. Matt currently serves on the board of the Student Loan Servicing Alliance (SLSA), the industry trade group for student loan servicers.

Education:

Macalester College, B.A. | University of Minnesota, M.B.A.

Tristan Fleming brings over 20 years of experience in legal and compliance matters, most of which has been focused on consumer loans. Previously, Tristan spent 9 years as General Counsel of GCO Education Loan Funding Corp., a student loan company with over $6B in assets under management at its peak. Prior to GCO, Tristan was an associate at the law firm of Thacher Proffitt & Wood, LLP in New York City, starting out in the Corporate and Financial Institutions group and then specializing in private student loan securitizations. Tristan and his team are responsible for all legal affairs of the company and its subsidiaries, including litigation, compliance, legal strategy and corporate governance.

Tristan is licensed to practice in New York, New Jersey and Colorado.

Education:

The University of Virginia, B.A | Georgetown University, J.D.