Our Team
With decades of investment experience, Silver Spike’s partners include early cannabis investors, entrepreneurs, and operators as well as emerging market finance veterans experienced in complex legal and regulatory characteristics like the cannabis landscape today.
Managing Partners
Scott Gordon
Scott has over 30 years of investing and asset management experience in emerging markets. He was one of the founding members of the JP Morgan emerging market business and later went on to head the market leading emerging market and distressed investing effort at ING Capital and the global special situations group at Bank of America. Scott then went to the buy side, where he led the emerging market businesses at Marathon Asset Management, Caxton Associates, and Taconic Capital.
Prior to launching Silver Spike, Scott was President of Fintech Advisory, a multi – billion dollar Family Office fund.
William Healy
From 1998 to 2016, he worked in the securities and asset management divisions of Deutsche Bank and managed several key client sales initiatives. From 1993 to 1998, he formed and led the ING Barings’ emerging markets institutional debt sales team where he covered clients and frequently helped structure, price, and pre-market many of the firm’s capital markets transactions.
He began his career in 1986 at The Chase Manhattan Bank where he advised multinational corporations on cross-border funding of their Latin America-domiciled operations.
He is a Member of the Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst Association (CAIA).
Umesh Mahajan
Partner, Co-Head Credit
Umesh Mahajan joined Silver Spike’s investment team in July 2021.
Umesh has a 28-year career in various middle-market, credit, and special situations investing.
Prior to Silver Spike, he was a Managing Director for four years at Ascribe Capital, a credit fund focused on value investing in middle market companies. From September 2003 to August 2016, he worked at Merrill Lynch and Bank of America in various roles in their Global Markets and Investment Banking divisions in New York. Umesh specialized in credit and special situation investing, as a Managing Director in the Global Credit and Special Situations group at Bank of America Securities and as a Vice President at Principal Credit Group at Merrill Lynch; he also worked in Merrill Lynch’s energy and power investment banking group for 2 years. From 1994 to 2001, Umesh worked in J.P. Morgan’s investment banking team in Asia.
He holds a Certificate in ESG Investing from the CFA Institute.
Dino Colonna, CFA
Partner, Co-Head Credit
Dino Colonna joined Silver Spike’s investment team in January 2020.
Since 2001, Mr. Colonna has managed traditional and alternative investment portfolios and advised corporations and institutional investors across the global capital markets.
Prior to Silver Spike, Dino was managing partner at Madison Capital Advisors, a middle-market asset-backed lending and advisory firm focused on emerging growth companies in the cannabis, life sciences and tech sectors. Prior to Madison, Dino spent over 10 years as an investment banker at the top-ranked Equity Capital Markets team at Barclays in London, and as a senior research analyst at Forest Investment Management, a global multi-strategy hedge fund. With Barclays, he advised on and structured over $8bn of equity, derivative and debt transactions and while at Forest, he specialized in credit and equity research, and was part of the portfolio management team managing a $500mm+ multi-strategy portfolio.
Paul Penney, CPA
Partner, Portfolio Manager
Paul Penney is an experienced institutional investor, research analyst, private company executive and board member. He is also an early and engaged cannabis industry private/public company investor, lender, strategic advisor and founder.
As the CIO of Safe Harbor Financial and KreditForce, Paul developed a substantial rolodex of cannabis relationships. His impressive responsibilities in cannabis range from managing a senior secured/equity fund to strategic advisory and financial roles. Paul previously worked on the institutional equity desk at Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers.
Previous to KreditForce, Paul was a Managing Director and Sr. Research Analyst focused on special situations at Northland Capital. While at Northland, Paul became the first US based analyst to officially provide/publish research on the legalized US cannabis sector and was an active advisor and underwriter for several of the largest cannabis Multi-State Operator going public transactions. He previously served as a Portfolio Manager at Cypress Funds, and a Founding Partner at Compass North Capital, an equity focused hedge fund.
Scott Zach
Partner
Scott Zach is a former MP for a Fortune 100 financial institution. During his ~20 years in this role, Scott led the transformation of a small insurance agency of ~25 agents to a financial planning powerhouse of ~130 financial advisors. During his tenure, the organization grew from less than $100M in AUM to over $3B and became the most productive organization per capita in the enterprise. During his service as MP, Scott was elected by his peers as President and successfully led the efforts with McKinsey & Company for a new partnership structure and a significant new strategic investment.
Scott obtained his graduate certificate from Harvard University in Real Estate Investment Management and began to built a real estate portfolio. Investor interest in his projects led Scott to establish Veras Real Estate Fund of America, and Legacy Fund Management LLC to facilitate the scaling of his real estate portfolio through investor participation.
Advisory Board
Dr. Orrin Devinsky
Since 1989, Dr. Devinsky has directed the NYU Langone Comprehensive Epilepsy Center and is a professor of neurology, neuroscience, psychiatry and neurosurgery at the NYU School of Medicine.
From 2013 to 2018, Dr. Devinsky served as a lead investigator for the GW Pharma trials of Epidiolex, a cannabis-based prescription for childhood-onset severe epilepsy. Since 2018, Dr. Devinsky has served as the chief medical officer for Receptor Life Sciences, a cannabinoid medicine drug development company.
In addition to his clinical trial work, Dr. Devinsky serves on numerous advisory boards including Receptor Life Sciences, Script Biosciences, and HitchBio. He is the Chief Medical Advisor for Blackrock Neurotech and Neunos. He is also the Managing Partner of PhiFund Ventures, an early stage life sciences VC.
Richard Prager
Rich started his career on Wall Street and became the global head of rates, currencies & commodities at Bank of America after which he transitioned and became the global head of trading, liquidity & investments platform at Blackrock. He was also a member of their global executive committee.
After leaving his career on Wall Street, he has acted as an advisor and currently is a board member of MarketAxess and is a senior advisor for Trestata.
Kenneth H. Landis
Since 2000, Mr. Landis has been the CEO of Landis Capital, LLC, a provider of capital for seed, early stage and later stage venture investments in consumer products, ecommerce and enterprise companies.
Prior to starting his own investment company, he has held numerous senior positions across the consumer products sector, including co-founder and board member of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, CEO of Benetton Cosmetics Corp, senior vice president of Alfin, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of cosmetics products, and treasurer of IMS Health, Inc., a provider of information, services and technology for the healthcare industry.
Today, he currently serves on the board of directors of several early stage private companies and as a trustee of Suffield Academy.
Richard M. Goldman
Mr. Goldman brings tremendous financial services expertise given his vast experience advising various financial firms.
Currently, Mr. Goldman serves as an independent director for the O’Shares Investments ETF Trust and is the independent chairman of the board of the Harvest Volatility Edge Trust, the entity responsible for the Harvest Edge mutual funds. He is also on the board of directors of Trinitas Capital Management, a credit-focused investment management firm and serves as lead independent director for the Axonic Alternative Income Interval Fund.
Prior to becoming an independent director and advisor, Mr. Goldman served as COO of Guggenheim Investments from 2010-2011 and was the CEO of Rydex Investments from 2007-2012.
Greg Gentile
Greg Gentile served as Silver Spike Capital’s President from inception until spring of 2023. Greg brings significant investment experience and has over 20 years of extensive lending experience evaluating, underwriting and managing risk.
From 2010 to 2018, Greg was CEO of GMG Investment Advisors, LLC, a direct lending investment management company.
Prior to founding GMG, Greg served as a managing director at Barclays Capital and Lehman Brothers where he was Head of Latin America Credit Trading and Structured Products at both institutions.
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