Venture Capital | Operator | Independent Director | National Bank Founder | Lecturer & Mentor - Stanford University GSB | 3-Exits
At SEV, JP serves as President, leading cross-border strategy and ecosystem design. He converts under-recognized operators into globally competitive founders, leveraging 30+ years as founder, operator, and investor to create durable companies anchored in Calgary with national Canadian relevance.
Originally from New York City, JP is a multi-disciplined senior executive specializing in organizational behavior optimization, market engagement strategy, and go-to-market design for companies disrupting traditional models. His career centers on building economic infrastructure for underserved markets—experience that directly informs SEV's mission.
Prior to Colorado, JP was Head Trader for a California family office hedge fund and served as equities portfolio and treasury asset manager for Merrill Lynch and Smith Barney/Morgan Stanley in New York City, specializing in women- and BIPOC-owned companies.
In 2007, JP founded Solera National Bancorp, raising $29M in a 13-state self-underwritten IPO and building the institution to over $1.3B in assets, the first nationally-approved bank holding company in Colorado in ten years and the first national Hispanic-markets specialized bank in the U.S. This experience building financial infrastructure for underserved communities shapes SEV's approach to treating operator capability as economic infrastructure.
Through Bainbridge Ventures, JP advised NYC's Department of Finance and served as Subject Matter Expert to the U.S. Postal Service Office of Inspector General on underserved markets lending, yielding the white paper "Providing Non-Bank Financial Services for the Underserved" (2014), endorsed by Senator Elizabeth Warren.
JP is the longest-serving mentor, lecturer, and capital advisor for Stanford University's Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative (SLEI) at Stanford's Graduate School of Business since 2015. This network, plus involvement with Access Mode, gBETA, and Techstars, U.S. Department of State, provides SEV with cross-border commercialization pathways helping Calgary companies access U.S. markets while retaining Canadian jobs and IP.
JP has served on over twenty boards spanning bank holding companies, VCs, fintechs, and CDFIs. He lives in Lafayette, Colorado with his family, holds a BA in International Relations from Syracuse's Maxwell School, and is an avid fly fisherman, jazz musician, and F1 enthusiast.