Aaron Dirlam

Aaron Dirlam is the Co-Founder and Co-Chief Investment Officer of SpringTide Partners, a boutique investment research, consulting, and management firm he co-founded in 2017. Based in Chicago, SpringTide delivers forward-thinking investment solutions for family offices, registered investment advisors (RIAs), and foundations. The firm has experienced significant growth since its founding, ranking #9 on RIA Channel's 2022 Top Wealth Managers By Growth list after its assets under management grew 449% from 2020 to 2021. SpringTide now advises on over $80 billion in client assets across more than 140 individual clients, ranging from small breakaway firms to $1B+ RIAs and family offices.

Prior to launching SpringTide, Aaron spent over a decade building deep expertise in investment research and portfolio management. He served as Director of Research at Altair Advisers, an independent wealth advisory firm, where he honed his skills in manager selection and asset allocation. Before Altair, he was a Senior Investment Analyst at Vogel Consulting, a multi-service family office, and earlier in his career he worked as a Senior Associate at Harris Associates from 1999 to 2004.

Aaron graduated from Lake Forest College with degrees in Business and Psychology. He holds both the CFA (Chartered Financial Analyst) and CAIA (Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst) designations, reflecting his deep expertise in traditional and alternative investment strategies. Beyond his institutional work, Aaron is also active as an angel investor, participating in seed-stage opportunities.

SpringTide Partners operates with a distinctive mean reversion investment framework that has been refined through multiple market cycles. The firm's philosophy centers on three principles: objectivity, discipline, and humility. Aaron and the SpringTide team maintain an unconstrained mandate, allowing them to deviate from strategic portfolios based on mean reversion opportunities across asset classes -- overweighting or underweighting equities, fixed income, or adjusting duration and credit quality exposures as conditions warrant.

On the manager selection front, SpringTide is indifferent to whether a passive or active approach is optimal, focusing instead on making the best decision for each asset class at any given time. The firm employs a disciplined process with structured frameworks to prevent thesis creep. In some cases, they will hold passive investments temporarily while waiting for mean reversion opportunities to emerge within active managers. SpringTide specializes across real estate, private equity, venture capital, private credit, and other alternative investments, providing clients with access to institutional-quality strategies.

As an angel investor, Aaron focuses on seed-stage opportunities, bringing his institutional-grade research and diligence approach to early-stage investing.