Chris Charles

Christopher D. Charles is President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Compliance Officer of Wulff, Hansen & Co., a San Rafael, California–based public finance and investment advisory firm founded in 1931. He joined the firm in 1979 and has spent his entire senior career there, holding roles including Manager – Municipal Trading and Director of Equity Research before moving into executive leadership. From 1997 to 2002 he served as the firm's Executive Vice President, CEO, and COO, and he has led the firm as President/CEO since.

In 1985 Charles formed Wulff Capital Management, the firm's investment advisory division, to consolidate and expand the discretionary investment-advisory and portfolio-management services Wulff, Hansen had offered in the decades since its founding. On the broker-dealer side, the firm today concentrates on public finance advisory work — municipal financing and refinancing, healthcare finance, and energy-project finance — supported by a network of specialized technical consultants.

Charles is unusually active in industry self-regulation and compliance circles. He has served multiple terms on FINRA committees — the District 1 Committee (2006–2009, 2010), the National Advisory Council (2009), the Small Firm Advisory Board (2012–2014), the Fixed Income Committee (2015–2017), and currently the West Region and Professional Qualifications committees. He sat on the Board of Directors of the National Society of Compliance Professionals (NSCP) from 2015 to 2021 and co-founded that organization's Municipal Advisor Committee. He is a frequent speaker at forums sponsored by FINRA, the MSRB, and NSCP, and has written for *Practical Compliance and Risk Management*. He holds an extensive slate of securities licenses, including the SIE and Series 7, 14, 24, 50, 52, 53, 54, 57, 79, and 99.

• Operates through Wulff Capital Management, a registered investment advisory practice offering discretionary portfolio management and wealth advisory — an ongoing advisory relationship model, not venture check-writing.
• Core firm business is public finance and municipal securities: structuring financing and refinancing for public-sector, healthcare, and energy issuers.
• Emphasis on fixed income and municipal markets, consistent with Charles's background in municipal trading and his service on FINRA's Fixed Income Committee.
• No verifiable public record of seed-stage, angel, or startup equity investing under this individual or firm.