Dylan Minor

Dylan B. Minor is the co-founder, Chief Strategist, and Chief Investment Officer of Omega Financial Group, an independent Santa Barbara wealth management firm he founded (with Bryan Hong) that manages roughly $250 million in client assets. He was first introduced to financial services in 1990 and began his career in investment management at Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo, working in private wealth before launching his own practice. In addition to Omega, he established and manages the Argos Total Return Fund (Argos Global Advisors), a hedge fund he describes as a "financial laboratory." At Omega he developed a proprietary planning approach he brands "Optimized Wealth Integration®," aimed at linking clients' financial planning with non-financial and sustainability goals.

Minor is also a finance and strategy academic with an unusually strong research record. He holds a B.A. in Mathematics and Economics (minor in English) from UC Santa Barbara (2006, summa cum laude) and both an M.S. in Business Administration (2008) and a Ph.D. (2011) from UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He carries the CFP®, ChFC, and CLU designations (and previously the CIMA®, 2006–2016). He has held professorships at Northwestern's Kellogg School of Management and Harvard Business School, and currently serves as an Adjunct Associate Professor of Strategy at UCLA Anderson and as Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), where he is the Brandmeyer Fellow for Impact and Sustainable Investing.

His research spans corporate social responsibility, strategic human capital and HR management, corporate governance, business ethics, non-market strategy, and sustainable/responsible investing. The Social Science Research Network (SSRN) ranks his research impact in the top 1% of scholars, and his work has been featured in outlets including NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. He was awarded the Moskowitz Prize for his research in sustainable and responsible investing. He also serves on the board of the Santa Barbara Symphony.

• Primary lens is sustainable, responsible, and impact (ESG) investing — the theme of both his award-winning academic research (Moskowitz Prize) and his advisory practice, which integrates clients' financial and social goals.
• Invests and advises through wealth-management mandates and a hedge fund (Argos Total Return Fund) rather than a startup angel/seed vehicle; his stated approach ("Optimized Wealth Integration®") emphasizes integrating financial planning with non-financial considerations across a family's full balance sheet.
• Academic focus suggests he screens on governance, ethics, and corporate social responsibility as drivers of long-term financial performance — a bias toward companies where non-financial factors and shareholder value align.
• Caveat for founders: no publicly documented seed-stage check size, target-company profile, or angel deal criteria could be verified. Treat the stub's "angel / seed" framing with skepticism until confirmed directly with him.