Stephan Pene

Stephan R. ("Steve") Pene is a Los Angeles–based financial executive who spent most of his career in compliance and finance leadership at wealth-management firms. He has been affiliated with Windward Capital Management Company since October 2004, serving as its Chief Financial Officer and Chief Compliance Officer. Windward, founded in 1996, is a full-service investment advisory firm providing wealth management and planning for ultra-high-net-worth individuals, families, and institutions; regulatory filings list it with roughly $380 million in regulatory assets under management and a small team of about 11 employees. Pene also served as CFO of S.L. Reed & Company, the affiliated broker-dealer that shares leadership (CEO Joseph Robillard) with Windward — which is the origin of the [hidden] email address.

Earlier in his career, Pene held finance roles at National Planning Holdings and at Wells Fargo Van Kasper. He describes himself on LinkedIn as a "financial executive with extensive financial reporting, budget preparation, [and] operations" experience. His LinkedIn profile now lists him as the retired CFO/CCO of Windward Capital, and he no longer appears on the current Windward or S.L. Reed team rosters, consistent with that retirement.

Pene was educated at Pepperdine University, where he attended (per LinkedIn) between roughly 1984 and 1986 and earned a Master of Business Administration. His public professional footprint is that of a back-office finance and compliance leader within a private wealth-management practice rather than a deal-sourcing investor.

• No personally stated startup-investment thesis was found in any source. His professional role is wealth management and compliance, not venture or angel investing.
• In his CFO/CCO capacity at Windward Capital, the firm's mandate is comprehensive, personalized public-markets investment management, estate and tax planning, and multigenerational wealth preservation for ultra-high-net-worth clients — not early-stage startup financing.
• Any characterization of him as a seed-stage "angel investor" with a defined check size or target company profile could not be substantiated and should be treated as unverified.