CAIS Live Conversations, Building With Alts

Sports franchises increasingly sit at the intersection of media, intellectual property, live entertainment, and real estate. Recorded live on stage at CAIS Live | West, Neil Blundell, Chief Investment Officer of CAIS Advisors, joins host Alex Cavalieri to discuss the factors shaping sports, media, and entertainment investing. Neil explores how long-term media rights, streaming, real estate development, sponsorships, and global audiences are changing franchise economics. He also explores the role IP can play across the broader attention economy, from music catalogs to entertainment companies.

Chapters 

1. The Attention Economy and Sports Investing — 00:01:18
2. Sizing the Sports and Entertainment Market — 00:02:47
3. Media Rights and the Changing Economics of Sports — 00:06:00
4. Real Estate and Infrastructure Around Franchise Ownership — 00:08:20
5. The Dodgers: Media Rights, Real Estate, and Player Economics — 00:09:09
6. Music and Entertainment IP — 00:19:22
7. Women's Sports, College Athletics, and Emerging Leagues — 00:21:30
8. Scarcity & Access — 00:25:17

Model portfolios, private markets, and portfolio constructions are converging, and financial advisors may be rethinking how they build and scale portfolios. Sam Miller, who leads investments and research at Signature Estate & Investment Advisors (SEIA), joins host Alex Cavalieri to discuss his objectives-first approach to incorporating alternatives into model portfolios. He also shares the questions he believes advisors should ask before allocating to private markets and how his team uses AI to work faster while keeping decision-making in human hands. 

Chapter 1: Welcome and Sam's Path to Portfolio Construction [00:00]
Chapter 2: How Portfolio Construction Has Evolved [04:30]
Chapter 3: Models, Misconceptions, and Building Around Client Objectives [08:23]
Chapter 4: Private Markets at Scale and Where Execution Breaks Down [13:22]
Chapter 5: AI, Industry Evolution, and What a Platform Should Deliver [17:22]

Doug Sieg cold-called Lord Abbett in the early 1990s looking for a job. More than 30 years later, he’s the CEO. In this episode, Doug joins CAIS Co-President Brad Walker for a wide-ranging conversation covering his path to Lord Abbett, what he found when he took over as managing partner in 2018, and how the firm has built out a private credit platform while staying true to its roots as a public fixed-income manager. They also discuss Doug’s outlook on today’s macro environment, and reflects on the leadership lessons that guided his path to CEO.

Chapters 

1. The Sieg Household [01:38]
2. Three Brothers, One Industry [03:10]
3. The Cold Call [07:04]
4. Why He Stayed [08:44]
5. Taking Over as Managing Partner [11:02]
6. Building a Culture From the Inside Out [13:28]
7. Leaders Aren't Born [18:24]
8. Building the Private Credit Platform [22:28]
9. Conviction and Caution [30:36]
10. What Leadership Looks Like at Every Level [44:55]

What does thirty years of investing through the dot-com bust, the great financial crisis, and COVID teach you? For Nuveen CIO Saira Malik, the answer comes down to three things: focus on the fundamentals, stay the course, and don't let the noise win. Saira joins Brad Walker on CAIS Live Conversations to share her read on today's macro landscape, the case for evolving the traditional 60/40, and how she talks clients through market downturns. She also opens up about her career path, one that started with rejection from every firm on Wall Street, and what that experience taught her about resilience.

Chapters 

Chapter 1: From Stockton to Wall Street (00:01:35) 

Chapter 2: Learning to Read the Cycle (00:04:38) 

Chapter 3: 125 Years of Nuveen: From Muni Bonds to $1.4 Trillion (00:06:03) 

Chapter 4: Beyond 60/40 (00:12:15) 

Chapter 5: Getting Private Markets Right (00:16:29) 

Chapter 6: Mapping the Macro Landscape (00:18:04) 

Chapter 7: The AI Trade: Spending, Productivity, and What Comes Next (00:21:39) 

Chapter 8: Infrastructure, Data Centers, and the Real Assets Opportunity (00:23:11) 

Chapter 9: Staying the Course: How to Keep Clients Invested Through Volatility (00:31:43) 

Chapter 10: Thirty Years, One Philosophy (00:33:14) 

David DeVoe, Founder and CEO of DeVoe & Company, has spent more than 25 years advising independent RIAs through some of the most significant decisions of their professional lives. He joins CAIS CMO Alex Cavalieri at CAIS Live | Leaders in Wealth to share his view on what's driving M&A activity for the independent advisor, and where he believes it’s heading.  

David also discusses why organic growth has become an important metric in firm valuation, what a real growth culture looks like from the inside out, and why he believes succession planning is about to re-emerge as the dominant force in deal activity. He shares his framework for evaluating cultural fit in M&A and the questions he believes every founder should be asking before they go to market.

Chapters
Chapter 1: The Structural Shift in RIA M&A (02:42)

Chapter 2: The Psychology of the Independent Founder (05:10)

Chapter 3: What a Firm Health Diagnostic Really Looks Like (08:11)

Chapter 4: Organic Growth as a Valuation Multiplier (08:59)

Chapter 5: Why the Industry Underinvests in Growth (10:40)

Chapter 6: Building a Comprehensive Integrated Growth Strategy (13:18)

Chapter 7: Starting With Purpose (16:57)

Chapter 8: Dynamic KPIs and the Long Game (21:46)

Chapter 9: Making Culture Tangible in M&A (29:59)

Chapter 10: Five to Seven Years of Activity Ahead (31:38)

Recorded live at CAIS Live, this episode features David Breach, President of Vista Equity Partners, in conversation with CAIS Co-President Brad Walker. David reflects on a nontraditional path, from food salesman at 19 to Michigan Law to his current role as part of a $100 billion private equity firm, and what he believes each chapter taught him. He shares Vista's founding operating thesis, some of the hardest lessons learned across 90 portfolio companies, and his perspective on where enterprise software stands today. From factory floors to DoorDash drivers, he uses vivid analogies throughout to cut through the noise around generative AI and what it actually means for the industry.

Chapters

Chapter 1: From Food Salesman to Firm President (00:02:18) 
Chapter 2: What Sales Taught Him About Investing (00:04:08) 
Chapter 3: Vista's Founding Thesis, 26 Years Later (00:05:38) 
Chapter 4: The Hardest Lesson: Management Matters Most (00:09:56) 
Chapter 5: Reading the SaaS Selloff (00:12:35) 
Chapter 6: The Factory Floor and the Agentic Shift (00:17:52) 
Chapter 7: AI Is Going to Eat Services, Not Software (00:21:15) 
Chapter 8: The Rule of 60 (00:27:41) 
Chapter 9: The Inference Cost Problem (00:35:23)

Alternative investments, private markets, and wealth management are converging, and financial advisors need infrastructure that can keep up. Matt Matrisian, President of Signature Estate & Investment Advisors (SEIA) joins host Alex Cavalieri on CAIS Live Conversations: Building With Alts to share his perspective on scaling a firm while maintaining a personal, advisor-first approach.  

Matt discusses SEIA’s team-based advisor model, the firm’s investment in a centralized data lake and AI-powered tools, and how he approaches M&A without disrupting culture. He also weighs in on the shift to private markets, why he believes advisor education may be the industry’s most pressing need, and the growth mindset that he sees separating the firms that scale from those that stall. 

Chapter 1: Welcome and Introduction (01:19)

Chapter 2: A Career Built Across Wealth Management (02:03)

Chapter 3: Scaling a Turnkey Asset Management Platform (07:34)

Chapter 4: Maintaining the Personal Touch (10:02)

Chapter 5: Expanding Advisor Capabilities and Reach (12:57)

Chapter 6: M&A Strategy and Cultural Alignment (18:10)

Chapter 7: Building an AI-Powered Advisor Platform (21:34)

Chapter 8: Data Integrity and Choosing the Right Partners (33:40)

Chapter 9: Private Markets, Private Credit, and the Advisor Education Gap (37:02)

Chapter 10: Growth Mindset and Advice for the Next Generation (41:51)

Recorded at CAIS Live | Leaders in Wealth, CAIS Co-President Brad Walker sits down with Randy Schwimmer, Vice Chairman and Chief Investment Strategist at Churchill Asset Management, a Nuveen affiliate. Randy shares his view on why he believes the core middle market may be one of the most overlooked corners of the private market and why the current wave of headline risk, from tariffs to rate uncertainty, could reinforce that case. They also discuss Churchill’s origination model, the education gap between institutional and private wealth investors, what Randy believes is driving redemption pressure across the industry, and why he sees illiquidity as a feature, not a flaw.

Chapters 

1. A Career Built in the Middle Market (00:02:54)
2. Churchill's Role Inside Nuveen (00:06:33) 
3. Bridging the Gap to Private Wealth (00:12:26) 
4. Headline Risk and the "Gift of the Month Club" (00:15:02) 
5. Seeing Through the Macro Noise (00:18:30) 
6. What Private Markets May Solve for in Portfolios (00:27:58) 
7. Redemption Pressure and the Liquidity Question (00:31:57) 
8. Hardest Lesson in 30 Years of Credit (00:40:21) 
9. NAV Marks and Transparency (00:48:07) 
10. The OG of Private Credit (00:50:20) 

Structured notes, portfolio customization, and rethinking what diversification really means—Jerry Verseput, founder of Veripax (now part of HUB International), brings an engineer’s perspective to wealth management. On this episode of CAIS Live Conversations: Building With Alts, Jerry sits down with CAIS CMO Alex Cavalieri to share how the Great Financial Crisis reshaped his approach to portfolio construction, his views on traditional asset class diversification as “different colors of M&Ms,” and how structured notes may help advisors target outcomes rather than chase benchmarks. They also discuss the realities of building and eventually selling an independent RIA, navigating liquidity conversations, and what Jerry sees ahead for the wealth management industry.  

Jon Diorio, Head of Alternatives for US Wealth, BlackRock, joins CAIS Co-President Brad Walker on CAIS Live Conversations: Building With Alts to discuss how he sees alternative investments reshaping wealth management for financial advisors. Jon shares how BlackRock is building its private markets platform across private equity, private credit, and infrastructure. He gets into why he thinks model portfolios may help advisors. They also explore the macro landscape, liquidity , and Jon’s views on why education remains key.

Chapters 

1. The Shift from Brokerage to Advisory (01:38)
2. Leading Product and Alternatives at BlackRock (06:11) 
3. BlackRock’s Private Market Platform: GIPS, GPS, and Preqin (08:26) 
4. Closing the Adoption Gap in Alternative Investments (11:48) 
5. Model Portfolios and the Convergence of Public & Private Markets (14:39) 
6. The Client Conversation: Access, Opportunity, and Private Credit (19:00) 
7. Navigating the 2026 Macro Landscape (23:30) 
8. Hedge Funds, AI-Driven Investing, and M&A Opportunities (27:13) 
9. Sequencing Private Markets for High-Net-Worth Portfolios (29:37) 
10. Liquidity as a Feature in Private Markets (32:34) 
11. Words of Wisdom: Show Up, Say Yes, and Be a Life Coach (36:39)