About the Management Team

Troy Onink

Troy Onink is the Chairman and CEO of Stratagee. A 17 year veteran of the financial services industry, Troy is a nationally recognized authority on education funding among financial services and academic professionals. Prior to co-founding Stratagee, he specialized in education planning as a financial advisor, consultant, author and mutual fund company executive.

Troy is a contributor to Forbes, where he writes a blog under the title of College Crossroads. He is also a contributor to Private Wealth Magazine, Financial Advisor Magazine and myStockOptions.com. He is the co-author of Strategy & Simplicity - for Private School and College Funding (May 2008), and the author of Penny-Wise: Paying for Your Child's Independent School Education (NAIS, 2008, 2010). In addition, Troy has authored and co-authored a number of white papers on college and retirement planning for the financial services industry.

As the former national accounts manager at a top-ranked mutual fund company, Troy managed relationships with many of the nation's largest financial institutions. He has presented at hundreds of industry conferences on investment and financial planning topics, speaking to financial advisors, their companies and their clients. Troy is a frequent guest speaker at wealth management workshops, coaching forums for financial advisors, and to parents of high school students nationwide.

He is also actively involved with academic and college admissions groups, as a guest lecturer at the Summer Institute of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA), a speaker for the Association of College Counselors of Independent Schools (ACCIS) and the National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS).

Bernard Whalen

Bernard Whalen is the President of Stratagee and has been in the financial services industry for over 40 years. He began his career in 1967 as an investment adviser and rose to assistant national sales manager for mutual funds and direct investments at a major NYSE firm. Over the next 17 years he was a wholesaler for an oil and gas company and then a major real estate syndication company, eventually becoming its national sales director.

Since then Bernard has held a variety of senior level management positions in sales and marketing with nationally known investment management companies. While at Funds Distributor, he and his sales team successfully launched the sales and marketing of World Equity Benchmark Shares (WEBS) which are single foreign country ETFs, and are now called iShares.

Subsequently, Bernard became the sales director for the Harris Insight Funds in the Broker-Dealer, RIA and Retirement Plans channels. Following the adoption of the Harris Funds by Phoenix Investment Partners, he became head of National Accounts and eventually their Retirement Platform. He retired from their surviving company, Virtus Investment Partners, in April 2009.

Over the years Bernard has been a speaker at numerous investment and broker-dealer conferences. He created a great deal of sales and marketing material for the financial services industry, helped develop several new investment products and contributed to published articles on a variety of financial subjects. He also served as a long-standing member of the Investment Company Institute's Sales Force Marketing Committee.

Lloyd Paradiso

Mr. Paradiso is a Director of Stratagee.com and the Editor of the firms content on school searches, placement and academic preparation.

The founder of the Admissions Authority LLC and an independent educational consultant, Mr. Paradiso's vast experience in the field spans over thirty years. He is a founding member and past president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association (IECA) and holds the designation of Certified Educational Planner. Mr. Paradiso is also a co-author of the new book, Strategy & Simplicity - for Private School and College Funding.

Mr. Paradiso's professional career is both varied and comprehensive. Initially, he served individual families by offering an in-depth evaluation of their child's academic profile, after which he suggested suitable institutions within the context of their specific priorities and expectations. Finally, Mr. Paradiso assisted parents and prospective students through the critical business of selecting the most appropriate school.

Corporations soon requested that he see their expatriate employees who would move frequently from one educational system to another - disrupting the schooling continuity of their children and creating many problems for both the family and the firm. In the course of working with such companies as Exxon Mobil, Hercules, RCA Ariola, Rockwell, Rhone-Poulenc Rorer and GlaxoSmithKline, he developed an international consulting model which now serves as an accepted standard.

The leader of workshops both here and abroad, Mr. Paradiso has also advised governments, boards of trustees and private agencies - in addition to working as a college counselor for a well-known private school. His services include educational counseling, private school, college and graduate program placement, professional seminars and executive training.

Mr. Paradiso participates actively in many professional conferences and is a member of the National Association for College Admissions Counseling (NACAC), the Pennsylvania Association for College Admissions Counseling (PACAC) and the College Board.

Gregory Whalen

Mr. Whalen is the Chief Technology Officer for Stratagee - where he is responsible for all phases of design, development and deployment of Stratagee's technology platform. Additionally, Mr. Whalen handles all of the company's research and development initiatives.

Prior to Stratagee, he was Technical Director at R/GA, a leading interactive agency. He served as a technical engagement lead for the Lowe's, walmart.com, J&J China, L'Oreal HIP and Splenda businesses. Mr. Whalen worked in a wide range of roles - including business development (acquisition of Lowe's and walmart.com), technical project management and consulting. He worked closely with Lowe's as an on-site consultant during the planning and execution of several key advertising campaigns. He also led the development of their gift registry and managed the required point-of-sale changes across 1,100 stores. With J&J China, Mr. Whalen served as a consultant and led development of J&J's first corporate web presence in mainland China (www.jnj.com.cn). In more traditional advertising roles, he managed technical execution of online advertisements for Splenda and occasionally for L'Oreal's HIP makeup line.

Mr. Whalen has actively consulted with New York Presbyterian Hospital's "OR of the Future" committee and has produced several patented surgical applications. He has also developed financial optimization models for a professor at NYU's Stern School of Business and has produced financial modeling software to accompany a pre-print asset allocation textbook.

Mr. Whalen is also a Director of Wisdom Data Services Corp, New York, NY, a technical consulting and software development company specializing in statistical optimization and machine learning software.