Board of Directors

Hailing from Amarillo, Texas, Brandon is 3X Texas State Wrestling Champion. After high school, Brandon went on to graduate from the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania with a dual concentration in Entrepreneurial Management and Finance in 1998. He is a 2X NCAA All-American and a 2X NCAA Finalist. He earned All-Ivy League status all four years in college and was the 1993 Ivy League Rookie of The Year.

Read more about Coach Slay here.

Nicholas Matteo is a 2007 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Annenberg School for Communication. Recruited by current Penn head coach Roger Reina, Nick was a four-year member of Penn’s varsity wrestling program. Unfortunately, Nick’s career on the mat was cut short due to a neck injury; however, he continued his commitment to the program by helping in all facets of wrestling operations until his graduation.

After Penn, Nick continued his education and earned a Master of Business Administration and a Master of Sport Administration from Ohio University Center for Sports Administration. Nick also earned a Juris Doctorate from Rutgers Law School at night while working full-time. He passed the bar exam in both New York and New Jersey in the summer of 2016.

Professionally, Nick has worked at the National Football League since 2009. He is currently the Director of Football Administration for the Baltimore Ravens.

Raised in Ramsey, NJ, Nick graduated from Bergen Catholic High School in 2003. There, he was a captain for coach Dave Bell. He was also a NJ state place winner and a member of Bell’s first two state championship teams.  In addition to his work with the Pennsylvania RTC board, Nick serves on Penn Wrestling’s Grappler’s Club Board and the Bergen Catholic Wrestling Alumni Board. He is a past recipient of the Grappler’s Club Order of Merit, and a co-founder and tournament director of Flo Wrestling Who’s Number 1 National Duals. Nick currently lives in Hoboken, NJ.

A 1997 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with degrees from the Wharton School and the College of Art and Sciences, Clinton Matter has long been a proud member of the Penn wrestling community. During his undergraduate career, Clinton was twice selected to be captain of the Penn wrestling team, won two EIWA individual titles and helped the program to capture the EIWA team championship in both ’96 and ’97. He was named an NWCA Academic All American and the Class of 1915 Award winner as the top male student-athlete in Penn’s ‘97 graduating class.  Following graduation, Clinton has remained an active member of the Penn and Philadelphia wrestling community. Currently, Clinton serves as a member of the Grapplers’ Club Board, the Board of the Pennsylvania RTC and the University of Pennsylvania’s Athletic Board of Overseers. He is one of the founding members and Chairman of the Board of Beat the Streets Philadelphia, an organization that sponsors youth wrestling and mentoring programs across the Philadelphia metropolitan region.

Professionally, Clinton has pursued a career in finance operating in various roles across the global credit markets over the last 25 years.  He currently works as a Senior Investor Associate Fellow at Bridgewater Associates.

Clinton and his wife Kourtney (C’98 and captain of the Penn women’s swimming team) live in Summit, NJ and are blessed with four children.

Gary serves as an Investment Associate within the Private Banking and Investment Group at Merrill Lynch, a subsidiary of Bank of America since 2007.  In this role he helps clients in all aspects of wealth management including portfolio management, asset allocation, and strategic planning.  Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, he traded whole loans and mortgage back securities for Fannie Mae from 2005-2007 as an Account Executive within the firm’s Capital Markets Sales Desk.  Before Fannie Mae, he was a Sales Consultant with Rydex Investments, a mutual fund company based in Rockville, MD.  Gary started his career at Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown as a member of the OTC Equity Trading Desk.

Gary graduated from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1995 with a Bachelor of Science in Economics major with a concentration in Finance.  He has been associated with the sport of wrestling for 30 years having competed in high school and college, leading teams to state and Ivy League Championships.  He is on the Board of the Wrestlers in Business Network – Philadelphia Chapter, on the Board and youth wrestling coach for Conestoga Youth Wrestling Association, on the Board of the Grapplers’ Club – Penn Wrestling’s alumni association, and the Board of the Pennsylvania RTC.  He currently lives in Berwyn, Pennsylvania with his wife and three children: Celeste, Kyle, and Azul.

A Hall of Fame coach and multiple-time EIWA and Ivy League champion, Penn alumnus Roger Reina C’84, WEV’05 began his second stint as head coach at his alma mater in 2017-18 and now enters his 21st season overall as head coach at Penn in 2018-19.

Read more about Coach Reina here.

Matt Azevedo enters his eighth season as head coach of Drexel Wrestling in 2018-19 after joining the Dragons in April of 2011 following successful coaching stints at Cornell and Cal Poly. Azevedo has led the program’s resurgence and ushered in a new era of Drexel Wrestling in the EIWA. He is the eighth head coach in the school’s history and replaced Jack Childs, who retired after 35 seasons at Drexel.

Read more about Coach Azevedo here.

Brett Matter is the Head Trader for Brahman Capital Corp, a hedge fund located in New York City.   Prior to joining to Brahman Capital in 2007, Brett was was a trader at Ziff Brothers Investments from 2001 – 2007.  Brett started his professional career working as an equity research associate for Salomon Smith Barney from 2000 – 2001.

Brett is a founding board member of Beat the Streets Philadelphia.  A nonprofit organization formed in 2009, focused on providing Philadelphia area youths the opportunity to participate in athletic and mentoring programs.

Brett Graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in 2000 with BS in Economics, was a 2 time New Jersey State High School Champion at Delran High School in New Jersey, a 2 time NCAA All American and an NCAA Champion at the University of Pennsylvania.  Brett is a member of the Eastern Intercollegiate Wrestling Association Hall of Fame.  He was enrolled at the schools prestigious Wharton School of Business where he concentrated in Finance and Management.

Brett and his wife Shannon reside in Chatham, NJ with their 4 children: Leigha, Olivia, Riley and Dean.

David S. Pottruck is the Chairman of HighTower Advisors, a $25 billion wealth management firm that he helped launch in 2008. He serves on the Board of Directors of Intel Corporation, where he is a member of the Executive Committee, Chairman of the Compensation Committee, and Chairman of the Retirement Plan Investment Committee. In addition, he is on the Board of Directors of several early-stage companies, including CorpU, a 21st-century corporate training organization, where he is chairman. Dave was formerly a Trustee of the University of Pennsylvania and Chair of the San Francisco Committee on Jobs.

Dave joined The Charles Schwab Corporation in 1984 as Executive Vice President of Marketing and led its innovative direct response advertising campaigns. Under his marketing leadership from 1984 to 1987, when the company went public, Schwab’s revenues tripled in size. He became Schwab’s President in 1992, co-CEO with Chuck Schwab in 1998, and CEO in 2002. During this period, Dave and Chuck worked shoulder to shoulder, together focusing on leading the company, with little attention to their respective titles. Over Dave’s 20-year tenure at Schwab, the company’s assets in custody grew from $5 billion to over $1 trillion and the equity value of Schwab grew from roughly $50 million to approximately $16 billion.

During Dave’s leadership, Schwab refocused its business model entirely on the Internet, a radically transformative move that drove the company’s explosive growth. Schwab also led a reinvention of the no-load mutual fund industry with the introduction of the no-fee “mutual fund supermarket” concept, and introduced the RIA servicing business; both innovations are now cornerstones of the discount brokerage industry.

Dave is the coauthor with Terry Pearce of Clicks and Mortar: Passion Driven Growth in an Internet Driven World. A top-ten best seller in BusinessWeek and on Amazon, Clicks and Mortar has been translated into six languages and was on the best seller list in Germany.

He is a Senior Fellow and adjunct faculty member at the Wharton School’s Center for Leadership and Change Management. In 2010 and again in 2012, he received Wharton San Francisco’s Outstanding Teaching Award for his course focused on leading breakthrough change. Dave has taught change leadership to hundreds of executives from around the world via programs tailored for specific corporations and in courses offered online through CorpU.

Dave has received accolades and recognition from numerous organizations and publications. He has been named one of the “Top 15 CEOs” by Worth; “CEO of the Year” by Information Week; “Executive of the Year” by the San Francisco Business Times; and “CEO of the Year” by Morningstar. He was named by Smart Money as one of the three most influential executives in the world of investing and by Institutional Investor as the number one most influential executive in the world of online finance.

In 1999 he was appointed by Congress and then-President Clinton to serve as one of 19 Commissioners on the Advisory Commission on Electronic Commerce, which was tasked with producing recommendations on electronic commerce and tax policy, arguably one of the most important policy initiatives of the Information Age.

Dave graduated with a BA from the University of Pennsylvania, and earned his MBA with honors from Wharton. Dave was Team Captain of both the Penn Football and Wrestling Teams, winning multiple Ivy Lague Championships and competing at the NCAA Championships.  He has served in Board and Advisory roles for USA Wrestling and the National Wrestling Coaches Associations.  A native of New York, Dave now resides in San Francisco.  His children, Stephanie and Craig, are both Penn alumni.

Daniel Butler is the Senior Director of Development at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He joined Mercatus after spending four years trading ETFs on the floor of the American Stock Exchange for Bailer Trading LLC.

His commitment to the Pennsylvania Regional Training Center(PRTC) stems from his commitment to wrestling in the Philadelphia area. He was a member of the University of Pennsylvania(Penn) wrestling team from 1994-1999 graduating with a degree in biology and a minor in history.

In addition to the PRTC, Dan serves as Board member for the Academy of Christian Education in Reston, Virginia. He is a father of three and resides in Vienna, Virginia.

Richard graduated from the University of Florida in 1983 where he received his B.S. in Business Administration. He was a member of the Track & Field team from 1979 through 1983, competing in the javelin throw. During his senior year, he was elected co-captain of the team, an accolade which he still cherishes today. Following undergraduate school, Richard attended Drexel University where he received his MBA in 1985. While attending Drexel University, he was a Track and Field coach. He coached the throwing events as well as strength training for the team.

Professionally, Richard is employed by Raymond James as a Branch Manager for the Philadelphia office, as well as a Managing Director of Investments. Prior to joining Raymond James, Richard joined W.H. Newbold’s (which subsequently became Oppenheimer & Co. Inc.) in the Jenkintown office as a financial consultant in 1985. Richard subsequently became the Branch Manager of the Philadelphia office and eventually the Pennsylvania Regional Manager in addition to being a Financial Advisor. In these roles, he provided investment advice to clients, was involved in various firm committees as well as regional management. These experiences have enabled Richard to experience virtually all aspects of the financial services industry from both a retail perspective and a management perspective . Throughout his professional career, he has served on various NASD and FINRA Committees. He has been a guest panelist several times at FINRA’s Annual Fixed Income Conference. Richard has also been selected by On Wall Street Magazine as one of the Top 100 Branch Managers for 2013.

Richard serves on several non-profit boards in the greater Philadelphia area. He is a co-founder of the University of Florida Track & Field Alumni Association. He has been married to his wife Patty for twenty five years. They have three children, Benjamin, Rachael and Daniel. Benjamin is a recent graduate of Drexel University where he was a member of the wrestling team. Rachael attends Lehigh University and Daniel attends Drexel University where he is also a member of the wrestling team.

Michael Ross is a 1997 graduate of Duke University. Following his time at Duke, he earned his Masters Degree in 2000 from New York University. Michael is currently the President and Chief Executive Officer of Poly-America, one of the largest and most successful polyethylene film and trash bag manufacturers in the world.

Michael is a Board member of the United States Wrestling Foundation. He grew up wrestling in Texas where he and Brandon Slay became childhood friends.

Michael has been married to his wife, Alison, for 19 years. They have two children, Turner and Paige. Turner is a Tulsa Nationals Champion, a Schoolboy National Freestyle Champion, and a member of Sebolt Wrestling Academy. Paige is an excelling horseback rider.