Mark P. Kust is Chief Operating Officer and a Founding Principal of Vernon Capital Partners. He is a CFA Charterholder and PRMIA Professional Risk Manager (PRM) and most recently led the CRO Model Risk and Governance function at the World Bank Group. Mark was previously Head of Model, Market and Strategic Risk Management at Brighthouse Financial where he designed, implemented and led that firm’s Model Risk Management function. He co-led Model Validation for Ally Financial after leading Capital Markets Model Validation Analysis and Support for Wells Fargo. While at Wells, Mark held a variety of roles on the Commodity Derivatives Trading Desk, spanning Business Management, Technology, Structured Pricing, Quantitative Analysis and Risk Management.

Prior to Mark’s tenure in financial services, he was a technology executive. He led Dell’s Intranet Standards and Applications groups in the late 1990s, and was co-founder and Chief Information Officer for ChemCodes Inc., an entrepreneurial life sciences firm. At ChemCodes Mark designed novel pattern recognition algorithms for processing high throughput mass spectroscopy signals and designed and implemented a full lifecycle Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

Mark began his career at Los Alamos National Laboratory and has graduate degrees in engineering and mathematics from Stanford University, and an MBA from Duke University.