Mr. Zugel serves as Founder and CIO of ZAIS. Before founding ZAIS in 1997, Mr. Zugel was Head of High Yield Proprietary Trading with J.P. Morgan Securities Inc., where he led J.P. Morgan’s entry into many new trading initiatives.

At J.P. Morgan, Mr. Zugel also served on the Asia Pacific management-wide and firm wide market risk committees. Mr. Zugel received a Masters in Economics from the University of Mannheim, Germany.

Mr. Curry serves as the President of ZAIS, Chief ESG Integration Officer, and head of ZAIS’s Leveraged Finance team. Before joining ZAIS in January of 2018, Mr. Curry served as the Chief Executive Officer of DBRS Limited and DBRS, Inc. from December 2013 to August 2016. Mr. Curry served as Global President of DBRS from May 2012 to December 2013 and held the role of President of DBRS, Inc. beginning in December 2008 when he joined DBRS.

Before joining DBRS, Mr. Curry was a Group Managing Director at Moody’s, where he co-managed the corporate finance group for the Americas, overseeing the ratings and research on over 2,500 non-financial companies, spanning both investment-grade and high-yield areas. At Moody’s, Mr. Curry also managed the Structured Finance rating groups for Europe and Asia. Mr. Curry holds an M.B.A. from Columbia University Graduate Business School and a Bachelor of Arts from Rutgers University.

Mr. Brune serves as Managing Director, Head of U.S. Client Relations and Business Development, and is a member of the ZAIS Group Investment Committee. Prior to joining ZAIS in December of 2022, Mr. Brune spent over a decade at J.P. Morgan Securities in New York. Most recently, Mr. Brune served as a Managing Director in the Corporate and Investment Bank, where he was responsible for leading the subsidiary coverage business for North America, and was a member of the U.S. and EMEA Corporate Banking management team.

He received a Masters of Business Administration (Diplom-Kaufmann) from Otto-Friedrich-University in Bamberg, Germany and also holds the title of Bankkaufmann after a two-year apprenticeship at Deutsche Bank in Duesseldorf, Germany. Mr. Brune is a member of the American Council on Germany and a Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors of the German American Chamber of Commerce in New York.

Ms. Crowley serves as Head of Structured Investments at ZAIS. As Head of ZAIS’s Structured Investments Business, Ms. Crowley is responsible for mortgage investments, including Non-Agency RMBS, CMBS, Commercial Real Estate debt and equity, ABS investments and CLO investments across our separately managed accounts and comingled funds.

Before joining ZAIS in August of 1997, Ms. Crowley worked at J.P. Morgan in the High Yield Trading Group. Before J.P. Morgan, she worked for Hon. Daniel P. Moynihan as an economic research analyst. Ms. Crowley received a B.A. from Boston College and an M.B.A. from New York University’s Stern School of Business.

Dr. Ross serves as Head of New Product Research and Development and Managing Director at ZAIS. Prior to assuming his current role in 2021, he was a member of the Structured Credit Portfolio Management Team at ZAIS responsible for trading Credit Derivatives and developing Quantitative Strategies.

Before joining ZAIS in September of 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher in Theoretical Physics at Carnegie Mellon University and at Yale University investigating elementary particles, cosmology and black holes. Dr. Ross holds a PhD in Physics from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and a Masters in Physics from the University of Karlsruhe.