David Ballard

David Ballard is our Senior Vice President, Enterprise Efficiency and Chief Technology Officer. Mr. Ballard has served as a consultant to the Company since February 2020, before joining the management team in July 2020. Prior to joining Vector Group, Mr. Ballard served as Senior Vice President, Enterprise Services of Ladenburg Thalmann Financial Services Inc. He led Ladenburg’s technology and operations platform and architected much of its shared services model, until February 2020, when the company was sold to Advisor Group, a portfolio company of Reverence Capital Partners. Prior to joining Ladenburg, he served as President and Chief Operating Officer for Docupace Technologies, a leading digital operations technology provider in the wealth management space. Previously Mr. Ballard was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Cetera Financial Group, a role which was preceded by more than two decades of relevant executive and management positions at several firms in the independent financial advisory and asset management industries, including AIG Advisor Group, SunAmerica Mutual Funds and AIG Retirement Services.

Mr. Ballard served on the Financial Services Institute Operations & Technology Council for five years, the FINRA Technology Council for three years and served as a member of the Docupace Technologies Board of Managers. Mr. Ballard has also been honored several times as a Top 500 Masters of Technology recipient by Information Week, and holds a FINRA Series 99 License.