Brennan Carley is Managing Principal of Proton Advisors, which provides advisory services to banks, private equity and venture investors, asset managers and fintech companies, bringing expertise in market data, trading technology and telecommunications. He serves as an independent director on the board of Sterling Trading Technologies, as Senior Advisor to Fintech M&A specialist PanArgent Capital Advisors, as Advisory Partner to Sand Hill East, as Operating Partner for Raido Capital Partners, and as Advisor to the Veterans Capital Markets Career Forum. Brennan is certified by the NACD (National Association of Corporate Directors) as aboard director.
Brennan spent 10 years as Managing Director at Refinitiv (now London Stock Exchange Group),where he ran the Enterprise Data business (a $1.8B business that provides content and related services including real-time, historical, reference data, enterprise analytic services, data management platforms, and managed services),and lead company-wide programs such as the MiFID2 program, the FRTB program, and the enterprise data program. He ran Product Management for all core Refinitiv platforms, including the Eikon desktop and the Elektron data platform.
Brennan was co-founder and SVP of Product & Marketing at Spread Networks, a provider of low latency fiber networks to the financial markets (featured in Michael Lewis’s “Flash Boys”), CEO of Monitor110 (alternative data), and COO of NYFIX (later NYSE Technologies). He founded Radianz (now Waypoint Trading Solutions) a global network provider for the financial markets. Prior to that he was head of technology for Instinet. He began his career at IBM developing operating system software, before moving into IBM’s financial services practice.
He has been a director on the boards of fintech companies including Sterling Trading Tech(electronic trading), REDI Technologies (electronic trading), Marketcetera (algorithmic trading), Yipes (telecommunications), and Monitor110 (alternative data). Brennan has advised private equity firm Warburg Pincus as “entrepreneur in residence” has taught courses in Strategy for Technology Companies at New York University, and currently mentors start-ups at Cornell Tech. He is also founder of GlucoRoo; GlucoRoo allows users of Continuous Glucose Monitors to monitor their glucose levels on an Android based bike computer, and was built by Brennan using AI based software development tools including Claude Code, Gemini, and Codex.
Brennan earned a bachelors degree in Economics and Computer Science from New York University and has done graduate studies at Columbia University, Harvard Business School and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He has been listed in The Trade magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in Buy-Side Trading” and featured in the books “Architects of Electronic Trading” and Michael Lewis’ “Flash Boys.”
