Founder, CHIEF INVESTMENT OFFICER and MANAGING PARTNER
Jenaro Cardona-Fox
Jenaro Cardona-Fox is Founder, Chief Investment Officer, and Managing Partner of North Ground Capital, the investment manager of the North Ground Capital Opportunity Fund LP. From 2018 through 2020, Jenaro was the Chief Investment Officer of Mitra Capital Management, LLC, a long-short equity hedge fund. Between 2008 and 2017, he was a Portfolio Manager and Managing Director at Ironsides Partners, a $500 million arbitrage and special situation focused absolute return fund. Jenaro started his career with AIG in Asia and New York. Jenaro serves on the board of directors and chairs the investment committee of Rosie’s Place, a sanctuary for poor and homeless women in Boston, MA. Colombian-born, Jenaro is a founding independent member of Externado University’s endowment, Latin America’s second largest university endowment. Jenaro earned his MBA at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and his BA from Princeton University where he majored in Comparative Literature. Jenaro lives in Cohasset, Mass with his wife and two sons.
Chief operating officer and chief compliance officer
Mark Merritt
Mark Merritt is COO and CCO of North Ground Capital, the investment manager of the North Ground Capital Opportunity Fund LP. Mr. Merritt is a CPA and brings 30+ years of financial industry experience. He began his career with Deloitte LLP (Stamford, CT), serving 5+ years in the audit and consulting functions. After Deloitte, he joined an early-stage broker dealer, CRT Capital Group LLC (Greenwich & Stamford, CT) where he was the CFO for 13+ years, and CCO for approximately half of that duration. During his tenure at CRT he was responsible for the operations, compliance, finance, IT, and administration functions for the firm which grew to over 200 people and covered both buy and sell side functions with over $1b in AUM. After CRT, he spent 5+ years as CFO of Harvest Volatility Management LLC (NY, NY), a derivatives hedge fund that grew to $6b+ AUM during his tenure. At Harvest, he developed and managed the operations, compliance, and finance infrastructures. Since then, Mr. Merritt has been outsourcing CFO services primarily to family offices, hedge funds, and mutual funds from Northeastern PA where he lives with his wife and four children.
Analyst
Luca Pontone
Luca Pontone is an Investment Analyst at North Ground Capital, the investment manager of the North Ground Capital Opportunity Fund LP. Luca began his investment career interning for North Ground Capital in the summers of 2022 and 2023 and working part-time his senior year. Luca earned his BA from Princeton University where he majored in History and was a 4-year letter-winner on the varsity wrestling team.
Advisor
Ari Schottenstein
Ari served as Chief Operating Officer at North Ground Capital during its formation and early operations and now serves as an advisor to the Fund. Ari is an Investment Professional with a successful track record in structuring and managing private equity and real estate investment funds. Ari began his career in the Private Equity Group (Financial Sponsors) at Citigroup Global Markets Inc., was a founding member of Cogent Partners’ New York office from 2004 to 2007 and has served as the Principal of Protean Capital Advisors and its predecessors since 2007. He holds a BSE degree from Princeton University with Sigma Xi honors and an MBA from Columbia University
Advisor
Richard Tavoso
Richard Tavoso, a key advisor and seed investor in the Fund, is a legendary trader and investor. During his 20 years at RBC Capital Markets Richard was a member of the Executive Committee and built and managed the Global Arbitrage & Trading group which operated as a multi-strategy multi-billion-dollar hedge fund. Recently, Richard has served as the President of Galaxy Digital and has helped seed other new ventures. Richard’s expertise in identifying, seeding, growing, and guiding successful and scalable absolute return strategies provides our Fund with critical access to sophisticated, specialized, and institutional-grade expertise. He holds a degree in History from Princeton University.