John O’Connell

John brings over 30 years of leadership experience spanning both emerging businesses and established organizations.  He began his career designing and developing financial applications at Merrill Lynch and played a key role in an IPO and the sale of two firms.  John then served in North American leadership roles at Oracle for more than eight years and held C-level customer-facing positions at two global, publicly traded companies.

John is the inventor of the Activist Investor Arc, a concept he developed to illustrate the different phases of activist investing, as detailed in his best-selling book, Rise of the Activist Investor.

John is the Founder and CEO of The Oasis Group.  His firm assists wealth management firms with technology selection and implementation, cybersecurity assessments, data warehousing, data analytics, and AI solutions.  Under his leadership, The Oasis Group recently introduced the AI WealthTech Map – a valuable resource for financial advisors and wealth management firms to discover leading AI solutions in the industry.  John recently published the Vantage Point Peaks for Custodian Platforms research, authors the Vantage Point monthly newsletter, and frequently publishes in leading industry publications.