PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT · SIX PROFESSIONALS · ZERO LAYERS
The People Managing Your Money
Six people. No layers. Click any portrait below to read the full story — credentials, experience, and the personal details they somewhat reluctantly agreed to share.
Every client works directly with a named portfolio manager. Not an associate. Not a call center. The person whose name is on your IPS. Since founding Burnabilly in 2006, that's never changed.
Meet the Six People Behind Your Portfolio
Click any portrait to expand their full biography, credentials, and — because they agreed to it — a few personal details. This is the complete team managing $340 million in client assets. There is no back office you don't see, no unnamed analyst running models in a side room. These six people do everything.
Marc Burnaby, CFA
Co-Founder & Chief Investment Officer
Lilian (Lily) Burnaby, P.Eng., CFA
Co-Founder & Managing Director
Derek Fonseca, CFA, CIM
Senior Portfolio Manager
Priya Chandrasekaran, CPA, CFA
Director of Research & Analytics
Jean-Luc Garnier, CFP®
Client Relations Manager & Financial Planner
Saoirse Doherty
Operations & Compliance Manager
Why Six People Outperform Sixty for Your Portfolio
We're a small team, so here's how we handle that: every person here does work that would sit three levels above their title at a large firm. There's no delegation chain. There's no "let me check with my manager." The person you're talking to is the person who made the decision — or who can make it right now, while you're on the phone.
Priya presents her research directly to clients — unedited, unfiltered, in the same format the investment committee sees it. When she published her Q3 2024 sector rotation analysis, clients read the identical document that Marc and Derek used to rebalance the Balanced Growth portfolios. No sanitized summary. No marketing gloss. Saoirse has a seat at the investment committee table because compliance isn't a checkpoint; it's a design constraint that shapes every trade before it's executed. Jean-Luc coordinates every quarterly report personally because the person who talks to clients should also be the person who reads the data — and who can explain it without a script.
Could we manage more money with more people? Sure. But we've noticed something over nearly two decades: the quality of the relationship degrades the moment a client gets handed off. You signed up to work with Marc, or Derek, or Lily. You should keep working with them. At a bank-owned wealth management firm, you'll meet someone senior during the pitch meeting and then never see them again. At Burnabilly, the person in the pitch meeting is the person who picks up the phone in January when markets are falling.
Our average client relationship is 8.4 years. The industry average for discretionary portfolio managers is roughly three. We think the small team — and the direct access it provides — is a big part of that number. You can see how that continuity translates into long-term investment outcomes on our performance page.
How Decisions Actually Get Made Here
Transparency means showing you how the sausage is made — including the internal process that determines what happens with your money. Here's how a typical investment decision flows through the team, from first signal to executed trade.
Research & Signal Identification
Priya and her valuation models flag an opportunity or a risk — a sector mispricing, a credit downgrade, or a macro shift that affects our active strategy mandates. She writes a research memo with a clear thesis, a price target (or risk target), and a confidence level. Every memo goes into the permanent record. Nothing is verbal-only.
Investment Committee Review
Marc, Lily, Derek, Priya, and Saoirse convene — typically within 48 hours for non-urgent calls, same day for material risks. Saoirse reviews the trade against each affected client's Investment Policy Statement, concentration limits, and tax situation before anyone votes. Jean-Luc flags any client-specific planning considerations (upcoming withdrawals, corporate distributions, estate timelines).
Execution & Client Communication
Derek or Marc execute the trade through our custodian, CIBC Mellon. Within one business day, affected clients receive a plain-language trade rationale in their Open Book portal — not a confirmation slip, but a written explanation of why we bought or sold, what we expect, and what could go wrong. Every trade. No exceptions.
What Qualifies Us to Manage Your Capital
We don't list credentials to impress. We list them because you should know who's making decisions with your capital and what qualifies them to do it. Burnabilly is registered as a Portfolio Manager and Investment Fund Manager with the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) under National Instrument 31-103, Registration No. PM-2006-0847.
CFA Charterholders
Marc, Lily, Derek, and Priya hold the CFA Charter — the most rigorous credential in investment management globally. The CFA program requires passing three multi-hour exams over a minimum of two and a half years, plus 4,000 hours of qualifying work experience. Four of our six people cleared that bar. The industry average for a firm this size is typically one or two.
Professional Engineer
Lily is a licensed P.Eng. (Ontario), having spent eleven years at SNC-Lavalin in structural and systems engineering before co-founding Burnabilly. Her engineering background built the firm's probabilistic risk modeling framework — the same stress-testing methodology applied to every client portfolio before a single dollar is invested.
CPA & CFP®
Priya holds the CPA designation (Ontario), bringing forensic-level accounting skills to equity research — she reads financial statements the way most analysts read headlines. Jean-Luc is a Certified Financial Planner, providing integrated tax and financial planning expertise in-house so clients don't need to coordinate between separate advisors.
Regulatory Compliance
Saoirse holds the Chief Compliance Officer qualifying examination from CSI and serves as Burnabilly's designated CCO. She runs internal compliance audits quarterly and publishes the results in our annual transparency report. No other firm we're aware of makes their internal audit findings publicly available. We think that's a problem worth fixing.
Bilingual Service
Derek and Jean-Luc are fluently bilingual (English/French). All client materials — including quarterly reports, trade rationales, Investment Policy Statements, and research memos — are available in both official languages on request. Approximately 30% of our client base communicates primarily in French.
Securities in Active Coverage
Priya's research coverage spans approximately 180 Canadian and U.S. securities, each with a proprietary valuation model updated at minimum quarterly. This isn't a screener output — it's fundamental, bottom-up analysis with explicit price targets and risk scenarios. Clients can access the full research library through their Open Book dashboard.
A Team Built to Stay, Not to Scale
We've hired three people in the last ten years. That's not a hiring freeze — it's the result of being deliberate about who sits at this table. Every person on the team was hired for a specific gap, interviewed by all existing team members, and given real client work in the first week. No training-wheel period. No shadowing for six months. If we trusted you enough to hire you, we trust you enough to do the job.
Derek joined in 2014 from National Bank's institutional desk, where he managed fixed-income portfolios for pension funds. Priya came aboard in 2017 after five years at Deloitte's audit practice, where she specialized in financial services clients. Jean-Luc arrived in 2019 from a large insurance-owned advisory firm, frustrated by the gap between what clients were promised and what they received. Saoirse joined in 2020, having spent four years in compliance at a mid-size Toronto dealer.
We don't plan to become a 50-person firm. We plan to remain a six-to-eight-person firm that manages a concentrated book of clients who value direct access over brand prestige. If that philosophy resonates and you think you belong here, see our current openings.
Know Exactly Who'd Manage Your Portfolio Before You Commit
We'll tell you exactly which portfolio manager would handle your account based on your situation, your goals, and the complexity of your portfolio. You'll have a direct conversation with them — not a salesperson, not a junior associate — before anything is signed. Most prospective clients start with a complimentary fee audit to see what they're currently paying versus what they'd pay here.
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