Our Advisory Board

Zvi Bodie is Professor Emeritus at Boston University, where he taught from 1972 to 2013. Bodie has served on the finance faculty at the Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan School of Management. In 2007 the Retirement Income Industry Association gave Bodie their Lifetime Achievement Award for applied research and in 2019 the Plan Sponsors Council of America selected him for their lifetime achievement award.

Bodie holds a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, an MA in Economics from the Hebrew University, and a BA with Honors in Philosophy from Brooklyn College.

Bodie is an independent educator, writer, speaker, and consultant on finance and the financial system. He has published widely on pension finance and investment strategy and is best known for applying modern financial theory to lifecycle saving and investing.

Bodie’s work, including his Risk Less and Prosper and Worry Free Investing inspired development of MaxiFi Planner’s Upside Investing, which allows you to set a basic living standard floor for your household and experience only upside risk to your living standard.

Nimet Gundogan is Executive Director of Employee Benefits at Boston University. She joined Boston University in 1982 as Benefits Specialist and was named Manager of Benefits in 1987. She was promoted to Director of Benefits in 2000 and Executive Director of Benefits in 2006. Gundogan currently oversees benefits strategy and administration for the University’s 10,000 plus employees. She is also responsible for Faculty and Staff Assistance, Occupational Health, the Children’s Center, and Family Resources. In recent years, Nimet has overseen a dramatic transformation of Boston University’s retirement plan.

Boston University began providing all employees free access to all our company’s software back in the 1990s. Nimet has actively encouraged use of MaxiFi and Maximize My Social Security by university personnel, organizing, with Larry, multiple training seminars over the years.

Matt Halperin, CFA, is cofounder of Act2 Financial, a financial software firm that helps seniors stay independent longer by monitoring their health and wealth data. Prior to Act2, Matt spent 30 years in investment management, first as a derivatives specialist, working for Allstate and Putnam Investments, and then as Senior Managing Director for TIAA. His last risk role was Senior Vice President, Global Independent Risk Officer, at MFS. Matt has a BA and MBA from the University of Chicago.

Matt became enamored of our approach to financial planning while at TIAA and strongly encouraged the then leadership of TIAA to adopt the tool for use with all participants. We’re hopeful, particularly with TIAA’s new leadership, that this will eventually transpire as the fit is perfect.

John Hill, CFP was a founder and, later, a CEO of Pinnacle Advisory Group, a multibillion-dollar AUM firm, from its inception in 1993 through the highly successful sale of the company in 2021. Pinnacle was consistently recognized as one of the top financial planning firms in the country.

Hill has a BA in Business and Economics from Elon University where he now serves on the Board of Directors. Hill has served two terms as the president of the MD FPA and introduced the High School Financial Planning Program to the state of Maryland.

Hill also serves as a board member for Habitat for Humanity for Lee and Hendry counties in SW Florida and tutors “at risk” elementary grade students through the New Horizons organization. He has served on many charitable boards over the years and is currently engaged in several charitable projects in South Carolina.

Hill discovered MaxiFi Planner while running Pinnacle and became an avid fan, using it for his own personal financial planning.

Rick Miller is the founder and CEO of Sensible Financial Planning and Management®. Rick’s disciplined and analytical nature served him well as he earned his PhD in economics at the University of Chicago.

Miller’s rigorous academic training in family economics and lifetime planning and his experience in the financial services world prepared him to start his own financial planning and investment firm in April of 2002. He combines hard data, thoughtful analysis, and personal attention to present high-quality advice and efficient financial products and services to each client. He and his team tailor a plan to every client’s needs.

Miller is a member of both NAPFA, the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors, where he has served as the program director for the Boston chapter and on the faculty of NAPFA University, and the Financial Planning Association.

Rick has been using MaxiFi Planner (and, before MaxiFi, our ESPlanner download tool) in his practice for decades. He writes for Forbes.com and provides frequent webinars on financial planning topics. These webinars include ones on the ability of MaxiFi, in particular, and economic analysis, in general, to materially raise living standards, lower risk, and improve lifestyles.

Hugh Penney, after more than 40 years in the benefits field, recently retired from Yale University. He was Yale’s Senior Director of Compensation & Benefits which included responsibility for long-term strategy development and leadership of retirement, heath care, and other university benefits. He served as a member of Yale’s Retirement Account Plans Fiduciary Committee on Investments, Labor negotiations team, Board of University Health, and HIPAA Privacy & Security Advisory Committee.

Prior to Yale, Penney served in Senior HR leadership at Tufts Medical Center, Shaw’s Supermarkets, BayBanks, and Filene’s Department Stores. He also worked for the Social Security Administration.

Hugh received a BS in Parks, Recreation, and Tourism from the University of Maine in 1976 and an MBA from Boston University in 2002. Hugh is a major fan of MaxiFi Planner. In the years leading up to “retirement,” Hugh used MaxiFi extensively to determine when to step down and move to his next stage of life – a combination of retirement and consulting.