Wealth Professional names its Rising Stars for 2026
Harris holds a BCom and the Responsible Retirement Consultant designation, and entered financial planning after dropping plans to study medicine. His practice draws on IG’s in-house tax, estate, insurance, mortgage, and advanced financial planning specialists.
Ilya Kudzelka, principal and portfolio manager for research and analytics at Westcourt Capital in Toronto, works on the screening, evaluation, due diligence, and ongoing monitoring of the firm’s investment products. His role covers analysis of alternative investment fund performance, including explaining results and investigating discrepancies. Before joining Westcourt, Kudzelka was a manager on the private equity team at a fund administrator, overseeing the fund accounting team evaluating private equity and private debt funds.
Josh Nakesch, a wealth counsellor and shareholder on the board of directors at Kinsted Wealth in Alberta, built his practice around the total elimination of jargon from client conversations. “Jargon should never be used, ever,” he said. “A true demonstration of your knowledge of a subject is to be able to explain the concept in a way that your audience can understand without having previous knowledge of that particular topic or concept.” Nakesch also walks clients through the original rationale behind their strategy when markets turn, framing turbulence as something the plan already accounted for.
Massimo Ianniruberto, co-founder and co-CEO of Cloven, built the Toronto financial advisor CRM out of BluRoot, the technology firm he founded in 2013 after working with insurance, mortgage, financial advisory, and wealth industry leaders. BluRoot moved fully to a product business in 2023, dropping consulting work to concentrate on Cloven and its mortgage broker counterpart, BluMortgage. Ianniruberto now guides Cloven’s growth and vision.
Mordechai Kuhnreich, a wealth advisor and portfolio manager at Lakeview Wealth Management – Wellington-Altus Private Wealth in Toronto, Ontario, built his book from nothing, with no inherited business and no family handoff. “I was never one of the lucky ones who has a parent that has a business to hand to me,” he said. “I started with cold calling. It was the real old-school grind.”
