Jeff Cusack, Nuveen's head of RIA Sales and retail distribution for alternatives, moved over to Tradewinds Global Investors, one of Nuveen's subsidiaries, as its executive managing director and president in March.

Cusack has been with Nuveen for a little less than two years, first joining the firm in August, 2012, from Forward Management, a San Francisco alternatives firm where he was president and head of distribution.

His previous stints included a managing director role at Rex & Co., an executive v.p. position inJ.P. Morgan Private Client Services and senior v.p. roles at Charles Schwab and Smith Barney, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Cusack and Kathleen Cardozo, a spokeswoman for Nuveen, did not return calls seeking further comment by press time, but Tradewinds' leadership seems to have been reshuffled following David Iben's departure in 2012. Iben was the firm's co-chief investment officer, executive managing director and co-president. The investment duties were taken over by co-CIOs Andrew Thelen and Emily Alejos, who are both also executive managing directors, but the president seat was empty until Cusack's joining last month.

Iben left the firm in 2012 to join Vinik Asset Management when the latter was looking to build out an asset management and mutual fund business. Jeff Vinik, the firm's founder and former manager of the Fidelity Magellan Fund, later nixed these plans and decided to shut down the whole hedge fund operation due to poor performance.

Iben started his own firm, Kopernik Global Advisors in Tampa, FL, in July last year. The startup received $20 million in seed capital from Vinik and will be running separate accounts, mutual funds and private investment partnerships. The firm initially plans to offer three strategies: global all-cap equities, a long-only fund that invests in value opportunities and an unconstrained long/short equity fund. 

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