John M. Schobel
Chief Executive Officer & Founder
As a founding member of RegEd, John has worked for more than 20 years to transform RegEd into the market-leading provider of regulatory compliance education and enterprise solutions for the financial services industry. Under his leadership and direction, RegEd ascended from a single-product company into the industry leader, serving hundreds of enterprise clients and more than one million end users.
Beginning in 2000, John worked to expand RegEd beyond its traditional role as the leading provider of continuing education to agents and advisors. Directing a seasoned team of technologists and engaging key clients in the process, RegEd created RegEd’s enterprise compliance management platform with integrated compliance workflow, process automation and reporting capabilities critical to maintaining compliance with state and federal financial services rules and regulations. Today, the platform is implemented in the top broker-dealers and insurance companies in the country. Through additional development and strategic acquisitions, RegEd’s platform has evolved into an unparalleled solution in the financial services compliance industry.
John’s passions include product management, a truly consultative client engagement process, and, above all, a commitment to client satisfaction. This commitment has given shape to RegEd’s organizational structure, which is client-experience focused and has enabled the company to create strong and lasting client relationships. It has also resulted in a solution-driven sales philosophy, continuous product innovation and a customer service model that has helped earn RegEd a reputation as a creative, responsive market leader that fully understands and responds to its clients’ needs.
John holds a B.A. from New York University and a J.D. from Washington University in Saint Louis.
Stephanie Buchanan
Chief Client Officer
RegEd’s most valuable asset is our robust, diverse and loyal client base. For nearly 20 years, Stephanie has successfully established, built, and nurtured relationships with RegEd’s clients–the industry’s largest broker-dealers, insurance companies and banks. Stephanie possesses deep expertise across RegEd’s portfolio of financial compliance solutions, and an intimate knowledge of the financial services compliance industry. As Chief Client Officer, Stephanie engages clients both in one-on-one detailed conversations and in collaborative sessions designed to tackle industry challenges together.
Joining RegEd in 2000, Stephanie has held progressive positions in Account Management, Implementation, Operations and Client Services. As SVP of Strategic Client Relationships, Stephanie built solid, long-lasting relationships with RegEd’s largest enterprise clients, implementing account strategies to better serve clients that utilize multiple RegEd solutions. Stephanie also established RegEd’s implementation team, a Center of Excellence for RegEd that employs a highly consultative methodology to ensure RegEd products are configured to serve each firm’s unique compliance needs.
Stephanie holds a Bachelor of Science, Business Administration from Meredith College, Raleigh, NC. She is an active member of the Securities and Insurance Licensing Association (SILA) and acts as a court appointed volunteer in North Carolina’s Guardian ad Litem Program, where she advocates for the best interests of abused and neglected children in courtrooms and communities.
Ethan Floyd
Chief Product Officer
Ethan recently joined RegEd’s Executive Team as our Chief Product Officer. In this role, Ethan is responsible for platform and product strategy, overseeing several teams of product managers that support RegEd’s enterprise compliance applications.
Ethan has over 14 years of experience in helping financial services firms solve complex business challenges with technology, implementing some of the industry’s most sophisticated business requirements and transforming them into high-tech applications used by hundreds of firms throughout the industry. Before accepting his new executive role, Ethan served as Senior Vice President of Product Management for RegEd’s Trax product suite and managed all of RegEd’s implementation operations.
Prior to joining RegEd, Ethan managed entrepreneurial programming at the Council for Entrepreneurial Development (CED), a nonprofit that provides education, mentoring and capital formation resources to startups in the technology and life science sectors.
Ethan holds a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Margaret S. “Peggy” Fox
General Counsel
Peggy has over 25 years’ experience in the financial services industry in roles that span regulator, compliance officer and legal counsel. She joined RegEd in 1999 and currently serves as General Counsel, working with RegEd customers and vendors, providing counsel and regulatory advice to the executive team and human resources group, and acting to manage risk for the company.
Peggy’s deep knowledge of financial services regulation has been deployed by RegEd, in its continuing education courseware and in the development of the company’s suite of compliance management applications and tools. Prior to RegEd, Peggy was a First Vice President of Compliance at Salomon Smith Barney, providing compliance advice to the firm’s capital markets businesses on SEC and SRO regulations, as well as developing written supervisory procedures and compliance training for many of the firm’s trading desks and business units.
As an Enforcement Director at the New York Stock Exchange as, Peggy and her staff conducted numerous investigations of and prosecutions for violations of NYSE and SEC rules by NYSE member firms and their registered personnel.
Peggy received her B.A. with highest honors from the University of Florida. She also received her J.D. from the University of Florida, and is a member of the Florida Bar.
Debra Freitag
Chief Strategy Officer
Debra joined RegEd in 2006 upon the acquisition of CT Insurance Services / Xchange, the Wolters Kluwer business she had led since 1999. With more than 20 years’ experience in executive management, business strategy, full-life cycle product management and enterprise sales, Debra has achieved commercial success and strong revenue growth for multiple companies’ technology products and solutions. At RegEd, Debra is responsible for strategic planning, strategic marketing and key product and market growth initiatives.
Prior to joining RegEd, Debra was General Manager of CT Insurance Services, responsible for product development, product management, sales, relationship management and operations. Over the 7 years as GM, Debra oversaw the division’s growth from organic startup through the acquisition of marquee clients and evolution into the industry’s leading licensing and registration solution, now known as Xchange.
Previous to that she was responsible for the management and growth of a $100+ million product line at CCH Legal Information Services, a division of Wolters Kluwer. She also led two pioneering and highly successful initiatives: a major effort to move key transactional filing and search services to the web, and the firm’s market entrance into insurance compliance, which would become CT Insurance Services. Debra’s early career was focused in software sales and sales management.
Debra holds an MBA from Rutgers Business School, Rutgers University and a Liberal Arts degree from City University of New York.
Angela Pace
Chief Operating Officer
As RegEd’s Chief Operating Officer, Angela has been an integral part of creating RegEd’s industry-leading financial services compliance offering. Angela has dedicated nearly 20 years to growing RegEd’s product offering, ensuring client satisfaction, engaging RegEd employees, and partnering with regulators, industry groups, and clients to continually evolve RegEd’s products and services.
An attorney with deep expertise in financial services regulation, Angela also serves as RegEd’s Chief Regulatory Officer, leading RegEd’s Regulatory Affairs department. Angela and her team of financial services experts and attorneys help RegEd’s clients identify impactful emerging regulations, understand their impacts and develop solutions to enable compliance and manage risk.
During her time at RegEd, Angela has held senior management and executive roles focused on product development and strategic initiatives. Previously, Angela was a manager with a leading global provider of education to financial services corporations and an attorney.
Angela received her J.D. from the Washington University School of Law in St. Louis and her B.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri – Columbia.
Yogesh Periwal
Chief Financial Officer
Yogesh serves as RegEd’s Chief Financial Officer, responsible for all financial operations. Experienced in working with companies under private equity ownership and managing financial operations during some of RegEd’s largest growth periods, Yogesh has focused on forecasting and budgeting, M&A modeling and strategic planning. Yogesh and his team of dedicated professionals have worked to improve RegEd’s accounting processes, with a focus on enhanced financial reporting and auditing capabilities.
A valued member of RegEd’s Executive Team, Yogesh goes beyond financial operations, working on cross-functional initiatives to improve client retention, ensure employee engagement and talent development, enhance operational efficiency and effectively manage vendor and partner relationships. Yogesh is also involved in several strategic initiatives involving market assessment, sales strategy and product development.
Before joining RegEd in 2015, Yogesh was Director of Finance at Relias Learning and held progressive positions at Sunquest Information Systems. Yogesh received his MBA from the University of Arizona and his Bachelor of Engineering in Computer Science from the Shri Vaishnav Institute of Technology and Science.
Michael Underwood
Chief Technology Officer
Mike joined RegEd in November 2015 as Chief Technology Officer. As RegEd’s CTO, Mike is responsible for a wide array of responsibilities including application development and quality assurance, data services, infrastructure, security, and operations services. Mike leads an experienced team of employees and contractors to ensure RegEd’s financial services compliance platform remains unparalleled in our industry, robust and continually evolving, and leveraging the latest technology innovations to serve our clients.
Previously, Mike served as CTO for National General Insurance and also spent 20 years with Royal & SunAlliance Insurance. While at Royal & SunAlliance, he served in many roles, including as the Business CIO for the London-based Personal Lines business and as Program Executive leading major transformation initiatives. Mike brings his 30 years of experience leading IT initiatives across all areas of technology to RegEd with a focus on innovating RegEd’s technology platforms and ensuring the security of RegEd’s client data.
Mike received his MBA from Winthrop University and has a Bachelor of Mathematics from UNC Asheville.