Team
CEO AND CIO
Mark Tennenbaum
40+ years in finance, predictive modeling, and corporate strategy. Began on Wall Street designing derivatives and M&A models before serving as CFO and Corporate Development executive across multiple industries. Co-founded FrontBridge (acquired by Microsoft, 2005). MBA, UCLA Anderson; BA Psychology, Pitzer College (Claremont Colleges). Author of “Where Alpha Cannot Be Measured: Regime-Conditional Performance Attribution,” forthcoming in the Journal of Investment Management.
Substantially invested alongside clients.
CCO
Lela Kelly
Keeps the firm legal, compliant, and protected. Started at Jones Day on complex corporate transactions, fund formation, and litigation. 16 years of corporate law with deep expertise in estate planning, trusts, and special needs advocacy. Manages the firm's sub-advisory relationships and serves as primary point of contact for institutional partners. USC, UCLA Law.
Substantially invested alongside clients.
MARKET NEUTRAL PORTFOLIO MANAGER
Brenden O'Connell
Founded Leyland Cypress in 2022 and leads research and investment strategy for our long-short strategies. Building quantitative models full-time since 2020. UCLA Economics.
Substantially invested alongside clients.
VP, MARKET NEUTRAL STRATEGIES
Ritwik Kumar
Leads technology and data infrastructure at Leyland Cypress. Previously investment banking at DBD Partners across SaaS and healthcare. UCLA Mathematics.
Substantially invested alongside clients.
VP, CLIENT RELATIONS AND TRADE EXECUTION
Aleks Kelly
Manages client relationships and communications at Life UnLocked Partners. Background in finance and luxury automotive sales serving high-net-worth clients. BS Finance and Economics, Cal State Northridge.
Substantially invested alongside clients.
Brief

Our goal is demonstrating skill at capturing alpha from lower market exposure portfolios under most market conditions. We build concentrated, equal-weight equity portfolios of 22 securities spread across all 11 GICS sectors, rebalanced as signals decay, averaging about 50 trading days and capped at 90.

Alpha comes in two forms: absolute alpha measures total return regardless of market direction, while relative alpha isolates excess return over a benchmark, what the manager actually contributed beyond what an index would have delivered for free.

We hunt relative alpha. Our benchmarks are the equal-weight S&P 500 (RSP) and the cap-weight S&P 500 (SPY). The spread between our portfolios and those indices is the signal we care about.

Where appropriate, we use derivatives to reshape risk and extract asymmetric payoffs that linear portfolios cannot reach, such as risk-managed and market-neutral variants. None of this is decorative. Every position exists because it improves the odds of capturing alpha on the days the market structure allows it.

Our proprietary framework classifies each trading day as either Alpha Opportunity or Pure Beta based on market conditions. On Pure Beta days, correlations spike and even good picks get swamped by index-level forces. We do not confuse surviving those days with skill. We measure what we can control, on the days it can manifest, and we build everything around that distinction.

We present live results every day at 1:30 PM Pacific in our AC Monitors for transparency. The numbers are there whether they flatter us or not. Every claim is tested daily against the live record: Statistical Validation →

Structure
Two firms, split by mandate
Life UnLocked Partners LLC
The registered investment adviser, CRD 318642, registered with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Runs Alpha Convergence and AC Market Neutral. Its mandate is long-only and fiduciary-appropriate securities.
Leyland Cypress LLC
A registered investment adviser in its own right, CRD 322964. Runs Independent Return. Its mandate is long-short strategies, including those that use derivatives, for a different audience. Market-neutral construction is long-short by definition. Founded in 2022 by Brenden O'Connell, who manages the strategy. Its disclosure documents: Form ADV, Part 2A, Part 2B.
Why two
The split is by mandate rather than by marketing. Long-only equity and long-short strategies suit different investors, carry different risks and sit in different accounts, so they are run by different firms rather than blurred inside one.
Ownership
Life UnLocked Partners holds a 50% interest in Leyland Cypress.
Shared officers
Mark Tennenbaum is CEO of both firms. Lela Kelly is Chief Compliance Officer of both. The two firms therefore share senior management and compliance oversight, which we state plainly because it is the kind of overlap a diligence reader should know about rather than discover.
Factsheet
Alpha Convergence, one page
Contents
Net and gross return since inception against RSP, both significance readings, risk, construction, terms, where the strategy is likely to lag, and what has and has not been verified.
How it is produced
Generated from the same record the site reads, so it cannot say something different from the live pages. Regenerated whenever the record updates.
Download
alpha-convergence-factsheet.pdf
Terms
Which strategy fits which account
Tax-exempt money
All three strategies generate short-term gains by design. In an IRA, Roth, defined-benefit plan, foundation, endowment or donor-advised fund those gains carry no tax cost, which is why tax-exempt money is their natural home. In a taxable account the gains are short-term.
Alpha Convergence
IRA, Roth, other tax-exempt, and taxable accounts. Long only, no margin required.
AC Market Neutral
Taxable accounts, and IRAs that qualify for margin at Schwab. Margin required: the RSP hedge is a short position held on margin.
Independent Return
Taxable accounts, and IRAs that qualify for margin at Schwab. Margin required: the ETF pairs are held long and short.
Alpha Convergence
Strategy
Concentrated, equal-weight US-traded large-cap equities.
Account Minimum
Direct relationship: $150,000, as stated in ADV Part 2A. Sub-advised through Schwab: $50,000 per sleeve, $250,000 per relationship.
Structure
Separately managed accounts, custodied at Charles Schwab. You hold the account, we trade it.
Liquidity
Daily.
Live since
June 27, 2025.
Capacity
At least $300MM per strategy on a deliberately conservative estimate. Modelled capacity runs to roughly $1B.
Fees
Fee-only, up to 2% top tier. Full schedule in ADV Part 2A.
GIPS
GIPS-consistent composite in development, methodology defined.
AC Market Neutral
Strategy
The Alpha Convergence long book hedged with a short position in RSP, the equal-weight S&P 500, so the sleeve carries the selection and not the market.
Margin
The short hedge is held on margin, so the account must be margin-enabled and carries the attendant borrowing and maintenance requirements. This is the principal structural difference from the long-only strategy.
Account Minimum
Direct relationship: $150,000, as stated in ADV Part 2A. Sub-advised through Schwab: $50,000 per sleeve, $250,000 per relationship.
Structure
Separately managed accounts, custodied at Charles Schwab. You hold the account, we trade it.
Liquidity
Daily.
Live since
January 8, 2026.
Capacity
At least $300MM per strategy on a deliberately conservative estimate. Modelled capacity runs to roughly $1B.
Fees
Fee-only, up to 2% top tier. Full schedule in ADV Part 2A.
GIPS
GIPS-consistent composite in development, methodology defined.
Independent Return, managed by Leyland Cypress
Strategy
Market-neutral ETF arbitrage.
Capacity
Limited, allocated by inquiry.
Fees
2%.
Live since
December 2024.
Account Minimum
$50,000.
Structure
Separately managed accounts, custodied at Charles Schwab. Leyland Cypress is the adviser of record and bills its own accounts; Life UnLocked Partners bills its own.
Service Providers
Who does what
Custodian
Charles Schwab. Client assets are held at Schwab, not by us. We have trading authority and no custody of client funds or securities.
Compliance
In-house. The Chief Compliance Officer, who is also General Counsel, reviews and approves marketing, performance presentation and the compliance program. We do not retain an outside compliance consultant.
Portfolio accounting
SS&C Black Diamond. Account values, returns and billed fees are maintained there and reconciled to custodial records. Firm-wide and composite figures are produced from that data.
Composite preparation
Self-prepared from Black Diamond data. The composite methodology is defined and a GIPS-consistent composite is in development. There is no external auditor and no GIPS verifier, so no third party has examined the composite or the firm-wide record. We would rather say so than leave the question open.
Market data
Twelve Data is the primary vendor; yfinance is the fallback. Strategy return series are maintained in the firm's own master file, reconciled to custodial records.
Registration
Life UnLocked Partners LLC is registered with the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation. Firm CRD 318642. Registration does not imply a certain level of skill or training.
Privacy
What this site collects
Analytics
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Session behaviour
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What we do not do
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If you email us
We keep your message and address to reply and to maintain the records an investment adviser is required to keep. Nothing in an inquiry creates an advisory relationship.
Questions or requests
Email us and we will tell you what we hold about you, or delete it where we are not required to retain it.
Inquiries
info@lifeunlocked.partners →
Sub-Advisory for RIAs → Statistical Validation → Form ADV → FlightDeck →