Envestnet CEO, Judson Bergman & wife killed in DUI wrong way car crash while riding San Francisco taxi. Drunk driver i’d as Emilie Ross. Financial pioneer mourned.
A Chicago CEO and his wife have been killed after a drunk wrong-way driver struck the taxi they were riding in ‘head on’ along a San Francisco highway according to reports. All three individuals in the taxi and the offending DUI driver were instantly killed.
Judson Bergman, 62, who was at the helm of the Envestnet firm, and his wife, Mary Miller-Bergman, 57, died when Emilie Ross, 34, of Hillsborough rammed her Volkswagen sedan into their cab in San Francisco, the California Highway Patrol said in a release.
Bergman was thrown from the taxi, authorities said. Cabbie, Berkant Ramadan Ahmed, 42, also was killed. Also killed was the female driver of the other car AP reported.
KPIX reported the couple had just arrived from Chicago when Ahmed who worked the airport route picked the Bergmans up as a fare and had been driving northbound towards San Francisco when the vehicle was struck. Authorities retrieved the killed couple’s luggage in the taxi’s trunk.
The deadly collision is said to have occurred just on 12.24am, Thursday morning.
The incident led to all lanes of northbound U.S. 101 being closed for nearly seven hours before reopening around 7 a.m.
Envestnet CEO & Chairman remembered:
Bergman, who also served as Envestnet’s chairman, founded the company in 1999, inspiring a wave of independent financial advisers, Crain’s Chicago Business reported.
In a statement, Envestnet called Bergman ‘a remarkable leader whose vision, brilliance and drive built the foundation for Envestnet’s success.’
‘On behalf of our board of directors, management team and employees, we extend our deepest sympathies to Jud and Mary’s family,’ the company said in a statement.
The company has appointed Bill Crager, president of Envestnet and chief executive of Envestnet Wealth Solutions, as interim CEO. The company’s lead independent director, Ross Chapin, has been named interim chairman of the board according to a release via businesswire.
Bergman ‘Revolutionized’ the Financial Services Technology Sector
Before founding Envestnet, Bergman served as the head of mutual funds at Nuveen Investments. He had initially pitched the business idea that became Envestnet to Nuveen, but that company wasn’t interested in accepting it at the time.
This in turn led to Bergman working on creating software tools that would help financial advisers launch their own shops, apart from large institutions.
‘I was a reluctant entrepreneur,’ Bergman said in an interview with Crain’s for a 2014 story about his company’s growth. He explained that he was in his early 40s, after having built a career at Nuveen over 17 years, and was supporting a wife and four kids. ‘There was never an ‘aha’ moment, just a growing conviction that this was a good thing to do.’
Envestnet grew into a major Chicago fintech firm, acquiring other companies along the way as it built extensive performance-tracking, portfolio-rebalancing, administrative and other software services for adviser clients and large institutions such as Fidelity.
Last year Crain’s named Envestnet, which trades on the New York Stock Exchange, one of the Chicago area’s 50 fastest-growing businesses.
