David Zager has been with Avesta Technologies Inc., since shortly after its founding in December 1996. As CTO, Chief Architect and Head of Research, his responsibilities span: technology strategy for Avesta, architecture of Avesta's product suite, research, and care and feeding of Avesta's intellectual properties. Prior to joining Avesta, David spent thirteen years with Morgan Stanley and Co., Inc., where he was a Vice President and served as chief architect of TAPS++, a distributed firmwide business object model. He worked also as a scenario strategic planner concentrating on the impact of global economic and social changes on technology and the financial services industry. David spent most of his time at Morgan Stanley as chief architect, lead developer and manager of a research and development group that created cross-platform data infrastructure and middleware services. Prior to his work in software architecture, Dr. Zager was a postdoctoral fellow in Cognitive Science at the University of Chicago and taught Linguistics at SUNY at Stony Brook.