User:Smalljim/EL draft

'''This sandbox page was created in 2016 as part of the discussions at Talk:Emmanuel Lemelson/Archive 1. It should be retained to make sense of those discussions.'''

Emmanuel Lemelson (born June 29, 1976 as Gregory Manoli Lemelson) is an American businessman, Greek Orthodox priest, social commentator and hedge fund manager.

In 1999, he started a retail business named Amvona selling photographic accessories in America. He closed this in 2010, changing its website into a social commentary site.

He was ordained a Greek Orthodox priest in 2011 and was assigned to the Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America. In 2014 he was a member of the Orthodox Church's delegation at the two day meeting between Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew I and Pope Francis in Istanbul, and is in favour of reconciliation between the two churches.

He has commented unfavourably on the securitization of mortgage-backed securities.

In 2012, he founded Lemelson Capital Management which runs The Amvona Fund, LP, a hedge fund that after its first two years of operation reported 160% net gains.

Early life and education
Lemelson was born Gregory Manoli Lemelson in Phoenix, Arizona, the son of a Jewish father and Christian mother. He attended Seattle University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in Theology and Religious Studies in 1999, followed by Hellenic College Holy Cross Greek Orthodox School of Theology in Brookline, Massachusetts, earning a Master's of Divinity in 2003.

While an 17-year old undergraduate at Seattle University, Lemelson met Robert Spitzer, a Jesuit priest and philosopher. In interviews, Lemelson has indicated that the encounter was a significant event in his religious life.

Businessman
Lemelson has written about his early business experiences, saying that his earliest recollection was selling candy on the bus ride home from school in the sixth grade. In 1994, while an undergraduate student at Seattle University, he launched a retail photography business. In 1999 Lemelson founded the retail website Amvona (from the Greek world for "pulpit") from his dorm room at Hellenic College. The company, which sold photography accessories, grew quickly, generating around $40 million in revenue.

Between 1999 and 2010, Amvona sold more than a million photo accessories to 300,000 customers, and was one of the top ten most visited online photo retail websites. The company also registered several patents, including proprietary software to connect its customers through user profiles, product reviews, exif data and online tracking software. Similar technology has since been used by other websites to track user activities. In 2005, based in part on proprietary software developed by the company, the Amvona website began to include elements of social networking alongside the ecommerce content. By 2007, Lemelson developed technology to link media creation to relevant products using exif data and aggregating shared images of the site's users as a prototype first known as 'Amvona Trails' and later rebranded as the independent website Flekt.

Lemelson discontinued the retail side of the business in 2010 changing the website into a news and securities analysis content outlet focused on issues of faith, technology, economics and investing.

Greek Orthodox priest
Lemelson was ordained as a Greek Orthodox Deacon on July 23, 2011 and, the following day, as a priest by Metropolitan Elpidophoros of Bursa. and was assigned to the Albanian Orthodox Diocese of America at the Holy Trinity Albanian Orthodox parish in South Boston to which he was still assigned as of January 2016. In June 2013, he was assigned to the Holy Metropolis of Switzerland, a jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

In December 2012,, Lemelson founded The Lantern Foundation, a non-profit foundation focused on supporting religious, charitable and educational causes especially those associated with the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Since its inception, he has served as its president.

In November 2014, Lemelson was a member of the Orthodox Church's delegation for a two day meeting between Ecumenical Patriarchate Bartholomew I and Pope Francis in Istanbul. He has said that as a young man he fostered a vision that Catholics and Orthodox Christians would soon be reunited, and he has stated that more progress towards reconciliation has been made under these two leaders than had taken place in nearly a millennium, since the East–West Schism.

On September 30, 2015, Lemelson joined U.S. presidential candidate Donald Trump at a New Hampshire campaign rally at which Trump and received Lemelson's blessing. Lemelson, who also offered the invocation, spoke at the rally, condemning the abortion practices of Planned Parenthood.

Lemelson’s position on ecumenism and the role of the Orthodox Church have been cited in The Washington Post, CBS News, Fox News and The Boston Herald. He has also advocated a philosophy of investment based on Christian ethics.

Social commentator
In 2010, in conjunction with the change of purpose of his Amvona website, Lemelson began to write on investment-related topics, including security analysis, Christian investment philosophy and ethics. He is a proponent of long-term investments in U.S. value stocks and has criticized what he considered fraudulent practices in the securitization of mortgage-backed securities. His writings on mortgage-backed securities were cited in relation to the legal cases U.S. Bank National Association v. Antonio Ibanez and Francis J. Bevilacqua v. Pablo Rodriguez, in which the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court held that financial institutions that did not hold both mortgages and the notes had no legal standing to pursue foreclosure proceedings against residents of these properties.

In 2014 he reached agreement with U.S. Bank after challenging the right of the bank's securitization trust to collect the principal and interest on a mortgage he took out in 2006. As part of the settlement, he was awarded relief of $1.2 million in principal, interest and fees.

Lemelson has appeared as a guest on the "Pre-Market Prep" radio show of Benzinga and on CBS News, Fox News and Fox Business Network.

Hedge fund manager
In September 2012, Lemelson founded Lemelson Capital Management, LLC, the sole sponsor and general partner of The Amvona Fund, L.P., a small hedge fund (managing around $20 million in late 2015) that focuses on deep value and special situations. He is the chief investment officer of the fund and has advertised it by means of press releases and interviews, under the provisions of the JOBS Act.

His commentary and trades have influenced the stock prices of several equities, including WWE, Skechers and Lumber Liquidators. His activities led the Amvona Fund to be ranked in three months during 2013–14 among the world's top performing hedge funds, and by mid 2015 the company reported a total return since its launch of 150 percent.

Lemelson's investment research and analysis has been cited in The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, New York Post, Fox Business Network and The Street.

In October 2015 The Wall Street Journal published an article about Lemelson that included a claim that Lemelson boasted of his ability to 'crash' stocks, and quoted him as saying "My whole life I always knew things before they happened. I guess it's just a gift from God." Lemelson later published repudiations of 14 points in the article and accused its author of writing a thinly-veiled ad hominem attack, but according to Benzinga, one of the financial media sites that published Lemelson's responses, Dow Jones (the owner of The Wall Street Journal) stated that they stood by their story.

Personal life
Lemelson lives in Southborough, Massachusetts and is married to Theodora Anjeza Lemelson. As of 2015 he has four children.