Dennis A. Tito is a founder, Chairman and CEO of Wilshire Associates Incorporated. A native New Yorker, Mr. Tito earned his B.S. from New York University College of Engineering in astronautics and aeronautics, and an M.S. in engineering science from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He later finished course requirements at the University of California, Los Angeles' Anderson School for a Ph.D. in finance. Mr. Tito became the world's first paying space traveler in 2001, when he flew with a Russian crew aboard a Soyuz spacecraft to the International Space Station.

Mr. Tito, who started his career as a rocket scientist, worked for five years for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the 1960s. There, he applied computing technologies to help plot the trajectories for the Mariner spacecraft mission to Mars. After helping to found Wilshire Associates in 1972, Mr. Tito created the index now known as the Wilshire 5000 Total Market Index^sm, the broadest measure of the U.S. securities markets and is credited with helping to develop the field of quantitative investment analysis, using mathematical tools to calculate market risks.