Knowell Espinosa, CFA CPA MBA MA Law

Founder and Lead Author

Knowell is the lead author for RapidQuizzer leading his colleagues of fellow CFA charterholders in the US and Europe. His multiple credentials attest to his academic excellence, which includes achieving 97% in the U.S. (New York) Uniform CPA exams in financial accounting and 94% in management accounting. He earned his MBA on full merit scholarship in Asian Institute of Management and was one of the top graduates having been a Dean's lister among 160 international students. His MBA electives included financial engineering, technical analysis, corporate finance, and financial management - so he knew many of the subjects covered in the CFA® exams even before he took and passed them. He even taught in top exclusive schools in the Philippines both undergraduate and graduate courses (e.g. MBA and Master of Science in Accountancy) and was voted outstanding teacher by the students on his first year of teaching despite being the youngest lecturer. He recently earned his MA Law in University of Law in London graduating with Commendation overall and Distinction in his dissertation on global copyright law despite then being already a mature student.

His investment management career includes being an equity portfolio risk analyst for Lehman Brothers in New York and a hedge fund quantitative and risk analyst for FIM in London. In his earlier career, he was a professional auditor for EY and KPMG where he applied his eagle eye on numbers not adding up on financial statements and financial models. His professional versatility includes being a VP in Finance for Credit Suisse in London and consulting in global technology projects for the likes of Rolls-Royce and UK Ministry of Defence. He now lives in Switzerland doing consulting in finance and technology while building a software development startup including an accounting software that has embedded artificial intelligence. He volunteers assisting pro bono social enterprises to obtain funding from or report progress to development institutions applying social ROI and valuation of social outcomes in impact/ESG investing. He was a volunteer judge in CFAI's Global Equity Research Challenge in CFA Society of New York in 2015 and was a volunteer grader in CFA Society of Switzerland in 2021. He was also a volunteer judge in Internet of Things (IoT) Open Innovation Lab Competition of Northeastern University in Boston in 2018.

The CFA Institute advises you to research the quality of CFA® exam instruction before you choose a third-party provider. Knowell's academic and professional profile help support to fit that bill with his demonstrated excellent academic achievement and rich professional international experience from New York to London. Having said this, Knowell's view is that all you need is the CFA® Curriculum Readings and a good amount of diligent practice to succeed in the CFA® exams. That's what he did in passing both his U.S. CPA exams and CFA® exams, except that he created (after dissatisfaction in commercial testbanks) his own Q&A testbank, which was the origin of rapidquizzer. He embedded his exam-prep and test-taking strategies in the quizbank including classifying practice questions according to level of difficulty (so he could focus on more challenging ones especially when the exam date was fast approaching), shortcut formulas developed from understanding the logic of the formula, succinct paraphrasing of key learning concepts, applying logical and reasonableness test on multiple choices to elliminate obviously wrong choices, solving the question without doing the math, and even memory aids, if need be (as he does not advise memorizing material but rather truly understanding it) -- all these are applied in rapidquizzer's comprehensive coverage of the assigned readings.

Knowell's goal in founding rapidquizzer is to share his personally successful prep methods as well as to apply his innovative teaching techniques (that applied his knowledge of learning science having been an educator himself) in helping you boosts your exam-readiness and even job-ready practical skills using real-world examples.