Tess Michaels

Chief Executive Officer

• Serial entrepreneur 

• Investment banking at Goldman Sachs

• Private equity at Vista Equity

• MBA, Harvard Business School

• Impact Investing at Wharton​

David Kafafian

VP, Business Development & Operations

• Serial entrepreneur - Early entrant into ISA space

• Investment banking at JPMorgan

• Senior Watson Analytics Consultant at IBM

• Harvard Law School graduate

Patrick S. Ziegler

Director of University Relations

• Former Financial Aid Administrator and Loan Coordinator

• 15 years in higher education financing

• Doctoral student in Education Policy and Leadership

Aidan O'Gara

Data Scientist

• Predictive income and financial models expert

• AI Researcher

• Winner of Amazon's 2019 Alexa Hackathon

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Patrick J. Conner

Chief Revenue Officer

• Student financing veteran       

• 20+ years managing student loan portfolios at banks (Wells Fargo, JPMorgan, Santander)

• Early hire at SoFi

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Max P. Michaels

Chief Investment Officer

• Former GM at IBM

• Investment banking (Financial Institutions) at Morgan Stanley

• Strategist at McKinsey, Cisco, AT&T

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Ryan Gardner

Senior Marketing Manager

• Expert in FinTech product marketing

• 4 years in student loan space (Vault | Student Loan Genius)

• Market Research at UT Austin

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Brendan Florez

Senior Technology Consultant

• Serial entrepreneur 

• Early entrant into ISA space as founder of Base Capital

• Former CEO of Lumni USA 

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Deborah Quazzo

• Managing Partner of GSV Ventures

• Investor in Coursera, CampusLogic, Degreed

• 16 years investment banking at Merrill Lynch, JPMorgan

Doug Levin

• Founder of Black Duck Software (sold to Synopsys for ~$550mm)

• Harvard / MIT Faculty

• Expert on software development

Tina Sharkey

• Founder of Brandless (raised ~$300mm in venture funding)

• Serial entrepreneur

• Expert on D2C branding and community building