The Financial Technology Report is pleased to announce The Top 25 Financial Technology CTOs of 2022. The areas of expertise of this year’s awardees run the gamut from B2B payments to currency exchange, data security, and financial infrastructure, among many others. They represent some of the most accomplished leaders across the industry, and many are pioneers and innovators in their specialties.
This year’s awardees include Tamir Nitzan, who functions as a software developer and cybersecurity officer while leading Virtu Financial’s IT/infrastructure group; Rajdeep Singh, who has been responsible for architecting the core platform and building the technology teams as part of the founding team at Sentieo; and Scott Tottman, who oversees OnDeck’s engineering and design organizations and is tasked with building the next generation of OnDeck’s digital products for small businesses.
Financial services have been experiencing a digital revolution, and these executives and their companies are radically changing the way technology augments and enhances the delivery of those services. From a pool of remarkable and highly-qualified nominees, these fintech CTOs were selected for their expertise, their leadership, and their impact not just on their firms, but on the broader, rapidly changing fintech industry. Please join us in celebrating the achievements of the Top 25 Financial Technology CTOs of 2022.
1. Ilan Atias, Melio
Title: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Ilan Atias, Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Melio, leads the R&D, Product, and Business Intelligence teams. As one of the fastest-growing online B2B payment solutions, Melio’s mission is to keep small business in business, helping them to improve their cash flow and workflow, gain more control over their finances, and optimize their business’s financial health. Melio was founded by CEO Matan Bar, CTO Ilan Atias, and Ziv Paz in 2018, with headquarters in New York, an R&D center in Tel Aviv, and western U.S. headquarters in Colorado.
The company has raised $506 million to date, tripling the company’s valuation to $4 billion since January 2021. The capital raised is helping to accelerate the company’s expansion through partnerships with leading financial institutions such as J.P. Morgan and Capital One, as well as software providers and marketplaces interested in enabling B2B payments for their customers. Melio’s monthly payments processing surged 5,000% in the last 18 months and the platform processes tens of billions of dollars annually in payments. Melio's smart B2B online payment solution is tailor-made for small businesses' needs. It is a free, simple, and secure solution that allows small businesses and their suppliers to transfer and receive payments quickly and easily.
Before joining Melio, Atias was Vice President of R&D at Windward, the world leader in predictive maritime analytics. Previously, Atias was a Researcher at native advertising company Outbrain, responsible for a personalized recommendation system using machine learning algorithms. Before that, Atias also volunteered for several years with at-risk youth, teaching students about technology in a local high school in Israel. Atias received his Master's Degree in Computer Science from Tel Aviv University.
2. Jeff Smits, Prime Trust
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Jeff Smits is the Chief Technology Officer at Prime Trust, the leading provider of financial infrastructure for fintech and digital asset innovators. Headquartered in Las Vegas, Prime Trust has established itself as a category leader in financial infrastructure services and is trusted by the world's leading crypto exchanges, on-ramps, apps, ATS, RIAs, broker-dealers, and banks – such as Binance.US, SWAN, ABRA, and Dapper, to name a few. With a $64 million Series A in July 2021 and strong business growth ahead, the company continues to be recognized as an industry player and has earned several accolades recently, including Certified Great Place to Work, Forbes' 2022 America's Best Startup Employers list, and a spot on the CB Insights' second annual Blockchain 50.
As Chief Technology Officer, Smits is responsible for the company’s global technology strategy and works closely with employees, executives, board of directors members, stakeholders, and customers to ensure excellence across product engineering, scalability, resilience, and operations. As an accomplished technology executive with more than 20 years of experience, Smits also provides sound technical leadership in all aspects of the business and aims to help the organization expand the team, innovate, and increase velocity.
Before joining Prime Trust, Smits served as the Vice President, IT Infrastructure & Operations at RingCentral; Vice President, IT & Operations at DocuSign; Vice President, IT & Operations at McAfee; Vice President, IT Global Operations at SalesForce; Senior Manager, Information Management & Delivery Operations at PayPal; and Senior Manager, IT Operations/End User Services at eBay. As an exceptional technology leader, solution architect, and project manager who has held several executive positions over the years, Smits is recognized by his peers for his enthusiasm to build innovative solutions and customer trust, promote operational excellence, and drive profitable growth for billion-dollar businesses. He holds a Bachelor’s of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems from Boise State University and previously served on the board of Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley.
3. Tamir Nitzan, Virtu Financial
Title: Senior Vice President of Software Development and Infrastructure
Tamir Nitzan is the Senior Vice President of Software Development and Infrastructure at Virtu Financial, a leading provider of financial services and products to deliver liquidity to global markets as well as innovative trading solutions to its clients. In his role, Nitzan functions as a software developer and cybersecurity officer while leading the company’s IT/infrastructure group. His specialties include Java, C++, .NET, algorithms, data structures, and large-scale multi-threaded systems.
Prior to his nearly 14 years with Virtu, Nitzan was the Lead Software Architect for PC and web-based software products in the R&D group of Medtronic Diabetes. As a Consulting Architect for Dell through SBI, he helped write the discounts and coupons system, initiated the Agent Cockpit project, rewrote the Dell EMEA site in .NET, and expanded the Dellserv (CRM) solution. He concurrently worked as an Applications and Technical Architect for Avenue-A/Razorfish (formerly SBI). At this time, Nitzan also led development of the Boots (Digital Wellbeing) online store as a Consulting Architect. He had previously been a Senior Software Developer for Elron, and he started his career as a Technical Integration Officer in the Israeli Navy. Nitzan earned a Bachelor of Science in Computer Engineering from Technion — Israel Institute of Technology and studied neural computations at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
4. Eric Anderson, Aspiration
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Eric Anderson is the Chief Technology Officer of Aspiration Partners, Inc., which is in the business of fighting the climate crisis. Aspiration helps people and businesses build sustainable impact into what they do every day by making it easy, automated, and powerful—whether it is in the ways people spend and save their money or the ways businesses engage their customers and employees. Aspiration has raised over $250 million in funding to date and plans to go public soon.
Anderson is a technology Leader with experience in cloud technologies, data engineering, architecture, governance, analytics, data science, and business intelligence. He has a track record of success in technology transformations from traditional to modern data architecture. Before being named CTO in May 2020, Anderson served as Interim CTO for 4 months and Head of Data before that. Prior to Aspiration, he was Vice President of Data Engineering and Science at ConsumerTrack and Executive Director of Data at Beachbody. He received his Master of Business Administration in Business Economics and his Bachelor of Arts in International Studies and International Economics, both from Bentley University.
5. Marshall Jones, Very Good Security
Title: Co-founder
When he is not surfing, hunting, playing the guitar, or running, Co-founder of Very Good Security (VGS) Marshall Jones is an engineering-focused manager with strong technical skills who is able to code, manage engineers, and liaise between engineers and non-technical people. VGS provides essential security and compliance infrastructure and enables startups and enterprises to focus on their core business instead of compliance and regulatory overhead. With one single integration, VGS customers unlock the value of sensitive data without the cost and liability of securing it themselves, while also accelerating compliances like PCI, SOC 2, and more.
Jones has deep knowledge of building RESTful HTTP APIs from gathering initial specification requirements through to implementation and deployment. In the last ten years, he has focused a large portion of his career around providing solutions for financial systems and has a deep understanding of how to create systems that are able to handle concurrent requests, are reconcilable, and are able to recover from catastrophic events.
Prior to co-founding VGS, Jones was Vice President of Engineering at Balanced, Development Lead at Blue42, Development Manager at Cannla, and Director of Engineering at MediaPop. He studied Business & Computing at Massey University.
6. Rajdeep Singh, Sentieo
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Rajdeep Singh is the Chief Technology Officer of Sentieo Inc., a financial intelligence platform specifically designed for the research needs of investors. Sentieo’s AI-powered financial search engine aggregates internal and external content into a single shared workspace for a more efficient research process. Over 1,000 global customers, including 800 institutional investment firms and Fortune 500 companies, use Sentieo to surface, visualize, and share the insights that give them an edge. Singh has been responsible for architecting the core platform and building the technology teams as part of the founding team. In his current role, he oversees the engineering, data science, and information security teams, focusing on scaling the technology functions worldwide.
Before Sentieo, Singh worked in various tech roles at Texas Instruments and Hindustan Times. He plunged into the startup world with his own social startup Anahat and has since worked at or consulted for almost half a dozen startups in education, healthcare, finance, and social. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics & Communication from NSIT (Delhi University) and graduated from the Executive Management Programme at the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.
7. Londa Quisling, CrowdStreet
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Londa Quisling serves CrowdStreet as its Chief Technology Officer. While leading CrowdStreet’s IT department, among other duties, she has been integral in ushering her company into its next phases of growth, with a product focus and team-building orientation. Quisling is an accomplished engineering and product technology executive who has served in various roles with high-tech start-ups for more than 20 years.
Before arriving at CrowdStreet, Quisling was the CPO at Treehouse, a provider of online technical education and apprenticeship programs. Preceding that, she worked at NAVEX Global as its Vice President of Engineering and Product Development. She came to NAVEX as part of its merger with EthicsPoint, where she had held the same title. She was also the Vice President of Product Development for Iterasi, and before that filled high-ranking roles at Audio Mojo, Allen Technologies, and HCORP. Quisling holds a Bachelor of Science in Applied Mathematics from the Engineering School at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
8. Scott Tottman, OnDeck
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Scott Tottman is the Chief Technology Officer of OnDeck, an online lending facilitator serving small businesses. His position entails overseeing the company’s engineering and design organizations, and he is tasked with building the next generation of OnDeck’s exceptional digital products for small businesses. Tottman is devoted to introducing new eras of digital innovation on behalf of small business customers.
Tottman came to OnDeck from cloud security company DivvyCloud, where he served as the Head of Engineering and Product Development. Prior to that, he was the Head of Digital Product Engineering at Capital One, where he led a team of over 700 professionals building the digital face of Capital One’s bank, in addition to its mobile and web presence. Earlier in his career, he was the CTO of a mobile-focused startup and held senior engineering roles at AOL, where he spearheaded the development of AOL’s widely-used instant messenger product. Tottman received a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the College of William and Mary in addition to a Master of Science in Software Systems Engineering and a Master of Business Administration from George Mason University and Virginia Tech, respectively.
9. Antonio Abad, TD Securities
Title: Director of Sales and Trading
Antonio Abad is the Director of Sales and Trading for TD Securities, an investment bank and financial services provider offering advisory and capital market services to global corporate, government, and institutional clients. Within the financial services domain, Abad has an established professional expertise in algorithmic trading and order management system technologies, with an emphasis on high frequency trading.
Abad joined TD Securities after nearly two years with Lightspeed Financial Services as its CTO and partner. Before that, he was a trading systems architect with private trading firm Engineers Gate after serving as CTO for that firm’s Market Technologies business. Prior to that he was the Vice President of Arxis Capital Group. Earlier in his career, he worked as a Senior Software Engineer for Bloomberg, the MIT Lincoln Laboratory, and Air Network Simulation and Analysis. Abad received a Master of Science in Aerospace, Aeronautical, and Astronautical Engineering from MIT as well as a Bachelor’s Degree in the same disciplines from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
10. David Schwartz, Ripple
Title: Chief Technology Officer
David Schwartz serves payments settlement system and currency exchange network Ripple as its Chief Technology Officer, leading a world-class group of engineers, scientists, and business executives growing a global network of financial institutions using blockchain-based solutions to remove friction from global payments. He is additionally the company’s Chief Cryptographer, having been an architect and lead developer for the Ripple payment system and holding expertise in cryptography, computer security, and software development, particularly for startups and small companies.
Prior to his decade with Ripple, Schwartz spent 13 years at WebMaster, first as its Director of Software Development and then as CTO. Before that, with Worldwide Internet Solutions, he supervised the design, implementation, and deployment of a regional network and a large document scan, index, search, and retrieval system as that company’s Senior Network Engineer. As Director of Network Services with Internet Gateway Connection, Schwartz helped bring the first ISDN service to South Florida. Preceding this, he co-founded Cardiophonics, where he was also a Partner. During his time as a Software Developer for RE/MAX, he conceived and developed a system to analyze public property records. At the outset of his career, he founded his own company, David Schwartz Enterprises, also serving as its CEO. Schwartz studied Electrical Engineering at the University of Houston.
11. Michael Hawkins, LendKey
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Michael “Hawk” Hawkins is the Chief Technology Officer of LendKey Technologies, Inc. LendKey, via the market’s most advanced lending platform and network, is changing the way financial institutions do business. Hundreds of lenders and asset managers partner with LendKey to bring borrowers a powerful, white-labeled lending platform that has redefined Lending-as-a-Service. The solution gives financial institutions of all sizes the ability to attract new business, grow relationships, manage liquidity, and mitigate risk.
Hawkins has deep expertise in product management and engineering at startups and early stage companies and new product development in financial services and healthcare. He previously designed and developed a lending marketplace platform for institutional and individual investors to lend to small businesses.
Prior to LendKey, Hawkins was a Software Architect and Engineering Manager for RIS Logic, which was acquired by Merge Healthcare. At Dynamic Imaging, he was Director of Product Management responsible for new product innovation in the three years leading up to its acquisition by General Electric. At GE, Hawkins led product strategy and product management for new product innovation for part of the health IT portfolio. He studied Mathematics at Columbia University and Electrical Engineering and Mathematics at Case Western Reserve University.
12. Alexey Kalinichenko, Step
Title: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Alexey Kalinichenko is the Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer at Step, a next-generation banking platform tackling the financial literacy gap by giving Gen Z the tools they need to start making smart money decisions today. Since its public launch in late 2020, Step has amassed more than 3 million customers. In his role overseeing Step’s technology strategy and product development execution, he has democratized access to financial education by building a free, all-in-one solution for teen banking.
With over 20 years of experience, Kalinichenko has built and scaled an extensive list of software systems, enabling millions of customers to access cutting edge technology platforms to improve their lives and businesses. Before co-founding Step, he was the CTO of Token, responsible for building an open banking platform for the European market. Kalinichenko also spent several years at Square, where he was instrumental in architecting the new Square Payments stack to support its massive global expansion.
He is an alumnus of technology giants Google and Microsoft, where he spent his early years in the software development space, and holds a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from Syracuse University.
13. Renato Marteleto, EverChain
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Renato Marteleto is the Chief Technology Officer at EverChain, LLC, a national fintech headquartered in Henderson, Nevada. Founded in 2012, EverChain is the world’s largest online commercial debt exchange and complete recovery management solution for consumer lenders and creditors. EverChain’s flagship product, DebtTrader, was the first fintech marketplace for buying and selling nonperforming consumer receivables. As CTO, Marteleto is responsible for architecting and implementing the company’s product and services roadmap.
With over 20 years of technology experience, Marteleto leads the company’s software development, information technology, and security initiatives. He and his team work tirelessly to build solutions to ensure the consumer and the originating creditor are protected from regulatory and headline risk throughout the entire recovery process. Marteleto’s contributions to the industry have earned him status as a thought leader and technology innovator.
Prior to joining EverChain, Marteleto held several technology and leadership positions in the healthcare and mining industries. In his free time, he enjoys spending time with his family, traveling, and volunteering in the local community. Marteleto holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from the Federal University of Ouro Preto and a Master of Science in Computer Science and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
14. Cristiano Machado, Lidya
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Cristiano Machado is the Chief Technology Officer at Lidya, which is the future of finance for small businesses in fast growing economies. Its mission is to help great business owners access financing and build a credit score through an easy and inspiring lending process.
Prior to Lidya, Machado served as CTO of iMEDICAL, a high-growth startup funded by venture capital and the Portuguese government, with a mobility-first approach to software in clinical diagnostic imaging workflows enabled by mobile, web-based, and social connectivity tools. At iMEDICAL, Machado managed a team responsible for the development of a RIS/PACS application, he was responsible for the iMEDICAL application architecture, and he defined the strategy for the development team, among other responsibilities. Previously, Machado was an IKM Engineer at Siemens Medical Solutions, and a Developer at both Devscope and Microsoft Portugal. He studied at the Instituto Superior Engenharia do Porto.
15. James Shepherd, Quantile
Title: Chief Technology Officer
James Shepherd is the Chief Technology Officer at Quantile. Quantile delivers market leading post trade optimisation services to some of the largest financial institutions globally. By reducing risk, capital and notional requirements, Quantile increases market liquidity and makes the financial system safer. Quantile was founded in 2015 and is now widely recognised as a market leader in its field, with over 90 employees who are based in offices in London, New York and Amsterdam – with Tokyo coming soon. More recently, Quantile announced that it is to be acquired by the London Stock Exchange Group plc.
As CTO, James leads an extensive team which is responsible for building and maintaining the technology, algorithms and infrastructure that power Quantile’s services. Prior to joining Quantile, James spent 16 years at Morgan Stanley where he held senior positions including head of the interest rate derivatives technology team and head of the core analytics group. James holds a PhD in Mathematics from Imperial College London and an MA in Mathematics from the University of Cambridge.
16. Srikanth Goteti, FinMkt
Title: Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer
Sri Goteti is Co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of FinMkt, a customizable, embedded SaaS solution for home improvement and healthcare point of sale financing. FinMkt’s award-winning, API-driven technology offers speed-to-market for banks, credit unions, and alternative lenders by providing a real-time, end-to-end digital consumer financing platform combined with a marketplace of high-quality home improvement companies and healthcare providers.
In addition to its lender client-base, FinMkt also provides its embedded multi-lender, full waterfall, and lender integration services to innovative, high-quality home improvement companies and healthcare providers. FinMkt has experienced triple digit growth and earned the trust of major lenders, home improvement companies, and healthcare providers.
Prior to co-founding FinMkt, Goteti served as Senior Director of Technology for Interactive Data Managed Solutions – Americas. While there, he built and led a global team in developing both adviser and investor-focused market data systems and front-end applications currently licensed by over 350 global financial institutions including Wells Fargo, Citi, JPMorgan Chase, Pershing, Bank of America, and the NYSE. Goteti received his Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from Pondicherry University and his Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Houston.
17. Kathleen Fitzpatrick, SynapseFI
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Kathleen Fitzpatrick is the Chief Technology Officer at SynapseFI, an innovative banking platform that enables companies to provide financial products to their customers for a fraction of the cost of traditional banks. She has earned her reputation as a pragmatic leader and problem solver through more than 20 years of experience in the successful delivery of custom software applications, package software implementations, agile transformations, and eCommerce initiatives as well as legacy application migrations.
Fitzpatrick came to SynapseFI from LendUp, where she was also the Chief Technology Officer. She began her time with that company as its VP of Engineering. Before that, as VP of GapTech, she was responsible for all development of the Gap’s websites and in-store technology. Her previous titles with Gap included Senior Director, Director, and Senior Manager. Preceding that, she oversaw a team of engineers at early Omnichannel retailer Gazoontite.com. The beginning of her career saw her in content-driven roles at Atevo.com and Miller Freeman (now United News and Media). Fitzpatrick holds a Bachelor’s Degree in English Literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara.
18. Lisa Neigut, Blockstream
Title: Lightning Protocol Engineer
With the title of Lightning Protocol Engineer, Lisa Neigut functions as an engineer and open-source software developer at Blockstream. She is well known for her work on the company’s c-lightning, and holds extensive expertise on quantum experiments, bitcoin, and stocks as currency. She also co-founded Base58, a bitcoin education company looking to foster involvement in the bitcoin ecosystem.
Prior to her Blockstream appointment, Neigut was a Backend Developer on the Bitcoin engineering team of Square Cash, a Senior Engineer for Pluot Communications, a Facilitator for Recurse Center, and an Android Developer and Engineer for Etsy and Electric Object, respectively. Her early career featured positions with Pariveda Solutions and Digby, and she worked as an Intern with Walmart’s RIS Project Management team. She also taught in three public schools in the Butatã neighborhood of São Paulo through the EduAction project. Neigut earned a Bachelor of Business Administration in Management Information Systems and a Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and Portuguese from The University of Texas at Austin.
19. Karney Li, Wealthsimple
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Karney Li is the Chief Technology Officer of Wealthsimple, a Canadian online investment management service geared toward serving millennials. Founded in 2014 in Toronto, Wealthsimple provides powerful financial tools for individuals to grow and manage money. The company is backed by a team of world-class financial experts and the best technology talent, boasting a staff of more than 1,000, including software engineers, designers, and data scientists that have previously worked at such companies as Amazon, Google, and Apple. The company has received numerous industry awards, including the 2016 Webby Award for Best Financial Services Website.
In his time with Wealthsimple, Li has served as CTO, Vice President of Engineering, and advisor.
He has also served as VP of Engineering for Instacart, and is currently an advisor to TOOLBX. Prior to joining Wealthsimple, Li worked for Amazon as a Senior Software Development Engineer and Manager, overseeing the development and operation of the software systems automating the company’s warehouses. He began his career as a Software Developer for IBM. He holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from St. Jerome's University at the University of Waterloo.
20. Steve Buchanan, UNest
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Steve Buchanan is the Chief Technology Officer of UNest, the money app for your kids’ future. UNest uses bank level security to keep the sensitive data of its more than 400,000 parents and kids secure. It allows users to establish a monthly contribution plan, receive gifts from friends and family, and keep track of savings on the go.
Buchanan has extensive experience over the full life cycle of enterprise production solutions, having worked extensively in the roles of Chief Architect, Vice President of Engineering, and Global Head of Integration & Consulting. These roles cover the full life cycle from the creation of a product from initial concept; to the development and deployment of products to clients; to working on site with clients to integrate the product into their ecosystem; to operating, maintaining, and upgrading the product.
Prior to UNest, Buchanan was Head of Global Integration at GlobeOne, Head of Big Data Products at First Derivatives, Director of Engineering at Calypso, and VP of Engineering at Principia Partners. He got his start as a Senior Developer/Architect at Wood Mackenzie after receiving his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Summa Cum Laude from the University of Edinburgh.
21. Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya, BlockFi
Title: Chief Technology Officer
With over 30 years of industry and leadership experience, Mahesh Paolini-Subramanya is a respected executive with expertise in fintech, crypto, telecommunications, and networking. Until early 2022, Paolini-Subramanya was the Chief Technology Officer for BlockFi, a cryptocurrency platform provider based in Jersey City, New Jersey. BlockFi is a cryptocurrency exchange and wallet that serves individuals and businesses worldwide. It offers an interest-earning account, portfolio-backed loans, and fee-free trading. The company’s team consists of nearly 800 professionals with a deep bench of expertise across financial services and technology with offices in New York, New Jersey, Singapore, Poland, and Argentina. In his role as CTO, Paolini-Subramanya quickly led the company to a $4 billion valuation.
Paolini-Subramanya currently serves as an advisor to blufolio AG in Switzerland and Kuvera Network in India. Prior to joining BlockFi, he was CTO and Executive Vice President of Engineering for Factom, EVP of Engineering for cielo24, and Vice President of R&D and Managing Director for Ubiquiti Networks. He co-founded Aptela, which merged with Vocalocity in 2011, and served as CTO for both. He holds a Bachelor’s in Electric Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and a Master’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Notre Dame.
22. Firoze Lafeer, SmartAsset
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Firoze Lafeer is the Chief Technology Officer of SmartAsset, a New York City-based financial technology company. Founded in 2012, SmartAsset is an award-winning fintech company that helps more than 100 million people each month make smart financial decisions. It has been recognized as one of Y Combinator's Top 100 companies of all time and one of America's Best Startup Employers in 2020 by Forbes. With a workforce of more than 200 professionals and experts, SmartAsset also operates SmartAdvisor, a digital platform that connects consumers with financial advisors. The company has raised more than $161 million in venture capital.
In his role, Lafeer is responsible for leading the Data, Engineering, and Technology teams as well as defining the strategy and vision for the company’s technical innovations and improvements. Prior to joining SmartAsset, he was Chief Architect and Head of Architecture and Innovation at Silicon Valley Bank, CTO at Breakout Capital, and CTO of Capital One Labs. He began his career in development roles with Content Studios and OneWhitePixel. He is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
23. Georgina Owens, Liberis
Title: Chief Technology Officer
With nearly 35 years of industry experience, Georgina Owens is the Chief Technology Officer of Liberis, a London-based alternative finance provider. Since 2007, Liberis has provided small businesses with accessible and responsive finance options, becoming a leading partner for embedded business finance across the U.K., U.S., and Europe. It provides ecommerce and payments partners with the technology platforms and financial solutions for hyper-personalized, fair funding for their small business customers. The company has financed more than 17,000 SMEs worldwide with more than $700 million, and is supported by British Business Investments, Paragon, BCI Finance, and SVB.
In her executive role, Owens drives Liberis’ technology and engineering strategy. She has received numerous accolades, including U.K. Top 50 Most Influential Women in Tech 2020, Top U.K. CIO 2020, and several Women in IT Awards. Prior to joining Liberis, she was the
Chief Product and Technology Cfficer of Doqit Technologies, Senior Vice President of IT for DAZN, and Head of Digital Process Management for Vodafone. She was also a Senior Infrastructure Manager for Cognizant, OT Portfolio Manager for WPP, and Global Service and Delivery Manager for Kantar IT Partnership. She is an advisory board member for The Studio @ Home.
24. Paz Diamant, INX Digital
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Paz Diamant is the Chief Technology Officer of The INX Digital Company, Inc. Founded in 2017, INX Digital owns regulated trading platforms for digital securities and cryptocurrencies, combining traditional markets expertise and an innovative fintech approach. The company’s vision is to be the preferred global regulated hub for digital assets on the blockchain, one of the fastest-growing technologies in the world. INX is led by an experienced team of business, finance, legal, and blockchain technology experts unified by the vision of redefining the world of capital markets through regulated blockchain.
Diamant boasts more than 25 years of experience in the banking and financial technology industry. From 2013-2020, he held several roles at eToro, a worldwide leading social investment network, where he was most recently Managing Director of R&D and Product. In that role, he directed the design, development, and deployment of the company’s cloud-based exchange system, and was responsible for the development of eToro’s complicated hedging algorithms. Prior to that, he was the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of ForexManage Ltd. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Physics from The Technion - Israel Institute of Technology and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from Bar-Ilan University in Tel Aviv, Israel.
25. Trent Miskin, Lendio
Title: Co-founder and Chief Product Officer
Lendio, the nation’s leading small business financial solutions provider, helps small businesses and financial institutions realize their dreams by facilitating loans and financial insights via technology and automation.
The company’s mission to make capital accessible to all small business owners has become a reality because of the systems, processes, and technology that Trent Miskin, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, has overseen during his tenure with Lendio. To date, his efforts have helped facilitate nearly $13 billion in financing for more than 200,000 small businesses in Lendio’s 11 years in business. As CPO, Trent oversees and empowers Lendio’s product management, engineering, and data science teams to develop creative technological solutions.
In addition to pivoting the tech that runs Lendio’s core business to facilitate more than 11.8 billion PPP loans for U.S. small business during PPP shutdowns, Trent’s teams have recently beta launched new technology to help community development financial institutions (CDFIs) reach more small business owners with faster approvals and lower risk. Trent has spent 10+ years volunteering with youth organizations. He also speaks Ukrainian and is helping organize relief and fundraising for aid in Ukraine. Trent Miskin received his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Brigham Young University.
