The Financial Technology Report is pleased to announce The Top 25 Financial Technology Leaders of New Jersey for 2022. While New Jersey may be considered part of the New York City metro area, it is quickly making a name for itself in the financial technology industry. Fintech companies are not only being formed in the state at a rapid clip, but they are increasingly relocating there as well, to the point that hundreds of fintechs now call The Garden State home. Some experts are even beginning to consider it within the realm of possibility that New Jersey may soon become the new capital of fintech.
This year’s list of awardees is chock-full of elite leaders guiding their companies to profitability and growth in the fintech space. For instance, CEO Gilles Gade’s Cross River Bank is delivering innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, lending, and crypto solutions to millions of consumers and businesses around the world. Meanwhile, Co-Founder and CTO Uday Thakur’s Volante Technologies’ cloud payments and financial messaging solutions are processing millions of transactions and trillions of dollars in value every day. And CEO Robert Cortright’s DriveWealth is offering unparalleled consultative support and a cloud-based, industrial strength technology platform that allow partners to seamlessly offer branded investing experiences.
While this year’s awardees lead companies in a wide range of specialties within the fintech industry, from banking to cloud payments, eSignatures, wealth management, and many more, they all have one thing in common: they are revolutionizing an already revolutionary industry, pushing technology forward not just for the benefit of their companies, but to provide their customers with the best products and services possible within the fintech space. Please join us in celebrating The Top 25 Financial Technology Leaders of New Jersey for 2022.
1. Gilles Gade
Company: Cross River Bank
Title: Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer
Gilles Gade is the Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer of Cross River Bank. Cross River provides technology infrastructure powering the future of financial services. Leveraging a proprietary real-time banking core, it delivers innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, lending, and crypto solutions to millions of consumers and businesses. Cross River is backed by leading investors and serves the world’s most essential fintech and technology companies. Together with its partners, Cross River is reshaping global finance and financial inclusion.
Previously, Gade was Chief Financial Officer of First Meridian Mortgage, and before that, a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Chela Technology Partners. Earlier in his career, he worked with Bear Stearns & Company as an investment banking associate.
2. Kathy Nelson
Company: Cross River Bank
Title: Chief Operating Officer
Kathy Nelson is the Chief Operating Officer of Cross River Bank, a financial institution that provides technology infrastructure to fintech and technology companies. Cross River delivers innovative and scalable embedded payments, cards, lending, and crypto solutions to millions of consumers and businesses. Cross River is backed by leading investors and serves the world’s most essential fintech and technology companies. Together with its partners, Cross River is reshaping global finance and financial inclusion.
3. Uday Thakur
Company: Volante Technologies
Title: Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer
Uday Thakur is the Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Volante Technologies, the leading global provider of cloud payments and financial messaging solutions to accelerate digital transformation. It serves as a trusted partner to more than 100 banks, financial institutions, market infrastructures, clearing houses, and corporate treasuries in 35 countries. Volante’s solutions and services process millions of transactions and trillions of dollars in value every day, powering four of the top five corporate banks, 40% of all U.S. commercial bank deposits, and 70% of worldwide card traffic.
Thakur first got his start in 1989 as a software engineer at Template Graphics Software. From there, he went on to Knowledge Set, before eventually rising to software engineer at Nextset Software, his most recent position prior to joining Volante Technologies.
4. Nish Shah
Company: IMM: The eSignature Company
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Nish Shah is the Chief Technology Officer of IMM: The eSignature Company, the leading source of eSignature and eTransaction management solutions exclusively for banks and credit unions. IMM’s flagship eSignature platform, IMM eSign, is used by hundreds of banks to power millions of “end-to-end” electronic transactions every month. Interfacing with virtually every business system used across the Bank today, IMM provides an easy-to-use, eSignature experience for customers, while significantly transforming internal business processes and the way transactions flow across institutions.
Before joining IMM: The eSignature Company, Shah was a workflow forms developer at Spectrum Systems & Resources. Shah graduated from DeVry University with an undergraduate degree in computer information systems.
5. James Kocis
Company: Burgiss
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
James Kocis is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Burgiss, a global, market-leading provider of data and analytics solutions for investors. With over 30 years of expertise in alternative investments, Burgiss offers unrivaled data, analytics, and transparency that enable asset owners, asset managers, and financial intermediaries to evaluate and manage complex portfolios.
Kocis first got his start in 1979 as a project manager at New Jersey Meadowlands Commission. Kocis graduated from the New Jersey Institute of Technology with an undergraduate degree in chemical engineering.
6. Robert Carr
Company: Beyond
Title: Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer
Robert Carr is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board at Beyond, a company that strives to help owners of small and mid-size businesses save time and reduce costs by simplifying complex back office operations. Beyond’s integrated suite of business tools and services includes payment processing, payroll, business capital and point-of-sale. Beyond provides every client with reliable, flexible, and secure business solutions they need in a transparent manner they can trust.
Before joining Beyond, Carr was Founder and CEO of Heartland Payment Systems. He graduated from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign with a master’s degree in computer science and an undergraduate degree in mathematics.
7. Robert Cortright
Company: DriveWealth
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Robert Cortright is the Chief Executive Officer of DriveWealth, the pioneer of fractional equities trading and embedded investing. DriveWealth is a visionary technology company that empowers more than 100 partners around the world to engage customers by placing the markets in the palm of their hand. DriveWealth believes the future is fractional, transactional, and mobile. Every mobile device should be a gateway to accessing investing and savings products, services, advice, and assistance for global citizens of all ages, wealth stages, and levels of financial expertise. DriveWealth’s unparalleled consultative support and cloud-based, industrial strength technology platform allow partners to seamlessly offer branded investing experiences to drive customer acquisition, loyalty, retention, and revenue growth. DriveWealth’s commitment to continuous evolution and innovation makes it the partner of choice for powering the future of investing.
Cortright first got his start in 1981 as a spot Swiss franc arbitrage trader at NM Rothschild & Sons Ltd. From there, he went on to Bank of America, before eventually rising to General Partner at Tachyon Capital Management, his most recent position prior to joining DriveWealth. Cortright graduated from Lehigh University with an MBA in international finance and an undergraduate degree in biochemistry.
8. Ramsey El-Fakir
Company: Fi-Tek
Title: Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer
Ramsey El-Fakir is the Chief Information Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Information Security Officer of Fi-Tek. He first joined the company in 2006. Fi-Tek is a premier financial technology company with industry-leading product solutions catering to the entire lifecycle of wealth management and the complex investor accounting requirements of hedge funds and other securities partnerships. Fi-Tek also renders a complete gamut of operations outsourcing services leveraging its cutting-edge technology platforms. In business for almost two decades, Fi-Tek has established several long-standing client relationships with a wide spectrum of financial institutions that include private banks, trust banks, wealth managers, RIAs, hedge fund managers, and administrators and family offices.
Previously, El-Fakir founded and was CEO of Warp Networks, Inc., and before that, a principal at Command Line Corp. Earlier in his career, he worked with ExxonMobil as a supply analyst. El-Fakir earned an MBA in consulting, finance, and international business from Cornell Johnson Graduate School of Management, and an undergraduate degree in engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology.
9. Manish Gurukula
Company: Alacriti
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Manish Gurukula is the Chief Executive Officer of Alacriti, a leading financial technology company dedicated to helping its clients accelerate digital payments transformation. Its cloud-based platform, Orbipay, delivers solutions across the payments ecosystem, including The Clearing House’s RTP network, Electronic Bill Presentment and Payments (EBPP), and Digital Disbursements. Alacriti also provides software, services, and technology outsourcing for clients, including AWS Cloud Consulting. Gurukula graduated from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Chennai, India with an undergraduate degree.
10. Marc Betesh
Company: Visual Lease
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Marc Betesh is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Visual Lease, the #1 lease optimization software provider. It empowers organizations to become compliant with FASB, IFRS, and GASB lease accounting standards, while simultaneously improving the financial, legal, and operational performance of their leases. Visual Lease is an established SaaS business with the heart of a startup. It is committed to ongoing innovation and unparalleled customer service. It helps its customers transform lease compliance requirements into opportunities for hard- and soft-dollar savings.
Before joining Visual Lease, Betesh was President at Lots NYC. He graduated from Georgetown University Law Center with a JD, and from Temple University with an undergraduate degree in political science.
11. Don Schreiber
Company: WBI
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Don Schreiber is the Chief Executive Officer of WBI. He first joined the company in 1984. WBI is an investment management company that provides wealth management solutions. The company offers portfolio and investment management, financial planning, and advisory services to individuals, pension and profit sharing plans, charitable organizations, corporations, and mutual funds. WBI makes risk protection more accessible to investors with lower minimums, daily liquidity, and reasonable fees when compared to hedge funds. Schreiber earned an undergraduate degree in finance from Susquehanna University.
12. Kevin March
Company: Floating Point Group
Title: Founder
Kevin March is the Founder of Floating Point Group. Floating Point Group is building secure and effortless access to cryptocurrency. It is a team of strategically-minded researchers and engineers solving problems experienced in cryptocurrency markets. It is drastically simplifying the operations necessary for asset managers to deploy cryptocurrency-centric strategies at meaningful scale.
Floating Point Group offers a secure settlement and transfers platform called FlowVault for safer exchange-based trading. The company carries insurance for custodied cryptocurrencies and is regulated in the U.S. The company is backed by Tribe Capital, Coinbase, Naval Ravikant, and a host of institutional investors. Floating Point Group endeavors to bring the power of programmatic currency to a legacy financial system that consumes billions of hours and trillions of dollars each year.
13. Richard O'Connell
Company: Leap
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Richard O'Connell is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Leap, a provider of innovative occupancy and risk management solutions for the multifamily and single-family rental markets. Its products serve to make apartment and single-family leases more affordable, providing insurance alternatives to security deposits and guarantors. Leap’s mission is to improve the financial performance of landlords while making renting more accessible. Its products mitigate the need for landlords to take security deposits, thereby streamlining the leasing process, reducing move-in costs for renters, and driving higher occupancy rates.
Formerly, O'Connell was Chief Operations Officer at Insurent Agency Corporation. From there, he went on to RapidAdvance, LLC, before eventually rising to Interim CEO at SITO Mobile, his most recent position prior to joining Leap. O'Connell graduated from Rutgers Business School with an MBA in finance, and from Franklin & Marshall College with an undergraduate degree in French studies.
14. Angelo Ciaramello
Company: The Funded Trader
Title: Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Angelo Ciaramello is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of The Funded Trader. He helped found the company in 2021. The Funded Trader transformed and disrupted an industry by gamifying capital markets retail trading. It provides an immersive experience for users who compete to get funded and make the top spot on the leaderboard. The program consists of multiple trading challenges that result in the opportunity to trade the company’s capital and receive a percent of payouts. Today, the company generates multiple seven figures per month in revenue while creating an alternative path to financial freedom for nearly 30,000 individuals; including truckers, McDonalds workers, college students and prison guards, just to name a few.
Previously, Ciaramello was an analyst of financial systems innovation at Bayer and before that a digital marketing consultant at Your Special Delivery Service. Ciaramello earned an undergraduate degree in information technology from Rutgers University.
15. Joshua Jersey
Company: DigiFi
Title: Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Joshua Jersey is a Co-Founder and the Chief Executive Officer of DigiFi, the next-gen platform for automated digital lending. Its all-in-one platform streamlines the lending journey from application to funding, powering a best-in-class experience for borrowers. Lenders can break free from the limitations of legacy loan origination software with the first platform built to drive innovation. DigiFi provides an unparalleled level of flexibility, allowing lenders to launch new products and deliver amazing borrower experiences for any product, anywhere. It works with lenders in the consumer, residential, automotive, small business, and commercial lending industries.
Before joining DigiFi, Jersey cofounded and was CEO of Promise Financial, and before that, a Vice President at Lee Equity Partners, LLC. Earlier in his career, he worked with Bain & Company as an associate consultant. He graduated from Princeton University with an undergraduate degree in East Asian studies.
16. Alf Newlin
Company: Financial Sciences
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Alf Newlin is the Chief Executive Officer of Financial Sciences. Financial Sciences Corporation (FSC) was founded in 1987 to develop and distribute ATOM and other advanced financial systems. It has grown to become a leading provider of integrated enterprise financial systems for multinational corporations and financial institutions. A trusted solution across the globe, FSC is a suite of comprehensive software solutions for treasury management, debt issuance and trading, loan asset syndication and securitization, bank trust, and Chinese treasury management. It offers mission critical software systems and services for the following applications: global treasury and risk management, money market trading, loan syndication and securitization, and electronic trading.
Newlin graduated from Columbia Business School with an MBA, from the University of Pennsylvania with an MS in engineering and computer science, and from St. John's College with an undergraduate degree.
17. Kevin Frisch
Company: Banquest Payment Systems
Title: Founder
Kevin Frisch founded Banquest Payment Systems in 2009. Banquest Payment Systems is a transaction processing service provider for retailers and e-commerce merchants. It has earned itself a very respectable reputation in the industry focusing primarily on mid to large-size businesses that process large volume and large ticket transactions. Previously, Frisch was CEO of Wireless Management Group.
18. Stan Jaslar
Company: SQN Banking System
Title: Chief Technology Officer
Stan Jaslar is the Chief Technology Officer of SQN Banking System. He first joined the company in 1990 as a software engineer. SQN Banking Systems sets the standard for fraud detection and process improvement software in the financial services industry. For over 30 years, financial institutions of all sizes have relied on SQN because its suite of Sentry products delivers improved earnings for customers and can reduce check fraud losses by as much as 84%. Sentry includes hosted solutions for real-time fraud analysis, exception item processing, image fraud detection, automated signature comparison, eSigning, signature verification and display, transaction analysis, and safe deposit operations management.
Previously, Jaslar was an Electronic Engineer at Chronar Corporation. He earned an undergraduate degree in MIS from La Salle University, and an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from The College of New Jersey.
19. Yogesh Shetty
Company: Avibra
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Yogesh Shetty is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Avibra, a benefits platform that rewards healthy habits like walking, saving money, and doing yoga with insurance coverage that grows at no cost to individuals. It is a mission-driven company focused on providing benefits to everyday people that are accessible, affordable, portable, caring, and smart.
Formerly, Shetty was Head of Product and Engineering at 63 Moons Technologies Ltd. From there, he went on to JPMorgan Chase, before eventually rising to Managing Director at New York Life Insurance Company, his most recent position prior to joining Avibra.
20. Narasimha Kodihalli
Company: OpenRisk Technologies Inc.
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Narasimha Kodihalli is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OpenRisk Technologies Inc. He first joined the company in 2016. OpenRisk’s mission is to help clients create the most valuable knowledge backbone of their organization, so they can make informed and timely business decisions with confidence. The company offers an Interconnected Insights platform. The platform interconnects any unstructured data with any related semi/structured data to derive real-time Insights. OpenRisk’s unstructured data management product harvests any financial contract in PDF/Image/Word/Email/Fax format into master records of usable facts, rules, and executable mathematical expressions without compromising the integrity of their data.
Previously, Kodihalli was an associate partner at Citihub Consulting, and before that, a manager of financial services advisory at PwC. Earlier in his career, he worked with Wipro Technologies as a senior systems engineer. Kodihalli earned an MBA in organizational leadership from TRIUM Global Executive MBA, and an undergraduate degree in mechanical engineering.
21. Mark Engelhardt
Company: OptionsPlay
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Mark Engelhardt is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of OptionsPlay, a company founded to show investors of all experience levels smart ways to speculate, generate income, and manage risk. Its company motto is “Options for the Rest of Us,” and it makes software that removes the complexity from options trading so that its customers can focus on investment decisions. In 2014, OptionsPlay launched its flagship platform: OptionsPlay Ideas. This intuitive new investing experience identifies new trading opportunities daily, delivers unbiased technical analysis for any stock, empowers users of any experience level to visualize complex option strategies, and provides recommendations for optimal call and put writing trades. The company’s goal is to make it easier for investors to transact business.
Before joining OptionsPlay, Engelhardt was Vice President of Sales, Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance at Perot Systems, and before that, a managing partner at Accurum. Earlier in his career, he worked with NumeriX as VP of Sales & Marketing. Engelhardt graduated from the University of Southern California with an undergraduate degree in mathematics.
22. Kristen Metzger
Company: Smyyth
Title: Chief Executive Officer
Kristen Metzger is the Chief Executive Officer of Smyyth LLC. She first joined the company in 2002. Smyyth provides world class revenue cycle and credit-to-cash services and SaaS technology for leading companies. Smyyth applies over 40 years of accounts receivable software implementation and hands-on operations expertise to create the most effective processes for cash application, deduction resolution, collection dunning, and credit management
Previously, Metzger was a Senior Vice President of Operations at Creditek. She earned an MBA in strategy and finance from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Vermont.
23. Suraj Nekram
Company: Inpensa
Title: Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board
Suraj Nekram is the Chief Executive Officer and Chairman of the Board at Inpensa. He first joined the company in 2012 as CEO and CFO. INPENSA is an innovative SaaS Technology and Advisory Services company focused on delivering solutions to organizations to better define project spend through strategic planning and prioritization, review and analyze via business case management, and track the value received even beyond the life of the investment. INPENSA is focused on helping corporate executives make better investments through strategic planning, ROI analysis, and benefits realization.
Previously, Nekram was President and Managing Director at SteelGlass Consulting, and before that, a Senior Vice President at Bank of America. Earlier in his career he worked with Jarus Technologies LLC as a VP of Corporate Finance. Nekram earned an MBA in finance from Seton Hall University, and an undergraduate degree in economics and biology from Rutgers University.
24. Adam Knuckey
Company: Dolomite
Title: Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer
Adam Knuckey is a Co-Founder and the Chief Operating Officer of Dolomite, a special purpose finance company that provides a simple and secure decentralized crypto exchange. It bridges the gap between the ease of use and liquidity that centralized exchanges offer and the incredible security and token trading options of decentralized exchanges. By putting user experience at the forefront of development, Dolomite provides users with a streamlined trading experience across a vast array of ERC20 token trading pairs. Its exchange is built on the Ethereum blockchain and is powered by the Loopring protocol.
Before joining Dolomite, Knuckey was a full stack web developer and administrator at Lehigh University IMRC. He graduated from Lehigh University with an undergraduate degree in computer science and business.
25. Eric Swerdlin
Company: GiftingNetwork
Title: Founder and Chief Executive Officer
Eric Swerdlin is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of GiftingNetwork. He first joined the company in 2016. GiftingNetwork is a donor advised fund network that connects financial services providers to nonprofit organizations using an innovative cloud-based platform. It caters to two markets: nonprofit organizations and financial service providers. Its mission is to transform philanthropy by empowering nonprofit organizations with world class technology. GiftingNetwork facilitates the interaction between staff, donors, grant seekers, and other constituents; provides timely insight to funds, grant opportunities, and content based on individual preferences; and connects philanthropy with financial systems for increased oversight, improved efficiency, and more timely reconciliation.
Previously, Swerdlin was CEO of ChesterCAP, LLC, and before that, a Vice President and Division Head at Bank of New York. Earlier in his career, he worked with Smith Barney Brokerage Firm as a Vice President. He earned an undergraduate degree in international business from The George Washington University.
