ARJUNA SOLUTIONS - Key Persons
Adam Treiser is a respected pioneer and inventor in applied Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) for decision-making. He is a noted professor of decision sciences at the Johns Hopkins University, Whiting School of Engineering, and founder of Arjuna Solutions, a quickly growing A.I. services firm that helps nonprofits more effectively scale. Adam also founded Skeleton Key, where he helped productize the firms' Intellectual Property.
Adam is known for his industry foresight and has been granted multiple patents for novel adaptations of A.I. algorithms, specifically in the area of determining relationships between data items and individuals, and dynamically calculating a metric score based on groups of characteristics. His innovations include self-learning algorithms that enable dynamic, complex consumer decisions such as pricing optimization to become reliably predictable events. He has also developed algorithms that determine whom to prioritize for a specific fundraising campaign, and at what specific time of the year to make that solicitation, among other valuable decision-modeling capabilities.
Adam has used Arjuna's A.I. decision-making services to enable nonprofit organizations to build greater financial capacity for the advancement of their missions. The key output of Arjuna's A.I. decisions for nonprofit organizations is distinct insights into the dynamics of individual donor behavior in real-time that simultaneously improve giving levels while lowering fundraising costs and sustaining brand value.
Adam delivered the keynote address at the United Nations Conference on Human Horizons, sharing his insights on the subject of "A.I. for Humanity."
He holds a J.D. from Georgetown University's School of Law with a focus on taxation, and a B.S. in Business, cum laude, from The George Washington University School of Business.
Adam spent part of his early career as a corporate attorney working with Fortune 500 companies and national non-governmental organizations, specializing in private equity, venture capital, and corporate reorganizations. During that time, he developed an appreciation of the practical realities and key data gaps facing decision-makers. Adam also worked in NFL sports marketing and is an avid skier who loves spending time with his kids.
Brian Finn has over 35 years of experience in financial services and private investments, largely at Credit Suisse (CS). He has also held a variety of corporate and philanthropic board roles. In 2013, Finn retired as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Asset Management Finance Corp (AMF) and as a Senior Advisor to CS. His private investment activity accelerated after that.
From 2004 to 2008 Mr. Finn was Chairman and Head of Alternative Investments (AI) at CS, one of the world's leading alternative managers with over $100 Billion Assets Under Management. Mr. Finn held many positions within CS and its predecessor firms, including President of Credit Suisse First Boston (CSFB), President of Investment Banking, Co-President of Institutional Securities, CEO of Credit Suisse USA and a member of the Office of the Chairman of CSFB. He was also a member of the Executive Board of Credit Suisse Group.
He began his career in 1982 as a member of the Mergers & Acquisitions Group (M&A) at The First Boston Corporation, ultimately becoming Co-Head of M&A in 1993. From 1997 to 2002 he was a partner at the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice. He rejoined CS in 2002.Mr. Finn serves on of the boards of Scotts Miracle Gro and Owl Rock Capital. He is Chairman of Star Mountain Capital, a lower middle market credit investment firm. He is Chairman of Covr Financial Technologies, a tech enabled insurance provider. He is also an Investment Partner at Nyca Partners (Fintech VC).
Job Titles:
- Chief Growth Officer of People First
Colin Stewart is a nonprofit industry veteran who has spent his career helping the nation's leading organizations adopt new technologies, reach new audiences, and create deeper relationships with their supporters to raise more money and deliver on their missions.
Colin is the Chief Growth Officer of People First, the first company to source and distribute micro-influencer content across any digital channel at scale. He recently led Arjuna's groundbreaking philanthropic practice, which enabled nonprofits to adopt new technologies and increase revenue more easily via philanthropic funding.
Prior to joining Arjuna, Colin led the Nonprofit Group at Merkle where he led a team that raised over $160M from 2.6 million unique donors annually for the leading nonprofit organizations in the country. During that time, he designed and executed go-to-market strategies that led to 45% revenue growth, modernizing, and diversifying the portfolio into new market segments and offerings. While at Merkle, Colin engaged with Arjuna on behalf of his clients and found that the increases in fundraising were so compelling that he joined Arjuna. He also served as Managing Director for Blue State Digital as well as various roles with Razorfish, Edelman, and Fleishman-Hillard.
He is proud to have worked with some of the leading nonprofits and brands in the world, including American Cancer Society, Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Harvard University, Kaiser Permanente, the NAACP, American Express, Apple, and the Green Bay Packers. He has been a guest lecturer at Harvard Kennedy School's Institute of Politics.
Colin resides in Washington D.C. with his wife and two children.
David Sica is a Partner at NYCA Partners, a leading venture capital firm focused on connecting innovative companies to the global financial system. Notable exits he led include Affirm, Payoneer, Blend, Avid, Poynt (sold to GoDaddy).
Prior to joining NYCA, David was a Director at Visa Corporation, focusing on the merchant side of the business during a period of government regulation and new payment innovation. Before Visa, David worked at Merrill Lynch in Real Estate Investment Banking and Institutional Sales, specializing in emerging markets.
David is a graduate of The George Washington University.
Job Titles:
- Technology Executive
- VP, Marketing & Communications
Doug Hunter is a deeply experienced technology executive with a rich background in marketing, strategy, and operations. He is responsible at Arjuna for driving brand, growth marketing, and communications.
He joined Arjuna after building and leading the Corporate Marketing team at Lattice Semiconductor. Doug was responsible in this capacity for leading the company's demand generation and communications including brand, content, web, email, social media, public relations, analyst relations, events, and creative. During his tenure at Lattice, he also founded the Strategic Planning Team, built the Business Operations and Analytics Group, and served as the CEO's Chief of Staff. Prior, Doug worked as a consultant at The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) focused on technology, financial services, and nonprofit clients. Earlier in his career he held multiple leadership positions at SMT Dynamics, a start-up he helped scale from five to 150 people.
Doug holds an MBA from The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at the University of California, Irvine, and a Certified Director certificate from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Doug and his family are based in in the Pacific Northwest, and he spends much of his free time hiking, backpacking, snowshoeing, and cycling.
As VP, Data Solutions, Jeremy Rupp is responsible for the data intake, processing, quality control, insights, and reporting of all Arjuna products. He joins the team with extensive experience analyzing, managing, and investigating large, complex data sets across a wide range of industries.
Prior to joining Arjuna Solutions, he was a manager in the Deals and Investigative Analytics group within the Forensics Practice at Price Waterhouse Coopers. He has led data analytics teams across forensic investigations such as Foreign Corrupt Practices Act violations, fraud, and Ponzi schemes as well as deal-related engagements such as financial carve-outs of large-scale divestitures, segmentations, and M&A.
During his time with PWC, Jeremy was the architect of a large-scale data platform that is still used as the standard for Transaction Services today. He also supported the U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Attorneys as the primary data investigator that led to the convictions of Ponzi scheme perpetrators for the largest Ponzi scheme by a user in history.
Jeremy holds a B.S. in Security and Risk Analysis from Penn State University.
John Gregory is an expert in quantitative methods of valuing securities and businesses and a successful entrepreneur. He serves as Managing Director of Princeps Capital Limited, a global private equity and investments firm, which he joined in 2017. In addition to leading Princeps' due diligence function, he has structured investments ranging in size from small investments in technology startups to oil & gas transactions valued at over $10 billion.
He began his career at the Corporate Executive Board in Washington DC, where he held numerous positions including Senior Research Manager in the practice group for Chief Financial Officers of Fortune 500 companies. Subsequent to that he co-founded and served as CFO of TerraShare.com, a top 100 internet company, where he devised the company's referral highly successful referral marketing program and led the company through two rounds of fundraising. John co-founded and sold a technology startup to Circuit City.
John also has extensive experience in developing quantitative strategies (including AI-based strategies) for hedge funds and has authored a number of white papers on various finance topics. He received an MBA (analytic finance, econometrics, and statistics) from The University of Chicago, Booth School of Business in 2003.
Joshua Krisiloff is an expert in the fields of big data and predictive modeling. Using his experience with advanced Artificial Intelligence and machine learning technologies, advanced mathematical modeling, and software development, Josh is responsible for the continuing development of the analytics behind ExactAsk and all Arjuna services.
Prior to working for Arjuna, Josh worked for Illinois Rocstar, an aerospace company in the scientific computing industry. He was tasked with writing and operating large scale simulations of propellants and energetic materials. He also has extensive experience in large scale computing, having worked on advanced mathematical models on Nvidia massively parallel machines.
In his spare time, Josh enjoys building anything - from computers to woodworking, even airplanes. He has a B.S. and M.S. in Aerospace Engineering, as well as a M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
Job Titles:
- CEO
- President
- Technology Sector Executive With an Extensive 30 Year Career at Microsoft
Michael Gorriarán is a globally experienced technology sector executive with an extensive 30+ year career at Microsoft, Xerox, and early-stage, high-growth business ventures. He has held executive leadership roles in advanced cloud services, enterprise software, business process outsourcing, and professional services businesses.
He has either led, been COO, GM, or a key executive in businesses ranging from under $10Mn to over $77B in annual revenues. His responsibilities have included developing and implementing new business strategies, financial models, executing turnarounds, launching new lines of business, and GTM plans to gain a sustainable competitive advantage around the world.
Prior to his current role with Arjuna Solutions, Michael was most recently GM, Worldwide Commercial Markets Strategy Group at Microsoft. He was responsible in this capacity for being one of the core leaders responsible for the largest GTM transformation in the technology industry; successfully migrating Microsoft's global sales, marketing, services, and partner ecosystem from the software and enterprise solutions business to becoming the preeminent leader of the cloud services industry. He held this responsibility as Microsoft's annual revenues were growing from $58.4B to $77.8B over three years.
Before this role, he was GM (COO), US Enterprise Sector & Partners Group at Microsoft. He was responsible in the capacity for developing, executing, and managing the US Enterprise Sector Business and GTM plans. He also led the national organizations serving US Enterprise Sector clients. He transitioned this business from selling software to selling enterprise solutions and services while growing from $5.4B to $7.6B in annual revenues over three years; tripling the growth of the overall US enterprise sector software market.
Prior to Microsoft, Michael spent 18 years with Xerox Corporation. He was most recently VP/GM, Industry Solutions & Services Organization, Northern and Central Europe. He also previously served as VP/GM, Carolinas/Georgia, GM of Oregon, as well as roles in worldwide product management and strategic planning.
Michael holds an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, and a B.S. in Marketing, with concentrated studies in Economics and Spanish, from the University of Rhode Island.
He is an avid distance runner, outdoor enthusiast, and active parent with his wife Kris of their two children. Michael was also the Chairman of the Board for the Oregon Council for Hispanic Advancement (OCHA).
Job Titles:
- CTO
- Arjuna 's Chief Technology Officer and Head of Operations
Rachel Michele is Arjuna's Chief Technology Officer and head of operations for seven years. She delivers a unique blend of technical, managerial, and executive experience in support of product development, A.I., process automation, data visualization, infrastructure, strategic planning, forecasting, and company operations.
Prior to joining Arjuna Solutions, Rachel led a Forensic Data Analytics team as a manager at PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Her team was deployed in response to some of the largest cyber breaches, financial crimes, and regulatory investigations in U.S. history, routinely requiring them to parse through billions of records across disparate databases and data sets. This work resulted in identifying and apprehending the hackers behind the largest financial services breach at that time. Rachel has also led numerous multidisciplinary teams on projects concerning matters of U.S. national security and has researched, developed, and changed the way Forensic Services visually represent datasets to enhance the decision-making process.
Rachel has served as a guest lecturer at universities and professional organizations throughout the United States and has served on the data quality board for a national nonprofit. She has a Bachelors of Decision Science and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Maryland.
She lives in the Washington, DC area with her husband and two boys and enjoys traveling and exploring the world with them.
Stephen L. Norris is the Co-Founder and Chairman, Princeps Capital Limited. He has a highly successful 30 plus years track record in financial strategy, investing in and providing strategic business advice to portfolio companies, and analyzing and investing in public and private companies.
He was Co-founder of The Carlyle Group in Washington, DC. Carlyle is globally recognized as one of the world's most successful private equity firms. Stephen played a leading role, along with Co-Founder David Rubenstein, in developing the Carlyle investment strategy and, together, they recruited the other Carlyle founding and senior partners. He served on the Boards of Directors of numerous Carlyle portfolio companies. Stephen has made, directed, or participated in buyouts, venture or innovative capital investments, real estate (hotels and offices), and private equity investments totaling more than $10 billion.
Stephen was appointed by President Bush, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, to serve as one of five members of the Federal Thrift Investment Board, (the Board established to administer the Thrift Savings Plan, which is a retirement savings and investment plan for federal employees and members of the U.S. uniformed services). He has served on numerous corporate boards of directors. Stephen has led or participated in transactions in defense, banking, software and cybersecurity, entertainment technology, and hotels and hospitality.