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Our Investors
Compass Venture Partners
Compass Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investments in emerging companies with innovative products or services addressing high-growth markets. Most of Compass’s portfolio companies also have strong intellectual property positions.
DFJ Frontier
DFJ Frontier invests in seed and early stage technology companies on the West Coast. The firm backs passionate entrepreneurs and provides business assistance, not just capital. DFJ Frontier is part of the DFJ Network, the most active venture capital organization on the planet. With offices in over 30 cities around the globe, the DFJ network has over $5 billion under management to fund extraordinary entrepreneurs.
Eli Reinhard
Eli Reinhard, President and sole owner of Arcadia Development Co., is a well-known builder and philanthropist in the San Jose Bay Area. Eli founded Arcadia in 1957 from a nominal investment into one of the larger, privately owned land developers and home builders in the Greater San Jose Area, having built approximately 10,000 homes and apartments over the past 50 years.
UCLA Foundation
Through The UCLA Foundation, generous donors participate with building, sustaining and advancing the university. The foundation oversees donated resources and investment assets, which are managed by the nonprofit UCLA Investment Company.
Our Advisors
Edward Haluska
Chief Revenue Officer, American First Finance
Mr. Haluska began his career in financial services at PNC Financial Services Group, where he honed his banking skills in Treasury Management, Real Estate, and Emerging Technology. Ed departed PNC to found Advance Services, a Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) in Philadelphia that provided a variety of products and support services to the Mid-Atlantic region’s consumer finance industry.
When Advance Services was acquired by Republic Bancorp, Mr. Haluska became the EVP of National Consumer Lending for the bank holding company. He also directed the bank’s highly accretive Delaware banking subsidiary. Over time, one of the Bank's client's, CIC Financial Services, enticed Mr. Haluska to become their COO, and he was responsible for store-based installment lending, e-commerce and business development.
Ed left CIC to co-found an Atlanta-based payments start-up, REPAY – Realtime Electronic Payments, a full-service provider of electronic transaction processing services to both traditional and online merchants. As COO of the firm, Mr. Haluska managed all operations and led corporate sales efforts. REPAY has been consistently ranked on the “Inc. 5000” list of America’s fastest growing private companies.
Mr. Haluska was later recruited to Savannah, GA to become the SVP of Product Development for TMX Finance, where he was responsible for creating a new online lending subsidiary, developing advanced consumer payment strategies, implementing new and alternative lending products, and architecting a set of ancillary products to compliment the firm’s core credit offering: title loans.
Ed added to his career success by joining Strategic Link Consulting as their COO. Strategic Link provides its financial services clients with Business Process Outsourcer (BPO) solutions that leverage the firm’s competencies in contact center services, outsourced back-office, loan management systems and technology support services.
Since 2017, Mr. Haluska has been the Chief Revenue Officer for American First Finance, a Dallas-based FinTech company which provides point-of-sale and eCommerce consumer finance solutions to retailers nationally.
Mr. Haluska is a Certified Cash Manager (CCM). He earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration (BSBA) from Duquesne University and also received a Master of Business Administration (MBA) Degree from Drexel University.
Dan Holt
CEO, BillGO
Mr. Holt began his career in the U.S. Air Force, where he served as an officer for 8 years. He then moved to Silicon Valley, where he worked in IT for Softnet Systems, Greenlight, and Ingenuity Web Apps. In 2003, he became CEO of HEIT, a secure high-availability cloud services provider based in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Mr. Holt became President & GM of Managed Services for Computers Services, Inc. (CSI), when that company acquired HEIT in 2011. At CSI, he was responsible for the company’s vision and strategy for serving community financial institutions. He also oversaw business development, strategic partnerships, and delivery of services to clients. Under his leadership, the Managed Services division of CSI became the largest secure banking cloud and managed service provider for community banks and credit unions, with revenues over $40 million. Profits for the division tripled under Mr. Holt’s management.
In 2014, Mr. Holt left CSI, and in 2015 he founded BillGO, a B2B bill payment engine that improves speed, efficiency and security.
In addition to these executive roles, Mr. Holt has served as a board director for Allied Payment Network, Inc. and as a mentor for the Entrepreneurship & Venture Accelerator Program for Colorado State University.
Mr. Holt is a CISSP-certified security professional and is a member of ISACA and the Association for Financial Technology. He earned a Bachelor Degree in Business Management from the University of Maryland College Park. He received a Master of Business Administration Degree from Colorado State University.
Dan Pavlick
Executive Vice President, CIO Corporate and Institutional Banking, PNC
As CIO for PNC's Corporate and Institutional Banking (C&IB) Business, Mr. Pavlick is responsible for C&IB Technology strategy and architecture, application development, IT program delivery and business technology enablement for the various C&IB business segments at PNC, one of the largest diversified financial institutions in the U.S. Mr. Pavlick is responsible for delivering IT solutions for PNC’s Treasury Management and Payment Processing, Corporate On-line Banking, Federal Services, Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management, Credit Origination and Servicing, Equipment Finance, Real Estate Technology and Business Analytics.
Mr. Pavlick is a member of PNC’s Technology and Operations Executive Committee and is the program owner for the Banks’ Enterprise Architecture Strategic Program while serving as chair for the Enterprise Technology Architecture and Governance Committee.
His previous roles at PNC included SVP, IT Strategy and Architecture, as well as SVP, Electronic Commerce and SVP, Product Management Treasury Management.
From 2004 to 2008, Mr. Pavlick served as VP, IT Services for Respironics, a medical supply company that was acquired by Philips in 2008. After the acquisition, he continued as VP, IT Services until 2010 when joined Summa Technologies as SVP, Strategy and Corporate Development.
Mr. Pavlick earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Management and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Information Systems and Business Management from Carnegie Mellon University. He also earned a Master of Business Administration degree with a concentration in Finance and Marketing from Duquesne University.
Jodi Pratt
Principal Consultant, Jodi Pratt and Associates
Ms. Pratt serves as a consultant for financial institutions, trade associations, and vendors, helping them develop and implement fraud and operations risk-management solutions. She also provided Expert Witness testimony in the areas of Risk Management and Bank Operations.
From 2001 to 2005, Ms. Pratt was Risk Management Practice Managing Principal with Carreker Corporation, responsible for developing, implementing and supporting many of the market’s leading risk-management products. While at Carreker, she expanded the domain of the Fraud Solutions Group from check fraud to include payments fraud, compliance, and enterprise risk management.
Before Carreker, Ms. Pratt worked for nearly twenty years at Bank of America in a variety of roles encompassing risk management, fraud detection, branch operations and call center management. As Vice President/Manager for National Operating Controls from 1992 to 1996, she managed the project-management group responsible for fraud control systems for the bank’s interstate retail bank subsidiaries. In a single year, the group was able to reduce retail losses by 47%. She also participated in national task forces and advisory groups, such as the ABA Check Fraud Task Force and guided a number of solution providers in the development of fraud-detection products.
Ms. Pratt is a frequent industry speaker on fraud detection, prevention, and risk management, and she is the author of many articles and white papers on risk issues. She has served on a variety of industry councils and advisory boards, including American Bankers Association Deposit Fraud Survey, BITS Fraud Working Group, and a number of trade associations’ conferences and fraud risk education programs.
Ms. Pratt earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Business Administration from John F. Kennedy University in Orinda, California. She received a Master of Business Administration Degree from California State University, Hayward.
Kelli Schultz
President at Allied Payment Network
Ms. Schultz is a board director and President at Allied Payment Network, A payment platform company for financial services, business and technology providers.
Ms. Schultz is also co-founder and director of strategic sales for Venminder by Digital Compliance, a cloud-based vendor management solution used by financial institutions. Previously she was president and CEO of Digital Compliance, a start-up that was spun out of iPay when that company was acquired by Jack Henry and Associates in 2011.
At iPay, an independent electronic bill pay provider for more than 3,600 banks and credit unions, Ms. Schultz’s roles included VP of IT, VP of Innovation, SVP Premier Accounts, and President. Before iPay, Ms. Schultz was an IT Manager for Netzee.
Ms. Schultz has also held several leadership positions in the Association for Financial Technology. She served as Vice President and Program Chair from 2009 to 2012 and President from 2012 to 2013.
Ms. Schultz studied learning and development, human resources, and business at the University of Louisville and voice at Western Kentucky University.