Making Parking and Transit benefits work for frontline hospitality employees!

This Is Alice Inc. offered modern pretax benefits including CRAs, Health FSAs, Dependent Care FSAs, and HSAs.

Building products and partnerships that bring about positive social change.SpentWe conducted background research for Spent: Looking for Change, a documentary about the unbanked and underbanked. Spent was released on Youtube and has over 12 million views as of 1/2015.Along with Participant Media, theAudience, and Amex we designed supporting programs to improve the financial security of underbanked Americans, including financial education in Clarksdale, MS; financial mentoring for returning veterans; and advocacy to support the passage of the American Savings Promotion Act.Prize-Linked Savings (PLS)PLS, a form of savings account where savers can win prizes instead of earning interest. In the US and abroad, PLS has been shown to be an effective, cost-efficient, and fun way to help people save.Through our partnership with D2D Fund, we designed a new model for PLS in partnership with a US state and facilitated advocacy efforts to help change regulations to allow these programs to flourish.Financial Innovation LabAlmost all real-world implementations of behavioral change innovations in financial services happen outside the US, in the developing world. Those findings may not always translate to the US consumer context. In partnership with American Express and Ideas42, we developed the Financial Innovation Lab. 37 top researchers applied. 3 research teams were selected to promote financial inclusion amongst prepaid card users in the US. Designed as randomized controlled trials to measure efficacy with the academics retaining ownership of their ideas and ability to publish.

In Summer 2014 I was a Fellow at Robin Hood Labs, the technology & research initiative of the Robin Hood Foundation aiming to meet the needs of the 20 million Americans who earn less than $25,000 a year. Working with community organizations, city agencies, and financial institutions, we brought together designers and developers to launch a free tool that helps un/underbanked New Yorkers locate fee-free basic checking accounts that the law required banks to provide but no one could easily find.

Churnless applied a blend of technology and psychology to product development in order to change consumer behavior. Led Churnless over 3 years. Clients included Amex, AARP, TED, Thrillist, non-profits, and startups. Grew team to 22+ and doubled annual revenue with 20%+ margins. Developed 3 lines of business:Product & Technical Development: Product strategy and tactics from requirements evaluation to wireframes/mockups to user testing. Project management of technical development. Built teams for clients.

Business Development & User Acquisition: Commercial partnerships for clients from sourcing through closing. Led acquisition process for a startup to term sheet from public co. Analyzed user acquisition funnels to design features to improve conversion.GetRaised.com:To address the gender-wage gap, Getraised helped users find out if they're underpaid and create a data-driven, personalized raise request that lays out the case for asking for a raise. Results: 60+% of underpaid users who identified as women got raises averaging $6K+.

Worked on integrating and transitioning Thrive into LendingTree. Led new business development efforts.

CEO and co-founder of Thrive, a startup that helped people manage and improve their financial lives through free, online, tailored advice. Active users of Thrive built assets and improved thier credit scores.Over 3 years, built a team of twenty focused on engineering, product, marketing, and fantastic customer service. Raised two rounds of funding and sold the company to LendingTree in 2009.I created Thrive when I saw my twenty and thirty-something friends had serious financial decisions to wrestle with and little in the way of education or tools to help them do that effectively. Banks were busy trying to get baby boomers to let them manage their nest eggs, while young people were putting off getting married or buying homes, spending themselves into debt, choosing not to invest rather than choosing what to invest in, and losing money on fees.

Special situations, risk-arb, event-driven, cap structure arb, relative value long/short opportunities.I joined as the first employee under two passionate fund managers to help build the business from the ground up. While we developed and traded global arbitrage opportunities, I always enjoyed getting carried away by the fundamental story of the many companies whose experienced management teams met with me. I learned about pitching for funding, dealing with the pressure of taking a position, and doing the mundane but necessary work required to make a business run. 

Under the mentorship of my portfolio managers, I learned about resisting the temptation to move in a direction just because everyone else is and began thinking actively about developing a professional life going where people are not.

Media, Telecom, Technology Investment BankingSpent night and day working on merger and acquisitions and capital markets transactions mainly involving Wireless, Radio, Telecom, Newspaper, Casino, and Internet companies. Ran into Patrick Bateman and left the business.

While in college, I cut my teeth in finance, M&A, and startups working with MSD Capital, Michael Dell’s hedge fund, where they let me work on public equity, private equity, and venture capital investments.