Around The Coin

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Wagner Ruiz, the Co-Founder and Chief Risk Officer (CRO) of EBANX. Wagner focuses on risk management, strategic partnerships, and regulatory operation, which are the essential pillars in the growth of the fintech company. Prior to being CRO, Wagner served as EBANX's Chief Financial Officer for almost nine years, since its founding in 2012. As CFO, he designed all of EBANX's cross-border payments infrastructure and all financial architecture linking EBANX to the world. Wagner studied Economics at Mackenzie University in Brazil and is a specialist in fintech finance regulatory systems, risk and compliance, and business opportunities in times of crisis.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Gershie Vann, the Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Magma Capital Funds. Gershie provides vision to the broader organization and implements strategic investment decisions in accordance with Magma’s investment approach and philosophy.Gershie has previous professional experience utilizing data analytics and process design. Gershie holds a BS in Finance from Touro College and can be found running, reading The Economist, and spending time with his wife and two daughters.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Craig J. Lewis, the Founder and CEO of Gig Wage, a venture capital backed SaaS company that’s raised $16.45 million to-date to meet the demands of the future workforce and to build modern payment tools for it. Investors have included Steve Case (Founder of AOL) and his Revolution’s Rise of the Rest Venture Fund, Foundry Group, Green Dot Corp. (NYSE: GDOT), and more. In an industry where forward thinking is a rarity, Craig’s vision for innovation has pushed an antiquated industry to modernize by designing a service that meets the demands of on-demand workforces. “Simple. Fast. Easy.” Prior to building Gig Wage, Craig was a professional basketball player across Europe before returning stateside and becoming an expert in payroll technology, selling over $10 million in payroll related software for the likes of ADP and others. He was the Chief Strategy Officer of Kairos, a venture-backed facial recognition and emotion detection startup that has been named one of the “Top 20 Startups” by The Wall Street Journal, was selected to participate in the first ever Morgan Stanley Multicultural Innovation Lab, and has reached a $130M valuation. As a Black tech entrepreneur with significant business and growth results throughout his career, he understands the importance of work ethic, teamwork, and the sacrifices required to accomplish the impossible. Embodying the motto, “Go for it,” has been the creed which has propelled him. Notable accomplishments include authoring The Sport of the Sales; being a contributor to Forbes, the American Payroll Association, PayTech Magazine and Thomson Reuters; sitting on the boards of Visit Dallas, the Friends of Fair Park, and Marketplace Risk; and is a Founding Member of Forbes’ Dallas Business Council. As an evangelist of technology and its capacity for wealth creation and therefore its ability to improve lives, Craig’s ultimate mission is to help millions of businesses and everyday people in the gig economy by providing innovative software, unique business models, and a path to financial success.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Brian Shniderman, CEO of Opy and Chief Strategy Officer of Openpay. With over 30 years focused on payments of every kind, between all types of parties, and in almost every major country, Brian has been a frequent contributor to banking journals, has published numerous white papers addressing trends, threats, and strategic opportunities in banking and payments, and has been published and featured in Forbes, Fortune, CNN, The Business Standard, Dow Jones, HBR, Wired, CIO, Bloomberg, Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Robert Materazzi, the CEO of Lukka. Prior to joining Lukka, he served as Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers, specializing in large risk, regulatory, and cybersecurity-driven technology implementations for traditional financial institutions and foreign banking organizations. Robert also led the PwC Advisory Veterans Recruiting and Mentorship Initiative. Prior to PwC, Robert served in the United States Marine Corps for nine years as an Officer and AH-1W Super Cobra Pilot.Founded in 2014, Lukka serves the largest crypto asset institutions with middle and back-office data & software solutions. Lukka solves the very unique complexities of crypto (and blockchain) data for businesses so that they can adopt digital assets into their businesses. Its customers include Crypto Asset Exchanges and Trading Desks, CPA & Accounting Firms, funds, fund administrators, fund auditors, and Financial Auditors, Miners, Protocols, individuals, and any business that interacts with crypto transactions. All of Lukka’s products are created with institutional standards, such as AICPA Service and Organization Controls (SOC), which focus on data quality, financial calculation accuracy & completeness, and managing technology risk. Lukka is a global company, currently headquartered in New York City. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Tegan Kline interviews James Simpson, the founder of  mStable, a stablecoin automated market maker on Ethereum and Polygon. Before founding mStable, James was the first employee at Australian crypto hedge fund Apollo Capital, worked as a management consultant at KPMG, Shanghai, and later as a data analyst at KPMG, Melbourne. James studied foreign policy and economics at the University of Melbourne at Fudan University, Shanghai.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Steven Xavier Chan, the senior director and regional head of government relations, Asia-Pacific, for Paypal Inc. Based in Singapore, he leads government advocacy, strategy, and outreach efforts in the region. Steven has more than 20 years of combined government and industry experience in international trade and public policy. Prior to joining Paypal in August 2018, he was the managing director and regional head of regulatory, industry and government affairs for State Street’s businesses in Asia Pacific. Steven also served as Director of Government Relations and Corporate Social Responsibility for the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai. He previously held various positions in the US government as a Foreign Service Officer with the Department of State with overseas and domestic assignments in Mexico, China and Washington D.C., and as Deputy Director for China and Mongolia Affairs with the Department of Commerce. He also worked at Booz Allen Hamilton and Deloitte Consulting supporting change management and enterprise transformation projects for large organizations.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend speaks with Arthur Breitman, Co-founder of Tezos. Arthur is an early architect of the Tezos protocol. Prior to becoming involved in Tezos full time, he worked at X and Waymo on self-driving cars. In his earlier career, he worked as a quantitative analyst at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend sits down with Thejo Kote, the Founder/CEO of Airbase. He was Co-Founder & CEO of Automatic, and of NextDrop. Prior to this, he worked as an Associate at Primera Capital. He served as Senior Engineer at Netcore Solutions and was the Software Engineer at Infosys Technologies Limited. He holds a Master’s degree from the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Visvesvaraya Technological University, India.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In this episode, Mike Townsend interviews Raullen Chai, Founder & CEO of IoTeX. After stints in cybersecurity and blockchain at Uber and Google, Raullen is now CEO of IoTex. He leads a global team of cryptologists, blockchain experts, and IoT specialists in building the Trusted Internet of Things.Founded as an open-source project in 2017, IoTeX is building bridges across the Connected World, leveraging blockchain technology and in-house hardware devices to provide secure and interoperable pathways for the machine-to-machine economy.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices