Ben Duranske, CEO/COFounder Beam Beam is a fintech compliance and product leader with deep experience across the financial services, regulatory, and technology industries. At Beam, Ben and the team are building the world’s most advanced suspicious activity reporting and transaction monitoring platform. Before co-founding Beam, Ben served as Chief Compliance Officer of Facebook Payments from the subsidiary’s 2010 formation through mid-2015. While at Facebook, Ben built a global compliance team, managed worldwide licenses and regulator relationships, and directed internal compliance software builds and external compliance software requisition. Prior to Facebook, Ben worked at PayPal, and before that, he represented payments and platform companies in private practice as an attorney. Ben has also consulted with and served on the Boards of Directors of several fintechs, including both startups and established companies, and taught classes at Santa Clara Law. He earned his J.D. at the University of California Berkeley, Boalt Hall.
Interviews
Jeremy Almond CEO PayStand #blockchaincryptofuture
Jeremy Almond CEO PayStand Paystand is a business to business focused digital payment company. Jeremy started his career as an engineer at nanotech startup Digital Instruments, later acquired by Veeco (Nadaq: VECO). At Veeco he led the enterprise architecture, helping shrink massive computers down to devices that now fit in our pockets. Since then Jeremy has worked as an operator and investor at a number of startups & established companies to drive improvements in digital commerce, ERP, and payments. He holds a computer engineering degree from the University of California and masters from the University of Massachusetts, where he did his thesis on how technology can help drive positive change in a broken financial system.
Pierre Wolff VP Tierion #blockchaincryptofuture
Pierre Wolff VP Tierion Pierre is a 20+ year veteran of Silicon Valley as a business strategist, startup advisor/mentor, and people-connector in the tech industry. At Tierion, a company that has developed a “proof engine” leveraging a decentralized network of nodes for time-stamping and anchoring digital content on the Bitcoin Blockchain, Pierre runs business development after having been an advisor there for two years. Pierre is also a Managing Director at ExecConnect, a consultancy where he focuses on helping financial and technology companies better understand the blockchain and cryptocurrency related ecosystems. In addition to advising several startups, he is an advisor to Science Blockchain, a Santa Monica-based blockchain-focused incubator that raised a venture fund using a registered security token offering in November 2017. When not in his day job, Pierre is a regular participant at various blockchain and cryptocurrency events as a moderator or panelist, discussing regulatory, business model, and technology suitability issues.
JP Bedoya VP Product & Design Civic #blockchaincryptofuture
JP Bedoya VP Product & Design Civic JP has over 15 years of experience developing and designing consumer and enterprise products. He previously served as head of Product Design at The Climate Corporation, overseeing product experience and user research and VP of Product at LifeLock, where he oversaw consumer products, new member acquisition, and new product development.