Crush Your Debt. Fuel Your Future.

Mike Dao

Mike is a Frontend Developer with a passion for developing highly interactive UI and delivering great user experience.

Over his odd 7 years of experience, he has worked in startups, software consultancies, governmental and financial organizations.

He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and a Master's Degree in IT.

Christopher De Arcangelis

Christopher De Arcangelis is an engineer, leader, and problem solver who loves being the catalyst that drives technological change.

Maria DiMaggio

Maria has been working in the FinTech industry with 25 years of software development and system implementation experience and 19 years of Student Loan industry experience. Prior to working at FutureFuel.io, Maria worked with Lenders to implement Student Loan programs for Federal, Private and Refinance programs. Maria worked in the Information Technology department at a large Los Angeles based law firm and was responsible for the system development and integration for the firm’s financial and accounting systems. Maria has a Project Management Professional (PMP®) certification and 17 years of project management experience.

Erika Grundon

Erika has experienced her own struggles with student debt after graduating with a degree in Psychology from UCLA. Her struggles are what drives her passion for assisting others in achieving financial freedom. She believes that FutureFuel.io’s mission to find innovative ways to help others find financial freedom and eliminate their student debt would change the lives of many, while also helping businesses obtain top tier employee talent.

Prior to FutureFuel, Erika cultivated a diverse background by working in Benefits, Technology, Human Resources, and Finance. She has over 5 years of experience in Customer Success and finding ways to make clients' lives easier in their day to day. Prior to working at FutureFuel.io, Erika worked as a Client Manager in Employee Benefits at Marsh and McLennan, one of the largest brokerages in America. She has over 3 years of experience working with Employee Benefits and helping companies find the best solutions to attract and obtain top talent. Before Marsh, she worked as a Customer Success Manager for Zenefits, an HRIS SaaS platform, advising Human Resource professionals on the best benefits packages available on the market while simultaneously assisting in the navigation and adaption of the SaaS technology. Due to her experience as a Human Resource Specialist, Erika understands the value of benefits and how it can cultivate a unique culture for a company.

Brianna Jones

Brianna Jones has had a front row seat with student debt and is always searching for the best options to mitigate the costs of having a passion for learning. After earning two degrees in Information Technology and Networking and Systems Administration at Rochester Institute of Technology Brianna is familiar with all steps of the student loan process, from applying to refinancing. While in School, Brianna grew from her opportunities as a software engineer intern at iD Tech Camps, M&T Bank, and Oracle.

Prior to joining FutureFuel.io, Brianna worked with a digital marketing company Trader Interactive polishing her skills in software engineering specializing in web development. With a mind always focused on improvements and new innovations Brianna readily brings her enthusiasm in making amazing products and quest for knowledge to the FutureFuel.io team.

Benjamin Levine

Inspired by FutureFuel’s mission to crush student debt and empower individuals to own their financial future, Ben left Columbia Business School after completing his PhD coursework in Quantitative Marketing. Prior to beginning the doctorate, Ben was a data scientist at Twitter.

Nuno Leong

I'm a software engineer with over 15 years of experience in building and delivering software solutions for a wide variety of business domains.

During this time I had the opportunity to develop skills across many disciplines having specialized in Full-Stack Web Development, Systems Integration and Business Intelligence; activities included R&D, defining development patterns, and leading teams throughout delivery.

I am enthusiastic about technology, driven by quality and by delivering value to end users.

Katherine Mkanganwi

Katherine Mkanganwi is a Big Four trained senior accounting and finance professional with over 13 years of experience in financial accounting and reporting, risk management, financial analysis, budgeting, financial planning and forecasting, cash management, tax compliance and auditing. She is an expert in developing, implementing and maintaining policies and procedures for accounting, financial reporting and internal control, achieving best practices in these areas. In her personal life, she is a mom and a wildlife conservation advocate.

Tomas Monteiro

I've been working as a Web Developer for a few years.

I was studying political science when I decided to create a music centric startup with a few friends. Because we lacked investment I learned how to program with the help of youtube, stack overflow, etc. I’ve been programming ever since. My interest in psychology has pushed me to be an advocate for the user and to understand their needs so that I can improve my UX development in a modern and fun way. I aim to build intuitive platforms that leave a long lasting impression in the end user.

Kevin Morris

Kevin is a software engineer and database architect with 12 years of experience developing rich internet applications. He specializes in helping stakeholders to streamline and improve business processes.

Kevin brings to FutureFuel expertise gained building auditable financial applications for M&T Realty Capital Corporation (M&T Bank), managing and refactoring highly available and accessible websites at the Bloomberg School of Public Health (Johns Hopkins University), architecting large internal reporting applications for Express Scripts (Cigna), a Fortune 20 company, and consulting for small business clients needing web-based database driven productivity applications.

Born and raised in Florida, Kevin relocated to Baltimore after graduating from Valencia College with a degree in Information Technology.

Sergio Moreira

Sérgio Moreira is leading the Design Process at FutureFuel. One of his main responsibilities is to ensure that every user has a great experience working with an intuitive, beautiful and functional platform. Sérgio has been a professional designer since 2005, which has allowed him to work with the whole spectrum of design processes, from graphic to digital, currently having UX and UI as his main focus.

A graduate from the Universidade Católica Portuguesa, he specialized in Digital Arts, and gathered the knowledge and skill-set required to evolve in the technological environment as well. During that time, Sérgio was already working as a freelance Designer, gaining experience dealing with clients and the business world. As such, a great part of his experience comes from working in many different projects, with clients based all over the world, and different sectors, such as insurance, healthcare, financial institutions, government and communication.

Sérgio has been using his career path to improve different skills and acquire new ones, such as HTML and CSS in order to better understand the complete design process.

By involving users and clients in the design process, and by working together with various creative disciplines, Sérgio strives to apply simplicity, visual appeal and design detail throughout his entire work process.

Anthony Piris

Anthony is a software and solutions engineer with over 15 years of development and consulting experience. Prior to joining FutureFuel, he was instrumental in architecting reporting and analytics solutions for Express Scripts (Cigna) and was the lead solutions engineer at Borderfree (Pitney Bowes), integrating major brands such as Ann Taylor and Sephora with the Borderfree global ecommerce platform. Anthony holds a B.S. in Computer Science with an emphasis in Technical and Professional Communications from NYU.

Tiago Raposeira

Tiago Raposeira started playing with computers since high school, where he took an IT Management and Development course, allowing him to start his ventures, on software and hardware ground.

After graduating as a Computer Scientist he got an opportunity to work at software development, and so he did ever since. With a major focus on the open source world, Tiago has been working with web frameworks as a full stack developer, building various web applications, websites and API’s in big companies and not so big ones.

Right now, he’s exploring the startup world, learning and expanding his tech savviness.

Mark Rose

Mark is passionate about developing dynamic fintech products that improve our financial wellness and has over 15 years of experience scaling products from early stage through launch.

Prior to FutureFuel, Mark held Director of Product roles at various startups and enterprises building MVPs from 0 to 1 including Quovo (acquired by Plaid), LearnVest (acquired by Northwestern Mutual), and Morgan Stanley Wealth Management.

Mark believes FutureFuel's mission to help people crush their student debt is an amazing opportunity to provide immediate value in millions of lives.

When he isn't working on the next generation of student debt tools, you'll find him in the kitchen experimenting with a new recipe or chasing around his two young sons.

Will Rose

Will and FutureFuel.io's Founder, Laurel Taylor, met through FinTech Sandbox, where he mentored and advised the company and joined FutureFuel after Quovo, his previous company, was acquired. Prior to FutureFuel, Will was one of Quovo's first hires, where he helped scale the company from private beta to more than $1.5 trillion in assets on the platform before its $200 million acquisition by Plaid.com; Visa acquired Plaid for $5.3 billion in January of 2020. Will attended the University of Pennsylvania.

Steve Saracino

Steve is a strong advocate and passionate about changing the student debt crisis. Self-funding his own college experience, Steve experienced the burden of multiple student loans. Steve joined FutureFuel to help crush student debt and promote financial health and wellness.

Steve is a strategic partnership and account management professional and has been working on high-growth startups in the past 7 years. Prior to working at FutureFuel.io, Steve worked at multiple startup companies in the food and beverage space and insurance industry. This experience spanned 3 startups to help lead strategic initiatives and build account management teams.

David Sauro

David is a software engineer / infrastructure architect with 13 years of experience.

David started his career as a developer for a small startup in Orlando Florida developing in house custom products for various customers while simultaneously helping manage “on prem” infrastructure.

David eventually joined a medium sized startup, HTH Worldwide where he helped bring their infrastructure and code into HIPAA, HITECH, SOC and PCI compliance. His talents helped the company maintain their on-line products and services as they transitioned into GeoBlue, the worldwide brand of BlueCross / BlueShield medical insurance services and pharmaceutical benefits.

After GeoBlue David began work at M&T Bank Realty Capital Corp as part of their “technology push” and helped develop their award-winning in-house platform to streamline their commercial loan pipeline. His team was one of the first to implement Fannie Mae’s DUS gateway API

Cecilia Schiebel

Cecilia Schiebel is a Frontend Developer and UI/UX enthusiast who likes to find solutions that solve real problems and also look great.

Tiago Silva

Tiago Silva, software engineer, completed his MSc. in Systems and Networks Engineering in 2009. Since then, he is been working as IT professional in multiple contexts. From R&D projects in health and biology to online classifieds in one of the global leaders of this market. He worked for well known companies such as Unicer and OLX before moving to FutureFuel.io.

Along the years, he had the chance to work with mainstream development tools as well with cutting edge technologies in the fields of data mining, machine learning and computer vision. He is also expending his knowledge in product and project management.

Born in Oporto, moved to Lisbon in 2011. In his free time he enjoys to run and listen to new bands.

Rodrigo Souza

Rodrigo is a Brazilian-born Software Engineer with about 10 years of professional experience. He has deep technology expertise, and has worked with companies of different sizes throughout his career, ranging from multinational financial groups to early stage startups. When not programming, Rodrigo is a homebrewer and craft beer enthusiast.

Frank Steinberg

Frank is a Norfolk-based software engineer with a passion for delivering simple solutions to complex problems. He has built data analytics reporting applications to help drive business operations decision making for Express Scripts (Cigna). He later was a core engineer working on Trader Interactive's API and customer-facing CMS that provided an intuitive interface for hundreds of commercial vehicle and equipment dealerships to manage their inventory and websites.

Frank is excited to bring his experience in creating powerful, secure, and easy to use applications to FutureFuel where we will provide an amazing experience for people to crush their student loan debt!

Michael Stockwell

Michael Stockwell is a strategic Sales and Marketing executive with over 20 years of
experience, with a proven record of success in leading multiple groups to achieve corporate and
personal objectives. Providing vision, strategy, leadership and consultation in support of
maximum performance and sales. Michael is the Chief Revenue Officer for FutureFuel.io.

Prior to joining FutureFuel.io, Michael was Executive Vice President & Market Leader with HUB
International, one of the country’s largest brokerage providing an array of risk management, life
and health, employee benefits, investment, and wealth management products and services
across North America.  In this role, Michael provided Sales and Marketing leadership, design
and strategic planning. 

Prior to working for HUB International, Michael was the Vice President of Sales at Regence
BlueShield, where he was responsible for leading Regence’s sales and marketing strategies in
the Northwest. 
Before joining Regence, he worked for Océ North America, Inc., (A Canon Company), a multi-
location, multi-divisional software and hardware solutions company, where he served as Vice
President of Sales and General Manager.  

Michael is very active in the community, serving on the Board of Directors for the American
Heart Association, Boise Valley Economic Partnership and Idaho Veterans Research and
Education Foundation. Michael is also a member of the Vision of the Valley Committee and the
Idaho Innovation Council.  He earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Boise State
University, and served in the U.S. Army in the Military Intelligence Officers Corps.  

When Michael isn’t working you can find him spending time with his family and friends.

Laurel Taylor

Laurel Taylor is the founder and driving force behind FutureFuel.io. Laurel’s mission is to reduce student debt by $1.5B by 2021, in partnership with the private sector.

Laurel has lived the problem we solve for both of our customers – as a leader seeking innovative incentives to retain top talent and as a student funding her education. When presented with a 9% interest rate on a student loan to fund her stint at MIT, with a credit score north of 800, she knew there was both an arbitrage opportunity and a serious need to innovate our way out of the mess that is student loan indebtedness and inappropriate risk profiling.

Laurel previously held a Head of Industry leadership position within Google’s Global Business Unit within the Large Customer Sales division, where she was responsible for meeting and exceeding eight-figure revenue targets. During this time, she also served as a super connector and cross-functional bridge within Google: Google Ventures, Partnerships, X, and Enterprise. Prior to Laurel's role at Google, she served as the Chief Revenue Officer and Executive Vice President of a technology and engineering firm in the San Francisco Bay Area, TEECOM. Her 15+ years at the intersection of technology and humanity enabled Laurel to internalize strong user preferences for all-things-mobile, efficiency, simplicity, instant access and engagement.

Laurel holds a Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School of Management. She holds an undergraduate degree from Texas State University where she majored in Organizational Communication, graduating summa cum laude.

Tom Wyckoff

Tom Wyckoff is a 25-year corporate securities lawyer with extensive executive management and board-level experience in analyzing, structuring and successfully leading the negotiation of complex business transactions and managerial circumstances in private organizations, public companies, and within a top-tier New York law firm. Tom’s most recent position as General Counsel of another early-stage SAAS company, has provided him with substantial insight into the particular business challenges and opportunities of a SAAS-based company like FutureFuel.io

Tom has three college-age children, is a private pilot, and is active in his Weston, CT community.

Kurt Yalcin

Kurt Yalcin is a user experience researcher dedicated to helping people overcome challenges they face in an ever-evolving, digital world. Kurt was committed to solving design problems in publishing prior to FutureFuel. He was a UX Manager at Advance Local and a UX Architect at Hearst Newspapers. In past lives, Kurt acted as copywriter, email marketer, and community manager for various startups in the Bay Area. He completed his graduate degree in information experience design from the Pratt Institute. He holds a dual B.A. from NYU in journalism and urban design.

Aaron Yuan

Aaron Yuan is a graphic designer, he graduated from Academy of Art University San Francisco with a graphic design master degree, he has been working as a multidisciplinary graphic designer for over ten years. He creates design with meaning, using design to bring clarity to complex problems and create solutions that put people first. He helps brands communicate effectively.

“To go from insight to ideas to design that connects, to craft things with intelligence, sensitivity, and precision” is his motto. It doesn’t happen in isolation. That’s why he collaborates with clients to understand their business, needs, and customers. To become a part of the brand that we truly love and believe.

Yifan Zhang

Yifan Zhang is a multidisciplinary product/user experience designer and an illustrator based in New York. She aims to help improve people’s lives by creating functional products that are easy and pleasant to use. Yifan is passionate about incorporating analytical and creative thinking styles when approaching design problems. She endeavors to better understand the pain points of people’s life by observing people’s behaviors and empathizing/analyzing with them. She holds a B.A. from Lawrence University in Mathematics and Studio Art.

Sarah Biller

Sarah Biller is very active in the FinTech community as an Entrepreneur, Advisor and Investor. She is the co-Founder of the FinTech Sandbox and currently sits on its Board of Directors. Sarah also sits on the Advisory Board of start-ups in the robo-advisory, blockchain and FX trading sectors and teaches a graduate level course on the evolution of Financial Technology at Brandeis University .

Sarah was most recently the Head of Innovation Ventures at State Street Bank and its Chief Operating Officer for Innovation. Prior to joining State Street, Sarah was a Principal in the launch of several successful venture-backed start-ups in the FinTech and Life Sciences sectors. She was the Co-Founder and President of Capital Market Exchange (CMX), a venture-backed predictive analytics platform utilizing investor sentiment to help capital markets professionals anticipate near-term changes in bond and CDS spreads.

Sarah has also held roles at Fidelity Investments; worked on MCI’s corporate venture team; and launched and led research divisions for Fortune 500 CFO’s and treasurers at the Corporate Executive Board. Ms. Biller studied Finance at West Virginia University and George Washington University.

Michael Westover

Michael Westover, Advisor, grew up around computers, buying his first computer, a Commodore 64, in 8th grade. He graduated from the University of Washington with a Bachelor of Arts in History, but was employed as "the computer guy" for a number of small firms both during and after college. After a brief stint working in San Francisco, Michael headed to the East Coast and Boston College for an MBA. He graduated in 1997 with a concentration in Finance. Following graduate school, Michael started in the Corporate Research group at Liberty Mutual. He continued at Liberty Mutual progressing through various technical leadership roles. In 2006 Michael left Liberty Mutual in search of more entrepreneurial pursuits, involving a few startup business and consulting with major insurance carriers on innovation in software development. Most recently he held the role of Chief Information Office for Fidelity Life Association.

Michael has served as an advisor to FutureFuel since the early days, stepping in as Interim CTO while the search for the perfect CTO was conducted. He is currently in the early stages of an insuretech startup.

Butter

Butter might be a Maltese-Poodle mix, but she is a purebred professional. When she's not napping during Product Sync Ups, she's barking during the company All Hands (she's not afraid to be heard). If things get too busy, Butter is always there to bring levity to the team with her cuteness. She is dedicated to unleashing everyone's full potential and banishing those dog days of indebtedness.