Management
Joe Proto
Chief Executive Officer/Chairman of the Board
Mr. Proto joined Transactis as its chairman in August of 2006 and became CEO in September of 2007. Prior to Transactis, Mr. Proto launched REMITCO, a remittance processing company. As CEO since 1996, Mr. Proto developed REMITCO into a high-quality payment processor with seven U.S. operating facilities, serving many of the country's largest corporations and financial institutions. In 2000, REMITCO was acquired by First Data and Mr. Proto served as President of REMITCO, until 2006. During his tenure, Mr. Proto built REMITCO into the world's largest payment company of its kind processing 1 billion mail-based payments a year. Prior to REMITCO/First Data, Mr. Proto was founder, owner and member of the executive management team of Financial Telesis, Inc., a holding company for businesses providing remittance and data processing services to banks and corporations. Financial Telesis and its holdings were sold in 1992 to CoreStates Bank, now Wachovia. Through new clients and acquisitions, Mr. Proto helped continue to build the business into an international leader in remittance processing with 18 sites in the U.S. and Canada, serving nearly 70 of the top 100 U.S. banks and over 3,000 corporate clients. Mr. Proto is a member various financial services associations and has been a frequent speaker at conferences in the payment services industry. Mr. Proto is a graduate of Montclair State University, cum laude, where he received his B.A. in English and Maharishi University of Management where he received his M.A. in Education.
Thomas L. Kohn
President/Co-Founder
Mr. Kohn has often worked for companies specializing in creating technologies that appeal to the mass market. He was an early member of America Online in the mid-1990s, where he helped write the business plan for the AOL Greenhouse, the company's first in-house venture capital arm. At AOL Mr. Kohn oversaw the initial evaluation of partnerships with and investments in start-ups such as The Motley Fool and iVillage. Mr. Kohn created and ran the e-commerce division for USATODAY.com from 1997-1999. As vice president of Gannett, he created a $20 million revenue stream for the company in less than two years. In April 2002, Mr. Kohn became CEO of Transactis, working with his team to convert the then e-tailing/fundraising company into a leader in the billing industry. With its two innovative solutions, BillMail® and BillerExpress™, Transactis, has adapted the e-mail solution made popular by AOL into a patent-pending secure e-mail billing platform to attract a less tech savvy customer demographic. Mr. Kohn has spent time at both big and small companies alike and, before Transactis, was the CEO and first employee of the Maryland-based online auction company, Bid4Assets, where he helped raise $9 million of institutional funding and put the company on track to break even. He was also an early member of the offline browsing company, Freeloader, which was sold in 1997 for $38 million to Individual, Inc. Before entering the world of high tech, Mr. Kohn spent several years with Ogilvy & Mather Advertising/New York, where he produced campaigns for American Express, AT&T and Kraft General Foods, among others. Mr. Kohn has a B.A. from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University.
Bill Morrison
Chief Information Officer
Mr. Morrison leads Transactis' product and delivery teams. He joined the company in September 2007 and brings over twenty years of information technology management experience. Prior to joining Transactis, Mr. Morrison worked for First Data in their Payments Services Division, responsible for all IT delivery of new products, boarding new clients and supporting operations. Before that, Mr. Morrison was at Citibank, responsible for the project management office of Citi's credit card division managing enterprise wide technology initiatives. He started his career with The Associates Corporation in 1985 in their Dallas headquarters supporting the corporate finance department and he continued with the company through the acquisitions by Ford Financial Services and Citigroup.
Charles (Chuck) Kelso
Chief Operating Officer
Mr. Kelso joined Transactis in February 2008 as the Chief Operation Officer responsible for overall organization delivery including strategic planning, service level agreements, organizational development and overall client satisfaction. He is a twenty year veteran of the financial services industry where he has held numerous senior leadership positions in operations and delivery with companies such as JP Morgan Chase and U.S Bank. Prior to joining Transactis, Mr. Kelso was vice president of the Government Business Process Outsourcing practice at First Data and directed the successful delivery of the world's largest child support payment processing site, in Sacramento, CA. He was also the co-founder and chief information officer of a remittance and imaging company in Charlotte, N.C., which is now part of the Symcor corporation. Mr. Kelso started his career in treasury management and has successfully lead over a dozen large scale system integration projects transforming legacy systems into image enabled processing platforms
Business Development
Eric Fox
Vice President of Business Development/Account Management
Mr. Fox leads Transactis' business development and account management efforts. Previously, Mr. Fox was with Capital One Financial Corporation, where he spent six years, most recently as the general manager of the Payment Networks and Co-Brands division managing all aspects of the company's partnerships with MasterCard and Visa. In this role he had responsibility for over $100 million in annual transactional expenses, over $1.5 billion in annual interchange revenues and responsibility for all major retail co-branded card partnerships. Mr. Fox was also CapOne's representative on the Electronic Check Council at NACHA. During the early part of his career at Capital One, Mr. Fox developed and launched the Capital One Bill Center and The Capital One Account Center and, as the company's Internet product and business development manager, was responsible for evaluating CapOne partnership opportunities with emerging companies. Mr. Fox has taught business communication courses at the university level and was the founder of Mediated Resolutions, a dispute resolution consultancy. Mr. Fox graduated from Radford University and holds his doctorate in the Philosophy of Communication from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale.
Product and Delivery
John Hudak
Director of Software Development
Mr. Hudak has spent over twelve years as a senior software developer and architect. He has lead and directed teams of developers abroad and in the contiguous 48. Much of Mr. Hudak’s experience has been in the financial vertical, and he comes to Transactis from Wachovia Securities after 4 years there as an application architect and tech lead. Mr. Hudak has extensive object-oriented design experience, and has aided such corporations as Siemens AG in Austria and Infineon in Germany with their global integration efforts.
Melissa Bernardino
Director of Product Development
Melissa Bernardino has been the Director of Product Development since April 2008. Ms. Bernardino is responsible for Transactis' product initiatives, leading the product development, sales support and marketing teams for both BillMail® and BillerExpress™. Prior to joining Transactis she was the senior manager - remittance operations for AT&T Southeast (formerly BellSouth). During her 12- year tenure there, Ms. Bernardino held positions in credit, collections, billing, and remittance, focusing on strategic planning and analysis, process improvements, and project management. At BellSouth Ms. Bernardino designed and managed the customer-facing centralized electronic payment platform, ensuring compliance with all governing regulations including PCI, NACHA and Reg E. This system was utilized to process more than six million payments monthly and provided straight-through authorization and processing, automated A/R posting, mechanized financial controls and reporting, and systematic reconciliations. Ms. Bernardino also spent six years with Equifax as director of systems development, overseeing the development of an automated collections system that employed robust credit scoring and resource allocation models for improving operational efficiency. Ms. Bernardino serves on the steering committee of NACHA's Council for Electronic Billing and Payment where she is the co-chair of B2C initiatives. Ms. Bernardino graduated magna cum laude with honors in Mathematics and Economics from Transylvania University and has her M.S. in Operations Research from The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Paul Coughlin
Quality Assurance
Mr. Coughlin leads Transactis' application testing teams. Previously, Mr. Coughlin was with the American Red Cross, where he spent seven years, most recently as Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering directing this important national IT infrastructure. In this role he had responsibility for the IT infrastructure which supports nearly 50% of the nation's blood supply, and American Red Cross' disaster relief efforts. Earlier at the Red Cross, Mr. Coughlin directed application development, test engineering, software configuration management and data warehousing. Mr. Coughlin has extensive software development & technical leadership experience for several corporations including Best Software Inc., ClaritasInc. and IBM. He has worked in several capacities including Director of Product Development, Test Engineering & Configuration Management.
Kevin Winchester
Project Management Office
Kevin Winchester directs the PMO (Project Management Office) for Transactis. He joined the team in May 2008 and has more than 10 years experience in the technology industry. Before joining Transactis, Mr. Winchester managed various projects in the private sector including key projects for the New Mexico Department of Labor, Vermont Department of Employment & Training, California State Disbursement Unit and several others. One of these government initiatives was the first North American implementation of an enterprise "natural language" IVR system for automated license plate renewals, conducted for the state of New Mexico. Recently joining the Transactis team from First Data Corp, Mr. Winchester also leads efforts to create key proprietary software components from conceptualization to delivery.
Operations, Customer Service, and Implementation
Mike Byrnes
Director of Production Support and BillerExpress Implementations
Mike Byrnes brings over thirty years of management experience to the Transactis project management office. Prior to joining Transactis, Mr. Byrnes was the Director of the First Data payment services PMO responsible for Operations support. Mike came to First Data as part of REMITCO's acquisition of Wachovia's retail lockbox operations where he spent five years in lockbox operations and support in various leadership roles. Prior to entering the remittance processing industry Mr. Byrnes spent several years in the hospitality industry as the founder of Celebration Foods, Inc. and working for Marriott Hotels.
Beth Wollet
Client Account Services Manager
Beth Wollett leads Transactis' partner implementation and support services program. Ms. Wollett joined the company in December 2007 bringing over 20 years of experience in process improvement, software services delivery and customer relationship management. Her prior experience includes over seven years as a director with First Data where she had overall responsibility for implementation and ongoing support services for numerous state government agency clients. Her last three years with First Data were spent implementing and supporting a large, state-wide payment processing operation where she established project control standards, coordinated implementation activities, and facilitated communication with all levels of the internal and client organizations. Ms. Wollett's experience also includes over 10 years with Electronic Data Systems serving in several capacities including technical delivery organizational manager. Ms. Wollett has held her PMP certification with the Project Management Institute since April 2003 and served for four years as the vice president of membership for her local PMI chapter board.
John Mottola
Information Security Officer and Compliance Manager
John Mottola's current responsibilities at Transactis include managing the IT infrastructure as well as compliance. Prior to joining Transactis, Mr. Mottola held the position of information security officer and IT compliance for the remittance processing division of First Data. His responsibilities included managing all industry and client audits, developing and implementing policies and procedures consistent with industry best practices, identifying and remediating vulnerabilities, as well as the overall security infrastructure for the business unit. Before attaining the position of information security officer, Mr. Mottola worked in several different roles including support, development, and system administration. While at First Data, Mr. Mottola obtained Patent #7329824 for the design and development of a proprietary mail tracking and inventory system.
Jay French
Client Configuration Manager
Mr. French serves as Transactis' Director of Account Management. Prior to Transactis, Mr. French was a founder and executive vice president of eDeposit.com, a full-service, online financial services company created in 1999 to minimize fraud during online transactions. The company owned the proprietary and patented process that enabled the electronic "hold" and "hold release" of funds over the Internet. Mr. French also spent seven years as chief operating officer of USA Companies, an investment and management company overseeing the management of hotels, real estate and medical facilities in the Mid-atlantic region. During Mr. French's tenure, the USA Companies experienced consistent revenue and profit growth. He was also a founder and former chief operating officer of Bid4Assets, Inc., recognized by CIO magazine as one of the top 100 Internet companies and "Best Business Idea" by the Washington Business Journal in 2001. Prior to USA Companies, Mr. French was an international trade and marketing consultant in China and Romania. He also served as the representative to the Small Business Committee of the U.S. House of Representatives for Congressman Bill Zeliff and was on the staff of former Senator William Cohen for two years. Mr. French served for four years in the United States Army and earned a bachelor's degree in economics from the University of New Hampshire.
Kathryn Salmon
Customer Service
Ms. Salmon leverages her experience in analytical research of consumer behavior and market interactions to lead the Transactis customer service effort. Under her guidance, the Transactis customer service team prepares growth statistics and production usage materials for internal and client utilization. Ms. Salmon develops training and marketing materials for Transactis' state-of-the-art payment software products. She also leads the quality analysis test experience for usability and software defects program for internal Transactis teams. Additionally, Ms. Salmon oversees customer service requests from internal and external clients. Ms. Salmon received her Masters in Government from the School of Public Affairs at American University.
Board of Directors
Joe Proto
Chairman of the Board/Chief Executive Officer
Thomas L. Kohn
Vice Chairman /President/Co-Founder
Mark Walsh
Board of Directors
Mark Walsh is the head of a small venture capital firm focusing on interactive/Internet technology and services, Ruxton Ventures, LLC, and CEO of GeniusRocket (www.geniusrocket.com) an Internet advertising platform. He has been in the Internet industry for over twenty years, heading up consumer Internet efforts for GE, running AOL's Internet and business-to-business efforts, and as CEO of VerticalNet, a business-to-business Internet company that he took public in early 1999. Since 2001 Mr. Walsh has been active in politics, serving as the first Chief Technology Advisor for the Democratic National Committee, then Internet head for the John Kerry for President Campaign, and then as founding CEO of Air America Radio. He currently co-hosts a weekly talk show called "Left Jab" on XM Satellite Radio. At his venture capital company, Mr. Walsh has invested in a number of small to medium technology/startup companies and serves on a number of their boards. He is also active in a number of non-profits, serving or having served on the boards of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony and In2Books, and as a senior fellow at The Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland. Mr.Walsh started his business career in television, as anchorman and News Director of a CBS-TV affiliate, and as New Business Development director for HBO in New York. He is a graduate of Union College (where he serves as a trustee) and Harvard Business School.
Jeffrey Greenberg
Co-Founder
Mr. Greenberg is an accomplished entrepenuer and has founded several companies focusing on direct marketing and customer service infrastructure solutions. Mr. Greenberg was co-founder of Electronic Direct Marketing in 1996 and he launched the Internet Catalogue/Opt-in E-mail Marketing Company's call center in 1997. In 2000 Mr. Greenberg founded eStara, now a very well-positioned, venture-backed company that is the leader in the voice over IP (VoIP) space for e-commerce. The product allows Internet users the ability to talk to a live customer service representative from the convenience of their computer screen with the ease of clicking on a Click-2-Call button. The product is now deployed throughout the developed world in hundreds of household name websites including Verizon, Gerbers, Hilton Hotels, JCrew and Contenental Airlines. eStara was acquired recently for over $48 million. Mr. Greenberg is now CEO of ContractorsPal, Inc. where he operates a network of affiliated online directories and portal websites specifically focused on matching home improvement requests with certified pre-screened contractors. Mr. Greenberg is a licensed investment banker with nine years of experience in the financial markets. He graduated from The University of Maryland Business School in 1987.
Advisory Committee
Karen Barrett
Ms. Barrett is a 25-year financial services veteran and is currently the president of M2B Solutions. She is a former banking executive of Bank One (now JP Morgan Chase) who has specialized in developing innovative and patented products. Such products have included the Merrill Lynch CMA account and the 401(k) credit card. Ms. Barrett managed Bank One's dial terminal authorization service later adopted by Visa. She was the senior managing director of Bank One's Institutional Trust Admin Division as well as the senior vice president of the Huntington Bank proprietary mutual fund. Ms. Barrett also developed the systems to support the first broker-managed ERISA accounts for E. F. Hutton Trust Co. (Citigroup).
William J. Benedict
William J. Benedict, Jr. is President of Alpine Meridian, an advisory and investment firm focused on information services, Internet, financial services, and healthcare industries. He is also managing partner of Resource Ventures, L.P., a venture capital fund that invests in Internet media and technology businesses, and chairman of Reach Financial, LLC, a specialty finance company. Prior to founding Alpine Meridian , Mr. Benedict held management and trading positions with Societe Generale, including responsibility for Societe Generale's U.S. National Banking Department. He oversaw corporate lending, securities/futures finance and loan syndication, and created and managed the bank's interest rate/futures arbitrage business. Prior to his positions with Societe Generale, Mr. Benedict was a corporate lending officer with Chase Manhattan Bank in New York and Tokyo. He was a co-founder of LaSalle Commodities, a futures investment fund, and Realty Factors, Inc. a real estate finance firm. Mr. Benedict is a director of Formtek, Directories, Inc., and Good Health Advertising.
Adam Coyle
Adam Coyle is an Operating Partner with Advent International, a global private equity firm with extensive experience in the financial service and transaction processing sectors. Prior to working with Advent, Adam spent ten years with First Data Corporation where he was President of First Data's Integrated Payment Systems group (IPS), a business unit comprised of four distinct subsidiaries that focused on providing transaction processing and risk-management services to financial institutions and their clients. In addition to his position as President of IPS, Adam served for seven years as the President of First Financial Bank, First Data's limited-purpose banking subsidiary. His career at First Data also included a variety of corporate roles, including Senior Vice President of Strategic Business Development and General Counsel of Western Union North America. Prior to joining First Data, Adam spent five years as an attorney in private practice in Denver, Colorado. Adam received his undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Bucknell University and his law degree, magna cum laude, from American University. He is a past board member of several corporations and was recently reappointed by the Governor of Colorado to the State Banking Board, which oversees state-chartered financial institutions in Colorado. Adam also holds two U.S. Patents on processes and technology related to payment disbursement systems.
Lewis Gersh
Mr. Gersh is the Managing Partner of Unadilla Ventures, LLC, a venture capital firm he founded that focuses on early stage ventures in the media and financial technology sectors. Mr. Gersh is a Director and the Treasurer of Tranvia, Inc., a transaction processing firm providing integrated Visa, MasterCard, gift card, customer loyalty and e-commerce features, to smaller banks, Independent Sales Organizations and small to medium-sized merchants nationwide; Reach Financial, a merchant lending company specializing in advances to small merchants back by their credit card volume; IndustryBrains, Inc., a performance advertising network focused on the B2B market; Fast Asset Corp., a computer industry asset recovery and logistics firm; Resource Ventures, LP, a late stage private equity fund; Empire Media, Inc., an integrated media publishing company; and the Pierce Law Center, a world leader in intellectual property law. Mr. Gersh has founded several start-ups, secured many rounds of venture capital and made a number of acquisitions and divestitures. Mr. Gersh has a law degree and masters degree in intellectual property law and is a member of the bar of the State of New York.
Geoff Judge
Geoff Judge is an investor in early stage companies and an active member of The NY Angels. Recently, Mr. Judge was the Chief Revenue Officer of Piczo Inc, where he was responsible for advertising revenue was instrumental in helping the company raise its first round of institutional capital. Recently he helped Collective Media, a leading online ad network, raise their first round of institutional capital. Mr. Judge was the COO of Preclick, a Digital Photography software firm. Mr. Judge is an investor in IndustryBrains (sold to Marchex Nasdaq: MCHX), Collective Media, Preclick, Precision Prospects, Email Data Services, Payoneer, Hyperquality, JiWire, Good Health Advertising, SchoolLoop, ReImage, and Transactis to name a few. Prior to Preclick, he was the Chief Operating Officer of Media Solution Services Inc., the market leader in credit card billing insert media and a subsidiary of Havas (Nasdaq: HAVS). Prior to MSS, Mr. Judge was Senior Vice President & General Manager of the Media Division at 24/7 Real Media, and a co-founder of the company. He was formerly the President and Chief Operating Officer of Interactive Imaginations, one of the three companies that merged to form 24/7 Media in 1997. Prior to joining Interactive Imaginations, Mr. Judge was Vice President, Marketing for iMarket Inc., a venture-backed software company, ranked #27 on the Inc. 500 in 1996. Mr. Judge also spent nine years at American Express in the Card Division in several roles including VP and General Manager, Travel & Corporate Insurance Group and VP Marketing, New Cardmember Group. He is on the Advisory Board of Gersh Venture Partners and sits on the board of Global Cash Access (NYSE: GCA) Mr. Judge received an M.B.A. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and a B.A. in Economics from Northwestern University. He is a founding board member of Children for Children and a Trustee for the Sacred Heart School in Manhattan. He lives in NYC with his wife and 3 children.
Vincent Passione
Mr. Passione is a financial services executive whose specialty is building high growth technology based businesses. Over the past year, he has focused on advising and investing in startup companies and is an active member of the NY Angels and is an investor in Pond5, Transactis, Schoolloop and Dabib. Mr. Passione was the former Chief Operating Officer of DealerTrack, where he focused on the company's main product: a credit portal that connects car dealers to financing sources enabling the electronic submission of credit applications. DealerTrack had a successful public offering in 2005 and today processes over 35% of all auto finance loan applications in the U.S. Prior to DealerTrack, Mr. Passione was President of Ameritrade's Institutional Client Division where he responsible for launching the Ameritrade Connection, a platform that provided clearing services for registered investment advisors and independent broker/dealers. He is the former CEO of OnMoney.com, an online personal financial management website. OnMoney enabled its customers to aggregate all their financial services accounts into a single online statement. For the first twelve months after its launch, OnMoney was in the top five most visited financial websites with just under one million register users. Prior to OnMoney, Mr. Passione held several senior level positions at Citigroup that included CTO of their U.S. Consumer Bank and COO of Citi Financial Interactive. He began his career at IBM where his last position was business unit executive responsible for the Citigroup account globally. Mr. Passione has a BS in Computer Science from Polytechnic University.
