Mission

To provide expert guidance that supports and fosters excellence with regard to curriculum, internships, entrepreneurship, graduate outcomes, and other relevant matters.

Logan Allin

ogan is the managing partner and founder of Fin Capital, where he is responsible for the management of the firm, sourcing/making investments, maintaining board responsibilities, and adding operating value across the portfolio. Logan was most recently Vice President of SoFi Ventures, where he was tasked with investing in and working hands-on with FinTech companies, as well as running SoFi’s accelerator and corporate development efforts.

Prior to SoFi, Logan was focused on entrepreneurial advisory and operating roles at Light Street Capital, Formation 8/Group, Zanbato, Addepar, Point Finance, Price, BridgeAthletic and ONEHOPE. Prior to his entrepreneurial pursuits, Logan was a corporate executive as Head of Strategy, overseeing the enterprise FinTech strategy and execution while serving as a member of the Operating Committee at Atlantic Trust, the Private Wealth Management arm of Invesco (and now CIBC). Previously, Logan was a Senior Vice President in City National Bank’s wealth management division (now part of RBC), where he led the technology strategy, open product architecture platform, and other strategic initiatives. Logan spent his earlier career in management consulting, in leadership positions at PwC, EMC, and Capgemini, focused exclusively on the intersection of Financial Services and technology.

Logan earned Bachelor of Arts degrees in public policy and political science from Duke University and a M.S. in Management from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, where he was a Sloan Fellow.

About Fin Capital

Fin Capital is headed by Founder/Managing Partner, Logan Allin, and General Partners, Ren Riley and Christian Ostberg, Investment Partner, Henry Cashin, Partner and Chief Capital Officer, Kevin Nee, and Partner and Chief Financial Officer, Marcella McColl, along with a team of seasoned investment professionals and platform operating value support. Fin has built a global asset management platform with Early Stage (Regatta & Flagship), Growth Equity (Horizons) and Public (Constellation) funds. Fin is focused on Enterprise FinTech software and specific theses across 10 sub-sectors: Next Gen Banking, Asset Management/Capital Markets, CFO Tech Stack, InsurTech, Digital Assets/Web 3, Risk Tech, Climate/ESG Tech, PropTech, Vertical FinTech, and Enabling Tech/Infrastructure. Regarding geographic scope, Fin principally focuses on the US and EU/UK, with opportunistic allocations to Israel and LatAm. As former corporate and start-up operators, the Fin team takes an active value-added approach, leveraging its Operating Playbook to steward its portfolio companies with business development, capital formation, corporate development, board advisory and talent sourcing. Fin developed its own “OS”, Lighthouse, leveraging AI/ML and data science for its team, founders and LPs. Fin manages over $1B in AUM (private + public assets), has offices in San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles, Miami, and London and currently has over 110 active portfolio companies globally, including 12 unicorns. Fin was recently named the most active FinTech investor globally by FT Partners as of Q1 and is backed by significant global institutional and family office investors.

Jerry Cuomo

Gennaro (Jerry) Cuomo holds the prestigious title of IBM Fellow and has been instrumental in shaping IBM’s technology landscape since 1987. Among his significant achievements, Cuomo played a critical role in developing IBM’s WebSphere Software. His innovative work helped establish WebSphere as a top-tier application server, serving over 80,000 customers in various industries.

As an inventor, Cuomo has more than 80 US patents to his name, including the familiar “Someone is typing …” indicator used billions of times a day across all major instant messaging applications. His leadership at IBM has spanned various technology domains, including artificial intelligence, blockchain, APIs, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things.

In addition to his practical contributions, Cuomo has made substantial scholarly contributions. He co-authored “Blockchain for Business”, a comprehensive look at how blockchain technology is transforming the business world. His expertise in this area also led him to testify to the US government about the potential of digital currency and blockchain for enhancing identity protection and national security.

Cuomo is currently leading the way as VP of Technology in IBM’s Consulting unit, focusing on AI-powered automation strategies. His thought leadership extends to his published works, “Think Blockchain and Art of Automation,” and corresponding podcasts that explore deeper into these topics.

Vas Kodali

Vas Kodali recently retired as executive vice president and head of strategic partnerships at Wells Fargo. His organization, which he launched in 2013, was responsible for driving strategic relationships globally with tier 1 venture capital/growth equity firms, IT industry leaders, and private technology companies to evaluate emerging technologies, develop new capabilities, influence technology investments and provide a technology business development platform. He also served on the board of the Carolina FinTech Hub to help foster collaboration between financial institutions and innovative fintech startups.

Prior to joining Wells Fargo, Vas held several senior executive positions in strategy, technology and risk at Bank of America. Previously, Vas was a partner at A.T. Kearney, a global management consulting firm. He served clients in the financial services and technology sectors on strategy, transformation and sourcing. Vas started his career at IBM’s Artificial Intelligence Development Center in Menlo Park, Calif.

Vas received an MBA from UCLA, an MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Michigan State University. Additionally, he has been an avid fan of Coach K for nearly 40 years. 

Craig Messinger

Craig Messinger is vice chairman of Virtu Financial. Craig is a 40-year veteran in the financial services industry and has held various senior management positions during that time. He serves as the chair of the Capital Markets Committee for Sifma and is also a member of the DTCC board on its risk and tech products committees.

Prior to joining Virtu, Craig served as executive vice president and global head of trading and risk management at BNY Mellon and was a member of the bank’s Operating Committee and the Global Markets Executive Committee. From 2000 through 2004, Craig served as President of Capital Markets for Fidelity Investments in Boston. Prior to Fidelity, Craig had 15 years of diversified experience with Lehman Brothers.

During his last six years, he served in two international assignments. He led the formation of Lehman Canada from 1994 to 1996 and served as its president. From 1990 to 1993, Craig was based in Japan and headed Lehman’s fixed income, foreign exchange, derivatives and financing products in Asia.

Craig has been an active industry leader and has been asked to serve on numerous boards and trade associations since 1991. His board experience includes Redi and Archipelago ECN’s, the “CBOE” Chicago Board Options Exchange, the Boston Stock Exchange and the performance committee of the “OCC” Options Clearing Corporation. He also served as the BNY Mellon representative to the American Bankers Association securities dealer board (advisory committee), Hedgemark, a wholly owned subsidiary, and Fast Match, where BNYM had equity holdings. Craig also held roles in trade associations, including Asia Chairman of the Public Securities Association, Investment Dealers Association of Canada, the executive committee of the Bond Market Association as Treasurer and Treasurer of the newly formed Foreign Exchange Professionals Association. He currently serves on the board and executive committee of SIFMA and the Market Risk Advisory Committee for the CFTC.

Craig holds a BS in Economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Darlene Newman

As the executive director, head of internal technology research and innovation for DTCC, Darlene Newman leads research and experimentation of transformative solutions to support the firm’s strategic mission to advance and protect the financial markets. Her instrumental role in driving DTCC’s open model of innovation has resulted in building strong relationships with renowned organizations and universities, such as Duke University. These partnerships gather research on emerging trends such as quantum, cloud, and artificial intelligence and their impact on the industry.

For over two decades, Darlene has been at the forefront of incubating, launching, and overseeing multiple high-profile and award-winning initiatives for startups and large organizations alike across financial services and consumer industries. 

She has worked with leading companies such as UBS, Estée Lauder, and Reckitt, and has led teams ranging from emerging tech research and digital transformation to execution and scale of new capabilities, including facial recognition, augmented reality (AR) / virtual reality (VR), and natural language processing (NLP).

Aside from launching one of the first digital streaming platforms on a mobile device, Darlene is passionate about inspiring and empowering women to be changemakers and to become the leaders of tomorrow. She is involved with several academic initiatives and organizations that foster growing women’s presence in the technology and data fields.

Kate Sampson

Kate Sampson is a managing director and partner at Anthemis with over 20 years of experience in the insurance industry. Kate brings deep insight and relationships across various insurance verticals. She is passionate about insurance and even more committed to cultivating change in the world of finance. Kate is recognized as an industry expert and thought leader in insurance innovation, disruption, product development and mobility.

Prior to joining Anthemis, Kate spent 18 years at Marsh in various leadership roles, including private equity and M&A, sales leadership and San Francisco Head of Office. In 2014, she joined Lyft as the first VP of risk solutions to help drive further innovation in the insurance industry to address the challenges of emerging-risk companies.