John Kish is the Executive Chairman of Kasasa^® and an Operating Partner with The Riverside Company. He has more than 30 years of senior management experience in the software and hardware industries and has led seven companies as President and CEO. Those businesses ranged in size from raw start-ups through $200M+ multi-national businesses.

Earlier in his career, John served in several senior management positions at Oracle, including Senior Vice President of Business Development, Vice President of the Desktop Division, and Assistant to the President responsible for market strategy and planning. Reporting directly to Larry Ellison, John established Oracle’s Desktop Division and founded the Business Development organization.

John graduated from the University of Maryland with a BA in Logics and received a Ph.D. in Logics from The Johns Hopkins University.

Gabriel Krajicek empowers community financial institutions with disruptive innovations and champions them in their fight for market dominance against megabanks and new industry players.

Gabe is captain of Kasasa^®. CEO since 2005, he has provided more than 900 community banks and credit unions with banking technology and marketing services, including the nationally branded Kasasa product suite. If all Kasasa financial institutions were a single bank, they'd be the fourth largest bank in the country, based on number of branches.

Inc. Magazine heralded the company's advances under Gabe's guidance, naming it the 23rd fastest-growing private company in America in 2009. That year, Gabe unveiled Kasasa, a national brand of highly profitable consumer-centric financial products offered exclusively at select community financial institutions. In 2018 Gabe was named to Glassdoor’s Employee’s Choice List of the Top CEOs at Small and Medium Companies. Kasasa’s accolades include two American Banker Best Places to Work in Fintech awards, three “Best of Show” Finovate awards, seven Austin Business Journal Best Places to Work awards, a FinTech Breakthrough Award for Best Consumer Lending Platform, and a FinTech Breakthrough “Banking Innovation” award for ORB Marketing.

Gabe won the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Central Texas 2011 Award in his third consecutive year nominated as a finalist. In 2019, he was invited to join the elite Young Entrepreneur Council. He also serves as a Community Board Member at the Center for Child Protection.

Prior to Kasasa, Gabe was President and CEO of DealerSkins, an automotive web solutions provider that served 1,200 auto dealers. Gabe took the helm in 2001, spearheading a five-year plan to drive the company into profitable territory. In 2005, Trader Publishing (parent company of Auto Trader magazine) acquired DealerSkins.

Gabe earned his MBA from Vanderbilt's Owens Graduate School of Management and his BS from Louisiana State University. He graduated both as valedictorian.

Guido Frantzen brings 20 years of experience in start-up, growth, and large company settings to his role as Kasasa’s Chief Financial Officer. He joins the Kasasa team following his role as CFO at Zola Electric and eMeter Corporation. Prior to eight years as CFO, Guido worked in different financial roles at Siemens. With experience in software/SaaS, energy and cleantech, automotive, and manufacturing industries, Guido has built highly effective financial functions from the ground up, including accounting/controlling, FP&A, treasury, credit, risk and controls, M&A, and fundraising. Fluent in English and German, Guido has an MBA in Business Administration and Management from the University of Georgia and a Master's in Business Administration and Management from University of Erlangen-Nuernberg, Germany.

When he is not working, Guido enjoys spending time with his family, teaching his kids to speak German, and taking them on road trips throughout the United States and Europe.

A 20-year veteran of the financial services and technology industry, Keith Brannan increases ROI for community financial institutions by aligning organizational design, differentiated brand strategy, go-to-market initiatives, and a vision for consumer and corporate marketing tactics with sales objectives. Keith designs and scales marketing products in order for community financial institutions to have access to best-in-class marketing.

Keith is Chief Marketing Officer of Kasasa^®, the innovative leader in branded, community-powered banking products proven to drive profit and growth. He directs growth initiatives for Kasasa and the company’s client base of more than 900 community banks and credit unions. 

He also drives adoption of Kasasa, a national brand of free rewards checking accounts and other products offered exclusively at select community financial institutions.

Prior to Kasasa, Keith was Vice President of Strategic Marketing for Country Financial. He directed sales, marketing, and brand strategy as well as resource management and marketing program design.

Keith led dozens of growth initiatives for the $3.5 billion financial services organization over eight years. As Financial Security Office Director, Keith spearheaded the largest initiative in the company’s history. Starting in 2004, he led a successful five-year plan to increase ROI and re-position the company. Additionally, he developed Country Financial’s corporate strategy practice.

Careerbuilder.com called on Keith in 1999 to develop a new corporate identity, including image, logo, messaging, and pricing. He led the launch of Sologig.com in 2000, taking Careerbuilder.com’s new brand and business component to positive EBITDA in less than one quarter. 

Keith first gained C-level vision of the financial services landscape in 1995 at Accenture, when he served as Financial Markets Consultant to Fortune 500 companies. Clients included NationsBank, Fleet Mortgage Corporation, Financial Ideas Exchange, and U.S. Bancorp Piper Jaffray.

Keith received his management education from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he received the Exec Education Certificate from Kellogg Management Institute. He also holds a BA in Psychology from the University of Alabama.

Chief Technology Officer at Kasasa^®, Pradeep Ittycheria is an experienced technology executive and entrepreneur with more than 20 years of experience managing software product engineering teams across a range of industries.

Pradeep co-founded Oink (www.oink.com), a payments company that targets the under-18 demographic. Oink has over 1.3 million users with an online wallet and a prepaid product in collaboration with Discover Financial. Oink has won many industry awards including Finovate "Best in Show" 2013.

Pradeep has successfully led new product development initiatives using global engineering teams. Before founding Oink, he ran a distributed engineering organization at Energy Solution International, a Houston-based developer of software products for the oil and gas industry. Prior to that, he was the Director of Product Development at Thermo Fisher Scientific (NYSE: TMO), where he managed a large multinational product engineering team developing software products for pharmaceutical drug discovery and production.

Pradeep is a graduate of the Jones Business School, Rice University, and holds a postgraduate diploma in Management and a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science.

For more than a decade, John Waupsh has pioneered integrated financial technology and marketing solutions. His innovations give community financial institutions the edge against megabanks, new industry players, and ever-changing consumer behavior.

John is Chief Innovation Officer at Kasasa^®. He leads the team that architects the company’s products including Kasasa, a suite of nationally-branded products and rewards checking accounts offered exclusively at select community financial institutions.

As Chief Creative Officer from 2012 to 2015, John directed the company’s B2B and B2C marketing creative. Kasasa’s national marketing campaigns received three Platinum and six Gold MarCom Awards.

Innovations under John’s leadership have earned Kasasa four Finovate “Best of Show” titles, recognition in Fast Company’s “10 Most Innovative Companies in Finance,” and standing in the FinTech Top 100.

Prior to Kasasa, John founded FIRST ROI. His company was first to drive online business for community financial institutions. FIRST ROI also created the award-winning Reward Checking search engine — another industry first. The company’s account opening platform generated seven times more funded accounts than its competitors’.

FIRST ROI was delivering coordinated marketing and technology solutions to more than 150 community banks and credit unions when BancVue acquired it in 2011.

John is the chief instigator of Vollee, a serendipity-powered picture-messaging app, and the Preservation Project, which restores and releases lost music from the 1920s to 1980s.

His book, Bankruption: How Community Banking Can Survive Fintech, is available on Amazon.

He received his BA in Marketing Communications from Columbia College Chicago.

Vennesa Van Ameyde directs the daily operations of Kasasa^®, a financial technology company that helps community financial institutions attract, engage, and retain profitable consumers. She is responsible for organizing and cascading the company’s primary objectives down to every employee.

In her role as Chief Operations Officer, she leads the implementation, client support, technical operations, client and internal creative services, internal applications, business process management, and human resource departments. Leveraging continuous lean, Six Sigma, and agile practices, she creates efficient ways to scale the business as a whole.

Until 2016, Vennesa served as the Executive Vice President of Operations where she led all customer operations, including product implementation, technical support, and creative services.

As Vice President of Interactive Marketing from 2011 to 2013, Vennesa defined the long-term objectives and strategic direction of the company’s interactive marketing and creative initiatives. She first joined the company in 2008 as Production Director of FIRST ROI, a sister company that was acquired in 2011.

She currently serves with Vanderbilt Commodore Recruitment Programs (CoRPs), attending college fairs, conducting interviews, and recruiting students for her alma mater. Vennesa has coached recreational soccer for more than six years and enjoys developing tomorrow’s leaders.

She holds an MA in Diplomacy from Norwich University and a BS in Political Science and Anthropology from Vanderbilt University. Vennesa received Lean Six Sigma training from the University of Michigan College of Engineering and studied Theory of Constraints for Operations at The Goldratt Institute.

Leveraging analytics as a growth driver and success indicator, Greg Wempe engineers data from community financial institutions nationwide to optimize each institution’s product sets for maximum profit.

Greg is Chief Client Officer at Kasasa^®, an innovative leader in branded, community-powered banking products proven to drive profit and growth. He advises more than 900 client financial institutions in selecting the most profitable product set, platform, and strategy. 

Greg takes a data driven approach to consulting. His team pores over analytics for hundreds of the company’s clients, identifying patterns and key components for success. The result is a vast library of customizable tactics and strategies capable of meeting — and exceeding — any community financial institution’s goals.

Greg also believes in delivering service with a personal touch. Under Greg’s leadership, Client Directors have more than doubled their face-to-face time with the community financial institutions they serve.

In 2013, as Executive Vice President and General Manager of Client Profit Solutions, Greg managed all of the company’s revenue-generating offerings, tailoring the product suite into individual client solutions.

From 2010 to 2013, Greg led the Executive Strategy team to consult executives at more than 60 community financial institutions on long-term product strategy. He served on the Asset-Liability Committee for eight institutions.

Greg joined Kasasa in 2006 as Vice President of Consulting. He built the training and analytics divisions, established the company’s consulting procedures, and created a channel between client feedback and product development. In 2007, Greg was named Vice President and Senior Executive Consultant.

When Greg joined National Instruments in 2002, he became the youngest product manager in the company’s history. A year later, Greg gained ownership of the MatrixX software. He exceeded the product’s yearly sales expectation by 30% and achieved 30% year-over-year sales growth for the next three years.

Greg holds a BE from Vanderbilt University in Biomedical Engineering and Electrical/Computer Engineering.

As Kasasa’s Chief Sales Officer, Mike Davis uses a blend of Patch values and proven sales methodology to enhance the client experience at every level of the business. By creating a comprehensive sales journey where every interaction builds agreement with the client, he is the cutting edge of our strategy to establish the Kasasa^® brand as a household name.

With more than 30 years of record sales performance and executive leadership of top-producing sales teams, Mike excels at grooming leaders who consistently exceed their goals.

He is accomplished in a wide range of high-level sales tactics, allowing him to synthesize a repeatable sales process, regardless of industry or personnel constraints. He has led seven companies to successful IPO or private equity exits in the past 20 years and has never missed a sales goal in his career.

More important that the sales results he has delivered over the years is the path of successful leaders he has developed, many of whom have sustained his legacy after his departure.

Near the beginning of his career, Mike took a VP role at ILogistix and developed a nine-figure healthcare division for the successful tech company. From there he went on to transform the sales organizations at Xelus, Aprisma, Enterasys Networks, Siemens Enterprise Communications, Tadiran Telecommunications, and most recently YourMembership.

Mike received his BSEE in Engineering and Math from the University of Arkansas and also attended The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Patrick Laughlin is responsible for developing and executing upon Kasasa’s overall government relations, regulatory agency, and compliance strategies and initiatives. He and his team research regulatory requirements for current and future products. They also create and maintain account holder disclosures and marketing disclaimer guidance for clients. At the same time, they develop relationships with influential government and regulatory officials to minimize regulatory risks and generate positive business outcomes for Kasasa^® financial institutions.

During his tenure with Kasasa, Patrick has held multiple management roles; resolved a major regulatory misunderstanding with a federal banking agency; automated the generation of TISA and TILA disclosures and disclaimers; and has participated in more than 400 meetings with Members of the United States Congress and/or their staffs, lobbying for regulatory relief and reform for community financial institutions.

Patrick joined Kasasa after serving as VP, Sales & Marketing for LGI Financial Solutions (LGI) in Austin, TX. LGI designs and manages commercial and consumer financing programs for manufacturers, captive finance organizations, banks, credit unions, and major lending institutions.

Prior to joining LGI, Patrick co-founded and served as Partner and Senior Vice President at Engauge Direct offering strategic consulting, marketing services, and traditional advertising agency capabilities. The company’s business philosophies and marketing methodologies were adopted by Adaptec Newbridge Networks, Mercedes Benz, CIDCO, Xerox, MPC, and Sony, the details of which can be seen in Patrick’s book “Planting Flowers, Pulling Weeds,” published by John Wiley and Sons, Inc. in January 2002.

Patrick graduated from Wake Forest University with a BA in Psychology.

Joseph Cabrera brings over a decade of experience leading elite teams. Joseph started his career guiding organizations through austere and complex environments, where resources were limited and achieving national security objectives were paramount.

As Kasasa’s Chief of Staff, Joseph drives results and ensures the team is always marching toward the Kasasa vision. He is responsible for investor relations, strategic business development, and the alignment of the executive team. As the direct advisor to the CEO, Joseph is also responsible for keeping a daily pulse on the company. Joseph also leads the Strategic Objectives Group which is responsible for the execution of critical company initiatives that directly drive growth. This group and execution model allow Kasasa to successfully launch and coordinate multiple lines of effort through nimble cross-functional teams, execution autonomy, and effective resource management.

Joseph received his Bachelor of Science from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point and was president of his MBA class at the McCombs School of Business. He is also a Texas Business Hall of Fame Scholar, recipient of the Bronze Star Medal and Army Commendation Medal for Valor, and a graduate of America’s premier leadership program, U.S. Army Ranger School.