Top 100 Global Innovators

Luan is a visionary and pioneer in the financial technology industry and has over 15 years of leadership experience. She has previously served as General Manager of Interactive Data Managed Solutions - Americas (IDC acquired by Silver Lake and Warburg Pincus), Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing for Stockpoint (acquired by ScreamingMedia now part of IDC), and Executive Director for Quote.com (acquired by IDC).

She has also been instrumental in the growth of the global crowd finance industry. Through Crowdnetic, she and her team have brought enterprise technology infrastructure and data to the rapidly growing online lending and crowdfunded securities space. Crowdnetic provides crowd finance data to Thomson Reuters, Dow Jones and CNBC and has recently launched Marketplace Lending Gateway, the first centralized platform connecting banks and retailers to online lenders. She also serves as a technology advisor to the elite Springboard Accelerator program comprised of the world’s leading women-led media and technology companies and serves on the advisory board for the American Banker-sponsored marketplace lending events.

Nathaniel Popper is a reporter at The New York Times, where he has covered the intersections between Wall Street and Silicon Valley. Before joining the Times, he worked at the Los Angeles Times and the Forward. Popper grew up in Pittsburgh and graduated from Harvard College. He lives in Brooklyn with his family.

One of the early VC bloggers in 2004, Jeff is now a popular conference speaker and social media/TV commentator. When he is not spending time with SoftTech's portfolio companies, Jeff enjoys traveling, skiing, scuba diving, collecting wine and hanging out with friends and family.

Mark Shelby Smith is CEO and Founder of Symbiont.io, Inc. Symbiont is the merger of MathMoney f(x) which was founded by Mr. Smith in September of 2013 and the founding team of Bitcoin 2.0 project Counterparty.io. As CEO Mark brings two decades of global experience in FinTech. He is a pioneer in creating and deploying disruptive technology to the foreign exchange ecosystem for both institutional and non-institutional customer segments. During his career Mark has been a founder of 4 FinTech companies that have gone from start-up to exit including The NexTrade ECN, MatchBook FX, Lava Trading, and Anderen Bank of Tampa Bay.

Sam Shrauger is senior vice president of digital for developed markets at Visa Inc., a global payments technology company. In this role, Shrauger is responsible for managing Visa’s portfolio of solutions for online and mobile commerce, including NFC and Visa payWave contactless payments and V.me by Visa, Visa’s digital wallet service.

Prior to joining Visa, Shrauger served as senior vice president of commerce at Yahoo. Previous to that role, Shrauger was vice president of global product and experience at PayPal, where he defined the vision and strategy for the company’s global product portfolio, and oversaw the product management and user experience design functions. In his eight years with the company, he led a variety of PayPal’s product lines, launched its digital goods payment solution, led the integration of Bill Me Later after its 2008 acquisition, and served as a founding member of the merchant services business unit.

LHe has also held roles in product management and consulting with Agency.com, VerticalNet, Deloitte Consulting, and Quantum Consulting.

Shrauger received his MBA from the University of Virginia, and has a BA in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley.

Rob Cox helped establish Breakingviews in 2000 in London. From 2004 he spearheaded the firm’s expansion in the United States and edited its American edition, including the daily Breakingviews columns in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal. Rob has worked as a financial journalist in London, Milan, New York, Washington, Chicago and Tokyo. Rob graduated from Columbia University’s Journalism School and the University of Vermont.