Our Squad
MEET THE TEAM
We’re so quick to run up the ladder of life. Instead of focusing on the long-term, we lust after fast gains: fine dining, a new car, the next vacation… we want it all. But before you ascend the ladder, shouldn’t you make sure it has a solid footing?
For much of my life I followed the wealthy, and how they made money. My home base has changed from Kolkata to Mumbai to New Delhi to London to New York City. I was a journalist at Reuters, and a columnist at Dow Jones/Wall Street Journal. I would often spend my days meeting with people who quickly scurried up their ladders. These were obviously smart people. But their ladders were planted in quicksand.
In the 2008 financial crisis, many of my contacts lost a lot. Some everything.
Like a crime scene investigator, I was paid to probe what went wrong. I saw the quicksand. People built their lives on this semi-solid surface: baristas, construction workers, teachers, doctors, artists, lawyers… most people.
I discovered the problem, but how was I to alert the masses?
I had an idea. However, the Bat-Signal was in Gotham City and I live in New York City. The next best thing to a Bat-Signal? The Internet.
Our mission is to provide a safe space for the creation and dissemination of financial knowledge. Have a look around our financial platform. It’ll help get you the solid footing you need. Figuratively speaking, CentSai’s mission is to turn quicksand into concrete. Care to climb with us?
Knowledge is everywhere, not just in schools. My father was an Italian immigrant who came to the United States in the late 1950s with $10.00 in his pocket. He self-taught his way into making money with the stock market. He passed that knowledge to me.
But I’m not a ‘finance’ person per se. In college, I majored in French literature. Instead of getting a job… teaching French literature I suppose, I moved to New York City. I earned a master’s degree in journalism. After college I worked at women’s magazines. You know, the glossy ones with the impossibly beautiful humans on the cover… of course you do.
I began to realize many of these girls and women weren’t financially empowered – both in the US and abroad. As a mother of girls, this was disconcerting to me. My girls feel empowered when they play softball, tennis, trumpet, piano, saxophone, or sing. The same positive feelings can come from practicing good financial habits.
Though financial knowledge is all around us, it has no home. There’s no place where young people can come hang out, make friends and learn about how to succeed with money (and life).
I co-created CentSai largely due to the inspiration my father gave me. Instead of getting my father as a teacher, you get a powerful website filled with bloggers, vloggers, podcasters and financial experts who will teach you what you want to know. We stay on the cutting edge of subjects and technology. The technology being integrated into CentSai partially stems from my passion (obsession, really) for artificial intelligence, but not in an Ex Machina sort of way.
Empowerment has no age minimum or maximum. I ran the NYC marathon at age 43 to prove age is just a number. CentSai will have a place for anyone, whether they be 9 or 99.
Want to know the best part about this wall-free teaching method? You only have to learn about things that interest you. You may think that mortgages don’t interest you but everyone needs to learn about them. Browse through the blogs. The information our ‘CentSai’s’ provide is accompanied by stories and games. You’ll soon find learning about money is as fun as reading about your favorite celebrity. Finance made easy.
I am a business development and finance executive with over 13 years of experience financing and building companies. Before joining CentSai, I launched the publishing and partnerships divisions at ConsumerAffairs as vice president of partnerships.
I signed the first publishing deal at ConsumerAffairs and I was a material part of its implementation and execution.
At the time of my departure from ConsumerAffairs, I had a deal in legal with one of the largest television broadcasters in the United States and had built a pipeline valued at over $20 million in annual recurring revenue. Before this,, I was the top-performing vice president of business development at ConsumerAffairs, generating over one-third of the company’s revenue-corresponding with the days when ConsumerAffairs was on the Inc. 5000 list. I contributed to a variety of company building initiatives and innovative ideas and I acted as a mentor to several employees at ConsumerAffairs. I was an original investor in ConsumerAffairs.
Before ConsumerAffairs, I was a vice president and senior associate at Crimson Investment in San Francisco, a private-equity group that focuses on investments in Asia, specifically China. I built out the firm’s investment banking coverage program resulting in a sourced deal (Milton Industries). I acted as the interim CEO of Milton Industries for three months.
Before joining Crimson Investment, I was an associate at Mainsail Partners in San Francisco where I sourced and executed on the growth-equity-focused firm’s proprietary and investment-bank-sourced opportunities. My efforts at Mainsail led to the closing of Novus Biologicals, a research antibodies business, which resulted in an impressive return to investors over the holding period.
I started my career at Houlihan Lokey in Los Angeles as an investment banking analyst in the media and entertainment industry. I focused on valuations, mergers and acquisitions, and various other corporate finance services at the middle-market investment bank.
I am a graduate of the University of Colorado at Boulder with degrees in economics, magna cum laude, and business administration with an emphasis on finance, both with honors. I completed a thesis entitled “The Potential Competition and Collusion within the United States International Telecommunications Market.”
I am originally from Kirkwood, Missouri, a suburb of Saint Louis, and in my free time enjoy exercising (hiking, running, cycling, weight lifting), fishing, reading, investing, dinner parties and events with friends and family, and repairing my family’s historic brownstone in South Saint Louis.
I am a strong believer in educating consumers, specifically millenials, on financial responsibility and their various options to ensure they make the right decisions to further their personal and professional goals. I joined CentSai as I believe in the mission of the company, its founders and what it can do for millenials and our society.
I’ve worked for and advised media, information, and financial services firms for many years. That includes time as the general manager and product chief for a full-service marketing, education, and creative agency owned by Standard & Poor’s, primarily focused on creating personal finance content, financial literacy materials, and consumer-facing newsletters for large firms including Fidelity, Bank of America, eTrade, TD Ameritrade, Edward Jones, LPL, SunTrust, and others. I was also vice president of marketing for S&P’s investment services division. At Reuters America, I spent a number of years as creative director and vice president of marketing communications and branding, directing large-scale advertising and marketing campaigns; one of the more exciting projects was conceiving and overseeing a $23 million video wall, still operating on the North American headquarters building in New York City’s Times Square. I’ve headed product marketing and management for Scholastic’s education division, and during the dot-com era, I was vice president of marketing, branding, and research for GetMusic/RollingStone.com, a digital-music division of what was once called Vivendi Universal.
In 2008, I cofounded ESE Advisory Group, LLC, now Mirahol, LLC. We’ve advised on sales and product development for fintech and financial services firms, created marketing strategies, created content (blog posts, digital videos, animations, magazine articles, analytical content, and more), consulted for advertising and marketing firms, negotiated a number of business agreements, and created and executed business plans, market segmentation strategies, and product rollouts. I’ve also published a book of fiction, written two more, and written songs, on which I’ve accompanied myself playing less-than-mediocre guitar. And I adore my two daughters.
When I got a call from Arindam, one of CentSai’s co founders, asking me to lead their product development, I was nervous, a bit scared and also excited. I have handled many overseas projects but this was a big one.
I came on board right from the start. The time difference between Mohali and Brooklyn meant my life needed some adjustments. My wife Ekta, who handles SEO for many U.S. clients and runs her own business, helped me get organize. My 3-year old daughter learned to adopt Doria and Arindam as part her own family, she saw me so frequently with them on video screens.
I love building products (I have a Masters’ Degree in Computer Science) but I fell in love with online education when I helped build WizIQ, a an online platform and virtual classroom tool for students and educators.
At CentSai I am responsible for market research, overall product strategy and corresponding roadmap, business and product planning, user experience, business intelligence and analytic, user base growth planning. I lead CentSai’s product management team and and working with the core design/ engineering teams to ensure the success of the product. If you have any questions or just want to say hi, its Sandeep@centsai.com
I grew up in a refugee camp in Thailand and had no access to school until my family immigrated to the U.S. when I was 7 years old. The only subject I was able to understand when I started school in the U.S. was the global language of mathematics. Math allowed me to understand personal finance and investing at a young age and fueled my passion for financial literacy. This passion and fascination with the evolving financial technology landscape led me to change industries and join CentSai's mission.
Prior to CentSai, I worked on Wall Street as an insurance M&A investment banker and accumulated a broad range of financial skill sets. My experiences also include portfolio management, capital raising, sales and trading, and derivatives structuring. I graduated from Wellesley College with a major in Economics and minor in Mathematics.
During my free time, I enjoy marathon training, rock climbing, ice skating, yoga, volunteering at homeless shelters, and fostering animals.
I’ve spent the past 15 years honing the leadership traits learned in the military; technical skills and theories learned through formal education; and business acumen acquired on-the-job while bridging the gap between marketing, sales, and IT. I leverage data science, technology, and business development at the intersection of the financial services and technology industries, and I’m passionate about helping business leaders attract the right clients. I’ve held sales and leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies and at a nationwide consulting firm; served as a financial advisor; and ran a startup robo-advisor. I have a master’s degree in predictive analytics from Northwestern University, and I served four years in the United States Marine Corps, achieving the rank of Sergeant. I am a big advocate for financial literacy, so naturally I jumped at the chance to join the team at CentSai and help them change the world.
When Arindam approached me about joining the CentSai team, I was initially uncertain. However, the more I researched CentSai, the more smitten I became. Its goals and mission resonate strongly with me. Once I met the people at CentSai, I was convinced that it was the right move.
As the father of three millennial sons, I fully understand the importance of financial literacy and the difficulty of giving quality, easy-to-understand advice that isn't "boilerplate" or in their "dad's voice."
Having spent nearly my entire career in various roles ranging from operations to sales at the premier provider of news and information in the corporate marketplace (Dow Jones), I take a long-term approach with my clients. I am very passionate about providing them with solutions solving their business needs. Most of my clients have been in the financial services industry, and as such, I have developed a great appreciation for the challenges they face as they try to enhance their client relationships by fostering better and more meaningful engagement. I am excited to be part of the CentSai team and believe that we can play a key role in helping empower people to improve their financial wellness.
I have been working in emerging markets and the start-up environment for over 20 years. I have a passion for building sales, managing partners, and establishing long-term relationships that range from financial services to SAAS to not-for-profit organizations of all sizes. In my previous roles, I have had the opportunity to directly impact the development and future skills of today’s youth. My experiences of working and partnering with Major League Baseball to playing a key role in driving sales to achieve three consecutive years on the Inc. 500 and 5,000 lists with SportsSignup and SI Play was quite a run. The CentSai mission has identified an underserved market, and I am thrilled to join a team that has the vision to positively impact lives.
From my early introduction to CenSai, I have been very impressed with their mission as well as their assembled group of dedicated people that have fostered the tremendous growth of this leading-edge organization. I am excited to bring my experiences, education and my personal goal of helping people across the country get access to the information they need to make smart financial decisions.
As the Executive Director of a financial literacy education nonprofit for the past 4 years, my primary focus was developing strategic relationships and securing sponsorships for financial literacy events at schools across the U.S. My collegiate education includes a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration from Regis University located in Denver, Colorado.
I was born and raised in the beautiful state of Wyoming, but very recently became a part-time New Yorker. My husband and I are looking forward to exploring the city and spending time with friends and family on the east coast.
I have been an affiliate and partnership manager since the early 2000s, and I'm proud to have worked with a number of large companies in building their partner programs. A native New Yorker transplanted to the Silicon Slopes, I've helped build and introduce relationships between local companies like Overstock and Nav and large, well-known brands like Publisher's Clearing House and Fathead.
Knowing how important financial education is, I am thrilled to be a part of the CentSai team. I'm excited to help spread CentSai's influence, develop great partners for our customers to use, and keep building this fantastic program!
I am an attorney and have been in the start-up space for years. My early dreams of becoming a public defender did not go the distance after the 2008 economic crisis. I took up the role of a general counsel for a new company and fell in love with working new firms, their energetic owners.
In 2014 I started my own firm, focusing on start-ups. A year and 50 clients later I met Doria and Arindam and have been working with them since. I believe CentSai provides sorely needed information and support, especially to young adults. I have seen them grow and how they have been developing their platform and I am have no doubt CentSai will be a household name in a short period of time.I live in Jersey City with my wife Carol and and our pet rabbits. In my coveted spare time I enjoy running, gardening, and hoping against hope that this will be the year the Washington Redskins will make it to the Super Bowl.
I grew up in small-town Oklahoma, practicing ballet for 14 years, and now call Tulsa home. I first started in digital marketing at a local startup and became a link-building extraordinaire. I then moved on to the corporate world promoting trade shows and other industry-specific events. I couldn't be more excited to be a part of the CentSai team.
In my spare time, I enjoy hanging out with my crazy rescue pups, weight lifting, kayaking, camping, fishing, going to concerts, and spending time with my loved ones.
"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat." - Theodore Roosevelt
I have spent the last 15 years as a creative graphic designer for various digital, print and marketing endeavors in the greater Seattle area. I design independently as a freelancer, which is both exhilarating and terrifying, financially speaking. I’m passionate about design that is multi-functional; it should simultaneously work hard and look amazing.
The beach is my “happy place” and I love living just minutes away from the Puget Sound. I’m an avid sea glass collector and beach combing for hidden treasures is a fun (and free!) hobby.
I’ve been married to my high school sweetheart and the love of my life for almost 21 years. We have 2 teenagers at home, our daughter is 17, and our son is 15.
I have loved language and storytelling from a young age, and there are few things I enjoy more than grammar. (I will happily argue with you at length over comma placement or tell you the history behind the different spellings of “amuck.”) As such, I have always been an avid writer and editor. But at age 15, I discovered another form of storytelling that I had never thought to explore: video. I fell in love almost immediately. This newfound passion followed me out of high school and into college. I found myself studying film at Oberlin, with a minor in Rhetoric and Composition (or, to put it in normal terms, “communications”). Being an Oberlin student meant always having an adventure – from directing theater shows and joining the circus to studying abroad at Prague Film School. And now, after graduating in 2014, I hope that I can help bring readers (and viewers) on small, informative adventures on CentSai, both through written word and through videos.
Jadyn joins us as an SEO consultant with experience optimizing sites for large global brands as well as small local businesses. He is a complete geek and loves anything to do with technology. He recently married and has a 5 year old son named Arlo. When he’s not working, Jadyn spends most of his time outdoors hiking, camping, and getting lost.
I am a software engineer with a master’s degree in computer technology.
I have experience working with PHP and WordPress-based websites. I am always looking for ways to integrate my skills with my interests.
I had no idea how challenging my work at CentSai would be when Sandeep, one of CentSai’s co-founders, spoke to me about a position while I was at my brother’s wedding. My life changed permanently from the first day—working in a fast-paced environment where I am learning new things constantly. I enjoy being a part of the financial education industry and a dynamic team.
Before CentSai, I worked for Live Satyamtech as a team leader. There were 10 members in my team, and we were directly responsible for developing new websites and maintaining them.
You can call me whatever you want, give me a variety of titles, entice me with anything, but I will always be a web designer. When I am not working I am surfing around to see the best fonts and colors in vogue. What are millennials looking at? What’s a good design? What’s a great design? These questions point at me all the time. I am always trying to seek answers. I started my professional career as a web designer 7 years ago with a company near Chandigarh, India. I was able to dabble around with a variety of technologies.
After spending almost 4 years in that company I decided to start freelancing on full-time basis as western corporations increasingly started to outsource critical creative work to India. I learned how to better manage projects and get even more creative.
For me CentSai has been a great experience in terms of trying out new things. It’s more than a website, more multi-dimensional platform that will have its own community. Fun stuff.
Currently I am working on providing a fine user experience (UX), interchangeably using a variety of tools such as User Interface Design & Development (UI), Responsive Designs, HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, Twitter Bootstrap, Wireframing, Branding and CMS Theme Integration.
It’s hard for me describe myself with full clarity because I am still in beta, meaning: still learning. Over the years I have seen many people make wrong choices about money or are confused. For me to be associated with CentSai was a no-brainer. I have a day job at a bank but I spend much of my free time looking at education platforms, designs, and mulling over creative ways to help teach. By nature I am a builder. I love to create websites, build cars, even help craft furniture. Despite a career in banking, my friends call me creative, whenever I can I try to infuse a bit of art in everything I do. I began my career in financial services, working for Greenwich Associates where I met one of CentSai’s cofounder Arindam.
I am working on the visualization of data and various widgets that find their place on CentSai’s platform. If you have any suggestions on how to further improve some of our functionalities or introduce new ones, drop me an email at keenan@Centsai.com
I am a 20-something new mom, dog lover, and freelance writer/solopreneur living in Chicago. When I returned from my honeymoon, I was devastated to learn that my husband lost his job. We were also in debt. But we have been fighting back to get in the black while learning how to make great financial decisions for the future. You can find my personal story at fitnpoor.com and my site for parents wanting to raise money-smart children at everylittlecent.com.
I’m a normal English ‘dude’ who loves to save money – especially with coupons! I’ve had an interest in personal finance since I was 15, and it helped me get my family out of rough times by money-saving and clever financing. This has led to doing a few crazy things… including getting $1,000 worth of groceries for just 10 cents and even flying over 1,000 miles roundtrip to a different country to save just $14 on train fares. My hobbies include eating, travel and seeing the look on a cashier’s face when you hand over 500 coupons… it’s a picture!
I am a freelance writer currently living in Portland, Oregon. I am passionate about education, financial literacy, and empowering people to take control of their finances. My work has been featured on Rockstar Finance, Credit Karma, Student Loan Hero, The Globe and Mail and more. My main website is deardebt.com (Annual Plutus Award winner of ‘best debt blog’) , and when I am not there you may well find me answering debt-related questions on this website. In my free time, I love to to travel and have fun at karaoke. My motto on life: I believe you can learn something from everyone.
I grew up traveling the world with my photojournalist father, but I have always been a New Yorker at heart. I attended high school in the Bronx and studied business management at SUNY Stony Brook in Long Island. I spent the last decade applying myself to digital marketing while working in different agencies and leading the sales and marketing departments of a number of tech startups.
To complement my marketing experience, I studied computer animation at the School of Visual Arts, which has been a valuable content production skill to add to my suite of content and marketing talents. During this learning opportunity, I also completed three Salesforce certifications to increase my understanding of business systems and architecture. I aim to do my work well, take on growing responsibilities, and "always be learning.
I'm a writer who has worked with premier brands to tell their stories. With a background in content and marketing, I've positioned key brand messages where they most need to be seen. I've worked with Viacom, Uproxx, Mass Appeal, Gawker Media, and Complex as an editorial consultant, each time growing the assigned audience. My main goal is to create and shape stories that best portray an idea to the public. I strive to make your mission my gospel.
I recently moved to the United States from Ireland after I graduated from college with a bachelor of business studies degree in marketing and management. The development and growth of a business has always interested me.
At CentSai, I’m so excited to not only be a part of such a fast-paced business environment but also to learn how to manage my personal finances through the site’s teachings.
I am continuously excited by the English language, particularly writing. Throughout middle and high school exams, my answers for essay questions always exceeded the word limit. When the page limit for an essay was six, I could easily write eight. I kept finding myself writing more and more about subjects that sometimes I was not even that interested in.
I initially majored in mass communications with a concentration in print journalism at Iona College. When I transferred to Brooklyn College during my sophomore year, I realized that my heart really belongs to English. I graduated from Brooklyn College in the Spring of 2017 with honors and a Bachelor of Arts in English and a minor in Television and Radio.
I am currently in my second semester of graduate school at Brooklyn College pursuing a Master of Arts in English. When I was looking for an internship to continue fostering a post-graduate path that was not completely focused on academia, I discovered CentSai. Everything is still fresh, but I look forward to exploring every aspect of this newfound path!
I have just moved to New York City from Ireland after graduating from Trinity College, Dublin with a double major in English literature and French. It turns out not to be as useless of a degree as it may seem!
Having served as Literature Editor of my college newspaper, the University Times, I have a passion for journalism and current events, particularly relating to the hardships of immigration and the difficulties of translating Irish slang into American English — topics which, sadly, I know all too well.
I was surprised and delighted to find that my skills could be integrated with a medium that focuses on financial education. I'm an extravagant, live-beyond-your-means millennial who could (and should) become CentSai's greatest student of all. When I'm not spending money on things I don't need, you can find me penning short stories and sarcastic tweets in a hipster café that is far too cool for someone who's favorite sport is speed reading.
I am an Irish graduate who moved to New York City at the end of 2017. In Ireland, I studied literature exclusively for four years and graduated with a BA in english studies from Trinity College, Dublin, last year.
Growing up, I always had my head stuck in a book, leaving me with a massive vocabulary filled with words I don’t know how to pronounce out loud. I am grateful that through CentSai I can use my writing skills to help others learn the ropes of finance as I learn them myself.
I was born and raised in Harlem in New York City, so I’ve always found myself surrounded and influenced by the arts. If it’s creative, I probably love to do it. Some would say that I’m jack-of-all-trades, master of some. I consider myself a digital alchemist who has a professional focus on digital art and animation, UI/UX design, and web development. Fueled by a passion for creativity, I have an excellent eye for detail, aesthetics, craftsmanship, and strategy. I work with creative lifestyle brands to craft immersive and exciting user experiences and tell amazing stories through art. Some of my past clients include HBO, MSG/Fuse Media, Beeloved Creations, NYC RecYouth Teen Filmmaking, and NYCDogswag.
When I’m not drawing, I like to keep active by creating comics and short films, studying history, dabbling in mixed martial arts, and shredding on the guitar. You can check out more of my work at www.nwar.co.
I’m the quintessential start-up and growth-marketing professional. For three decades, I’ve been involved in a notable sequence of early-stage-company ventures and successes. My in-the-trenches experience makes me invaluable in assisting new ventures realize their market potential. I’ve helped fast-growth companies such as PropertyBridge, Wallaby Financial, Marqeta, Xircom, and Gearworks reach an aggregate market value of close to $5 billion. Beyond my strategic role as a consultant chief marketing officer, I’m actively involved in branding, user acquisition, partner development, social media and content, public relations, and channel programs. I also help early-stage companies raise funding through an active network of angels, venture capital funds, and institutional investors. My current roster of clients includes Bankrate, UrgentPoint, The Build Card, and inerTRAIN.