Founder & CEO - Elery founded Nift in 2015. Elery is a technology entrepreneur and executive with over 15 years of experience in building great teams, business operations, product development and strategy.
Prior to Nift, Elery co-founded Pursway (Acq. IPG), a SaaS marketing solution for fortune 500's. Elery was the company's CEO throughout its growth. The company customers included top 10 retailers, banks and telcos worldwide.
Elery received B.sc Magna Cum Laude from Tel-Aviv university and is a research fellow at Harvard University.
Founding Team Member, VP Brand and User Experience - Creative entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience launching, building and developing digital user experiences for the brands people love. Most recently, Ana Maria served as Global Creative Director, Product and Brand at TripAdvisor. There she led a team of 24 and completed a brand and UX overhaul for the world's largest travel site, including 74-million emails per week, print, digital, and display advertising, social, apps, and more.
At Digitas LBI, Ana Maria served as VP Creative Director. During her tenure, she led creative teams for AOL, Bank of America, Merrill Edge, Merrill Lynch, Olay, and Pantene.
Ana Maria holds an MA in Advertising from the University of Texas at Austin and a BA in Advertising from Syracuse University.
Founding Team Member, VP Product Development - Execution focused entrepreneur with over 15 years experience in mobile, media, and online services. Before Nift, Lior co-founded ShopAdvisor with the mission of helping millions of users shop smarter.
Prior to that, at Nokia, Lior led a team of 100 engineers and launched amazing products and services that changed people's lives. He oversaw the development of the first MMS solution (mobile messaging) for the world's first smartphone to let users share photos taken from their smartphone. He was the General Manager of the first Nokia Ovi Service, that helped over 20M mobile users take a photo on their Nokia mobile phone and with one-click share it with their friends and family. Lior's last role at Nokia was an operational one, streamlining the Nokia Services infrastructure to a cloud based architecture, and taking advantage of the big data platform they had built.
Lior holds a B.S. from Tel Aviv College and a MBA from Babson College.
Founding Team Member, VP Business Development - Kathryn started her career at Forrester Research managing and growing relationships with senior “C-level” executives at Fortune 500 companies. In 2005, Kathryn co-founded CityVoter, a local merchant voting platform. Kathryn and her co-founders raised more than six million dollars in venture capital from world-class media investors including Allen & Co.
Kathryn grew the CitiVoter merchant base to more than 70,000 merchants across 20 key markets with a team of only 5. As head of Business Development, Kathryn won contracts with leading media companies such as CBS, Hearst, Gannett and Belo. Most recently Kathryn served as Vice President of Strategic Partnerships at CollegeWeekLive and Vice President of Business Development at SocialSphere.
Kathryn is a 1998 graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.
Founding Team Member, Data Scientist, N.T. - Ami has 10 years of experience in cutting edge data science. From RNA sequencing to behavioral consumer modeling, his expertise as a computational biologists puts Ami at the forefront of statistics, algorithms and engineering. Most recently Ami served as lead at the Broad institute of Harvard and MIT at the method development team of the Genome Sequence Analysis (GSA) group. There he led the RNA sequencing methodology for the Broad.
Ami did his Post-Doc at BU leading analysis in a project lead by Nobel laureate Sir Richard Roberts at 2012. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from Ben-Gurion University in 2010.
Founding Team Member, Chief Scientist (part time) - David is the Co-Director of Harvard's Data Science Initiative and the former Area Dean for Computer Science at Harvard University, where he leads research at the interface between economics and computer science, with a focus on electronic commerce, artificial intelligence and machine learning, and where he founded the EconCS research group. David has served as Chair of the ACM Special Interest Group on Electronic Commerce (2011-15), and on several international scientific advisory boards.
David received his Ph.D. in Computer and Information Science from the University of Pennsylvania in 2001, and an M. Eng. (First class) in Engineering and Computing Science from the University of Oxford in 1995.
Defining the field of modern marketplace engineering, David is currently writing the first comprehensive book of the field of science that underpins Uber, AirB&B—combining electronic commerce, artificial intelligence, machine learning, auctioning, gaming, economic theory and computer science.
Operations & Strategy Manager - With an entrepreneurial spirit, Emily is passionate for startups and product growth. After college, Emily joined ShopAdvisor where she nurtured key relationships in the publishing industry, from Condé Nast to Time, Inc, and was responsible for user acquisition. Later, she became a part of the product marketing team at Buildium where she improved customer onboarding as well as implemented and analyzed in-app campaigns. Emily was also a contributor and food photographer for DailyBurn. An avid marathon runner, she completed 12 marathons by the age of 26.
Emily graduated cum laude from Colgate University with a B.A. in English and a minor in Economics.
Architect - Soccer coach and seasoned programmer, Vikram has 20 years of experience in software development with deep and broad skills in server, desktop and mobile technologies.
At Fidelity, Vikram oversaw the core infrastructure of the 401K system with peak traffic of a million users per day and hundreds of billions of dollars under management. Providing the architecture and executional leadership for an 80-person software team, Vikram's system famously handled the black Wedensday crash of 2002 and successfully handled over a million users exchanging half a trillion dollars. Prior, Vikram was a Co-founder and CTO at OfficeDrop, a document management solution for small businesses similar to Google Docs and DropBox. Powerful enough to manage 1000's of document uploads every second, OfficeDrop raised $5M and was acquired by Neat.
Vikram has a Bachelor of Engineering in Electrical Sciences from PSG Tech, India and is the winner of the Gartner Cool Vendor Awards and AlwaysOn Global 250.
Principal Engineer - Paul has extensive background as a Software Engineer and Technical Lead with 20 years of professional experience in various industries including financial services and scientific applications. Most recently Paul worked for Geode Capital Management, a Fidelity spin-off for institutional investors with billions under management where he worked on the core infrastructure. There isn't a language Paul doesn't code in.
Paul graduated summa cum laude in computer science from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland.
Account Manager - Patrick started his professional career as a product integration associate at Wayfair, eventually becoming a business account manager for B2B sales. During his three-year tenure, he developed new business across all verticals, provided top-tier sales and service support for over 1,000 accounts, and established personalized relationships with his book of businesses. With previous experience in the retail, food and beverage, event planning, public relations, and nonprofit industries, he brings extensive knowledge and enthusiasm into each of his projects and account relationships.
Patrick graduated from Boston University with his B.S. in public relations.
Account Manager - Before joining Nift, Olivia spent five years in New York City working in the fashion industry. After landing an internship with Gucci she joined the sales teams at well-known brands Jones New York and Halston Heritage. In her role as Account Executive she developed strong sales skills and strategies which lead to her success in both domestic and global markets.
Olivia graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a B.A. in French Language and a B.S. in Textile Merchandising. She spent her junior year studying abroad in Europe. This experience allowed her to adapt to a variety of diverse circumstances and address challenges head on. During her time with Halston Heritage she travelled regularly to Paris, France to run sales meetings and build relationships with international clients.
Olivia is happy to be back in her home state of Massachusetts where she lives in South Boston with her French Bulldog, Gilbert.
Senior Software Engineer - Danielle is an experienced programmer with a love of food, startups and code. Prior to working at Nift, Danielle was part of the core team that developed Attend's platform and application serving hundreds of thousands of registered participants.
With a broad background, Danielle has worked on Windows desktop and server software, android applications and web apps. Danielle is fortunately a much better programmer than she is a writer of bios. She did her undergrad at MIT in Computer Science with a concentration in Japanese, and has a goal of baking a new flavour of cupcakes every month.
Vice President of Account Management - Before joining Nift, Mike spent 9 years in various domestic and international management positions at Wayfair. In his last role, Mike was head of Specialized Sales, where he developed the growth strategy to leverage the inside sales teams to support key technical product categories. He grew annual revenues from $2MM to $60MM. Prior to that, Mike oversaw a site of over 400 people and was responsible for all of Wayfair's inbound and outbound contact channels in Ogden, UT. He also launched and started the Wayfair UT B2B sales department which he scaled to 120 people.
Mike lives in Hanson, MA with his wife and graduated cum laude from Franklin Pierce University where he majored in business and minored in music.
VP People
Account Manager - Aidan is an accomplished sales professional who has a background in both investor backed technology companies and iconic retail brands. Before joining Nift, he spent time with a startup called the Department of Better Technology where they tackled the inefficient and headache inducing processes that plague government, from the local level all the way to large federal departments and agencies. He brings experience to the team in building and implementing effective and repeatable sales processes, and building long-lasting strategic and business relationships.
Aidan lives in Waltham, MA with his wife and daughter, and graduated from the University of Vermont where he majored in European History and Psychology.
Account Manager - Danny is a first generation American from the Dominican Republic. His excellent academic skills earned him a scholarship to Providence College,RI, from which he graduated with a degree in Business Administration and Management. Danny's work experience in the sales industry ranges from retail businesses and restaurant to nonprofits throughout the US. He is committed to supporting local businesses through economic empowerment.
Account Manager - Connor grew up in New Rochelle, NY and attended the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he graduated with a degree in Economics and Real Estate Investment and Analysis. After working as a builder at Cortese Construction, he entered the sales sector at Yelp. He developed a passion for contributing to the shop local movement. At Nift, Connor brings relentless positivity in helping small business owners grow their business.
