Management Team

Gerard Michael

President, director, and co-founder
Jerry has led the company’s growth and guided product development from Smartleaf’s conception. Jerry’s commentaries on tax-efficient investing and technology have appeared in publications that include The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Barron’s, Fortune, Forbes, Investment Advisor and Wall Street & Technology.


Mark Nitzberg

CTO, director, and co-founder
Mark co-founded Smartleaf and has responsibility for software development and production operations, as well as acting in the role of Smartleaf’s Security Executive since 2003. Prior to Smartleaf, Mark was previously a principal at Viaweb, which built the world’s leading e-commerce platform. Viaweb’s scalable, distributed browser-based system, now Yahoo! Store, is used by over 20,000 merchants to build, maintain and run online retail stores handling millions of transactions daily. Mark has a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Harvard University.


John Kim

Director. Chairman
John started his career as a consultant for McKinsey and Company, where he advised several of the nation’s largest wealth management firms. He has served as the Chairman and CEO of a 300+ person software company where he expanded its operations to Europe and China, oversaw its North American Operations and Japanese Joint Venture; he also served as Corporate Senior Vice President of one of the largest publicly listed multi-national Japanese internet companies listed on JASDAQ. John has served and currently serves on numerous corporate and non-profit boards. He is currently the CEO of the District Management Counsel, which provides innovative consulting and software services to school districts. John has a BA and an MBA from Harvard.


James Taylor

VP of Operations and co-founder
Jim has been involved with start-ups since he left a high energy physics lab at MIT to become a founder and officer of First Data Corporation of Waltham MA. Jim’s most recent start-ups were Flash (sold to Microsoft) where he was Director of Operations and Valent Software (supplier of technology for Lycos Clubs) where he was Vice President of Operations. Jim has a BS in Economics (physics minor) from MIT.


Robert Thau

Chief Architect
Robert is the principal author of the widely used Apache web server, for which he and the other members of the Apache development team were awarded the 1999 ACM Software System Award. He has designed and implemented Internet systems that support medical decision making for W3Health Corp, as well as massively-parallel data-retrieval systems for Thinking Machines Corp. Robert has a Ph.D. in Brain and Cognitive Sciences from MIT.


Robert McKinley

VP of Operations
Robert has over 20 years’ experience at director and executive levels in operations and finance at a range of software and technology companies, including Shiva, NEON and Teradyne. Robert has an M.B.A from Harvard Business School.



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