Sothi Thillairajah
Chief Executive Officer
Cofounded Finzat Block, guided the development of the company’s mortgage block chain solution, and brought the opportunity to Block One Capital. Until recently, Mr. Thillairajah was a Managing Director at Revere Capital Advisors in New York City where he formulated and executed capital raising and business development strategy for early stage companies. His recent projects have focused of medical technology, solutions addressing the North American opioid epidemic, and industry specific block chain solutions. Mr. Thillairajah has two decades of experience in management and international finance advising early-stage ventures. Over his career with Nomura, Commerzbank and Societe General, Mr. Thillairajah has worked on projects in Europe, Africa and Latin America and developed an extensive network of relationships inclusive of global financial institutions, sovereign-wealth funds, and family offices. Mr Thillairajah earned a B.A. Cum Laude in Economics at the University of Rochester and holds an MBA in Finance and Statistics from the University of Chicago.
Pratheev Sreetharan
Chief Technology Officer & Entrepreneur In Residence
Received his A.B., M.S., and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Harvard University and has been recognized for developing a novel, origami-inspired manufacturing process capable of making complex, miniature devices with unparalleled speed, accuracy and repeatability. Dr. Sreetharan is highly proficient in mathematics and computational algorithms and has broad background across many technical and scientific fields. Dr. Sreetharan was named a recipient of the prestigious TR35 Award, given each year to the top 35 innovators in the world under the age of 35 as determined by Technology Review Magazine, published by MIT. As founder and CEO of Vibrant Composites, he found a way to build tiny machines and complex objects that were previously impossible to fabricate without assembling them manually. As such, Dr. Sreetharan was successful in opening up the manufacturing no-man’s-land between the micrometer-scale features of silicon chips and the centimeter-plus scale of everyday items. Dr. Sreetharan is also the winner of the Invented Here! Award (The Museum of Science, Boston Cambridge, MA) and the Manufacturing Innovation Award (Society of Manufacturing Engineers Dearborn, MI) and his work have also been featured in Wall Street Journal, Business Week, MIT Technology Review, Scientific American, on the Discovery Channel and National Public Radio.
Arnold Spangler
Director
Mr. Spangler is a financial executive, having extensive experience for more than 45 years in private equity, investment banking, investment portfolio management and as a board director. His most recent private equity experience was as a Managing Director at Mancuso & Co., which managed a private equity fund that was successfully monetized. Prior to that he spent more than 20 years as an investment banker. He served as Co-head of Paine Webber’s (now UBS) M & A department. Mr. Spangler spent most of his career as a General Partner at Lazard Freres & Co. where he was involved in mergers and acquisitions transactions, initial public offerings, joint ventures, start-ups and venture capital projects. Before joining Lazard Freres he was a product officer in the merchant banking group at Citibank.
Mr. Spangler has served as a corporate director on numerous boards of both public and private companies. He was chairman of an industry leading medical device company which ultimately was sold to Stryker Corporation. He spent 17 years as an independent director of Syncor International, a health care manufacturing and distribution company which was ultimately sold to Cardinal Health. He also has been a director or advisor to numerous privately-held companies in a variety of industries including health care, manufacturing, service, retail and financial and trading. He has also been an active investor of his own portfolio.
Mr. Spangler has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS from Iowa State University.
Aman Thindal
Director
Aman Thindal is the Chief Financial Officer at Reliq Health Technologies Inc. He has over 6 years of experience and knowledge as an independent investor and has provided consulting services to private companies. Prior to Joining Reliq Health Technologies Inc., Mr. Thindal spent 4 years as a partner and CFO of a Greater Vancouver based private mid-tier real estate development company where he played an active role in land acquisitions, financial management, human resources and marketing of the company’s projects. During his tenure Mr. Thindal helped the company secure over $75,000,000 in both traditional mortgage and private equity financing. Mr. Thindal obtained his Chartered Accountant Designation in 2010 and he holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree with joint concentration in Accounting and Finance from Simon Fraser University.
David Andrew Berg
Director
Mr Berg is currently an independent businessman. He spent 28 years of consecutive service with one of Canada’s largest publicly traded companies, serving in the capacity of Vice President of Operations. He managed a business unit with over 1.5 Billion in annual revenue and a total of 8500 employees. His Corporate experience has encompassed financial, retail services and petroleum businesses.
As a former Chairman and Director of Potash One, he actively contributed to its successful development from an early stage exploration company to its acquisition by K & S of Germany for 450 million in 2011. He is also the advisor, founder and Director of numerous private and publicly traded Companies.
Presently he operates a private consulting business specializing in the provision of management services and the development of business models for public and private companies.
Gnanseh Coomaraswamy, PhD. CFA
Advisory Board
Dr. Gnanesh Coomaraswamy is the founder and CEO of FinZat Block LLC. He has over 20 years of mortgage industry experience and over 10 years of R&D experience in telecommunication engineering. His experience in banking and risk include positions with Morgan Stanley, GE Capital and as the Chief Investment Officer and Treasurer of the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago. Dr. Coomaraswamy holds a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Northwestern University with a specialization in cryptography. Some of the foundational precepts in his published papers in the area of authentication and confidential communication across networks have been referenced in the original Bitcoin whitepaper. He was a pioneering member of the Mortgage Partnership Finance (MPF) program team at the Federal Home Loan Bank of Chicago, where he successfully managed a $50 billion residential mortgage portfolio and one of the world’s largest interest rate swaps and options positions in the OTC interest rate derivative market. He self-funded a mortgage REIT start up and positioned the company for a 144A private equity offering. Dr. Coomaraswamy also holds a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation and is a Certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM).
Larry Timlick
Advisory Board
Mr.Timlick has over 30 years of extensive technology management experience in a number of technical and sales oriented roles specific to large data center and computing environments in both the enterprise and service provider markets. Mr. Timlick was most recently Vice-President Major Accounts, Western Canada, at Avaya Inc. and between 1991 and 2004 was a Vice President with Cisco Systems, Inc. Mr. Timlick gained many accomplishments with Cisco Systems including: Top Americas International Performer – Regional Manager FY 2000; Highest Regional Percentage of Goal – Americas International FY 2000; Top Canadian Regional Performance FY 2001 – Western Region Service Providers; and Top Customer Satisfaction Americas International FY 2002. As the first Cisco Systems employee in Western Canada, Mr. Timlick expanded the business and opened offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Regina and Winnipeg.
Mr.Timlick currently serves on the Board of Directors of the following technology companies: Glance Technologies, Inc. (CSE: GET) and CounterPath Corporation (NASDAQ: CPAH).
Christoper P. Cherry
Chief Financial Officer & Director
Mr. Cherry has over 14 years of corporate accounting and audit experience. Mr. Cherry has extensive corporate experience and has held senior-level positions for several public mining companies, including director, CFO and secretary. Mr. Cherry has been a chartered accountant since February, 2009, and a certified general accountant since 2004. In his former experience as an auditor, he held positions with KPMG and Davidson and Co. LLP in Vancouver, where he gained experience as an auditor for junior public companies and as an initial public offering specialist. Mr. Cherry served as CFO of the Company in 2012 and 2013, and has extensive knowledge of business in Guyana.
Julie Zhu
Director
Ms. Zhu Li (Julie) Zhu received her Bachelor of Arts from Beijing University in 1987, her Masters of Arts from the University of British Columbia in 1993, and her MBA from the University of British Columbia in 1995. She also obtained her Chartered Financial Planning designation in 1999 and her Chartered Financial Analyst designation in 2002. Since May 2003, Ms. Zhu has been working as an independent consultant, providing expertise to Canadian entities conducting business in China.
Nick Watters
Director
Mr. Watters is a co-founder of Canaco, Tigray and several other successful Mining enterprises since 1996. Mr. Watters has raised of nearly $260 million in his career. Beginning in the corporate communications field, he has worked with several public and private companies in a wide variety of sectors including mining, high-tech and the biotech industries. Mr. Watters helped create the corporate identities for a number of small start-ups as well as heading up their corporate communications departments. Mr. Watters is also serving as a Director to other public companies.