Executive Officers

Ryan M. Gilbert, 47
President, Chief Executive Officer and Director

Mr. Gilbert brings over 20 years of global financial services expertise as an entrepreneur, angel investor, venture investor, and advisor spanning payments, remittances, credit, insurance, and compliance. Since February 2016, Mr. Gilbert has been a General Partner at Propel Venture Partners, a venture capital fund backed by BBVA Group. He currently represents Propel Venture Partners on the boards of directors of Guideline, Inc., Enrollease, Inc., Steady Platform, Inc., Charlie Finance Co. and Grabango Co. Since July 2015, he has served as an independent director of bKash Limited, Bangladesh’s largest remittance and mobile banking platform. He has also served as a director of River City Bank, a $2.5 billion community bank based in Sacramento, CA, since October 2012, and as a director of The Reserve Trust Company, a non-depository Colorado chartered Trust Company, since May 2020. Before joining Propel Venture Partners, Mr. Gilbert served as Chief Executive Officer of BillFloat, Inc. (dba SmartBiz Loans), a consumer finance service company that he co-founded in September 2009. He continues to serve as SmartBiz Loans’ Executive Chairman. He was previously co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of real estate payments company PropertyBridge (acquired by MoneyGram International in 2007). Mr. Gilbert graduated from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and is member of the State Bar of California.

Douglas Listman, 49
Chief Financial Officer

Mr. Listman has served as the Chief Accounting Officer of Cohen & Company, Inc. since December 2009 and Chief Accounting Officer of Cohen & Company, LLC since 2006. From 2004 to 2006, Mr. Listman served as an associate for Resources Global Professionals (a worldwide accounting services consulting firm). From 1992 to 2003, Mr. Listman served in various accounting and finance positions including: senior accountant with KPMG; Assistant Corporate Controller of Integrated Health Services (a publicly traded provider of skilled nursing services; NYSE: IHS); Controller of Integrated Living Communities (a publicly traded provider of assisted living services; NASDAQ: ILCC); Chief Financial Officer of Senior Lifestyles Corporation (a private owned provider of assisted living services); and Chief Financial Officer of Monarch Properties (a privately owned health care facility real estate investment company). Mr. Listman is a Certified Public Accountant and graduated from the University of Delaware with a B.S. in accounting.

Shami Patel, 51
Chief Operating Officer

Mr. Patel currently serves as a Managing Director of Cohen & Company (in its asset management group) and was active in all aspects of the initial public offering and business combination process of FinTech I and FinTech II, including origination, due diligence and execution. He served as a director, Chairman of the Audit Committee and member of the Compensation Committee of FinTech I and FinTech II. Mr. Patel also currently serves as an advisor to FinServ Acquisition Corp. (Nasdaq: FSRV), a special purpose acquisition company that consummated its initial public offering in November 2019. Aside from his experience with special purpose acquisition companies, Mr. Patel has served as the Co-Head of the Venture Capital Team and General Partner of Pacific View Ventures, a division of Pacific View Asset Management, LLC, an investment advisory firm, and as the Vice Chairman of the Board of Golden Pacific Bancorp, Inc., a financial holding company that provides banking and other financial products and services. He has served at Clean Pacific Ventures Management, LLC, a venture capital firm specializing in early stage investments, as a venture partner, and was a partner at, and served on the Executive Committee of, Hexagon Securities, LLC, a credit focused investment bank and securities firm. From 2001 to August 2009, he served as Managing Director and Senior Partner at Cohen & Company, where he helped launch Alesco Financial, Inc., where he served as Chief Operating Officer and Chief Investment Officer from 2006 to 2009. From 1999 to 2000, he served as Chief Financial Officer for TRM Corporation (Nasdaq: TRMM), a consumer and financial services company. In 2000, he founded iATMglobal.net, a middleware software business where he served as Chief Executive Officer and which was sold to NCR Corporation in 2001. He served as Vice President of the West Coast Region for Sirrom Capital Corporation, a mezzanine finance fund, from 1998 to 1999. Prior to this he was in the business services group at Robertson Stephens, an investment banking firm from 1997 to 1998 and served as a strategy consultant in the energy group at Andersen Consulting from 1991 to 1993. Mr. Patel has served on the Board of the Duke University School of Law since 2011 and has been a Senior Lecturing Fellow since 2012 and a member of the Advisory Board of the Law and Entrepreneurship Program at Duke since 2013. Mr. Patel has also served on the Executive Committee of the Seven Hills School since 2010 and was the Treasurer of the Board of Trustees from 2012 to 2018.

Board of Directors

Betsy Z. Cohen, 78
Chairman of the Board

Mrs. Cohen currently serves as the Chairman of the board of directors of FinTech III, a position she has held since March 2017. Mrs. Cohen served as Chairman of FinTech II’s board of directors from August 2016 until July 2018. She served as a director of FinTech I and its successor, Card Connect Corp. (Nasdaq: CCN), a provider of payment processing solutions to merchants, from November 2013 until May 2017, and previously served as Chairman of the board of directors of FinTech I from July 2014 through July 2016 and as FinTech I’s Chief Executive Officer from July 2014 through August 2014. She served as Chief Executive Officer of The Bancorp, Inc., a publicly traded financial holdings company, and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Bancorp Bank, from September 2000 and Chairman of Bancorp Bank from November 2003, and resigned from these positions upon her retirement in December 2014. She served as the Chairman of the Board of Trustees and as a trustee of RAIT Financial Trust, a formerly publicly traded a real estate investment trust, from its founding in August 1997 through her resignation as of December 31, 2010, and served as RAIT’s Chief Executive Officer from 1997 to 2006. Mrs. Cohen served as a director of Hudson United Bancorp (a bank holding company), the successor to JeffBanks, Inc., from December 1999 until July 2000 and as the Chairman of the Jefferson Bank Division of Hudson United Bank (Hudson United Bancorp’s banking subsidiary) from December 1999 through March 2000. Before the merger of JeffBanks, Inc. with Hudson United Bancorp in December 1999, Mrs. Cohen was Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JeffBanks, Inc. from its inception in 1981 and also served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of each of its subsidiaries, Jefferson Bank, which she founded in 1974, and Jefferson Bank New Jersey, which she founded in 1987. From 1985 until 1993, Mrs. Cohen was a director of First Union Corp. of Virginia (a bank holding company) and its predecessor, Dominion Bancshares, Inc. In 1969, Mrs. Cohen co-founded a commercial law firm and served as a senior partner until 1984. Mrs. Cohen also served as a director of Aetna, Inc. (NYSE: AET), an insurance company, from 1994 until May 2018.

Mei-Mei Tuan, 53
Director 

Ms. Tuan has been a director of both Bancorp and its wholly-owned subsidiary Bancorp Bank since 2013. She has also been a member of the board of FinTech III since 2018. Ms. Tuan is the co-founder and co-owner, managing partner and Chairman of Notch Partners LLC, a firm providing leadership capital and managed-led buyout strategies exclusively for institutional private equity funds. Ms. Tuan is also a Managing Director of Trewstar LLC, a boutique search firm based in New York specializing in board placements. As an investment banker with Goldman Sachs, BankAmerica and BankAustria, Ms. Tuan led domestic and international transactions in project finance, mergers and acquisitions, real estate, syndications and sale leasebacks. Ms. Tuan’s operating experience includes serving as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer at the Sierra Foundation, from 1996 through 1997, and the San Francisco Food Bank, from 1997 through 1998. Ms. Tuan is an active board member of the Clara Maass Medical Center and its Foundation, The Harvard Business School Asian-American Alumnae Association and Montclair Kimberley Academy. In the recent past, she has served on the Boards of Friends of Thirteen (WNET), the Museum of Chinese in America in New York City (Co-Chair), the Wellesley College Alumnae Association, the New Jersey Women’s Forum, the Mid-Manhattan Performing Arts Foundation and the New Jersey Network (NJN). Ms. Tuan is a member of the Committee of 100, an organization that addresses issues concerning Sino-U.S. relations. She holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Jan Hopkins Trachtman, 73
Director 

Ms. Hopkins Trachtman is President of The Jan Hopkins Group, a communications consulting company, which she founded in 2005. Since 2009, Ms. Hopkins Trachtman has served as an independent director of three Franklin Templeton mutual fund boards of directors, including Mutual Shares and Alternative Investment funds, where she also serves on the Nominating, Governance and Compensation Committees. She serves on the Advisory Board of the Knight Bagehot Fellowship at Columbia University School of Journalism and is a former member of the Advisory Board of Houlihan Lokey, an investment bank. Ms. Hopkins Trachtman has also served as a director of FinTech III since November 2018. Previously, Ms. Hopkins Trachtman was a Managing Director and Head of Global Client Communications at Citigroup Private Bank and is an Emmy and Peabody Award-winning anchor and business correspondent at CNN. She was also President of the Economic Club of New York from 2007 to 2015.

Walter C. Jones, 57
Director 

Mr. Jones is currently an international consultant based in Washington, DC. and is the Founder and CEO of Daana Technologies, Inc., a fintech firm based in Washington, DC. He served as a director of the general partner of Atlas Growth Partners, L.P., an oil and gas company, from July 2017 to April 2020. Mr. Jones served as a director of Atlas Energy Group, LLC, from February 2015 until July 2017. Mr. Jones served as a director of the general partner of Atlas Energy, L.P. from October 2013 until February 2015, a director of Atlas Energy Resources, LLC from December 2006 until September 2009, and a director of Atlas Energy, Inc. from September 2009 until March 2010. From November 2013 until mid-2017, Mr. Jones was the managing director of the Jones Pohl Group (JPG), an investment firm based in Dubai, UAE, which invested in clean energy projects, primarily in developing and developed markets around the globe. JPG also was the majority shareholder of a Dubai-based geothermal energy developer, RG Safa Energy. From April 2010 to October 2013, Mr. Jones served as the U.S. Executive Director and Chief-of-Mission to the African Development Bank in Tunis, Tunisia, having been nominated for the position by President Barack Obama in 2009, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate in 2010. In that position, he represented the United States on the African Development Bank’s Board of Directors, and served as chair of the bank’s audit committee and vice-chair of both the ethics and development effectiveness committees. Mr. Jones served as the Head of Private Equity and General Counsel at GRAVITAS Capital Advisors, LLC from June 2005 until May 2007. Mr. Jones served in a number of positions at the Overseas Private Investment Corporation from May 1994 to May 2005, and then again from September 2007 until April 2010, including Manager for Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America and the Caribbean and Senior Investment Officer in the Finance Department; and was an International Consultant at the Washington, D.C. firm of Neill & Co. before that. Mr. Jones began his career at the law firm of Sidley & Austin, where he was a transactions attorney specializing in leveraged buyouts. Mr. Jones’ combination of private and public sector experience, as well as his international work, has afforded him a unique combination of management and leadership experience.