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The MentorWorks team
MentorWorks Founders
Karthik Krishnan
CEO + President
Karthik Krishnan has expertise in higher education, finance, data analytics, and ISA pricing models. He is a thought leader in the higher education financing space and has published peer reviewed articles as well as appeared in various media articles on this topic. He has developed MentorWorks ISA pricing models that are student friendly and transparent. His connections in the higher education space have allowed us to get early customers and validation of our model as well.
Karthik has been an angel investor in early stage companies through Launchpad Venture Group. He has been involved in doing company deep dive and diligence reports for startups at Launchpad. He has a PhD in Finance from Boston College and a Bachelors in Electrical Engineering from Delhi University.
Karthik is also a tenured associate professor and industry faculty in the finance group at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University (NU). At NU, he advises the dean of the business school on their fintech initiatives and outreach. In addition, Karthik has developed a course on applied machine learning in finance at NU.
Mark Bernfeld
Chairman
Mark is the Chairman of Tamarack Technologies and an angel investor with Launchpad Venture Group and Clean Energy Venture Group. An experienced entrepreneur, he has significant experience in sales, marketing, and business development. Mark has been involved in academia for a number of years and has mentored many students.
Senior Leadership
Micha Sabovik
Chief Operating Officer
Micha Sabovik has more than 25 years of experience in higher education focusing on: operations, careers, financial aid, admissions/enrollment, sales and marketing. Micha has led a variety of cross-functional teams at Boston University/College of Communication and Brandeis International Business School.
Furthermore, Micha, along with a faculty colleague won the inaugural Digital Learning Initiative grant (BU) and built an online course targeted toward assisting incoming non‐English speaking graduate students. Additionally, she oversaw a nation-wide staff of 25 on the Institutional Relations/Sales and Scholarship teams at CIEE Study Abroad.
Micha recently taught a graduate-level Social Media/Advertising course at Boston University and has collected a dozen awards for marketing efforts/student recruiting efforts.
Ki akrami, CFA
Chief Investment Officer
Ki Akrami has over 20 years of experience in investment management, structured finance, and capital raise. Ki was previously Managing Director at Rothschild & Co, and was Portfolio Manager of several investment funds over multiple market cycles. At Rothschild, he developed the idea for and led the creation of an innovative principal protected investment fund from start to finish, including negotiation with business partners, creation of the legal structure, hiring service providers, leading the coordination of efforts among internal and external teams as well as the regulator in the lead-up to launch, securing seed funding and later leading capital raising efforts.
Ki has conducted due diligence on over 1,000 investments during his career, and personally led strategic deals, product launches, and seed deal negotiations. He has hands-on experience with institutional investors, and secured a $150M mandate from a Fortune 500 pension plan. Additionally, Ki negotiated a $25M seed deal with an institutional asset manager.
Mike Trachtman
Chief Technology Officer
Mike Trachtman has 25 years of experience architecting digital experiences and developing software products using a wide range of platforms and technologies. At MentorWorks, Mike leads development of its ISA origination platform and cloud-powered infrastructure.
Previously, at Insightfil, Mike developed cloud software and mobile apps that power pharmacy operations and offer additional value to patients and their families. He also managed robotics and software engineering teams responsible for supporting innovative mosaic design and robotic manufacturing processes at Artaic.
Mike has advised project teams and clients in the application of human-centered design and Agile development methodologies, creating digital experiences that meaningfully engage users at Story+Structure, a design consultancy. Additionally, Mike designed and engineered Introspect, an electronic discovery product used by paralegals and attorneys to review billions of sensitive documents at ZANTAZ, later acquired by HP Autonomy.
The Team
Clayton D. Samuels
Fractional CFO
Clayton brings with him 15 years of experience in private equity direct investment and M&A focused corporate development where he has led the deal process to originate, evaluate and structure leveraged buyouts, growth equity and recapitalization transactions of middle market companies within financial services, life sciences, software technology and business services sectors. Additionally, he brings a deep operating experience garnered from ConvergEx, a GTCR portfolio company where in addition to contributing to the acquisition of three competitors totaling $122M, he managed post-merger integrations and led a cross-functional team to develop a custom revenue management system achieving a 45% reduction in staff effort.
Clayton was part of the $1B divestiture and subsequent sale of Eze Software to TPG Capital, Clayton served as the project manager to establish a new internal finance and accounting infrastructure while mitigating business continuity risks.
He independently sourced an $18M bolt-on acquisition, negotiated deal terms, and engaged 400+ companies to generate 15 active deals at Century Equity Partners.
Mark Levinson
Business Development Intern
Mark joined MentorWorks as a Business Development Intern in November 2022. Previously, he worked with the Go-To-Market team at Robust Intelligence, and graduated Dartmouth College with a BA in Psychology. Mark is passionate about working with technology, building strong relationships, and helping to make a difference in people’s lives. Mark is a two-time USA National Team rower and is currently training for the Olympics.