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C2FO Advisors

Working together for a better financial future

Together, the C2FO Advisory Board of global experts and leaders represents the top of their field. They offer guidance, knowledge and expertise to provide critical strategic leadership and analysis to guide us on our mission to ensure every business has the capital needed to thrive.

Jason Bristow

Jason is a business executive with more than 20 years’ experience in large multi-national organizations as well as smaller, venture-backed enterprises. With a focus on operational accounting and finance, Jason has a proven track record in P&L and balance sheet management, achieving success for international organizations and businesses operating in challenging, high-growth environments. Jason has served as the CFO of Code42 and as the Vice President Finance & Treasurer at Amazon before managing treasury and financial planning and analysis at GE and Campbell’s.

David G. Brown

David is a venture capital and private equity investor. He is the Managing Partner of Oak Hill Venture Partners and a Vice President of Keystone, LP (formerly known as the Robert M. Bass Company). David has invested in more than 45 companies and funds since 1993. He is a founding investor and currently serves on the board of directors of five private companies. He possesses broad experience in social media, software, communications, financial services and clean technology markets. David is also active in a number of charities and non-profit organizations. He serves on the board of Bowdoin College and NatureBridge. David holds a B.A. degree from Bowdoin College and an M.B.A. from the Amos Tuck School of Business Administration.

Francisco Javier Casanueva

Francisco is the executive president and board member at INTERproteccion, a leading insurance and reinsurance broker in Latin America, servicing clients worldwide. He serves on several boards including Finaccess México (Fund Manager) FGA (Consulting & Investment Banking) and the C2FO advisory board. He is involved in several philanthropic endeavors, including being chairman of Endeavor México and Consejo de la Comunicacón. He also participates as a board member for Pacto por la Primera Infancia, Papalote Museo del Niño and Instituto para el Fomento a la Calidad. Francisco holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from the Universidad Iberoamericana, an insurance degree from ITAM, a master’s degree from IPADE, and is a graduate of the executive program at Singularity University.

David B. Dillon

Dave Dillon is the retired Chairman and CEO of The Kroger Co., based in Cincinnati. The company employs over 400,000 associates who serve customers in more than 2,700 retail food stores under two dozen names. Dave served in a variety of leadership roles after joining the Dillon Companies (now part of Kroger) in 1976 with its King Soopers division in Denver. During his career, he served in various leadership positions with Fry’s Food Stores and the Dillon Companies before being named president of Dillon Companies in 1986. He was appointed executive vice president of Kroger in 1990, and he was elected president and chief operating officer of the company in 1995. Dave was named CEO of Kroger in 2003. He was elected Chairman of the Board of Directors in 2004. Dave retired as CEO at the end of 2013 and as Chairman of the Board of Directors at the end of 2014. Dave earned a bachelor’s degree in Business at the University of Kansas and a law degree at Southern Methodist University. He is a member of the board of directors of 3M and the Union Pacific Corporation. He also serves on the Board of Trustees for the University of Kansas Endowment, the University of Kansas Hospital Authority Board, the River Club, and MRIGlobal. In addition, he previously served on the Board of Trustees for the Urban League of Greater Cincinnati, Board of Trustees for the University of Cincinnati Foundation, and the Board of Directors for Catalyst, Directv, and Convergys.

Neelam Dhawan

Neelam Dhawan is an accomplished business leader with over 38 years of experience in the information technology industry. Recognized for her pivotal role in shaping the information technology industry in India, Neelam has been honored by Fortune, Forbes and Business Today as one of the Most Powerful Women in Business. In India, Neelam is listed among India’s ‘Top Inspiration Women Leaders’ by the Confederation of Indian Industry. Most recently, she served as the vice president for global industries, strategic alliances and inside sales for the Asia Pacific and Japan with Hewlett Packard. Neelam has also held various positions with HCL, IBM, and Microsoft. Neelam graduated from St. Stephen’s College with a degree in economics and received her MBA from the University of Delhi.

Ali Fuat Erbil

Ali Fuat Erbil has extensive experience in banking and business administration. After working as an executive at various private companies and banks, he joined Garanti Bank, the second largest private bank in Turkey, as the Senior Vice President of Distribution Channels in 1997. After that, Mr. Erbil was appointed as Executive Vice President and was responsible of several areas such as Retail Banking, Corporate Banking, Investment Banking, Financial Institutions and Human Resources. From September 2015 to December 2019, he held the roles of Board Member, President & CEO at Garanti Bank. Mr. Erbil currently serves as the Board Member in the Banks Association of Turkey.

Matthew Gamser

Matthew Gamser

Dr. Matthew Gamser has over 40 years of experience in private enterprise and financial sector development. He founded and was until recently CEO of the SME Finance Forum, the world’s leading center for knowledge exchange, good practice promotion and public-private dialogue in this field. He worked for IFC, the private-sector arm of the World Bank Group, for 18+ years in various positions from Washington, DC, and Hong Kong, where he has focused on SME finance and wider financial sector development. Prior to that, he spent 25 years in management consulting and in senior leadership in an international NGO. Matthew holds B.A. and M.A. degrees from Harvard University and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Sussex University (UK), where his work focused on the management of technological change.

Martial Gérardin

Martial is an independent adviser, helping software investors and executives to design, build and deliver successful B2B market strategies in France and Western Europe. Martial brings over 30 years of professional services experience in IT and business consulting, specializing in spend management and B2B exchanges. Currently, he serves as Board Director at Unisylva, the second-largest forestry cooperative in France, and as Adviser to Kanop.io, a French startup using satellite images and AI to analyze forest growth and carbon capture. Between 2005 and 2017, Martial launched and successfully developed Perfect Commerce in Europe. In 2017, Perfect Commerce was purchased by Proactis, and Martial served as managing director for three additional years. Previously, he served as CEO of Answork, a commerce-one marketplace. Before Answork, he was responsible for business development in industry markets at SOPRA-STERIA, a major IT consulting firm in the French market. Martial holds a degree in engineering from Ecole Centrale de Lille and a license in economics science.

Joe Grachek III

Joseph Grachek III

Joseph Grachek III is an accomplished management executive (retired) with 39 years of experience in retail operations, accounting, and audit at Costco Wholesale. As VP – Merchandise Accounting, Joseph implemented systems and operational practices to ensure Costco’s administrative success and system security as the organization grew annual sales of over $200B. As VP – Chief Auditor – Global Internal Audit, Joseph built a team to provide business systems audit and advisory services to Costco’s global entity.  Joseph is a 1982 graduate of the University of Nebraska – Lincoln with a degree in Business Administration – Finance.

Manoj Kohli

Manoj Kohli is a professional entrepreneur, an independent director, a business advisor to large companies and a coach of young entrepreneurs in India and the United States. Currently, he serves as the Chairman and Managing Partner of MK Knowledge LLP. Over his 44-year career, Manoj has worked in the manufacturing, telecom, renewable energy and digital technology sectors in the United States, Europe, China and Japan. He has helped build businesses in 20 countries throughout the Asia Pacific region and in Africa. Manoj holds degrees in Commerce and Law and an MBA from Delhi University. He attended management programs at the University of Michigan and the Wharton School of Business.

Tyra Mariani, president of the Schultz Family Foundation

Tyra Mariani

Tyra Mariani is president of the Schultz Family Foundation and head of philanthropy at Emes Project, LLC. She serves on the board of trustees of Howard University and is a board member of Fidelity Charitable and Jobs for the Future (JFF). Before joining the Foundation, Tyra was president and COO at New America, where she partnered with the board and CEO to transform the organization into a new kind of think tank committed to exploring new and effective ways of solving public problems. Prior to that, she served as deputy chief of staff to the US secretary of education and then chief of staff to the US deputy secretary of education in the Obama administration, helping to shape policies and programs impacting education and leading interagency and cross-departmental teams. Earlier in her career, Tyra launched entrepreneurial efforts to develop leaders in the education sector as founder of the Greater New Orleans Region of New Leaders. Before New Leaders, she served as budget director for Chicago Public Schools. Tyra began her career in the private sector, with roles at organizations such as McKinsey & Company and Kraft Foods.

Brian McClendon

Brian McClendon is a software designer, developer, engineer, advisor for Firebrand Ventures, and a research professor at the University of Kansas. Previously, Brian spent two years at Uber, leading their Maps and Business Platform efforts. For 10 years prior, Brian was a Vice President with Google and led the entire Geo business unit including Google Maps, Street View, and Google Earth. He was a co-founder and angel investor in Keyhole, Inc., a geospatial data visualization company that was purchased by Google in 2004, which led to Google Earth. Brian grew up in Lawrence, Kansas and graduated from the University of Kansas with a degree in electrical engineering. Brian maintains close ties with the university, serving on advisory boards for both the School of Engineering, the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and serving as a Trustee for the KU Endowment. In 2007, he and his wife, Beth McClendon, established the McClendon Engineering Scholarship at the university.

Jan-Martin Nufer

Jan-Martin Nufer is the Vice President of Treasury and Funding at Borealis, a leading provider of innovative solutions in the fields of polyolefins, base chemicals, fertilizers and melamine, headquartered in Vienna. He has 25 years of international finance experience in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the United States, France, the Middle East and Africa. Jan-Martin has managed projects globally and led finance organizations with a wide variety of structures. Jan-Martin has worked in companies ranging from startups to large multinationals, and in industries including banking, financial advisory, health, telecommunications, airlines, large conglomerates and petrochemicals, as well as in most fields within finance. Throughout his career, he has lectured at major finance and treasury events around the world. He holds various management board positions and supervisory board mandates. He is the founding board member of the Austrian Corporate Treasury Association, board member of the European Association of Corporate Treasurers and a representative of the International Group of Treasury Associations.

Kartik Raghavan

Kartik Raghavan is a former Managing Director at Two Sigma. At Two Sigma from 2014-2020, he proposed, built, and led the Product Management, Business Innovation and Growth (BIG), and Strategy teams. Previously, he held technology, investing, and strategy leadership roles at the Gates Foundation and Microsoft. Kartik served on the Gates Foundation’s Program Related Investments Committee which grew to over a $1B worldwide portfolio. He also worked extensively on Financial Services for the Poor and US Education Strategies and was a member of the Foundation Leadership Team. At Microsoft, Kartik worked directly for the President of Microsoft’s Business Division and Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect. He started his career in the Windows Division where he led and built product teams. Kartik was a member of the 2008 Obama-Biden Transition project where he worked on a variety of technology and policy issues. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a dual-degree in Engineering Sciences/Computer Science and Economics/Math.

Gianluca Riccio

Gianluca, CFA, has over 20 years’ experience in the banking industry. His experience combines risk, strategy, business, regulatory and capital needs, and over time has ranged from managing risk in different regions and economic environments, to successfully leading a broad range of strategic transformation programmes, including modelling, pricing, capital and regulatory requirements, as well as business restructures and wider projects across the organization. Gianluca is Chair of the “Business at OECD” (BIAC) Finance Committee; and since 2015 he has been Member of B20 Financing Growth & Infrastructure Taskforce as part of the G20 process (in 2023 he is also member of the Action Council on ESG in Business). In addition, Gianluca is member of the Technical Committee for Financial Services (IST/12) of British Standards Institute to the ISO (International Organization for Standardisation). Gianluca works in the Risk division of Lloyds Banking Group, joined in 2010 following 14 years in the Risk division of UBS Investment Bank. By background he is graduated in Economics and holds a CFA and a MSc in Finance, and has various publications.

Martin Scott

Martin Scott is a banking professional with over 40 years of experience in a number of global banking organisations, including, HSBC, JP Morgan, ABN Amro, Bank of America, NatWest Group. Martin has gained his global transactional banking experience with specialisms in Global Trade including Supply Chain and Receivables Financing and Cash & Liquidity Management including global payments. Over the past 20 years Martin has led global teams in designing and executing complex supply chain and receivables financing structures for large multi-national corporations. He worked extensively with corporate clients to develop efficient means for Banks to actively support supplier engagement and on-boarding techniques that contributed substantially to successfully programme development. During his career Martin worked with multiple industry leading financial platform providers including C2FO. He was a founding Board Director of We.trade a blockchain-based platform for open account trade.

Arun Seth

Arun Seth took early retirement from his corporate career to focus on bringing the benefits of IT/Telecom to real world businesses in energy, health, fintech, medtech, education and hospitality via a vibrant innovative entrepreneurial eco system and a focus on giving back to society. Starting as the founding MD of British Telecom in India in 1995, he built it to its current leadership position in managed telecom services and outsourced IT and back office operations. He left in 2012 as its non-Executive Chairman. Arun also helped incubate and grow Mahindra BT in the mid 90’s into what now is Tech Mahindra and has been on the board for 17 years. He is very active with Govt and Regulators on shaping Telecoms Policy and IT policy being an elected member of Nasscom for more than a decade. He is an active angel investor for the last 20+ years having incubated companies like Avendus InMobi, Tonetag, Ezetap, HelathifyMe, alertgy.com. Arun is a founding Charter Member of TiE Delhi Chapter and Indian Angel Network and has been part of angel funds and advises/mentors several start-ups in the tech space in India and the US. An alumnus of IIT Kanpur and IIM Calcutta – he has worked in senior commercial positions in the BT, HCL, Usha Martin and the UB Group, in the last 40+ years. He is active in Alumni Affairs and has Chaired PanIIT in 2010 and was Vice President of IIT Kanpur Alumni Association.

Luis Tellez

Luis Téllez

Luis Téllez was Chairman and CEO of the Mexican Stock Exchange (MSE) from May 2009 to December 2014. He also served as Chief of Staff to President Ernesto Zedillo from 1994 to 1997, Secretary of Energy from 1997 to 2000, and Mexico’s Secretary of Communications and Transportation from 2006 to 2009. Since April 2015, he has led the operations in Mexico of KKR & Co. Inc. as Senior Advisor, Head of Mexico. Prior to the MSE, he was Managing Director of the Carlyle Group in Mexico and Chief Executive Officer of Desc, a Mexican industrial conglomerate. Tellez earned a Ph.D. in economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He currently serves as a director of two public companies in Mexico, Cultiba and Grupo Aereoportuario del Pacífico (GAP), and was a director of Sempra Energy from 2010 until 2015.

Matt Truman

Matt is CEO and co-founder of True, a consumer investment firm that includes its own proprietary innovation hub, itself boasting strategic partnerships with some of the world’s leading retail and consumer companies. Matt has been involved in the retail and consumer sector for 16 years. He began his career at Deloitte and afterwards joined Lehman Brothers, where he became Head of Retail. He subsequently joined JP Morgan where he led the European retail franchise. Over his 13 year career in London, Matt advised a collection of the largest and most disruptive retailers in the world. He co-founded True in 2008, initially as a private investment vehicle to build and ultimately realise his own e-commerce business in his spare time which sold product to more than 70 countries at exit, before launching the business full time in 2013. True is currently investing from its second institutional fund and joins C2FO as an advisor to help accelerate C2FO’s path into the boardrooms of the world’s leading retail and consumer companies as well as provide strategic advice to the operating board. Matt graduated from the University of London with a 1st class degree in business and economics.

Alexander Visser

Alexander, a Dutch national, is a senior leader at Royal Philips, a global HealthTech company based out of Amsterdam the Netherlands. He currently holds the position of Indirect CPO, transforming the traditional procurement function into Spend Management – by which the entire operating model gets validated and business outcomes structurally improved. He has built an international career with a strong track record of financial leadership, business interventions, M&A and building organizations from the ground up.

Alexander holds the unique perspective by combining his broad financial background, serving as emerging market Africa CFO for the group and various businesses and ventures in the in the Lighting sector with his current leadership position of the procurement function.

Alexander holds a Finance Business Administration MSc and graduated from Groningen & Maastricht University, The Netherlands.

Jim Winkler

James Winkler

James Packard Winkler, Ph.D., is a senior associate of the Project on Prosperity and Development at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and advises business, government, development agencies and nonprofits on economic and enterprise growth in emerging markets. Dr. Winkler has provided over 35 years of senior leadership, management, and technical expertise supporting public-private partnerships, blended finance, and economic competitiveness. As an executive and leader at international development consultancies DAI and Creative Associates International, he has worked in close collaboration with the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.K. Aid, International Finance Corporation, U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and World Bank along with business and nonprofit partners to support investment, trade, market reforms, and private sector development. He recently completed five years as a Board Director on the Corporate Council on Africa and currently serves on the Business for Impact Program at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business.  Dr. Winkler has Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in international economics and business from the Fletcher School at Tufts University and a B.S. in business administration from Georgetown University.