Mark Friedgan is a hands-on Technology Leader and Entrepreneur with a proven track record of successfully leveraging cutting edge technology to implement the best business processes, products and solutions in a start-up environment.
KEY ACCOMPLISHMENTS
As the former CIO of Enova Financial, Mark built and led a robust technology and analytics organization of 150 from 2005 to 2011. He was responsible for building the technology platform supporting the business including a CRM, Loan Management System, Predictive Dialer, Lead Management System and others. The same software platform now powers the business in 4 countries under almost 10 different brands. The platform heavily leveraged open source technologies, including Ruby on Rails, Asterisk, Linux, Postgres and others. In 2005, Mark joined what was then known as CashnetUSA and helped grow it from issuing 30 loans a day to over 10,000 in 2011. Cash America (NYSE:CSH) acquired CashnetUSA in late 2006 and is spinning it off in an IPO with an expected valuation close to $1B (NYSE:ENVA).
Prior to that, he was a Director at Data Cartography where he helped design advanced technology solutions for companies like CDW and CCC Information Services as well as a variety of startups, including Product Animations, Videosave. Notable projects include helping CDW upgrade their legacy AS400 platform and team capability from RPG to Java through framework design and team education, helping CCC create a hybrid online/offline platform for insurance re-adjusters leveraging an existing C++ based estimation platform combined with a new .NET based front-end and Java based server platform.
EDUCATION & AWARDS
In 2010 Mark was named Top 25 CTO by Infoworld Magazine and was awarded the prestigious CIO Magazine Top 100 award. He was recognized for innovation in productivity improvements and cost reduction by creating a new technology platform.
Mark has Masters and Bachelor’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University in Electrical and Computer Engineering where his research focused on ubiquitous computing architectures and graduated with University Honors.
MARK TODAY
Mark is currently involved in angel investments as well as mentoring a number of early stage companies. He is a board member of DebtEye, which was named one of the most promising companies in the recent Y-Combinator class of startups. Mark is a co-founder of FundScience, a public charity supporting scientific research. He is also an active startup mentor with the for University of Illinois Academy Entrepreneurial Leadership as well as a speaker at Techweek and Technology Executives Club events.