Our Management

Michael Kharitonov is a co-founder and the CEO of Voleon. Dr. Kharitonov's career spans quantitative finance, scientific research, engineering and general management. Dr. Kharitonov earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Stanford University and has a BA in Computer Science and Mathematics with highest honors from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dr. Kharitonov's interests in quantitative finance were first put to practice at D. E. Shaw & Co., where he focused on equities and equity derivatives and led the development of a number of quantitative trading strategies which contributed to Shaw's rapid growth into one of the world's most successful hedge funds. Prior to co-founding Voleon, Dr. Kharitonov was a founder, CEO, and Chairman of Netli Inc., a successful Silicon Valley startup that pioneered the development of Application Delivery Networks and was acquired in 2007 by Akamai Technologies.

Dr. Kharitonov's scientific contributions have earned a number of prestigious awards (including an ACM best paper award), primarily in the field of Machine Learning. Dr. Kharitonov has contributed to the fields of Combinatorial Optimization and Cryptography as well. Dr. Kharitonov also held an appointment as a Scientific Associate at CERN, the preeminent international high energy physics research center in Geneva, Switzerland, where he participated in the development of the LEP particle accelerator. Dr. Kharitonov is a co-inventor of multiple US and international patents. Dr. Kharitonov was chosen to be in "The Bloomberg 50: The People Who Changed Global Business in 2019."

Jon McAuliffe is co-founder and Chief Investment Officer of Voleon, heading the firm's investment-strategy research and development. Jon is also Adjunct Professor of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on theory and methodology for large-scale data analysis.

Dr. McAuliffe has a substantial track record of successful innovation in applying statistical methods to real-life prediction problems, particularly in the financial markets. He was formerly a Vice President at D. E. Shaw & Co., where he researched, developed, and managed statistical arbitrage trading strategies. Prior to co-founding Voleon, Dr. McAuliffe built recommender systems at Amazon.com, real-time click prediction rules at search-keyword portfolio manager Efficient Frontier, and genotype-calling algorithms at microarray maker Affymetrix.

Dr. McAuliffe held a University of California Regents Fellowship from 2000 to 2004, and won the Berkeley Statistics Department's Erich Lehmann award for the outstanding dissertation in theoretical statistics. He is widely published and served on the editorial board of The Journal of Machine Learning Research. He has served on the senior program committee for NeurIPS and ICML, the flagship annual machine learning conferences. Dr. McAuliffe was chosen to be in "The Bloomberg 50: The People Who Changed Global Business in 2019."

Dr. McAuliffe earned his Ph.D. in Statistics from the University of California, Berkeley. He also holds an A.B. in Computer Science, with honors, and an S.M. in Applied Mathematics, both from Harvard University.

Dr. McAuliffe's academic CV can be found here.

Prem Gopalan serves as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) for Voleon. Before this role, he led the research team responsible for Voleon's portfolio optimization and market impact estimation.

Prior to joining Voleon, Dr. Gopalan graduated from Princeton University with a Ph.D. in Computer Science. He has published his research on large-scale Bayesian inference in journals such as Nature Genetics and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and in machine learning conferences.

Before his Ph.D., he worked at a startup as a software engineer for eight years in enterprise network security. He holds two patents from this period. Dr. Gopalan has a track record of developing computer systems based on principled approaches in academia and industry. He holds an M.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University and a B.E. in Computer Science, with honors, from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India.

Erick Hong serves as Head of Investor Relations and Business Development for Voleon. His career includes leadership roles in finance, management consulting, and nonprofits.

Mr. Hong began his career in advertising and PR before transitioning to management consulting at Oliver Wyman. After Oliver Wyman, Mr. Hong worked as Director of Special Projects at Kiva.org, as an independent advisor to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and as a management consultant at Bain & Company. Prior to joining Voleon, Mr. Hong worked at Bridgewater Associates where he held a variety of client service and marketing roles including most recently overseeing the firm's Pacific region.

Mr. Hong earned his MBA in General Management from Harvard Business School, and he holds a BA in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.

Lee Koffler serves as Chief Operating Officer for Voleon, and he is based in Berkeley, California. His career includes leadership roles in finance, management consulting, and nonprofits.

Mr. Koffler began his career at McKinsey & Company, where he consulted for clients in financial services. After McKinsey, Mr. Koffler worked at Orbis Investment Management as the Head of the Investment Counselor Group: Americas, leading efforts in investment management, operations, strategy, and client-related activities. Following Orbis, Mr. Koffler worked at State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) as the Head of Institutional Strategy: Americas, where he revamped lagging businesses and set strategy.

Mr. Koffler earned his MBA in General Management from Harvard Business School, and he holds an AB in Biochemistry from Harvard College.

Faye McGrath is the Chief Compliance Officer ("CCO") of Voleon. Her career includes leadership roles in asset management compliance, focusing on private fund advisory compliance, conflicts of interest, and fair allocation practices.

Prior to Voleon, Ms. McGrath worked for thirteen years in the Compliance Division of Goldman, Sachs & Co. where she provided advisory compliance support for various public equity and fixed income, hedge funds, and other alternative asset businesses - including Goldman's global third-party manager selection businesses. Ms. McGrath joined Voleon in 2019 as the Compliance Manager, responsible for managing the firm's regulatory compliance program.

Ms. McGrath holds an A.B. in Philosophy from Bryn Mawr College.

Catherine Mesgar serves as the Head of People Operations for Voleon. Her career includes leadership roles in human resources and corporate strategy.

Prior to joining Voleon in 2022, Ms. Mesgar was the Senior Director of HR for Codexis, a biotechnology firm, and Vice President, HR at AssetMark, a turnkey asset management platform. Prior to that, she was the Director of Corporate Strategy for Willis Towers Watson and its predecessor firms, focused on strategic planning, product and service expansions, and M&A integration.

Ms. Mesgar holds a B.S. in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University.

Jeremy Rosenblatt serves as Managing Director of Strategic Projects and Head of Systems and Software for Voleon, and he is based in Berkeley, CA. His career includes leadership roles in the technology industry, where he has held the roles of CTO, CIO, and COO.

Mr. Rosenblatt's career includes roles as CTO of both StubHub (acquired by eBay) and AskJeeves (acquired by IAC). After AskJeeves, Mr. Rosenblatt was Vice President of Operations for Nanomix, a leading nano-electronic detection company. He then went on to work as CTO for the Office of Development and Alumni Association at Stanford University, where he was responsible for strategic planning and day-to-day operations, ranging from data mining to social media. Following his work at Stanford, Mr. Rosenblatt was CTO for Mortgage Resolution Partners (MRP) and served as a technology consultant and outsourced CTO for stealth-stage startups.

Mr. Rosenblatt holds a BS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from University of California, Berkeley.

Steve Schraibman serves as General Counsel. Steve has 20+ years of legal and compliance leadership focused mainly on securities law and investment management, as well as commercial contracts.

Prior to joining Voleon, Steve was the General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer and oversaw Finance and Operations at TIFIN, a FinTech firm that in 2022 was the third fastest growing start-up in Colorado and whose strategic investors include J.P. Morgan, Motive Partners, Franklin Templeton and Morningstar. Prior to that, Steve spent more than twelve years at Point72 Asset Management, where he was Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel for Point72, and Managing Director and General Counsel for Cubist Systematic Strategies, Point72's quantitative investment manager. Steve has also worked in private practice, and at Citadel.

Steve received his J.D. with a Business Enterprise Concentration from Northwestern Prtizker School of Law.

Stephen Terry serves as the Chief Financial Officer for Voleon, and is based in Berkeley, CA. His career includes leadership roles in investment fund operations, finance, and compliance as well as at high-growth, venture capital-backed technology companies.

Mr. Terry began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he held roles in equity research and investment banking, with a focus on corporate finance and M&A. After Goldman Sachs, Mr. Terry founded a climate tech-focused investment and advisory firm. Subsequently, Mr. Terry worked at Early Growth Financial Services where he served as CFO for several venture capital firms, as well as high-growth technology companies backed by leading venture capital firms.

Mr. Terry holds a BS in Engineering from MIT and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation.

Dave Tolliver serves as the Chief of Technical Staff (CoTS) for Voleon. Before taking the role of CoTS, he led the research team responsible for advancing Voleon's European and Asia-Pacific equities trading strategies.

Before joining Voleon, Dr. Tolliver was the Director of Computational Sciences at ObjectVideo, where he worked on large-scale detection and tracking problems. Prior to ObjectVideo, he was a Systems Scientist in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). At CMU he worked on scalable approximation algorithms with applications in cancer phylogenetics, regularized regression, and numerical linear algebra.

Dr. Tolliver holds a PhD in Robotics and a BSc in Computer Science, both from the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University.