"Moving fast and trusting each other is what drives our growth at Cadana."

Can you share a bit about your professional background and what led you to join Cadana as the Head of Growth?

I have taken a pretty circuitous path towards ending up in the fintech and payments world. I graduated from Stanford University in 2016 with degrees in renewable energy engineering and creative writing, and my plans were to work in the solar industry following graduation. After completing a couple of internships and part-time work on commercial and industrial solar projects, I got turned off by the industry with how slow moving things were and all of the red tape involved with seeing projects through completion; as someone who has an entrepreneurial mindset, dealing with local government permitting processes, tax credits, and construction challenges for a seemingly simple project to get started had me second guessing if that was the long-term career path I wanted to take. So like a lot of motivated college graduates not knowing exactly what is next for them, I went into tech sales, first for a cybersecurity company, and then for a data analytics company that was eventually acquired by Mastercard. Working at Mastercard was my first experience in the world of payments, and after a couple of successful years there I was able to land a role at a cross-border payments company called Nium.

About a year into my time at Nium, I took a meeting with two founders of this startup called Cadana that was building payroll and payments infrastructure with a focus on emerging markets, and they were interested in an integration with Nium to leverage their payment rails for particular corridors that were seeing growth on the Cadana platform. I remember that even from the first meeting with Albert and Ameer, we had a style of work and communication that meshed really well together; the three of us operate very quickly and will drop everything to support one another, our skillsets compliment each other very well, and there is an unspoken level of respect that we are all building and working towards making the world a better and more connected place. After a year of working together as partners, and after the close of the recent funding raise by Cadana, Albert and Ameer asked if I wanted to come on board as the Head of Growth and it was an easy decision for me to accept their offer. I trust Albert and Ameer both as strong leaders and good human beings and I couldn’t be more excited to work alongside them and the rest of the Cadana team as we accelerate this next phase of growth of the business.

Growth and marketing can be a wild ride—what first drew you to this field, and how has your experience shaped the way you approach your role today?

I’ve always had a goal that no matter what career path I chose, I want to be using both sides of my brain: the technical/engineering side and the writing/communication side. I think that growth and marketing allow me to do that every day, as the most important skill set to be successful in both fields is to be able to distill the technical and complex details of a product or a solution into easily digestible information where the value proposition can be easily understood by the user or customer. I joke that I might not use my renewable energy engineering degree much on a day-to-day basis, but I definitely use the creative writing degree every day. Whether I'm writing a client follow-up email, drafting a website blog post, or sending feedback to our product team on Slack, I'm always focused on conveying the value proposition in the most digestible way possible. This approach, I believe, encapsulates my overall philosophy on growth and marketing.

What’s been the most interesting challenge you’ve faced at Cadana so far?

One of the early strategic discussions that Albert, Ameer, and I had after I joined Cadana is that we want to be known as an infrastructure company as opposed to a payroll company. It’s been a really interesting challenge for me and the rest of the team over the last few months as we’ve gone through a full rebranding exercise to reflect that strategic change, including redoing our website, refreshing our marketing materials, and launching a new network tool. Early signs point to the changes being very well received and we’ve had an all-time rate of customer onboardings over the summer. The most exciting part for me with these new customers is that they are reaching out to Cadana with all different types of use cases; some customers are requesting building on top of our contractor wallet infrastructure, some customers are asking to integrate our Payments APIs for emerging markets payouts, and others are looking to leverage our EOR services for Africa, and it’s reaffirmed for me and the rest of the team that we made the right decision positioning ourselves being more than just a global payroll company.

Outside of your professional life, what’s something people might be surprised to learn about you?

At the end of 2021, I decided to start my own semi-professional soccer team in the Washington DC-area called Blazers Football Club. We currently play in the 4th division of the US soccer pyramid (UPSL Premier) and have been growing our following steadily over the last couple of years.

Owning a soccer team has felt a lot like running a mini-startup and it’s been a rewarding (and at times stressful) project that I am really proud of. I grew up a massive soccer fan, and although I never played competitively until recently because I focused on swimming and triathlon in my teenage and early adult years, it’s been a lot of fun being involved with a team sport and all of the strategy and people management that goes along with that. I’ve worked very hard over the first couple of years on creating a team culture at Blazers FC that is built on respect and a high intensity of effort in games and practices, and we’re now at a point where I’m getting constant outreach from players wanting to trial for the team because they have heard such positive things about the team culture.

For the near-term, the goal is to continue to move up the league standings during the 2024 fall season and compete for playoff spots which will further help with sponsor discussions and player recruitment for the 2025 season. Maybe after a few more successful years in the fintech space I will look to make the move into the front office of a pro sports team!

What’s your favorite thing about working here at Cadana?

Ever since my first week of joining the team, I have been amazed at how quickly projects get done at Cadana and it is by far my favorite part about working at the company (and a huge asset to our clients!). Albert and Ameer have created a culture of ownership that I think is so important to how we operate; instead of getting bogged down with multiple layers of approval on decisions, employees are encouraged to own their projects and have total control on making sure tasks get done in a timely manner. So whether that’s launching a new feature in our wallet infrastructure that a client has requested or doing a total redesign of our website, we’re able to launch into production at a rate that I have never seen before because of the work culture and flat org structure that Albert and Ameer have purposefully designed.

If you could have lunch with anyone, past or present, who would it be and why?

My favorite saying in life ever since I was a teenager has been “Work the Dream”. The phrase comes from Fran Crippen, who was a former professional distance swimmer in the US. It’s a short and simple expression, but to me it is a grounding reminder that it’s worth working hard for the things that you care about in life, it’s important to always have goals and be working towards them, and that every day that you get to spend with family and friends is a blessing and should never be taken for granted.

Fran passed away in 2010 during an open water race, at a time when he was one of the top distance swimmers in the world and having the best season of his career. A few months before his passing, I, as a totally ignorant 15-year-old teenager, had reached out to him on Facebook asking if he had any advice for an upcoming open water race that I was competing in. He didn’t owe a random kid on the internet any type of response, but instead, he sent me back a detailed strategy of how I should think about pacing myself in the race, how I should plan my nutrition and other technical changes I should make to my stroke before the race. I would go on to win the race which kicked off a mildly successful career for me in open-water swimming, part of which I credit to his inspiration and guiding advice. We exchanged messages one more time after the race where I let him know how the race went and he congratulated me, and that was the last time that we interacted. I still vividly remember the sinking feeling in my stomach as I saw the ticker on ESPN’s Sportscenter on a Saturday morning in October announcing the news of his passing.

So I would choose to have lunch with Fran, and I’m sure there would be some swapping of stories of the hardest training sets that we’ve done or the weirdest bodies of water that we’ve raced in before, but I’d mostly want to hear his thoughts on how to properly balance your life now that I’m older and how he would recommend prioritizing work, family, fitness goals, recovery and downtime, and helping others. I always want to be in a position in my life where if that 15-year-old kid reaches out to me asking for advice, I would be willing to take the time to respond because you never know the long-term impact that can have on someone who looks up to you.

What’s your approach to setting goals? Do you prefer tackling big-picture ideas or focusing on smaller, immediate wins?

I’m a very competitive person by nature with most of my motivation coming from my own internal drive and desire to succeed, and though I am constantly setting goals for myself, I keep a lot of them close to my chest. I’m someone who sets a bunch of mini goals throughout a given day like sending out a certain number of prospect emails or getting a marketing proposal done before 2 pm. The leadership team at Cadana also makes sure that our departments are working towards longer-term goals for the end of the year that we have regular check-ins on, and I really appreciate that balanced approach of hitting shorter-term goals that contribute towards broader annual organization goals that we can all support each other on.

What’s a personal passion or hobby that you’ve recently picked up or would love to explore more?

About six months ago my wife and I started playing the New York Times Games app and it’s become part of our nightly routine to go through the list of daily games before we fall asleep. So we always start with Wordle (have a 100% score still after 200 days), then we do Connections, followed by Strands, we play Spelling Bee until we get at least an “Amazing” score, and then we finish up with a crossword puzzle which is usually where I fall asleep before we get to the halfway point.

I think that it’s healthy to have a nighttime routine where we have to be in bed before midnight to start that day’s games and it gives us time to decompress and disconnect before falling asleep.

What’s one thing you’re excited about for the future, either at work or in your personal life?

In this post-COVID world, and working in global payments with colleagues and clients based all over the world, I’ve had a goal to try and travel internationally at least once a year with my wife.

We recently did trips to Ireland and Scotland which we loved, and we’ve been wanting to go back to Hungary as our next trip (where the name Gyenis comes from). Hopefully, at some point, I can do a trip to Ghana and Nigeria to meet other members of the Cadana team!