Deep Industry Expertise & Inspired Next Generation Technology

Founder & CEO

Jeff Mason

Prior to forming Groundspeed, Jeff served as SVP of the insurance holding company Chelsea Rhone, where he led sales, alternative risk transfer programs, and all innovation efforts. He’s held various positions in commercial insurance for the last 19 years.

He is also the founder of Evolucent, a risk consultancy, CRCS, a captive insurance company administrator, and QAReader, a quality information SaaS for healthcare facilities.

Jeff holds an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan and a BA in Economics from Michigan State University.

Chief Technology Officer

Naim Falandino

Naim leads the long-term vision of how machine learning, data engineering, and analytics can deliver actionable data solutions. He has twenty years of experience in technology and organizational leadership.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, Naim was part of the founding team at Deepfield, where he served as Chief Data Scientist, and later as Director of R&D at Nokia for the Deepfield product line after the company’s acquisition in 2017. He holds a MS in Information Science from the University of Michigan and a BS in Computer Science from Michigan State University.

Chief Revenue Officer

Jeff Heine

Jeff leads Sales and Marketing for the company. He has extensive experience in building and scaling high-tech startups, including ten startups with eight successful exits.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, Jeff served in the Insurance and Financial Services industries, in which he helped start sales at Guidewire Software, scaled Adsensa globally, leading to the acquisition by Exari, scaled Ascent from seed round to B round, and began his career at CCC Information Services. He holds a BS from Bradley University and is a certified Business Professional by Hecht & Associates in Leadership, Entrepreneurship, and Innovation.

Chief Operating Officer

Eric Kobe

Eric leads the company’s Operations, Analytics, HR, Recruiting, and Business Operations teams. Prior to joining Groundspeed, he was most recently VP of New Markets at Affirm, where he spent four years scaling the Strategy and Operations team during the company’s growth from 100 to 900+ employees.

Prior to that, Eric led Operations and Analytics at Wiser Solutions and started his career in management consulting. He holds an MBA from the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan and a BS in Systems Engineering and Economics from the University of Virginia.

Vice President, Customer Success

Rebecca Gordon

Rebecca oversees customer relationships at Groundspeed, ensuring mutual goals are met starting with implementation and throughout every stage of the customer lifecycle.

Over the course of her career, Rebecca has worked in customer-facing roles at high growth organizations, most recently leading Customer Success at a data and research company. She holds a BA from Tufts University and an MBA from the University of Virginia.

Vice President, Product

Suman Palit

Suman leads Groundspeed’s Product team. He comes from a deep background in managing full-stack development teams as well as hands-on Enterprise software application development.

He served in product management functions and has provided technical mentoring and management leadership to large development teams in various organizations across industries in sectors as diverse such as Healthcare, Insurance, Commercial Banking, Pharmaceutical, Retail, e-business, and Not-for-profits.

Vice President, Finance

Megan Yonkaitis

Megan leads the company’s Finance, Accounting and IT teams. Prior to joining Groundspeed, she was most recently VP of Finance at EasyPost, where she helped the company achieve profitability in less than a year and built out the company’s forecasting, reporting and budgeting processes.

Prior to that, she worked in Capital Markets and Finance at several FinTech startups including Affirm and Aura Financial. She started her career in Investment Banking at Citigroup in New York City and San Francisco. She holds a BS in Operations Research and Information Engineering from Cornell University.

Vice President, Engineering

Connor Smith

Connor leads the growth and development efforts of the engineering team. He has over a decade of experience solving complex data and machine learning challenges.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, he was a leader in the Advanced Technology group at Sonos, responsible for the development of cutting-edge voice recognition and sensor fusion technologies throughout the company’s successful IPO. He is passionate about intellectual property strategy, has been granted 20 patents, and served as technical lead during several startup acquisitions. Connor holds an MM:SRT from University of Massachusetts Lowell and a BA in Music from the University of Dayton.

Vice President, Business Operations

Katie Cartwright

At Groundspeed, Katie leads the Business Operations team, focused on cross functional projects and building for scale. She has a decade of experience in technology and growth stage start-ups.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, Katie has spent time at Chegg, Adara, and EasyPost, where she led teams in
business operations, sales and sales operations, customer support, HR, and analytics. She holds a BA from the University of California, Berkeley.

Director, People Operations and Talent

Thressa Nichols

Thressa supports the team by implementing best practices and improving performance to help the company achieve its goals.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, Thressa had a brief stint managing state-wide grants in the non-profit section, where she then transitioned to a career helping tech startups build their teams. Groundspeed Analytics is her fourth startup, where she uses her love of building communities to help the People Operations team foster an inclusive and collaborative environment. She holds a BS in Human Capital and Economics from Michigan State University.

Head of Analytics & BI

YP Wang

YP leads analytics team to help cross-functional teams gain insights from data and incorporate data into Groundspeed’s decision making process.

Prior to joining Groundspeed, he was VP of supply chain analytics at Rent The Runway, where he spent six years and helped RTR achieve unicorn status. Prior to that, YP led sales and web analytics at AOL, where he started his career. He holds a MS and BS degree in Applied Mathematics from Stony Brook University.