Uri Kaufthal
CEO and President
Mr. Kaufthal was Managing Director at both
Mellon Investor Services and Smith Barney, where he ran
the stock plan services businesses. Prior to its merger
with Smith Barney, Mr. Kaufthal was President and CEO of
AST StockPlan, an innovator in stock plan administration,
serving over 600 corporate clients with more than 750,000
participants. Prior to assuming leadership of AST StockPlan,
Mr. Kaufthal spent 14 years with Banker's Trust Company,
where he last served as Partner and Senior Managing Director
and head of its Corporate Trust and Agency Group, a global
business with over 500 employees operating in six locations
in the U.S. and overseas. His earlier experience includes
MasterCard International, Synscort Inc., and the American
Express Company.
Mr. Kaufthal received a BA in economics in 1973 from the
City College of New York and an MBA in 1975 from New York
University's Graduate School of Business Administration
(Stern School of Business).
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Kris Raj
Chief Information Officer
Kris Raj has over 25 years experience as a software professional
and is an expert in both the equity compensation industry,
as well as the technology required to serve it. As Chief
Business Strategist for Mellon Investor Services, he was
instrumental in directing the technological builds required
for the defined business initiatives. Prior to joining Mellon,
Mr. Raj was a consultant with Smith Barney, where he redesigned
the stock plan platform from the initial gap analysis, developed
the business requirements, performed the business analysis,
created the functional and technical design of the system
and managed its implementation. His earlier experience was
as Senior Vice President and Project Manager at Softeon,
where a key project was to design the stock plan administration
system used by AST StockPlan. He also was the Managing Director
at Lexus Information, a Singapore-based technology company.
Mr. Raj has a BS in mechanical engineering from the University
of Madras, India, with a post graduate diploma in Computer
Science.
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Francis Gleason
Senior Vice President for Operations
As Senior Vice President for Operations at AST EPS Mr. Gleason brings with him over 24 years of
banking experience that includes 15 years managing Operations
Units including Corporate Trust, Reorganization and Collections.
He is a Certified Equity Professional (CEP). Mr. Gleason
attended LaSalle University.
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April Stephens
Senior Vice President of Client Management
As Senior Vice President of Client Management at AST EPS Ms. Stephens brings a wide range of stock
plan management responsibilities to the role. At Mellon
Investor Services, she was responsible for product development
and new business support. Prior to that, she managed a team
of Client Services Managers that support the day-to-day
management and consulting with current Stock Option and
Employee Stock Purchase Plan relationships. She also managed
the New Business Implementation team that supports the Stock
Option and Employee Stock Purchase products.
Prior experience includes tenure at Merrill
Lynch in the Group Employee Service division for both Operations
and Information Technology. As a Plan Administrator, Ms.
Stephens was responsible for both the daily support of numerous
high visibility Stock Option clients, as well as the coordination
of the implementation of new Equity Plan business. After
acquiring a comprehensive understanding of the Equity Plan
business, she made the migration to the Technology side,
where she served as the manager of the Equity Plan Business
Analyst team. In support of the Information Technology area,
she was responsible for Business Requirement Management,
Function Testing, User Acceptance Coordinator, and Client
Relationship Management.
In addition to over ten years of experience
in Equity Plan products, Ms. Stephens earned a Bachelor
of Science degree from Salisbury State University, majoring
in Finance.
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Sandeep Saini
Senior Vice President, Information Technology
Mr. Saini is Senior Vice President in AST EPS
Information Technology Department, where he is responsible
for forming and aligning organization’s enterprise
technology strategy with business goals and objectives,
and provides leadership to Application Design and Development
teams, System Operations and Infrastructure Management groups
supporting all aspects of equity plan business and associated
mission critical trading functions.
Before joining AST EPS
Mr. Saini held Chief Architect position in Technology Delivery
Department at Mellon Investor Services. He provided enterprise
wide technology leadership to the organization and led transformation
to a Service-Oriented based Enterprise Architecture Model,
enhancing software quality and reducing Total Cost of Ownership
of enterprise systems supporting Transfer Agency, Equity
Plan and Broker Dealer Lines of Business.
Mr. Saini holds a MBA degree in Finance & Strategic
Management from Rutgers University, New Jersey and has completed
Bachelor of Science degree in Software Engineering.
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