Ben Prusky
CEO
With a distinguished track record in technology entrepreneurship, Ben has led Freedom Merchants since its founding in 2004. He is a leading industry advisor on all topics regarding credit card processing, integrated payments, Chip-and-Pin (“EMV”) migration, Near-Field Communication (“NFC”), Internet gateways and related software, mobile payment technologies, PCI compliance matters, and wireless/wireline hardware terminal technology.
Previously Ben was on the executive management team and vice-president of finance & operations at SoftCoin, Inc., a Silicon Valley based precision-marketing software company (now part of You Technologies) that served most of the major consumer-packaged goods companies such as Procter & Gamble, Nestle, Heinz, Kraft, Pepsi and many others. Prior to that Ben co-founded Omnient Corporation, a web technology company with over 100 employees in two cities that developed web-based software for medium sized businesses. Ben has also worked in the Investment Banking division of Bear, Stearns & Co. Inc., the investment firm Providence Capital, and briefly as an engineer at Lockheed Martin. Proficient in Japanese and a number of other languages, Ben also worked at Holon Corporation, a subsidiary of Omron Corporation, in Shiga, Japan.
Ben graduated as a Nelson Scholar from the University of Pennsylvania’s M&T Program where he earned dual-degrees in Computer Systems Engineering from the School of Engineering and in Finance from the Wharton School.
Varun Aggarwal
CTO
Varun graduated from University of Waterloo in Canada with a degree in Computer Engineering. He brings extensive web development experience having worked at some of the most well known companies in the world including Qualcomm, Amazon, and CBS. He also has several years of start-up experience, from coding to design, to managing development teams, he has done it all. Varun oversees all technology-development and R&D for Freedom Merchants including managing the technology team. He previously served as the co-founder of iExperienceIt where he led the five-person team’s Ruby on Rails, MySQL, Git, jQuery, and other application-development projects. When he’s not doing coding (which isn’t that often!), he enjoys playing soccer, tennis, and volleyball in the city.
Joe Rinato
VP of Operations
Joe oversees all aspects of the company’s operations including risk-management, customer onboarding, funding operations, chargeback management, customer retention and everything else relating to running the company operationally. Most recently Joe served for seven years in the commercial banking area at Citibank in New York City. He’s also spent time at M&T Bank, Provident Bank of Maryland and Webco, a Web LLC company. Joe graduated from William Patterson University with a degree in Business Administration, and he’s a proud New Jersey native and an avid Giants and Yankees fan.
Hannah Kline
Sales & Operations
Hannah helps our new applicants understand the benefits of using Freedom Merchants and works with our applicants for the smoothest and fastest onboarding experience possible. Hannah has her undergraduate and graduate degrees from Arcadia University where she also was the captain of the women’s varsity golf team.
Nathan Monger
Operations Manager
Nathan handles all things customer operations. From account setups to gateway configurations to general account support, Nathan’s on it. Nathan holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Texas A&M University and in his free time enjoys a good game of highly competitive sand volleyball.
Brian Tomes
Operations Support
Brian helps our Operations team and does a lot of the important work behind the scenes to make our Merchants go “wow”. Brian graduated from St. Joseph’s University with a degree in Business Administation and in his free time enjoys playing ice hockey.
Mahogany Rawles
Operations Support
With a broad background in operations at companies such as Blackbaud, Schreiber Translations, and United Rentals, Mahogany also helps in our operations and our PCI compliance areas of excellence, ensuring that each merchant is fully within scope of the latest PCI requirements. Mahogany attended Central Piedmont College in Charlotte, NC.
Peter Gural
Sales Operations
Peter helps make sure each and every business who expresses interest in Freedom Merchants is taken care of and communicated with quickly and efficiently. Peter recently graduated from Berklee College of Music in Boston and when he’s not helping the onboarding process of our customers, he can usually be found playing his guitar at cool bars in the Philadelphia area.
Samuel Wigmore
Samuel is responsible for reviewing and analyzing current strategy, auditing current business operations, and providing recommendations on how Freedom Merchants can effectively scale its client acquisition through growing their sales, marketing and client services teams. Previously, Samuel spent the last 7 years as a management consultant in the entertainment and tech industries, most recently with Pryor Hill Productions, and started his career at a boutique private wealth advisory in New York City. He graduated from Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia with a Bachelor of Management.
Bobbi Pugh
Accounting
Bobbi joins Freedom Merchants after having managed her own bookkeeping firm for the past couple of years. Previously she worked as the in-house bookkeeper at Ck2 Financials. Bobbi graduated Summa Cum Laude from Community College of Philadelphia with a degree in Accounting.
Ilana Kalish
Operations Support
Ilana handles much of the customer on-boarding process where she makes sure that each new merchant is properly setup with full database access. Ilana helps in our PCI compliance center, ensuring that each merchant is fully within scope of the latest PCI requirements. Ilana graduated from the University of Maryland and is an avid music enthusiast and accomplished contributing writer for Atwood Music Magazine.