Company ... Segovia
About Segovia ... and the team

About Segovia ... and the team ... Pathways for better information

Burgess COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

MISSION Tools to Fight Poverty

Before aqueducts, moving water was a slow, costly, and leaky process. Aqueducts made it faster, cheaper, and more secure. The Aqueduct of Segovia -- one of the oldest and largest -- epitomized these benefits and was a symbol of effective governance.

At Segovia we are building aqueducts for today's social programs. We aim to dramatically improve the distribution of essential resources to those who have the least. Extreme poverty is one of the biggest problems of our time, but solving it is within reach.

PRODUCT Enroll • Pay • Deliver

On the front lines in the fight against extreme poverty, NGOs and governments operate without the benefit of modern enterprise technology. Segovia integrates data and decision-making in a secure, scalable, closed-loop system to make teams faster, safer, more accurate, and ultimately better able to deliver to those in greatest need.

ENROLL Field data collection Beneficiary case management Intelligent automation Sophisticated role provisioning and decision management Anti-fraud algorithms Team management and process optimization Smart mobile and offline

PAY

Bulk payment scheduling and management Seamless integration across multiple vendors Secure interface (no emailing or uploading pay orders) Streamlined reconciliation and problem-case management Support for a wide range of applications

Segovia Is Hiring

We are a venture-backed company located in NY and SF. Our team is committed to building technology that improves the lives of the extreme poor, and we're hiring exceptional people who share this vision.

Our Team

Michael Faye, CEO MICHAEL FAYE, CEO Michael is a co-founder and the Executive Chairman of GiveDirectly, which was recently recognized as one of the 10 most innovative companies in Finance (FastCompany). He has worked extensively in enterprise technology as an Associate Partner at McKinsey and Company, with international governments at the United Nations Millennium Project, and operating large-scale field projects while earning his PhD in Business Economics from Harvard. Michael also holds a BA from Harvard in Mathematics and Classics (although he didn’t know Segovia is an aqueduct) and was recognized as a top 100 Global Thinker by Foreign Policy.

Paul Niehaus, Co-Founder PAUL NIEHAUS, CO-FOUNDER Paul has a track record of leadership in the practice and study of anti-corruption in developing countries. He is a co-founder and the President of GiveDirectly and is Assistant Professor of Economics at UC San Diego. He is also Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research, an Affiliate of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) and Center for Effective Global Action (CEGA), and a Junior Affiliate of the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. In 2013 Foreign Policy named him one of its top 100 Global Thinkers.

Satwik Seshasai, VP of Engineering SATWIK SESHASAI, VP OF ENGINEERING Satwik has built and deployed technology systems in global enterprise and entrepreneurial environments. As Program Director of Engineering at IBM, he helped build the SmartCloud platform deployed across 17 countries and 18 million users, including multiple international social programs. He was Chief Technology Officer of NextDocs, and a senior advisor to Oscar and K2 Intelligence. He earned a PhD in Engineering systems with research focused on technology deployment in Nairobi, Abu Dhabi and the US. Satwik also holds a MS in Technology and Policy, and BS/MEng in Computer Science from MIT.

Steve Grimm, Engineer STEVE GRIMM, ENGINEER Steve has diverse experience developing scalable online systems, from multiplayer games to social networks. He was an early employee at Facebook where he served for over six years as technical lead on projects in server infrastructure, internationalization, and test automation. Prior to Facebook, after working as a software engineer at Sun Microsystems for several years, he consulted for a series of venture-backed startups, helping them build their technical teams and implement their software systems. He has a bachelor's degree in Computer and Information Sciences from the University of California at Santa Cruz.

Charles Guo, Engineer CHARLES GUO, ENGINEER Charles recently graduated from Princeton University with a degree in physics, where he did research on astrophysical accretion disks and Bitcoin. He previously worked at Addepar and the Boston Consulting Group.

Sajid Mehmood, Engineer SAJID MEHMOOD, ENGINEER Sajid Mehmood is an engineer with broad experience in product development, distributed systems, and security. Most recently, he was a Technical Lead at Foursquare, where he led development of several products, including the developer platform, social features, and user growth initiatives. Sajid has also worked at Google building its next-generation global networking infrastructure and at Microsoft on distributed storage. He holds a BSE in Computer Science from Princeton University, where he did research at the Center for IT Policy on privacy-preserving location-aware services.

Sid Nair, Engineer SID NAIR, ENGINEER Sid was previously at Foursquare, where he worked on everything from the website to the Android app to the recommendations API. Before that, he studied Computer Science at Columbia and did research in the Systems Lab. In his free time, he enjoys playing and watching soccer and fostering cats.

Jon Warman, Engineer JON WARMAN, ENGINEER Jon was an early engineer at Facebook, where he worked on Pages, Profiles, Events, Notifications, and Ads as the product grew from 5 million to 500 million users and the team grew from 50 to 1,500 people. Jon has co-founded multiple companies, including an enterprise SaaS business, and is an advisor to Footnote, a media site which translates academic research for mainstream use. Prior to joining Facebook, he worked at Amazon. Jon holds a BS in Computer Science and BA in Comparative Literature from Brown University.

Michael Goldfarb, Director of Operations MICHAEL GOLDFARB, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS Michael was a member of the investment team at Centerbridge Partners, where he focused on private equity and distressed investments. He evaluated new opportunities and oversaw portfolio company operations across a range of geographies, including North America, Latin America, Europe, and the Middle East, and industries, including payment processing, telecommunications and logistics. Before joining Centerbridge, Michael worked at Blackstone Advisory Partners and in finance and education in Shanghai and Chongqing. He holds a BA from Harvard in Economics.

Melissa Harpool, Admin MELISSA HARPOOL, ADMIN Melissa was an Executive Assistant to top-level management at McKinsey and Company, where she focused on communications and external relations. She has experience managing account relations for companies ranging from small private businesses to global industry leaders and holds a Bachelor’s degree in Organizational Communication from the University of Central Florida.

Kieran O'Toole, Partnership Manager - Europe KIERAN O'TOOLE, PARTNERSHIP MANAGER - EUROPE Kieran has developed client and partner relationships on behalf of multi-national tech sector organizations delivering hardware systems (servers, network storage and mobile devices), professional services (e-Commerce services and solutions), and software solutions (operational support systems). Most recently as Head of International NGO Sector for PSI Mobile, Kieran implemented mobile solutions for NGOs across Africa, Central America and Middle East. Kieran has a computer engineering degree from the Radio Electronics Institute in Cork, Ireland. Our Board and Advisors

Chris Schroeder CHRIS SCHROEDER Christopher M. Schroeder, joining Segovia's Board, is a Washington D.C. and New York City based entrepreneur and venture investor. He co-founded HealthCentral.com, has been CEO of washingtonpost.newsweek interactive and LegiSlate.com, and is an active investor in and advisor to top US venture capital funds and over a dozen startups. He also served in President George HW Bush's White House and Department of State. Schroeder has written extensively about startups and technology in emerging growth markets for The Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, AllThingsD, TechCrunch, Pando Daily, Harvard Business Review, and Business Insider. He sits on the board of advisors of The American University of Cairo School of Business, the Jordanian incubator Oasis500, the Middle East online entrepreneur information platform and network wamda.com and on the Board of Directors of the American Council on Germany, The Dean's Board of the American University School of International Service, and member of the French American Foundation and Council on Foreign Relations. Schroeder graduated with honors from Harvard Business School, and magna cum laude from Harvard College. Schroeder is married to Alexandra Coburn and has three children.

Ron Brachman RON BRACHMAN Ron Brachman is Head of Yahoo Labs and Chief Scientist of Yahoo. He has overall responsibility for leading all of Yahoo's science activities worldwide, including research and applied science, research engineering, and Academic Relations. Ron joined Yahoo in 2005. He was one of the original leaders who helped to define and build Yahoo Research. Ron founded the research lab in New York City and established the basic operational procedures for the entire Research and Labs organizations, acting as its main liaison to key corporate support functions. Prior to joining Yahoo, Ron was the Director of the Information Processing Technology Office at DARPA; before that he held various research leadership and management positions at AT&T, both at Bell Laboratories and AT&T Labs. Ron holds a B.S.E.E. degree from Princeton University (summa cum laude) as well as the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in Applied Mathematics from Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, a Fellow of IEEE, and a Founding Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI). He won IJCAI's Donald E. Walker Distinguished Service Award and AAAI's Distinguished Service Award. He served as President of AAAI from 2003 to 2005. He also edits the Synthesis Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning series of online publications for Morgan & Claypool.

Maura O'Neill MAURA O'NEILL Maura has been thrilled to grow businesses, teach, and mentor others wanting to make a big difference. In 2009 she was appointed by President Obama to be the first Chief Innovation Officer of the US Agency for International Development. Serving until 2013, she was responsible for inspiring and leading breakthrough innovations in foreign assistance and development worldwide. Maura is best known for adapting venture capital and drug discovery methods to global development by co-creating the Development Innovation Venture Fund that has expanded into the Global Innovation Fund. She also served as a member of the White House Innovation Cohort and a Chief of Staff in the U.S. Senate and founded companies in the fields of electricity efficiency, smart grid and customer info systems & billing, e-commerce, and digital education. In 1989, she was named the Greater Seattle Business Person of the Year. Currently Maura is teaching at Berkeley, Stanford, and Columbia and advising start-ups, global companies, foundations and global government agencies. Maura has MBAs from Columbia and Berkeley and a PhD from University of Washington. She helped found a public charter school, Baltimore Leadership School for Young Women (grades 6-12) and continues to serve as Vice Chair. Maura is married and has two grown kids, a digital journalist who cooks the most amazing vegetables and a basketball-playing particle physicist.

Our Primary Investors

Reid Hoffman REID HOFFMAN

Omidyar Network OMIDYAR NETWORK

Global Innovation Fund GLOBAL INNOVATION FUND

Pershing Square Foundation PERSHING SQUARE FOUNDATION

Arif Naqvi ARIF NAQVI

Lampert Family Foundation LAMPERT FAMILY FOUNDATION