Our Team
Meet the team that's responsible for the magic behind Gradient.
Chris Chang
Co-Founder & CEO
Chris is the Co-Founder and CEO at Gradient, who most recently led Studio AI at Netflix and was an architect of early domain expert LLMs for content production and intelligence. Prior to joining Netflix, Chris held a variety of leadership roles at Pinterest, Opendoor, and Meta. Chris started his career in finance and holds a dual bachelors degree in computer science and business, and a master degree in computer science from UPenn.
Mark Kim-Huang
Co-Founder & Chief Architect
Mark is the Co-founder and Chief Architect at Gradient. Prior to Gradient, Mark led ML teams at Splunk and Box, leading research on streaming ML transitioning over from a nearly decade long career as a quantitative portfolio manager at companies like Stevens Capital, Paloma Partners, and TD Securities. Mark holds a dual bachelors degree in mathematics and finance from UPenn.
Forrest Moret
Co-Founder & CTO
Forrest is the Co-Founder and CTO at Gradient. Forrest was previously an engineering lead at Google building distributed serverless ML systems, and scaling out their technology to support exabyte-scale processing. He was also a founding engineer at Table, pioneering causal inference modeling for e-commerce. Forrest holds a bachelors degree in computer science from MIT.
Tiffany Peng
VP of Engineering & COO
Tiffany oversees all of our engineering and operational efforts here at Gradient. Prior to Gradient, making her way from Lumos where she led consumer product and dev platform. Prior to Gradient, Tiffany spent 6 years leading product and ML engineering at Opendoor - from Series B through IPO. Tiffany holds a bachelors degree in chemical-biological engineering and biology from MIT.
Tim Nersten
Head of Strategic BizDev, FinServ
Tim leads our strategic business development efforts for financial services - joining us with over 20+ years in capital markets, market structure and client management. Prior to Gradient, Tim worked at companies like Templum, OptimX, and Liquidnet. Tim holds a doctorate in business administration from Fox School of Business at Temple University and a masters and bachelors in business from Hofstra University.
Morgan Dunbar
Head of Strategy, FinServ
Morgan joins us with over 25+ years of experience in financial services and is responsible for Gradient's overall strategy in financial services. Before joining Gradient, Morgan held several leadership positions, including serving as the Head of Strategy and Emerging Technologies at WisdomTree, where he focused on growth, and as a founding partner at Bendigo Partners. Morgan holds a bachelors in economics from Colgate University.
Leo Pekelis
Chief Scientist
As Gradient's Chief Scientist, Leo leads our research team. Prior to Gradient, Leo led CloudTruck's ML and data science orgs pioneering applied ML to operational challenges. Prior to CloudTrucks, Leo held leadership roles across Opendoor, Optimizely, and Disney. Leo holds a bachelors degree in economics from Stanford, as well as a masters and PhD in statistics from Stanford.
Eric Johnston
Head of Sales
Eric is our founding GTM hire and Head of Sales at Gradient. Eric joins us from Google Cloud and Looker where he was an early-stage sales hire, key contributor, and leader across enterprise & strategic sales roles, channel partnerships, and international expansion. Eric holds a BA from Santa Clara University.
Nathan Lam
VP of Marketing
Nathan is the VP of Marketing at Gradient, leading Gradient's brand and GTM efforts. Most recently, Nathan led marketing across commerce and fintech at Meta. Prior to Meta, Nathan held a variety of leadership roles at Box, Uber, Amazon, and Microsoft. Nathan holds a bachelors degree in business from the University of Washington and a masters degree in information systems from the University of Washington.
Nghi Nguyen
ML/AI Engineer
Nghi is a ML engineer at Gradient and has spent more than a decade in machine learning across companies like Meta, A9.com (Amazon), and Splunk. Prior to his career in tech, Nghi was a researcher and mathematician at the US Department of Defense. Nghi holds a bachelors, masters, and PhD in mathematics from UC Berkeley.
Jeff Ye
Business Operations Lead
Jeff is a business operations lead at Gradient, joining us after nearly a decade in various analytics, finance, GTM, and product roles at Segment, Google, and OpenDoor. Prior to shifting his focus to tech, Jeff spent several years in private equity and management consulting. Jeff holds a bachelors degree in Economics from Harvard University.
Rashi Singhania
Director of Demand Generation
Rashi leads our growth and demand generation efforts here at Gradient. Rashi joins us from years of experience at Google, Flipkart and early stage startups such as Strivr and BioRender - building out demand gen functions and ABM programs from 0 to 1. Rashi holds an undergraduate degree from St. Xavier's College and an MBA from University of Canterbury.
Ronak Bansal
Sr. Software Engineer
Ronak is a senior engineer at Gradient that brings a wealth of experience, especially within the startup scene. Ronak was a founding engineer at two dynamic startups - Finary (YC W21) & Repool (YC S21), where he built scalable, high-impact products for consumer finance and asset management respectively. Ronak holds a dual bachelors in computer science and electrical engineering from UC Berkeley.
Adrian Miguel
Software Engineer
Adrian is one of our first software engineers at Gradient and was most recently at Fysical (acquired by Gimbal), working on high-performance location data software. Prior to Fysical, Adrian was at BevSpot where he built their core food and beverage management software from scratch. Adrian holds a bachelors degree in computer science from MIT.
Brenda Lee
Product Lead
Brenda is a product lead at Gradient, joining us from nearly a decade at Microsoft working on products to bring cloud services and solutions to large enterprises across Microsoft Azure. Most recently, Brenda spent a few years leading product in the decentralized data storage space, focusing on storage protocol design and node provider software. Brenda holds a bachelors degree in computer science from CMU and a masters in information systems from the University of Washington.
Devon Moore
Operations Associate
Devon is an operations associate here at Gradient, joining us from Deloitte where he specialized in planning and cross-border transactions for multinational clients. Prior to Deloitte, Devon worked in regulatory compliance and managed tax planning projects for NetJets and Greif, a global manufacturer. Devon holds a bachelors in business from the University of Cincinnati and a masters in economics from OSU.
Ishan Kaul
Sr. Software Engineer
Ishan is a senior software engineer at Gradient who spent the last 4 years working at various Bay Area startups focused on AI (e.g. Ironclad, C3 AI, etc.), where he helped build and scale robust products and solutions. Ishan holds a MS in computer science from Vanderbilt University and a bachelors of computer science from Purdue University.
Brian James
AI Product Engineer
Brian is a AI product engineer here at Gradient. Prior to joining Gradient, Brian was UX Engineer at Google, working on Flutter—the open-source application development framework. Before heading into tech, Brian taught design at Parsons School of Design and St. John’s University. Brian holds a M.F.A. in Graphic Design from the Rhode Island School of Design.
Joe Laurendi
Sr. Software Engineer
Joe is a senior software engineer here at Gradient, who has an extensive background in high-growth startups that focus on complex and robust software systems. From working as an engineering leader at OneSignal to starting his own company Bright Cellars, Joe’s skillsets could not be a better fit for Gradient. Joe holds a Bachelors and Masters in Computer Science from MIT.
Stewie Zhu
Global Partnerships Advisor
Stewie is our Global Partnerships Advisor, ensuring deep collaboration with international institutions. As a successful entrepreneur, Stewie has co-founded multiple startups and achieved two notable exits in the FinTech and Blockchain sectors. With over 12 years of experience as an active investor and advisor, Stewie brings a wealth of knowledge and insight to our team. He holds an MS degree from Yale, an MFE from Oxford University, and a PhD in finance from the London School of Economics.
