Our Executive Team

Robert Kaufman

Founder & CEO

Prior to founding ConnexPay, Bob was the General Manager of the Virtual Pay division of U.S. Bank overseeing product, marketing, and supplier enablement for all virtual payment solutions, as well as a virtual pay focused sales team.

In total, Bob spent 18 years at U.S. Bank, as well as five years as CFO of a technology company in Minnesota. His tenure at U.S. Bank included the position of CFO for the Payment Services division as well as Senior Vice President, leading innovation projects that spanned across the bank’s Payments division.

In his free time, Bob’s favorite activity is watching sunets on the beach in Florida. Bob is a CPA and CMA, received his bachelor’s in accounting from the University of Minnesota and master’s degree in finance and strategic management from the University of Chicago GSB.

Kunal Patel

Chief Technology Officer

Kunal has spent the last decade on both sides of the financial services coin. He has worked to build and manage acquiring platforms focused on merchant on-boarding and underwriting for a leading electronic payments company. Kunal’s most recent projects include the ground up design and implementation of an award winning issuing platform for corporate payments, leveraging cutting edge big data processing, orchestration and automation services.

Kunal and his wife spend their free time in Woodstock, GA chasing golf balls, tennis balls, soccer balls and their two young boys around the backyard. They are big fans of the championship winning Atlanta United FC.

Beth Blaisdell

Chief Operating Officer

Beth received her bachelor’s degree from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, with a double major in finance and accounting. Beth lives in Atlanta and enjoys spending time on the lake, golfing and loves to travel.

Tammy Clemons

Chief Revenue Officer

Tammy brings more than 22 years of payments industry experience to ConnexPay. Her career, both in banking and financial technologies, has included roles where she has built successful commercial payments sales teams in multiple emerging markets with focus on virtual card payables. In her start, Tammy was instrumental to gaining early virtual card adopters in her time at Commerce Bank and went on to lead sales at AOC Solutions (now WEX), a top fintech in the commercial payments space, while also being the GM over the building of their issuing processor and their direct-to-market launch. In 2017, Tammy joined U.S. Bank where she was the Head of Large Market and Specialized Industry Verticals, Partnership Sales and Supplier Enablement. During her time at U.S. Bank, she notably brought alignment to the sales team, met goal in her first full year ($1.65B), grew revenue over 65%, expanded the team and territory to include the US as well as global expansion into the EU, and built a network of new partnerships to spur more opportunities.

Tammy received her Bachelor’s degree from Baker University, Baldwin City, KS, and her MBA from Webster University. When Tammy isn’t traveling for work or leisure, she resides in San Clemente, CA where she enjoys spending time with family, friends and their puppy, Charlie.

Julie Heffelfinger

Head of Finance

Julie has already proven herself to be an asset in the payments industry working for a highly successful corporate payments company as SVP of Strategic Operations, and ACI Worldwide as Director of Operations. With her years of progressive leadership, Julie provides the experience and knowledge to continually inspire ConnexPay teams.

When Julie isn’t working, she loves spending time outdoors exploring nature and spending time with wildlife above and below the water through hiking, kayaking and scuba diving. Julie earned a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Ohio Dominican University. She also holds two master’s degrees, an MBA with a healthcare concentration from Southern New Hampshire University, and a master’s degree in positive organization development and change from Case Western Reserve University.

Judson Preuss

Head of Payment Operations

Prior to joining the ConnexPay team, Judson was the Director of Product Management at Priority Technology Holdings where he led a lean-and-mean but high-output product team and oversaw the development and management of various proprietary payment software products.

Judson started in the Payments industry in 2009 in a Sales role. Since then has worked in various roles in Finance, ISO and Agent Sales Training, Interchange Optimization, Operations Management, Project Management and Product Management. At Priority, he oversaw the build out, launch and management of CRMs to optimize and automate new merchant on-boarding, managed credit and transaction risk, and calculated and managed commissions. Judson also oversaw Virtual Terminal solutions, Mobile Payment Apps, an Authorization Platform and other Agent and Merchant payment software. He is a firm believer that leveraging modern technology to build highly functional, automated and extremely desirable electronic payment software solutions is the key to taking Fintech companies to the next level.

In his free time Judson enjoys being with his wife and daughter – especially going to the lake, hiking, camping and visiting Montana where he wants to live one day. Judson is an Eagle Scout and he received his bachelor’s in finance from the University of West Georgia.

Anant Patel

Head of International

Anant joins ConnexPay from the UK as President, International Markets and has more than 20 years of payment experience. He is a visionary overachiever and a new market creator. Through his core belief and mantra, “Behaviors drive culture, and culture drives results,” Anant is focused on building inclusive and diverse teams that consistently exceed expectations. His payments technology background has seen him lead both FinTech and Corporate Payments businesses in Europe and internationally including being Vice President at Mastercard, Managing Director of EMEA for eNett, as well as serving as the EMEA Managing Director for First Performance Global where he was tasked with leading the revolution on processing and refining customer experience. Most recently Anant was Vice President, EMEA & APAC for Corporate Payments at WEX Inc.

Anant and his wife live in Leicestershire, UK and have two grown kids. Anant spends his free time trying to follow Leicester City Football Club around the UK and Europe and striving to play more golf. Anant holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Studies at The Nottingham Trent University and a Master of Business Administrations from The University of Warwick, UK.