Leading the future of payments tech.
ConnexPay’s leadership team has years of experience in payments, banking, finance, technology, sales, and travel. Together, they take a collaborative and transparent approach in guiding ConnexPay in its constant quest to be an innovative, easy, and reliable payments solution for our clients and partners.
Robert Kaufman
Founder and 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 and his family enjoy spending weekends at a local NASCAR-affiliated Speedway that he co-owns, or at a hockey and training center that he owns in Stillwater, Minnesota. 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.
Jacob Eisen
EVP, Chief Revenue Officer
Jacob brings more than 15 years of diversified financial services experience to ConnexPay. As a former financial services industry investment banker, he regularly served as an adviser to commercial banks, financial technology, payments, and specialty finance companies. Jacob maintains strong ties to the U.S. commercial banking industry and is director of County Bancorp (Nasdaq: ICBK) and its subsidiary Investors Community Bank.
Prior to ConnexPay, he was director of corporate development and new ventures for a highly successful corporate payments company. Jacob previously served as head of the financial services practice for a boutique global investment bank with more than $3 billion in assets under management, and as head of capital markets for a national broker-dealer serving community and regional banks.
Early in his career, Jacob was an equity partner at a successful payments company, where he served as its director of sales and operations. Jacob holds a B.A. from DePaul University in Chicago and is an Eagle Scout and Lifetime Member of the National Eagle Scout Association.
Julie Heffelfinger
Chief Operating Officer
Julie Heffelfinger has over 20 years of success in operations, management, strategic relationships, inception of and directing programs, and process improvement. Julie’s passion is evident throughout her career which spanned from a lobbyist and business owner to a healthcare administrator before joining the payments industry early 2017.
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.
Kunal Patel
Chief Technology Officer
Kunal has spent his career working to build high performance teams for startups and large organizations with a focus on delivery and execution. His experience in providing IT services and expertise started over 20 years ago while working with up and coming startups in Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center. His propensity for growing small businesses continued later in his career where he provided scalable solutions to large institutions in the higher education and financial services industries.
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.
Judson Preuss
Head of Product
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.
Karen Galles
SVP, Relationship Management
Karen has a unique blend of hands on experience in both the Travel and Payments industries. Her business roles include: Director of Sales and Marketing for IHG Properties, Business Development leadership for a traditional tour operator, Senior Director of Market Management with Expedia and Relationship Manager for WEX Inc. This varied background enables her to understand & manage payments end-to-end for ConnexPay.
Karen excels in relationship management with a genuine curiosity and drive to improve processes each step of the way. Her experience managing remote employees and global teams has led her to excel at bringing a diverse group of people together to achieve success.
After graduating from Niagara University in Niagara Falls, NY, Karen headed to the Sunshine state where she lives with her family including three large dogs. In Karen’s spare time she’s active with animal rescue groups, directs the communication efforts and acts as an elder on the leadership board for her church and tries to relax daily by spending time on her treadmill.
Jamie McNair
SVP, Sales
Jamie has spent over 25 years in the travel industry in various leadership roles. Prior to joining ConnexPay, Jamie was the Regional President for UNIGLOBE Travel Eastern Canada. He also spent over 25 years with Sabre where he was the Vice President and General Manager for Western USA and Canada.
Jamie has an in-depth knowledge of both Canadian and US travel markets, with extensive experience in sales, operations, technology, product development and innovation in B2B and B2C large multinational companies. In his free time, Jamie loves to spend time with his children at his family cottage in northern Ontario as well as his home in Naples, FL.