New Partners, new promotions, new team member and looking for new analysts
At Illuminate we aren’t investors attached to a generations old brand, we started Illuminate from scratch and much like our portfolio companies built our firm from the ground up. Which means much like our portfolio companies when we come out of fundraising period we can really start to focus our attention back on growth and expansion. As such, we are delighted to share some exciting Illuminate news here and highlight that we are hiring …
Promotions
Firstly we are delighted to announce the promotions of Alexander Ross and Rezso Szabo to Partner. Both have been with us from the days before the first fund and have contributed enormously to what we have built at Illuminate.
Alexander joined Illuminate over six years ago from Bain to help set up and launch Illuminate Fund I. Like all of us, Alexander wears many hats at Illuminate. In his case it ranges from fundraising, to driving our investment into digital asset infrastructure provider Curv (which Rezso helped to source, one team one dream!) in addition to dv01, enmacc, CloudMargin & SteelEye. He also manages our recently announced partnership with JPMorgan. Alexander moved out to New York in 2020 to further expand our presence in North America.
Rezso also joined similarly early on in the Illuminate journey. Rezso previously spent time at McKinsey, the Hungarian Central bank and FinTech unicorn Ebury. Rezso has driven a number of our data and data infrastructure focused investments including TickSmith, Net Purpose, Privitar & Genesis Global and sits on the board of FeedStock. Through his friendly, collaborative and positive approach Rezso is a shining beacon of Illuminate culture and been a key driver of our deep relationship with Barclays, Illuminate’s longest standing industry partner.
We are also delighted to announce the promotion of Katherine Wilson to Investment Director and Andrew Patey to Finance Director.
Katherine has been a great member of the deal team from the day she joined, has been instrumental in driving Illuminate’s thesis in a number of areas, not least ESG & Impact, and has been the driver of deals such as YvesBlue, Arteria and d1g1t — gaining recognition both internally and externally where she recently featured in the Innovate Finance FinTech Powerlist 2020 for the third time.
Andrew joined us from Octopus three years ago and has really driven a much more proactive approach to our entire accounting and finance and corporate structuring.
New Hires and Regions
Illuminate is also delighted to welcome Rosie Zehtab as our new Head of Community. Rosie will lead our stakeholder relationship management and platform strategy, reinforcing our commitment to supporting and expanding our deep networks and industry partners. Rosie joins us from the Milken Institute, the financial markets think-tank founded by financier Michael Milken where she co-led the firm’s European business development arm. If Illuminate aren’t already working with you or your organisation then we encourage you to connect with Rosie: rz@illuminatefinancial.com.
We are also excited about our expansion in to the Asian markets driven by Luca Zorzino who has established our office in Singapore, which you can read more about here.
We are currently hiring for an analyst position in each of the New York & London offices and would welcome applications here — https://apply.workable.com/illuminate-financial/
