| 1079 B Ashbury St. | apc@gordianlabs.com |
| San Francisco, CA 94117 | http://rlyeh.mimezine.com/~arkasha |
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cell: 415.370.4451 |
| Andrew Carra is a creative technologist and leader who has designed, implemented, and managed projects ranging from educational research software to enterprise collaboration systems, from original user interfaces to wireless security diagnostic tools. |
| EXPERIENCE |
CO-FOUNDER and CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER at Social Finance, Inc San Francisco, California, June 2011 - Present Co-founded a financial services company that is changing the face of lending and banking. Designing several new products, establishing technology choices that will integrate multiple financial and social technologies, and building a technology team. |
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PRINCIPAL at Gordian Labs, LLC San Francisco, California, November 2006 - Present Co-founded a technology consulting firm, focused on providing innovative solutions for the financial services industry. Working in various capacities providing logistics, technology, and management expertise to clients who want insight into modern technology for communication, security, and auditing. |
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CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER at LearnVest San Francisco, California, and New York, NY, November 2007 - November 2008 Established the original technology choices for an early-stage financial education start-up. Made platform and architecture decisions that have guided LearnVest through development and venture funding. Created and managed an engineering plan for the first version of the system. Hrishi Dixit, a partner in Gordian Labs has assumed the role of CTO at LearnVest on-site in New York. |
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INDEPENDENT CONSULTANT San Francisco, California, February 2006 - October 2006 Worked on exciting new projects involving multiple technologies and areas of interest while building an elite consulting firm. Collaborated on projects in finance and communication. |
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ENGINEERING MANAGER, TRADING/PORTFOLIO MANAGEMENT TEAMS at Finaplex (now Broadridge) San Francisco, California, October 2004 - January 2006 Oversaw the design and implementation of two critical product components, the trading and portfolio management modules of the Finaplex Wealth Management system. Managed a team across three different timezones (spanning two-thirds of the globe), integrated with multiple vendors and technologies. Was instrumental in the design and implementation of the equity, option, mutual fund, fixed income, block, basket, and managed product elements of the Finaplex data model. Helped to balance process and quality control with the fast-paced, innovative climate of a financial software start-up. |
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PROJECT MANAGER, DEVELOPMENT at
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Chicago, Illinois, February 2004 - August 2004 Led the team that created the next-generation electronic options trading platform for the Exchange. Facilitated communication between a development team, other Exchange departments, and customers. Developed the systems, standards, and processes that have defined electronic trading globally. |
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SENIOR ANALYST at
The Chicago Mercantile Exchange Chicago, Illinois, October 2002 - January 2004 As a Senior Engineer, redesigned the web-based systems for order monitoring and control at the first publicly-traded exchange in the United States. Worked with a broad range of Java technologies for web-based applications, database access, and user interface design. Built a team critical to future of computing at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Evaluated, selected, and championed new technologies. |
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SENIOR SOFTWARE ENGINEER at
divine Inc. Collaboration Lab (Since re-incorporated as Parlano) Chicago, Illinois, March 2001 - September 2002 Worked in an elite object-oriented programming environment with a highly skilled team of Java and Delphi architects developing the next version of the network collaboration tool MindAlign. Focused on Extreme Programming and Design Patterns while evolving a tool that every team member used on a daily basis. Gained experience with advanced Java/JMS and XML concepts and acquired skills in Delphi for native Windows applications. |
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INTEGRATION CONSULTANT at
Parlano Inc. Chicago, Illinois, September 2000 - March 2001 Performed integration tasks in various languages and environments against the 3.0 and 4.0 releases of the MindAlign collaboration tool. Participated in requirements-gathering and development phases of systems in-progress, customer relations, on site support and engineering for integration work. Acted as sole integrator in several sales-critical tasks. In addition to polishing skills in rapid development and work estimation, this job facilitated learning the implementation details of both client and server architectures in the MindAlign system. | ||
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PROGRAMMER / RESEARCH ASSISTANT at U of M's hi-ce (center for highly interactive computing in education) Ann Arbor, Michigan, September 1997 - August 2000 Programmed and designed educational software including a highly interactive data retrieval client for science education and exploration in the Java 1.1 programming language and a Palm-based concept-mapping system. Working with a talented and dynamic programming team, gained experience in Learner-Centered Design and focused on the academic side of computer science. |
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PROGRAMMER at Net-Link Systems, LLC (Now CoreComm) Kalamazoo, Michigan, January 1997 - August 1997 Programmed applications for the Internet and company intranet. Learned Perl, Java, and some Visual Basic as well as programming in C language. Undertook diverse projects involving Internet communication, SQL Databases and user interface design. |
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CONSULTANT at Canon Research America Palo Alto, California, Fall, 1996 Assisted in the production and debugging of the PICS document imaging system. Debugged hardware for prototype release, learned details of Windows NT 4.0 in preparation and field support of PICS prototypes. Became familiar with Microsoft Developer's Studio and Microsoft Visual C++. |
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TECHNICAL SUPPORT STAFF at Net-Link Systems, LLC (Now CoreComm) Kalamazoo, Michigan, Summer 1996 Technical support, system maintenance, and system setup at a start-up Internet service provider in my home town. Learned new aspects of network administration and maintenance, client configuration of current PC operating systems, and UNIX TCP applications. |
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ASSISTANT NETWORK MANAGER at Canon Research of America Palo Alto, California, Spring 1995 Assisted in the development of an office image and optical character recognition server. Co-ordinated new equipment and assisted prototype construction and testing under Windows NT. |
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LAB CONSULTANT at Kalamazoo College Summer and Fall, 1994, Spring 1996 Answered questions and helped with projects in Kalamazoo College Computer Labs. Learned finer points of many software packages, printer networks and UNIX operating system. Explained computers to laypeople. |
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SYSTEM CONSTRUCTION at M-TEC engineering Kalamazoo Michigan, Spring 1992 to Winter 1994 Designed, built, and sold MS-DOS compatible computer systems in small computer business. |
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| OTHER EXPERIENCE |
ASSISTANT LIBRARIAN at the ECOLE DES ARTS DECORATIVES Strasbourg, France, Fall and Spring, 1996 Assisted in the libraries change of organization and setup of new computer-based filing system. Learned about French culture and art in a non- technological environment. |
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| HONORS AND ACHIEVEMENTS |
ADVISOR, MAYORAL CIO COMMITTEE (Chicago, IL) March - July, 2004 Served as an expert helping define the city's policy regarding public networking infrastructure. |
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CO-FOUNDER, DEVELOPER, PUBLIC RELATIONS WIGLE.net Created a highly successful wireless network security and mapping community. WiGLE is the largest publicly accessible catalog of wireless network observations. WiGLE provides data for both commercial and non-commercial applications, serves as a model of data separation based on the wishes of our users, hosts interactive maps on technology developed entirely in-house, and provides native applications for advanced visualization and exploration. |
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CO-FOUNDER, CHIEF SCIENCE OFFICER raqz.net Co-founded a colocation company providing high-performance, low-price colocation for smart customers. This business serves simultaneously as a service provider for existing applications, a backup site for large update-critical services, and an incubator for experimental internet services such as WiGLE.net. |
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CME EXCELLENCE AWARD RECIPIENT Received special commendation for work beyond job responsibilities, July 2003. |
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| EDUCATION | UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN Ann Arbor, Michigan | |
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Master of Science Computer Science Engineering, May 2000 Concentrations: Human-Computer Interaction and Educational Technology |
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KALAMAZOO COLLEGE,
Kalamazoo, Michigan |
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Bachelor of Arts, June 1997 Major: Computer Science Concentration: Philosophy |
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National Merit Scholar 1993-1997 Heyl Scholar 1993-1994 (Kalamazoo College) Heyl Scholar 1996-1997 (Kalamazoo College) Honors on Senior Individualized Project (Kalamazoo College) |
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| OTHER ACTIVITIES |
Former President, Secretary:
University of Michigan ACM student chapter Eagle Scout Boy Scouts of America |
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| PUBLICATIONS | Include the Proceedings of ACM SIGCHI, HCI textbooks, and Pen Computing Magazine. | |