Who are we? Good question. We’re nice. Friendly. We like to laugh. We put our pants on one leg at a time. And we’re pretty darn smart when it comes to money and loans and mortgages and things like that. We think you’d like us if you got to know us.
Asheesh Advani
President and CEO
Asheesh is an egghead among cool kids and a cool kid among eggheads – and that’s how he likes it. He founded Virgin Money USA and helped develop the vision of building a company that is unlike any other in the crowded but staid financial services industry. Asheesh pioneered the business of managing person-to-person loans between relatives and friends as the CEO and Founder of CircleLending, which launched in 2001 and jazzed up the industry. The company grew at rates exceeding 25% per quarter and established the new product category before attracting the interest of Richard Branson’s Virgin Group.
Asheesh is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and commentator on financial innovation in the media. He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Time magazine, and highlighted in broadcast segments on PBS and NPR. Asheesh was named one of the Boston’s Top 40 Entrepreneurs Under 40 and authored Investors in Your Backyard (Nolo Press), the first book on the topic of raising money from relatives and friends, which Business Week called “as indispensable as a calculator” for small business owners seeking financing.
Asheesh began his career as a management consultant at the Monitor Group, a strategy consulting firm, and subsequently worked at the World Bank in Washington, DC. He is a graduate of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and from Oxford University, where he received a Commonwealth Scholarship.
Jeff Olden
Chief Financial Officer
Jeff puts the M in money at Virgin Money, when he’s not engaged in pitched Pokemon and Decepticon battles with the two raucous little boys that live with him. He brings over 18 years of experience in the financial services sector to this role, most recently as Vice President of Finance at Goal Financial LLC. Jeff has a thing for leading agile and strong finance teams in fast growing companies; he’s done it before and is doing it again. His background includes education lending, community banking, credit unions, and commercial banking. Jeff is a native of the Great Northwest, where he earned a B.A. in Economics from Seattle University and a B.S. in Accounting from Central Washington University.
Sarah Dekin
Chief Marketing Officer
When Sarah’s not snuggling with her kids or white water rafting, she’s creating innovative marketing strategies for our innovative products. Sarah is also our in-house steward of brand development at Virgin Money. She has over 14 years dedicated to outstanding consumer experiences, most recently as the CMO of Zipcar.
Sarah also spent 9 years at the House of Blues in Los Angeles, where she was most recently EVP Strategic Marketing & Development. During her tenure with House of Blues, Sarah oversaw the company's strategic growth initiatives, led the marketing team throughout the company's tremendous growth. Under her leadership, House of Blues led the industry in leveraging the online medium to cultivate customer relationships, rebalance marketing spend and build a new, exciting lifestyle brand.
Sarah has also held roles at California Pizza Kitchen and the Boston-based business strategy consulting firm Bain & Company, where she served as a market strategy consultant. Sarah has a BS from Trinity College and is a graduate of the Harvard Business School.
Dan Narahara
Chief Technology Officer
Our self-proclaimed “Head Geek”, Dan oversees all things technical at Virgin Money and is the rare technology leader who can’t bring himself to outsource anything. Not even building his family’s backyard deck. Dan has been the leader of the technology group at CircleLending for three years. He helped develop and enhance the company's unique loan processing software that is engineered to manage flexible loans between relatives and friends (Dan wanted to prove that you don't need to work for a bank to design great financial software). Dan has over 20 years experience managing teams in software development and new media consulting for a broad range of industries from healthcare to financial services. He began his career at KPMG where he helped develop K-World and is a graduate of Hamilton College.
Tomas Yurkstas
Executive Vice President & General Manager
Tomas is a banker who likes to take risks. He once hopped the fence around Foxboro stadium to see the New England Patriots play. He likes to suggest financial products that others in the industry think will never work, which is fine with us, especially when our clients discover that they work brilliantly. Tomas has over 15 years experience in both growth-oriented and stable financial services environments. He led product management at CircleLending including the process of relaunching the website as Virgin Money. Previously, he led the revitalization of the online business at Citizens Financial Group as Senior Vice President of Online Services. Tomas’ experience also includes Fleet Financial Group where he was responsible for online services, and OneCore Financial Network, the first internet bank for small business, where he was responsible for marketing and business development. Tomas is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts with an MBA and BSEE.
Greg O'Connor
Executive Vice President & General Manager
If you listen to him tell one of his stories, bring a bag of popcorn, maybe even a pillow. Storytelling prowess aside, Greg is all about strategic vision and direction. But he's also deeply involved in our day-to-day operations. So he's pretty busy on the macro and micro levels. He has spent more than 15 years as an entrepreneur building businesses from the ground up. In 1999 he realized there was an opportunity to do things vastly better in the mortgage industry, that's when he created Lendia, which became Virgin Money in 2008.