Team

​David Weild IV

Founder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer

David is Founder, Chairman and CEO of IssuWorks and heads Capital Markets Thought Leadership at Grant Thornton.   The studies that he and Ed Kim co-authored documented the long-term decline in equity capital formation in the United States and provided the core arguments that gave rise to the JOBS Act and many of the specific provisions contained in the JOBS Act.   For these reasons, he has been called “The father of the JOBS Act.”  David has also called for a “JOBS Act 2” or “JOBS Act Part 2”  -  language increasingly heard on Capitol Hill.  Weild and Kim’s written work was cited by a broad range of legislators, regulators, academics, the IPO Task Force and the White House Jobs Council leading up to the JOBS Act.  David has testified in Congress (most recently in June 2013) and at the SEC (most recently at the Roundtable on Decimalization) on these and other market issues and attended the signing of the JOBS Act by President Obama in the Rose Garden on April 5, 2012. 

 

David was also recently asked to author a study for the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) which was entitled, “Making Stock Markets Work to Support Economic Growth” and presented in April 2013 in draft form to the 35 member nations of the OECD, IOSCO and the European Commission.  The U.S. Treasury and SEC were in attendance.   He later presented the final version at a meeting in June that included the CEO of the World Federation of Exchanges where it was generally agreed, as Weild and Kim have maintained,  that structural changes to stock markets have caused  the global decline in capital formation for small companies.

 

David is a former Vice Chairman and executive committee member of The NASDAQ Stock Market and spent years running Wall Street investment banking and equity capital markets businesses.   

 

David holds an MBA from the Stern School of Business and a BA from Wesleyan University. He studied on exchange at The Sorbonne, Ecole des Haute Etudes Commerciales and The Stockholm School of Economics.   He is also Chairman of the Board of Tuesday’s Children, the 9/11 charity.

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Gregory L. Wright

Vice Chairman, IssuWorks &  President, Weild & Co.

Mr. Wright has over 25 years of investment banking experience.  Mr. Wright began his career in the Investment Banking division of Merrill Lynch. He worked there for over two decades, including as Managing Director and Head of Corporate Finance for the firm's Global Financial Sponsors Group.  His last posting at the firm was as Managing Director and Head of Corporate Finance for Merrill Lynch in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.   He subsequently served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ThinkEquity LLC.  Mr. Wright graduated cum laude from Princeton University and holds FINRA Series 7, Series 24 and Series 63 licenses.

 

 

Edward H. Kim

Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer

Edward has over 20 years of capital markets, finance, product development, and operations experience in both established and entrepreneurial environments. Prior to helping form IssuWorks, he was Managing Director of Financial Communications at Stern And Company, a strategic communications and public relations firm.

 

Previously, Edward was Senior Vice President at The NASDAQ Stock Market with responsibility for developing new products and services for NASDAQ’s Corporate Client Group. Prior to NASDAQ, he was Chief Administrative Officer of a publicly held software company. Edward has worked in investment banking, equity and equity-linked trading, salestrading, research and equity capital markets at firms including Lehman Brothers, Prudential Securities, and Robertson Stephens, in the financial centers of New York, San Francisco, London and Tokyo.  Edward has a BS in Materials Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and holds FINRA Series 7, Series 24, Series 63, Series 79 and Series 99 licenses.

 

 

Richard A. Ross

Chief Technology Officer

Richard A. Ross is the founder of several software startups; his most recent venture is High Speed Analytics, a developer of nanosecond-speed technologies for financial services. He also founded Telemedia Devices, the inventor of "FreezeDry" space-optimizing Java system (acquired by HP), and Notable Technologies, a Kleiner, Perkins-backed developer of software for pen-based computing. He started his career as the second engineer on Lotus 1-2-3, for which he developed several core technologies. 

 

Recently, Rick has been consulting to diverse organization, including Bridgewater Associates, where he worked in Research Technology, developing systems to support macroeconomic research; Six Telekurs, on behalf of Gartner, where he performed "technical deep dive" on STK's new market data system in advance of management sign-off; and Experian/Cheetahmail, where he worked on next generation messaging/email system, and performed technical due diligence on potential acquisitions. Rick was also involved with "Committee to Establish the National Institute of Finance," which became Office of Financial Research under Dodd-Frank, and has publicly commented on SEC proposals at the SEC's request.

 

Rick has degrees in Computer Science from MIT in Cambridge, MA, and participated in MIT's Technology and Policy Program; as well, he received a Certificat de Cuisine from Cordon Bleu in Paris.

 

 

Brian VanKonynenburg

VP Product Development

Brian VanKonynenburg is a "startup animal" with over 25 years experience leveraging technology to solve problems and leading productivity via clarity, communication and calm.  
 
Brian's most recent success was as VP Product of Helium Inc. (www.helium.com) for the four years that Helium grew from concept to over ten million unique monthly visitors, attracting the world's largest writing community, doubling revenue year to year from SEO-based advertising, and building out a variety of revenue streams including Helium Content Source in 2009 that attracted thousands of publishers and was ultimately the driving reason behind Helium’s sale to RR Donnelly.
 
Brian's career has spanned development and strategic roles in large companies and startups alike, including VP Product at OurStage Inc. (www.ourstage.com), Monster.com's Strategic Systems team, and

Digital Equipment Corporation, Ziff Davis, AT&T New Media Services, BaseSix and UNIFI Communications. He is a Certified Scrum Product Owner and Certified Scrum Master from the Scrum Alliance.
 
On the creative side, Brian's past explorations include music (singing, songwriting, recording, professional and street performance), painting, screenwriting, filmmaking, voiceover and film acting (lead roles in indie films shown at Sundance and Woods Hole Film festivals, major productions such as Manchurian Candidate, Mystic River, Law & Order and Sex and the City).