Leadership

SendFriend Team

We are cheaper, faster, more reliable and secure.

Our expert team

David Lighton
Cofounder/CEO
David Lighton is SendFriend's Co-Founder and CEO. David developed the concept for SendFriend in 2017 while getting his MBA from MIT Sloan's full-time program. David stewarded his early team into MIT's delta V Accelerator and Barclays Accelerator TechStars.

David Lighton is SendFriend's Co-Founder and CEO. David developed the concept for SendFriend in 2017 while getting his MBA from MIT Sloan's full-time program. David stewarded his early team into MIT's delta V Accelerator and Barclays Accelerator TechStars. In the process, he sourced pre-seed funding for the venture from leading sources including the European Union Smart Growth fund, Ripple, MIT Media Lab, Knick Capital, and 8 Decimal Capital. Prior to SendFriend and Sloan, David was an analyst for five years at the World Bank's Haiti desk in Washington, DC, where he served on the Special Envoy's staff overseeing an $800M investment portfolio for earthquake reconstruction. Since 2019, David has been a Yale Global Justice Fellow, appointed to conduct and advise on research related to Cross-Border payments and blockchain. He also sits on the Johns Hopkins University Dean's Advisory Board. Additionally, David is a Co-Founder of Lithium Finance, a blockchain platform designed to value private assets via the wisdom of crowds and algorithms. David holds his MBA from MIT Sloan, MA from John Hopkins School of International Studies (SAIS) with honors, and BA in International Studies from Johns Hopkins University.

Satwik Seshasai
Board Director
Satwik Seshasai is the head of AI Infrastructure Engineering at Compass. Previously he served as CTO at ShopSpring, an e-commerce business. He is the co-founder of Segovia Technology, an international payments platform, which was backed by Greylock Partners and was recently acquired by Crown Agents Bank and Helios Partners. He holds a PhD from MIT.

Sandra Ro
Board Director
Sandra Ro is the current CEO of the Global Blockchain Business Council, and a recognized thought leader in the blockchain space, having built blockchain-based products at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. She holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from the London Business School.

Rafal Petsch
General Manager of Polish Operations
Rafal Petsch is SendFriend's General Manager of its Polish subsidiary. He boasts over 25 years of experience working in the international banking sector. He started his career in 1994 in the Treasury Department of the Warsaw branch of ING bank.

Rafal Petsch is SendFriend's General Manager of its Polish subsidiary. He boasts over 25 years of experience working in the international banking sector. He started his career in 1994 in the Treasury Department of the Warsaw branch of ING bank. Afterwards, he spent 5 years with Bank of America Group, where he co-founded the BOA Warsaw branch, held the positions of Chief Trader, Treasurer and Member of the Management Board. At BoA in London, Rafal was the head of the Exotic Currencies team and later managed PLN currency positions at Citibank N.A. After returning to Poland, he was appointed Director of the Treasury Department at DZ Bank Polska. In 2004, he became Head of the Treasury and Investment Finance Department at the newly established Dexia Kommunalcredit Bank. The remainder of his banking career was spent developing the Pekao S.A. group (Unicredit), the largest corporate bank in Poland. Since 2009, he has held the position of Managing Director of the Financial Institutions and Public Sector Department, Managing Director of the Strategic Clients Department, as well as being a member of the Management Board of Pekao Investment Banking S.A. He was also the head of two strategic projects (Go Poland and Agromania) and was an active member of the bank's credit committee. Since January 2021, he has been a Managing Director at Ipopema Securities. Rafal is also one of the founding members of PLUS Connector - a platform that supports innovative US companies with their expansion into Polish and European Markets. He also holds a Board Member position at Sendfriend Polska Sp.z o.o. He is a graduate of INSEAD, as well as the Warsaw School of Economics.

Michal Czaja
Director of Engineering
Michał has wide experience in IT gained in a broad spectrum of industries. He has been working in every level of the software development process and had the opportunity to try a variety of approaches and architectures designs.

Michał has wide experience in IT gained in a broad spectrum of industries. He has been working in every level of the software development process and had the opportunity to try a variety of approaches and architectural designs in different sized companies, from startups to international corporations. Inter alia, he worked for companies such as British HSBC Holdings, American Sabre Corporation, German Daimler, BSH, or Saudi Arabia ELM information security. Michał has also a deep understanding of use cases in Data Science, Machine Learning, AI, and blockchain technologies where he popularized and applied his knowledge within the companies he worked for. He graduated in science from Jagiellonian University in Poland.

Robert Rudko
Cloud Infrastructure Engineer
Robert Rudko is a cloud and software engineer with experience in multiple financial software projects, from corporate finance platforms to virtual banks.

Robert Rudko is a cloud and software engineer with experience in multiple financial software projects, from corporate finance platforms to virtual banks. He is responsible for building a reliable and secure platform that SendFriend operates on. As a quality-focused holder of 8 AWS certifications, he ensures that the product performs in the best possible manner.

Natalia Sakowicz
Financial Expert
Natalia graduated in European administration from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. She gained her professional experience in the European parliament, insurance company.

Natalia graduated in European administration from Cardinal Stefan Wyszyński University. She gained her professional experience in the European parliament, insurance company, financial institutions, as well as in a law firm. Recently, she joined SendFriend as a financial expert.