Leadership

Keri Gohman

Chief Executive Officer

For more than two decades, Keri has spent her entire career reinventing financial services and helping established market-leading firms and disruptive new entrants solve global challenges. Keri’s expertise centers on the intersection of SaaS, platform-based business models, and fintech. She’s worked across several sectors including payments, workforce technology, and accounting.

Previously a Partner at Bain Capital Ventures, Keri focused on their fintech and business SaaS portfolios. She most recently led Passport as interim President and currently sits on the boards of Passport, RelayFinancial, and Pleo. Prior to BCV, Keri was Chief Platform Business officer at Xero and Executive Vice President and General Manager of Capital One’s small business bank.

Keri has been recognized as one of Denver’s Most Admired CEOs and a Top 100 Accounting Influencer. Presently on the national board of Make-A-Wish Foundation, she is also involved with nonprofits such as Endeavor, Kiva, and Grameen America.

As a transplant to the Mile High City (Denver), Keri enjoys all outdoor sports (hiking, mountain biking, skiing) and spending time with her husband and three kids.

Jonathan Blackburn

Chief Revenue Officer

Jonathan is a proven executive with 20+ years creating record-breaking, high-performing sales and marketing teams in technology-based businesses.

Prior to joining AbacusNext, Jonathan served as the chief revenue officer for Therapy Brands, a mental and behavioral health software and integrated payments company, where he drove rapid growth and expansion of the platform both organically and through M&A. He previously served as chief revenue officer and general manager of Daxko, a leader in software and integrated payments for the health and wellness industry. Before Daxko, Jonathan was vice president of sales for major accounts at ADP, a global provider of cloud-based human capital management.

A customer-centric strategist utilizing people, process, and products to deliver exceptional experiences and drive value. Jonathan is responsible for leading AbacusNext’s commercial strategy across its industry-leading portfolio of practice management, document automation and digital payments solutions.

Jennifer Sherman

Chief Product & Experience Officer

Jennifer has over 20 years of extensive experience in the enterprise B2B software market, focused on ERP, supply chain, manufacturing, CRM, e-commerce, and payments product strategy and management.

Prior to joining AbacusNext, Jennifer was Chief Product and Experience Officer at NMI. She has also led the product teams at Kibo, NAVEX Global, and Aptean. She also serves on the Board of Directors for 3PL Central.

Jennifer holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering and a Master of Science in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management from Stanford University. Jennifer is a TEDxspeaker, a glass artist, a bread baker, and a certified judge with the Kansas City Barbecue Society. She lives in Chicago with her partner and their 3 pets.

Mike Summers

Chief People Officer

Mike brings over 40 years of human resources experience to the company across several industries including private equity sponsored portfolio companies in manufacturing, consumer products, aerospace, chemicals, and technology.

Prior to joining AbacusNext, Mike worked as an executive advisor at Thomas H. Lee Partners where he held interim leadership roles across five different THL companies, including AbacusNext. Before that, he founded Avanti HR Group where he focused on CEO and C-Suite engagement, executive coaching, organizational diagnostics, and HR organizational support. Mike also served as the chief human resources officer for CHC Helicopters Canada, Inc. and Celanese Corporation and was vice president of human resources at Dell, Inc.

Mike holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from Fairmont State University and a Master of Science in human resources management and services from West Virginia University. He lives in Arizona with his wife and family, and enjoys golfing, hiking, weightlifting, cooking, traveling, and spending time with his granddaughter.

Fred Cohen

Chief Legal Strategy Officer / Chief Executive Officer Zola

Fred is the founder and Chief Executive Officer at Zola Suite. He is focused on developing state-of-the-art technology to enable law firms to massively scale their operations. He has been a leader, product visionary, and innovator in the legal technology space for over 10 years. In that role, he is the inventor of 2 patents with the USPTO. Fred has led the company from its founding to becoming one of the fastest-growing businesses in the U.S. two years in a row as recognized by Inc Magazine. He is also a former practicing attorney as a partner at a New York Trusts & Estates firm. His interests include anthropology, tennis, art, user experience design, and business process optimization.=

Fred holds both an Economics and a Political Science degree from Queens College of the City University of New York and a JD from Hofstra University School of Law.

Kevin Gallagher

General Manager, Payments

Kevin has 25+ years of experience in the payment industry and is an expert in building and scaling PE-backed payment and SaaS companies.

Prior to his role at AbacusNext, he was general manager of FrontStream Payments, a division of FrontStream. Prior to that, he was senior vice president at Transpay, a B2B/B2P cross-border payouts platform that was acquired by MasterCard in 2019. He served as senior vice president of global sales at Vesta Corporation, senior vice president of global business development at 2Checkout, and held other senior leadership and board positions within the electronic payments and e-commerce industry.

Kevin currently serves on the board of directors at TAG FinTech Steering Committee. He earned a Bachelor of Business Administration from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business, an MBA in marketing from Kennesaw State University and an MBA in e-commerce from Georgia State University. Kevin was honored as the Technology Association of Georgia (TAG), Sales Leadership Executive of the Year.

Eric Hart

General Counsel

Eric joined the AbacusNext team as General Counsel in January 2015. Prior to that, he worked as a litigator, handling large contract disputes for a variety of companies, copyright and other intellectual property disputes, and employment law matters. Eric graduated from California Western School of Law in 2002. While in law school, he served as a law clerk for the Honorable J. Richard Haden (Ret.) of the San Diego Superior Court.

Thomas “TJ” Schoessow

SVP, Technology & Business Systems

As SVP of Technology & Business Systems, TJ oversees the cloud and engineering teams to ensure high-availability for all cloud clients. With an expansive career in IT, TJ understands the evolving needs of virtual systems and creates pragmatic strategies and implementation designs that deliver maximum return on investment. He holds a Bachelors of Science degree in Computer Science from UCSD, and a wide array of technical certifications. TJ’s specialties are virtualization, data protection, MS Exchange, and SAN tech administration.

Stephanie Johnson

SVP, Business Transformation

Stephanie joins AbacusNext with over 15 years of experience growing and transforming organizations to achieve their operational, financial, and strategic goals. She brings experience leading change from strategy through implementation.

Most recently, she joins us from Wells Fargo where she led teams to optimize and mature processes across the commercial bank. Prior to that, in her role as consulting director, Stephanie led platform implementations, M&A program management, strategic planning, and process optimization across
multiple sectors, including financial services, technology, logistics, and nonprofit.

In her role as Business Transformation leader, Stephanie will use best practices across program and project management, process optimization, data analysis, and change management to improve and grow AbacusNext through transformative change.

In her spare time, Stephanie enjoys hiking through the Blue Ridge mountains, running, and exploring Charlotte’s developing food scene.

Vlad Katsovich

VP, Engineering

For nearly three decades Vlad has been empowering teams to consistently deliver industry-leading, mission critical enterprise-class software and platforms for Fortune 100 companies across multiple industries and spent the last two decades in the legal technology space.

Prior to AbacusNext, Vlad was Head of Global Technology Engineering at Wolters Kluwer where he led a global software engineering function with end-to-end responsibilities for development and maintenance of the company’s flagship SaaS platform for Corporate Legal and Insurance Claims Management customers.

As a technology leader at AbacusNext, Vlad is responsible for the Engineering function delivering product technology innovation.  With his strong technical implementation and people leadership background Vlad leads his teams to deliver outstanding quality products, establishing performance culture and developing and mentoring people.

Lisa Hasen

VP, Marketing

Lisa leads the company’s efforts in marketing, branding and communications. She has 18 years’ experience creating and delivering B2B brand and go to market strategies to exceed business growth objectives. Prior to joining AbacusNext, Lisa oversaw enterprise marketing at Daxko, a leader in B2B SaaS and integrated payments. She has a B.A. in International Studies and Spanish from Rhodes College. Lisa and her husband live in Birmingham, Alabama with their two sons and two rescue dogs. She devotes time outside of work and family to nonprofits dedicated to advancing women in leadership and solving homelessness in her community.