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Leadership

Building Infrastructure for Institutional Tokenization

Our team brings decades of experience from regulated financial institutions, payment networks, and blockchain infrastructure development.

Executive Team

Led by veterans of regulated finance, payments infrastructure, and distributed systems engineering.

  • Mark Sulavka

    Chief Executive Officer

    Mark is the former Chairman & CEO of the National Stock Exchange, an SEC-registered exchange and SRO, with over 30 years across trading, market structure, exchange operations, risk, and financial technology. He began in futures pits and market operations at the Chicago Board of Trade, later serving as head trader for a global arbitrage group across futures, FX, OTC, and derivatives. He was also CTO and co-founder of MatchPoint Trading, acquired by NYSE, and licensed FXECN software foundational to one of the first institutional FX ECNs.

  • Mark Kemna

    Chief Technology Officer

    Mark Kemna is a CTO and enterprise architect with 30+ years of experience building high-availability, high-throughput systems, distributed databases, machine-learning applications, mathematical optimization engines, and big-data analytics platforms. His technical work spans operational research, natural-language processing, identity systems, cloud infrastructure, and large-scale transactional platforms. He has built six companies, including three successful exits to Best Buy, Merkle, and WPP, and has led engineering teams of more than 25 people. His platforms have processed hundreds of millions of daily requests across advertising, identity, analytics, and enterprise data environments, and he has also served as a reviewer for major big-data publications.

  • Jeffrey Diedrich

    Chief Information Officer

    Jeff has spent nearly three decades building enterprise-scale market technology across trading, exchange, FX ECN, risk, and compliance systems. He was co-designer and developer of Matchpoint, helped develop one of the first institutional FX ECNs, managed the NYSE integration team, and later served as CTO for the National Stock Exchange. His experience spans OMS architecture, institutional order management, real-time risk, compliance workflows, product development, market-structure technology, exchange operations, and complex integrations across regulated financial-market infrastructure environments.

  • Egor Agafonov

    Chief Architect

    Egor is a senior systems architect with over 30 years of experience across mission-critical aerospace, real-time trading, market data, and financial infrastructure. With dual degrees in engineering and mathematics, he began his career as chief specialist on a Baikonur space-program project, leading a technical team of over 30 engineers. He later held senior architecture and development roles across high-performance trading platforms, including the National Stock Exchange and eSpeed-related market infrastructure. His expertise spans C/C++, database systems, order management, compliance reporting, and low-latency trading systems.

  • Kris Gowin

    SVP, Product Strategy & Research Innovation

    Kris brings over ten years of experience across scientific research, Web3, payment systems, enterprise technology, and early-stage company development. He holds a MS in Chemistry, where training in research discipline, structured analysis, and technical problem solving shaped his approach to complex product and infrastructure challenges. At TauriPay, Kris translates complex financial technology into institutional positioning, product roadmaps, investor narratives, and go-to-market planning across stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized assets, settlement systems, governance workflows, and compliance-ready product design.

Advisory Board

Strategic Advisors

Craig Kallman

Executive at Warner Music Group as CEO Atlantic Records 20+ yrs · Founder Big Beat Records

Craig Kallman

Rich Macary

Chairman Sinaptica Therapeutics · ex Delos CSO · co-founded FolioDynamix ($200M+ exit to Amex).

Rich Macary

Chris Jonns ("Jonnsie")

Co-founder RTX Fintech · 25+ yr USD-derivatives broker · BGC, TP ICAP.

Chris Jonns ("Jonnsie")

Greg C. Johnson, CFP

CEO Rubicon Crypto · Bretton Woods Committee · NYU adjunct · Advisor Digital Dollar Project & UK House of Lords CBDC.

Greg C. Johnson, CFP

Lee Saba

Co-Chair, FIX Trading Community. FIX is the institutional electronic-trading messaging standard.

Lee Saba

David Eagan

Enterprise operations executive 29 years leading global compliance systems, treasury, client-service organizations, and P&L management.

David Eagan

Mission

Why We Built TauriPay

Regulated financial institutions need infrastructure that meets their compliance, custody, and settlement requirements — not infrastructure borrowed from decentralized consumer applications. TauriPay demonstrates what becomes possible when deterministic settlement, institutional governance controls, and regulatory compliance are built into the foundation rather than retrofitted on top. Our goal is to provide the reference implementation and repeatable build pattern for institutions entering tokenized markets — from stablecoin issuance to digital securities settlement to cross-border payments infrastructure.

Work With Us

We work with regulated institutions building on Taurium. If you are exploring stablecoin infrastructure, tokenized deposits, or digital securities settlement, we can help.