Heather Claus, Co-Founder and CEO. She has over 25 years of experience in large scale software deployment and consulting in the asset management industry starting with her tenure at Barclays Global Investors. Heather has led numerous projects focusing on software implementation across various asset management portfolios, including fixed income and equity strategies. She has provided consulting services to government and institutional investors, including RIA’s, on capital market dynamics, systems research, and software deployment strategies.

As CEO of Flex Axion Heather is instrumental in shaping Flex Axion’s long-term strategic goals, building the firms’ culture of innovation and client service, as well as meeting interim key targets, removing impediments to success, and managing resources.

Heather holds a Master of Science in Applied Economics and Finance from the University of California Santa Cruz where she studied applied mathematics and Econometrics and specialized in real options logic applied to capital investment. Additionally, she has passed the Series 7 and 66 FINRA exams.

James Claus, PhD, Co-Founder and CTO has spent his career pushing the bounds of computing possibilities for research and trading in the global capital markets. He was recruited to Columbia University to pursue his doctorate degree and upon completion he was recruited to innovate and transform the legacy systems at Barclay’s Global Investors (now Blackrock Scientific).

At Flex Axion James has continued to innovate and further refine his ideas and technology from academic and industry settings where he has combined advances in machine learning, optimization, and computing architecture that produces results that are hundreds of times faster and more cost-effective than generic cloud and traditional software solutions. The Flex Axion technology platform is the result of over 25 years of research and experimentation at the most extreme edges of computing and asset management.

James is published in the Journal of Finance, has received numerous academic and industry awards. He completed his PhD at Columbia University Business School in Financial Engineering and Accounting. James has taught at Columbia University, UC Berkeley, and the University of Utah where he created the Computational Finance Lab.

Hal Tolley is Co-Founder and Head of Engineering and has worked with James previously in both business and academia. He has been the lead engineer on numerous large scale computing projects for both the government and private businesses including Vhayu, a trading platform startup sold to Thomson Reuters, as well as Fusion IO. Throughout his career he has substantially contributed to the libraries of numerous software languages and open-source initiatives

Hal is a full stack engineer as well as a hardware/software expert who is the authority on solving I/O bottlenecks and improving performance of Flex Axion’s software and hardware integrations as well as refining the optimization engine and software OSI compliance. Hal built the original hardware prototypes and is the engineer of the proprietary computing architecture that underpins Flex Axion’s powerful software performance. Hal also oversees all aspects of development from hardware to interface design.

Hal received his undergraduate degree from Brigham Young University and has served an Executive in Residence at the University of Utah.