Michael Kelly. With a strong entrepreneurial background, Michael’s international leadership experience includes venture capital, consulting, banking, and the technology and financial services industries worldwide, notably in Europe and China. He has founded, managed and restructured multiple companies in Europe and the U.S. After more than 17 years living and working abroad, he now resides in the San Francisco Bay area.

Most recently Michael served as President and CEO of ViaLogy in Altadena, CA - a technology spin-off from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratories. He guided the company through two major fund raisings and a reverse merger that resulted in a public listing on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM). He is currently a non-executive board member and chairman of the audit committee.

Prior to ViaLogy, Michael was a co-founder and managing partner of First Ventury, a successful early-stage venture capital firm based in Heidelberg, Germany, and subsequently established the firm’s US presence in San Francisco. He still serves as a venture partner and advisor to several portfolio companies. He was co-founder and CFO for N4FX.com in San Carlos, CA, a start-up specializing in Internet customer retention solutions, and a managing director at Financial Proformas in Walnut Creek, CA, where he oversaw software development for credit and risk analysis. He is credited with negotiating a successful acquisition of the company by Moody’s Investor Services.

As an independent consultant, Michael was engaged in financial advisory services for structuring and raising debt and equity capital, as well as restructuring and privatization. He has advised the Asian Development Bank in Beijing, China, a Baltic and European investment fund in Russia, overseen capital equipment financing in Venezuela, and driven the privatization of Hungary’s third largest brewery on behalf of a private investor. As a KPMG consultant, he served one year in Tallinn, Estonia, as USAID Chief of Party where he led a team that restructured and privatized over 100 state-owned enterprises.

Mr. Kelly is well known within the international banking community, where he has held multiple executive positions with American Express Bank GmbH in Frankfurt (CEO/Vorsitzender der Geschäftsfürung), Deutsche Bank in Ludwigshafen and Berlin (Direktor), Commerzbank in Chicago (senior vice president, general manager), Bank of America in San Francisco (vice president, Regional Director of Investment Banking), the Berliner Handels and Frankfurter Bank in New York (vice president, US corporate manager), and Wells Fargo Bank in San Francisco, New York, London and Frankfurt (vice president).

Michael earned B.A. and M.B.A. degrees from the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. He studied German at the Monterey Institute of Foreign Studies (Monterey, CA), and Economics and Russian at the Institut zur Forshung der UdSSR in Munich, Germany. He has passed the Certified Public Accounting examination. He is fluent in English and German. Michael holds dual citizenship in the United States and Ireland.