Team

Gora is comprised of both full time and part-time contractors, and utilizes strategic advisors to help build the protocol. This section describes our team members.

Abdul Osman - CEO

Gora is led by CEO and founder Abdul Osman who has a background in Software Engineering and Business Administration. He is the founder of two software companies with Gora being his second successful venture. He specializes in creating innovative web and mobile applications with over 8 years of experience in bringing technological products from ideation to delivery to scale. Under his vision Gora aims to be the the first enterprise grade oracle network to bring proper decentralization, speed, security, and off-chain computation to Algorand.

Finance

Ali Hassan - CFO Finance is managed full time by CFO Ali Hassan who has over 15 years’ experience working in financial analysis, internal audit & risk management for several multinational organizations. Ali ensures that grant, seed funding and treasuries are managed to the highest standards and that Gora is in compliance with accounting regulations and financial reporting mandates.

Chris Brookins - Head of Business

Chris has 10+ years experience in credit, blockchain, technology, and machine learning. Chris co-founded RociFi Labs, a blockchain and machine learning development company that built RociFi, an under-collateralized lending and credit scoring protocol on Polygon & zkSync; and RA, an onchain wallet analytics tool.

Engineering

Joseph Jones - CTO The engineering department is led by Joseph Jones who is a multifaceted software engineer– having worked in many areas of software including machine learning, DevOps, web/mobile applications and blockchain development. He leads a team of six, devising the technical strategy to ensure Gora’s technology is not only cutting edge but also in alignment with its long-term business goals.

Julius Githaiga - Full Stack developer

Julius Githaiga is a highly skilled full stack developer with a decade of experience working in senior web development roles. He loves working on complex web development projects making him the perfect fit to design Gora’s web application to guarantee it delivers both functionality and an excellent user experience.

Egor Shipovalov - Distributed Engineer Egor Shipovalov is a computer scientist with over two decades of experience in various senior software development roles (e.g. Amazon, Deutsche Bank) and is a PHD candidate in Applied Mathematics, thesis being in parallel automated planning using C++ and CUDA.. His work has been crucial to the development of Gora’s Node Runner software.

Samantha Palmer - Blockchain Developer

Samantha Palmer is a highly skilled Computer Scientist with experience as a Lead Data Scientist and Software Engineer in the past and currently uses her skills at Gora to develop, test, deploy and maintain smart contracts and other blockchain interfacing functionality.

Jesse Wallace - Blockchain Developer Jesse Wallace is an Electrical Engineer with extensive experience in hardware and software development. Jesse is an integral part of Gora, writing, testing and maintaining smart contracts.

George Njuguna - Senior Backend developer, Integration specialist George Njuguna has more than 10 years of experience in Systems Development with an expertise in project management and strategic planning. George is key in ensuring data feeds from over 50 data providers are seamlessly integrated into the Gora protocol.

Data Science

Ahmed Ali - CDO Data management is led full time by Ahmed Ali who has worked as a lead statistician and data scientist in the past and holds a masters in Mathematics and Statistics. His work has been key to creating models and simulation methods to determine the most suitable rewards system for our ecosystem participants.

Stylianos Kampakis - Data Scientist (Part Time) Dr. Stylianos Kampakis has a PHD in Computer Science and has over a decade of experience in Data Science, specifically in the Blockchain industry. He is an expert in designing tokenomics and his work has been integral to the formation of Gora's tokenomics. Dr. Stylianos has also published several books and papers on the topics of data modelling, blockchain, and various data science relatied topics.

Marketing and Admin

Fred Arias - CMO Fred is an award-winning creative director, with a career in Television and Media spanning 20 years. Fred most recently completed a Masters in Marketing management, with a thesis in Marketing Strategies for Web3. Furthermore, Fred has a track record of executing under pressure, and bringing teams and communities together to achieve a common goal. Adam Kinley - Director Of Strategic Partnerships Adam Kinley is an experienced business development account executive and consultant and is responsible for increasing brand awareness for Gora and developing strategic partnerships. He accomplishes this by meeting with investors, onboarding institutional feed providers and educating developer teams on network functionality, feed providers/tiers, staking options, validator nodes, and our overall tokenomics.

Andre Bussanich - Creative Director Andre Bussanich is an award winning storyteller with over two decades of experience working as a Creative Director in advertising, video animation, and social media marketing. Using his unique set of skills, he directs all creative projects and shapes the standards of our brand identity at Gora.

Amal Osman - Social Media Coordinator/Digital Producer Amal Osman has worked as a videographer, photographer, and podcast producer in the past and uses her creative skills to produce high quality videos and other social media content. Working closely with our creative director Amal is tasked with positioning Gora as a hub for all types of Oracle and Blockchain related content.

Advisors

Gora is advised by several experts with a wide range of skills. The section below describes our appointed advisors.

Olu Omoyele Olu is a governer at Algorand, graduate of Oxford, Harvard and MIT and Executive Leader with nearly two decades of experience in Financial Regulatory Policy & Risk Management in both the public and private sectors. He has worked for the Bank of England, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Visa in the past. He also serves as an advisor for multiple Fintech startups and Blockchain companies. He provides a valuable blend of financial advice from both traditional and decentralized finance.

dxFeed dxFeed offers the broadest range of data services currently available by a single company in the financial space and has built one of the most comprehensive ticker plants in the world. They are a subsidiary of Devexperts, who specialize in providing financial markets information and services to buy-side and sell-side institutions of the global financial industry, specifically to traders, data analysts, quants and portfolio managers. dxFeed's will provide high quality data to Gora and advise the technical team on how to most effectively format the data that Gora obtains for the dApps on the Algorand blockchain.

Brave New Coin

BNC provides data, analysis and research to a global network of market participants. BNC's experience and expertise make them the leading provider of standard and non standard institutional grade, highly compliant, data solutions. Brave new coin advises Gora on data strategy, as well ad advertising through their media networl.

Patrick Sibetz

Patrick is a quantitative analyst with an expertise in equity and derivatives quantitative trading. He assists Gora with token modelling.

Thomas Melskens

Thomas Melskens is a pioneer in the blockchain space with a long history of involvement and leadership in the industry. Melskens has made significant contributions to the development and adoption of blockchain technology and has played a vital role in shaping the direction of the industry.