Gilles Gade is Founder, President and CEO of Cross River, having served as Chairman for the company since its inception in 2008. Gade’s vision is steering Cross River as an innovation-driven, state-chartered bank and provider of trusted financial solutions, to the marketplace lending and next-generation payment processing arenas. Gade graduated from the MBA Institute IMIP (Groupe IPESUP) in Paris, with a Masters of Science in International Management. In 1990 he began his career at Citicorp Venture Capital. Later on he served as CFO of First Meridian Mortgage, and was Co-Founder and Managing Director of Chela Technology Partners. In addition, he was Technology Investment Banker at Barclays Capital, and FIG Investment Banker at Bear Stearns.