Illuminate Team
Julian Traversa
Founder & CEO
Julian is the founder of our sister protocol Swivel Finance. While his college background was not in finance - in fact he was a pro video game player who majored in Psychology - he is a long time self taught student of DeFi with a passion for making the tech fair and equitable for all users. Julian is focused on thought leadership, Gitcoin community organizing, and EIP development to solve real problems in the space.
Janko Simonovic
Head of Development
Janko is a Senior Software Engineer and Software Architect with over 15 years of experience. He participated in bootstrapping multiple startups and rewriting complex engines for companies such as 3Box (Ceramic protocol), OriginTrail, Frame (Nutanix), and SevenBridges - SDK(s). Fun fact: Janko is the Inventor of the patent for Systems and Methods for Processing Computational Workflows! (Issued Mar 9, 2017 - us 20180053328)
Alexander Wende
Front End Lead Developer
Alex began his FinTech journey in 2010 developing white label finance management apps for banks including Barclays, BBVA, ING, PostFinance and BMO (Bank of Montreal). He then moved to Serbia where he became the principal frontend engineer for a startup working in the genomics/data-analysis space which was acquired in 2022. He joined Swivel in early 2021, his first job in crypto.
Sourabh Marathe
Software Engineer
Sourabh first became interested in crypto after taking a cryptography course in college. He worked as an embedded systems and mobile engineer in the past, and started working full time in crypto in 2022.
Aleksa Jovanovic
Back End Developer
Aleksa started coding in c# in high school, and then attended University of Belgrade where he studied Mathematics, Computational Theory, and Algorithmical Programming. He started his career developing frontend compilers in yacc flex and c, then switched to web dev writing in golang and JavaScript , and eventually working on nodejs developing microservices at Celsius.
Kevin Hyde
Design & PM
Kevin has 10+ years doing sales, project management, logistics, and team leadership in retail, finance and technology services. He has spent the majority of his career developing UX and engineering frontend libraries for emerging products at Cisco. He puts his whole haberdashery to work to keep products on track and contribute lift across every domain.
Big D
Marketing
Big D successfully launched an innovative VTuber focused NFT project called Anata-which minted out almost instantly. Through his various connections in the crypto space and a background in sales and business relations, he guides the strategy and vision for growth at illuminate.
Keem
Community Manager
Keem became involved with crypto full-time in 2020 after exploring traditional finance. He previously worked in project management for the oil/gas industry, and has lost over $60,000 trading altcoins.