Our Team
Tom Smith
Chairman of the Board
Senior Director, Development and Strategic Initiatives, MIT
Bio & Info
Tom is Chairman of the Board at PFT. In his role at MIT, he is responsible for providing operational leadership on all development activities in Open Learning. He works with colleagues across MIT to help achieve capital campaign goals of $5 Billion and develops and implements initiatives to align with the mission to further our understanding of teaching and learning. He leads MIT’s i2 Learning Courses, immersive STEM experiences transforming schools at scale, which will be pivotal in introducing MIT’s STEM program in partnership with PFT’s client banks.
Mike Purchia
President & Founder
Bio & Info
Richard Buttermore
Chief Operating Officer
Bio & Info
Richard has over 25 years of banking experience in commercial and community banks in New England. As Chief Operating Officer, his diverse experience is now focused on developing and executing winning retail and business banking client engagements. Prior to PFT, he was Executive Vice President of Needham Bank. Through the mergers of large commercial bank – from Shawmut to Bank of America – he successfully managed systems integration, product management, and customer experience teams. Richard has earned his Six Sigma Project Management Certification and holds a BS from North Adams State College. He currently resides in Attleboro with his wife Nancy.
Peter Galligan
Vice Chairman of the Board
Strategy Advisor, Commercial Banking
Bio & Info
Peter is Vice Chairman of PFT’s Board of Directors and Strategy Advisor, Commercial Banking. He has a proven record of success in developing new business and achieving sustainable, above-market growth in traditionally mature business lines. Peter has provided consulting services to community and regional banks and a large multi-national bank based in Australia to support their strategic direction, product development and sales and marketing plans.
He has held numerous executive leadership positions including: Chief Operating Officer, Executive Vice President at RBS/ GTS-Americas, Executive Vice President, Group Director of Treasury Management at Citizens Bank. He had direct responsibility for managing the bank’s Domestic and International Treasury Management Group, Trade and Foreign Exchange , Liquidity Management and had dotted line responsibility for Commercial Card and Merchant Services. Collectively Peter was responsible for managing revenues in excess of $640MM and 155 FTE, including Sales, Product Management and Customer Service. While at Shawmut Bank / Fleet Financial Group, Peter served as Senior Vice President, Division Executive for the bank’s Cash Management Division.
For more than 30 years, Peter has volunteered at all levels of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society. He is Chairman of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society and serves as a member of the MS International Federation Board of Directors based in London. Peter is a member of the Leadership Council at Boston College, serves on the Alumni Board at St. Sebastian’s School, and Board Member of Brae Burn Country Club. Peter and his wife Meg reside in Needham MA.
Jon Bruss
Strategy Advisor, Capital Markets
Bio & Info
In 1991, Jon Bruss formed Fortress Partners Capital Management, Ltd. (Fortress Partners) and has served as Managing Principal and CEO. Since his graduation from Marquette University in 1963, he has served in various financial services industries.
Jon has served in commercial and agricultural lending and tax-oriented equipment leasing industries, and senior management capacities in large publicly traded banks in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Omaha, Nebraska and a Fortune 1000 manufacturing company in Milwaukee. He also served as Senior Vice President and Director of Investment Banking at the former Blunt Ellis & Loewi Inc., Milwaukee.
Through Fortress Partners Jon raised capital for Fortress Bancshares, Inc. to acquire community banks in Western Wisconsin, SE Minnesota and NE Iowa, all three of which he managed by Jon until mid-2000. In 1998 he formed what has become the $3.5 billion asset Town Bank, NA in Hartland, Wisconsin.
In 2000 Fortress Partners formed and continues to manage FFP BankManagers Fund, LLC, investing in publicly traded and privately owned community (micro-cap and small cap) banks and thrifts. Jon also formed two private equity partnerships investing over $20 million in privately-owned community banks and served as a director of two of those banks.
Richard Pilla
Board Member
Principal, Paramount Partners
Bio & Info
Richard specializes in the retail and banking real estate sectors. He is a member of the Retail Brokers Network’s (RBN) Executive Committee, and Co-Chairman of RBN’s Financial Institutions Specialty Council. He is also an active member of ICSC, and a member of the Massachusetts and New Hampshire Bankers Associations. Richard holds a Master of Science Degree from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, and a Bachelor of Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
Randi Purchia
Strategy Advisor, Financial Industry Technology
Bio & Info
As research director and senior analyst for financial services at Aite Novarica, AMR (Gartner) and Meridien (IDC) Randi covered analytics, CRM, core processing, and digital banking. Randi’s experience includes co-founding Commonwealth Financial Technologies Group, consulting to Cadent Medical, and the International Group of MassGeneral Brigham. At Fidelity Investments, she was a Senior Business Analyst and later Executive Director responsible for the startup of Boston Coach, Fidelity Futures and the evaluation and startup of new businesses and products. She was Research Analyst/Practice Leader, Global ICT, financial services industry analytics Aite Group, AMR Research (Gartner), Meridien Research (IDC). Randi received her MBA from New York University and her MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Zaine Venter
Managing Director, Analytics
Bio & Info
Zaine heads the analytics team designing and continuously improving PFT’s products and services by developing solutions to create insight and understanding from data. He is responsible for data processing, management, analysis, modeling, and GIS services for all banking, market intelligence, demographic, and customer data. He has been in the IT field since 1998. Zaine is a native of Durban, South Africa, and earned his MS in Applied Geographic Information Science from Ball State University and BS in Geography with a concentration in GIS from Bridgewater State University.
Matthew Goppee
Marketing & Communications Director
Bio & Info
Matthew is responsible for all marketing, content design, and outreach efforts at PFT. He develops and executes multi-faceted marketing initiatives aimed at regional and community banks, and designs all collateral, from product one-sheets and flyers, to website content and client presentations. He also oversees the company’s social media, email campaigns, website, and recruits junior-level staff. Prior to PFT, Matthew worked in the mobile tech industry, helping brands like McDonalds, Starbucks, and Nike better engage with consumers through personalized engagements. He holds a BA in Advertising Communications from Suffolk University. Matt is an avid combat sports fan and cityscape photographer, with his photos being featured by Boston.com, Hawaiian Airlines, NBC Boston, and others.
Charlie Steele
Senior Vice President
Bio & Info
Charlie has specialized banking experience as a former CEO, CFO, and SLO. Prior to joining PFT, he was SVP, Strategic Planning at Needham Bank, and has been involved in starting a successful de novo bank, numerous banking mergers, and has worked as a consultant in the areas of strategic planning, mergers, branching, loan review, and regulatory compliance. Charlie was faculty at Fitchburg State College, New England College of Finance, and CFT Atlantic States. He holds a BS in Business Administration from Boston University and an MBA from Babson College.
Jason Toy
Senior Tech Advisor
Bio & Info
Jason is Senior Tech Advisor at PFT. Currently CTO at CloudApp. San Francisco-based CloudApp has been recognized as one of the Top Software companies in 2018 by G2 Crowd, is a Winter Leader in the G2 Crowd Sales Enablement Category, and is used by tens of thousands of businesses. The former chief technology officer of Boston-based Commonwealth Financial Technologies who worked with PFT’s CEO, Mike Purchia. Jason established and successfully ran an applied machine learning research company where he took state of the art research and fused it with business needs to create new products. Jason has expertise in image processing, generative image models, NLP, voice recognition, and robotics with deep reinforcement learning. Jason has a BS from Northeastern University. He currently resides in northern California.
Tom Smith
Chairman of the Board
Senior Director, Development and Strategic Initiatives, MIT
Bio & Info
Mike Purchia
President & Founder
Bio & Info
As President, Mike’s vision has shaped PFT into the company it is today. Prior to founding PFT, Mike was co-founder and CEO of BancRealty Advisors, and the Commonwealth Financial Technologies Group. When The Commonwealth Group was acquired by BrandPartners, a national consulting, design-build, and branding company, he ran its strategic market intelligence, marketing, and real estate groups. Prior to The Commonwealth Group, Mike was CEO of Fitcorp, a first-mover company in corporate wellness and outpatient cardiac rehabilitation services. Prior to Fitcorp, he was an executive at Chase Bank, where he led commercial lending groups in the U.S., Brazil, and in the Southwest. Mike earned a BA in Economics from Tufts University and an MA in Public and International Affairs from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a frequent speaker and contributor to banking journals.
Richard Buttermore
Chief Operating Officer
Bio & Info
Richard has over 25 years of banking experience in commercial and community banks in New England. As COO, his diverse experience is now focused on developing and executing a winning retail and business banking planning module and overseeing the rest of the PFT team. Prior to PFT, he was Executive Vice President of Needham Bank. Through the mergers of large commercial bank – from Shawmut to Bank of America – he successfully managed systems integration, product management, and customer experience teams. Richard has earned his Six Sigma Project Management Certification and holds a BS from North Adams State College. He currently resides in Carver with his wife Nancy.
Richard Pilla
Board Member
Managing Principal, Paramount Partners
Bio & Info
Zaine Venter
Managing Director, Analytics
Bio & Info
Charlie Steele
SVP, Strategic Partnerships
Bio & Info
Matthew Goppee
Marketing & Communications Director
Bio & Info
Matthew is responsible for all marketing, content design, and outreach efforts at PFT. He develops and executes multi-faceted marketing initiatives aimed at regional and community banks, and designs all collateral, from product one-sheets and flyers, to website content and client presentations. He also oversees the company’s social media, email campaigns, website, and recruits junior-level staff. Prior to PFT, Matthew worked in the mobile tech industry, helping brands like McDonalds, Starbucks, and Nike better engage with consumers through personalized engagements. He holds a BA in Advertising Communications from Suffolk University.
Lindsey Douglas
Design Assistant
Bio & Info
Lindsey Douglas is responsible for creating graphic maps and aerials that help clients construct a better understanding of prospective sites and properties.
She is currently attending Boston Architectural College and is working her way towards a Bachelor of Landscape Architecture degree. Her experience with analyzing and representing data with GIS in her education has made her eager to practice her skills in a professional working environment. While Ms. Douglas aspires to work in a design firm, she accredits Paramount Partners for providing her with valuable work experience that she can carry on with her throughout her career. She resides in Bridgewater with her parents and two dogs.
Dan Purchia
Research Associate
