Corporate Governance

Mr. Adami is an original member of CNBC’s Fast Money. He is currently the Director of Advisor Advocacy at Private Advisor Group in Morristown, New Jersey. Private Advisor Group is comprised of a network of nearly 600 advisors with assets approaching $17B. He has held numerous key leadership roles in the financial services industry. He began his career at Drexel Burnham Lambert in 1986 and was quickly promoted to Vice President and head gold trader at the firm. In 1996, he joined Goldman Sachs as their head gold trader and one of the many proprietary traders within the Fixed Income Currency and Commodity division. In the spring of 2000, Adami joined the U.S. Equities division of Goldman Sachs where he was put in charge of the firm’s Industrial/Basic Material group. Mr. Adami is the Vice Chairman of the NJ Chapter of The Leukemia and Lymphoma Society, who named him their “Man of the Year” in 2015. He also sits on the national board of Invest in Others, and Big Brothers Big Sisters.

Mr. Palella has served as our Chief Executive Officer and a member of our board of directors since 2015. Mr. Palella, a serial entrepreneur, founded Helbiz in 2015, at the age of 29, with a mission to solve the first- and last-mile transportation problem of cities around the world through an innovative and scalable transportation rental platform designed for the sharing economy. Originally from Acireale, Italy, Mr. Palella began his career in the fast-food industry in the United Kingdom, and then moved to Milan at age 17 to study at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. At the age of 19, he founded his first business, a company that specialized in the production and distribution of vending machines for fresh-squeezed orange juice.

Mr. Stern was appointed to the Board of Directors effective November 27, 2020. Mr. Stern has an accomplished career with over 25 years of providing debt solutions to middle market companies and expertise across multiple industries and as of April 26, 2021, he will join Centre Lane Partners, LLC as a Managing Director. From 2014 to April 9, 2021, Mr. Stern served as Managing Director of Monroe Capital LLC, responsible for origination of both sponsor and non-sponsor transactions. Prior to Monroe, Mr. Stern was a Managing Director at Levine Leichtman Capital Partners from 2012 to 2013, and was formerly a Director and founding member of Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co’s mezzanine debt business from 2009 to 2012. Prior to KKR, Mr. Stern was a Managing Director at Blackstone/GSO Capital Partners from 2005 to 2009, responsible for senior and mezzanine investments. Prior to Blackstone, he was a founding employee of a Nasdaq public company Technology Investment Capital Corp. from 2002 to 2005. From 1985 to 2002, Mr. Stern worked for Drexel Burnham Lambert, Kidder, Peabody & Co., Nomura Securities International, Inc., and Thomas Weisel Partners. Mr. Stern holds a B.A. degree from Middlebury College and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Velco Farina is an Industrial Engineer with a MBA from SDA Bocconi and UCLA Anderson. Mr. Farina is a senior executive whose career started in management consulting at Bain & Co., Sapient and McKinsey. In 2007 he moved to New York City and the enterprise world at American Express, where he served in multiple roles, from product management to international strategy and innovation and partnerships until 2016. He then became the Chief Operating Officer of Kunai, a scrappy professional service agency, and grew it 10x into the tech engine of Fortune 500 financial institutions that it is today. Next he became the founding Managing Director of the innovation lab for Kaleyra, a communication-platform-as-a-service company, recently acquired by Tata Communications. After moving back to Europe, Mr. Farina worked as Amazon Web Services Principal for the Financial Services EMEA market. Currently, Mr. Farina serves on the Board of Directors of Torch Systems and sits on the Strategic Board of DIP Capital.