Advisors

Federica Carugati, PhD

Advisor – Legal Institutions

Federica teaches at Indiana University Bloomington’s Maurer School of Law and IUB’s Political Science Department, where she is visiting assistant professor. She also is associate director of IUB’s Ostrom Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis. Her work focuses on political, legal, and economic institutions in pre-modern, citizen-centered, open-access governments; and lessons that such institutions’ emergence, configuration, and breakdown may hold for rethinking institution-building in today’s developing world.

Wilfried De Wever

Advisor – Justice Innovation Investment

Head of the Justice Accelerator initiative and coordinator of the Justice Investment Program at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiilL), Wilfried guides innovation scale-up processes and connects investors with top justice innovators. The HiiL investor network ranges from private individuals such as lawyers or judges who want to invest in justice initiatives, to professional venture capitalists and institutional investors.

Steven Druker, JD

Advisor – Public Interest Law
Altered Genes, Twisted Truth

Public interest attorney and Executive Director of the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, Steven is an advocate for environmental health and food safety, and an expert regarding risks of GMOs. His 2015 book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, was hailed by Jane Goodall in her foreword as "one of the most important books of the last 50 years." In 2017 he received the Luxembourg Peace Prize for exceptional achievement on behalf of the environment. He's been a featured speaker at the Commonwealth Club of California, the City Club of Cleveland, the Silicon Valley Health Institute, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and numerous other organizations worldwide.

Gillian Hadfield, JD, PhD Economics

Advisor – Innovation in Law and Dispute Resolution
Rules for a Flat World

Director of the USC Center for Law and Social Science, Gillian is in the forefront of the movement to adapt legal systems to a world being rapidly transformed by globalization and technology. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Technology, Values and Policy; the World Justice Project’s Research Consortium; and is advisor to a variety of justice organizations and legal-tech ventures. Her book Rules for a Flat World has become essential reading for anyone concerned with legal institutions, innovation, and technology.

Anwar Kashif Mumtaz

Advisor – Emerging Economies

A practicing advocate in corporate and tax law, Anwar is immediate past president of the Pakistan Mediators Association; has been vice president of the Public Interest Law Association of Pakistan, a member of Pakistan’s business delegation to the Republic of China, delegate to JCI World Congresses, etc. Anwar is a member of the International Bar Association, IBA.

Giovanni Rodriguez

Advisor – Communications Strategy
Forbes (magazine)

An innovator in branding and communications, Giovanni is a founding partner of The Silicon Valley Story Lab, a media and content-strategy consulting firm dedicated to advancing the art and science of storytelling for the purpose-driven enterprise. He has advised dozens of start-ups—from market entry to exit—and organizations as diverse as The White House (the Obama years), the AARP, Intel, Microsoft, Google, SAP, Stanford University, and Singularity University (which he helped to launch in 2009). He writes what he learns in his business and his travels for Forbes, where he has been a regular contributor since 2011.

Ana Sambold, Esq.

Advisor – Mediation and Arbitration

Ana is co-chair of the California Lawyers Association's Civil Litigation Section ADR Committee and a board member of the Southern California Mediation Association; is active in the American Bar Association’s ADR Section; and teaches conflict resolution and intercultural diversity with the National Conflict Resolution Center. She has mediated more than 700 civil cases, including complex business matters and disputes between culturally diverse parties.

Tom Stipanowich, JD

Advisor – Dispute Resolution Law

Tom holds the William Webster Chair at Pepperdine Law School where he heads the famed Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, top-ranked by U.S. News in thirteen of the last fourteen years. He is a much-cited, award-winning author of many books and articles on arbitration and dispute resolution; an arbitrator and mediator of large and complex commercial disputes in the U.S. and internationally; and a recognized expert on dispute resolution law and practice with affiliations to leading law schools and institutions worldwide.

Alex Tudorache

Advisor – ICO Marketing

With a sales/marketing background, Alex has helped guide marketing programs in a wide range of industries, including telecom and high-risk payment processing. His experience in affiliate marketing is extensive, beginning as an Amazon affiliate and ultimately heading ActionPay's multinational affiliate program for two years. A blockchain enthusiast and cryptocurrency investor himself, Alex currently applies his marketing expertise advising high-performing ICOs.

John Sorflaten, PhD

Advisor – Human Factors, UX, Predictive Markets

John is an innovator in usability assessment and optimization for information systems of all kinds. For nearly three decades his work has helped “institutionalize” usability best-practices within some of the largest and most significant organizations in the world. He has taught and applied human-factors and usability principles for a wide variety of clients, including Volkswagen, Sprint, Northrop Grumman, McKesson-HBOC, Pershing, Allen-Bradley (Rockwell Collins), Reuters, Avery Dennison, the U.S. Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Department of Defense, among others.

Team

Mark Deuitch

Founder & CEO

Mark conceived and developed PeopleClaim, the world’s largest online community-based dispute resolution system, to expand access to civil justice. He is launching Rhubarb Fund and RHUCoin to further that goal, bringing rapid distributed consensus mechanisms to legal settlements and other forms of dispute resolution. Mark also founded RateADrug.com, which crowdsources user experiences with prescription drugs and supplements and will soon be offering a cryptocurrency to let patients monetize the value of their health data.

Prior to PeopleClaim Mark was an investment banker at Oppenheimer and Regal International Capital. He earned an M.A. at the University of St. Andrews.

Vishant Patil

Technical Architect

One of the original PeopleClaim developers and part of the core Rhubarb launch team, Vishant is responsible for architectural development, coding, and tech team handling. An engineering graduate in Computer Science and Engineering, Vishant has more than 12 years’ experience in system architecture, UML, Domain Driven Development, and Microsoft technologies. He has paid close attention to blockchain technology developments since 2016.

Paul Anastasio

UX/UI Designer – Applications

Paul rejoins the team he worked with at PeopleClaim to help launch Rhubarb Fund and RHUCoin. Most recently Paul has been UX/UI designer at London video curator Findie, and web developer at Softbinator Algorithms of Bucharest, Romania.

Naresh Naidu

Project Manager

A ten-year team member at PeopleClaim, Naresh brings more than 15 years experience in design and development to Rhubarb. Naresh has extensive background in UML model designing through class Diagrams, ERD, and sequence diagrams; and experience in Domain Driven Development; and is well versed in managing from the perspective of enterprise needs.

Mukesh Haval

Senior Software Developer

A five-year PeopleClaim veteran and engineering graduate in Computer Science and Engineering, Mukesh brings eight years of technical development expertise to Rhubarb. His core expertise includes Microsoft .NET and system integration.

Sagar Radam

Senior Web Developer

A developer with a talent for graphic design, Sagar's contribution is already noticeable on the Rhubarb site. He's been part of the PeopleClaim team for four years, has five years’ experience in responsive web development, and is familiar with JavaScript, HTML, and CSS.

Kim Sinton

Technical Advisor

Project manager at the launch of PeopleClaim, Kim is a senior software engineer at LifeLock Symantec. Prior roles include senior web application development at Apple’s retail division, and senior front-end developer at CBS Interactive in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Abdul Rehman

Technical Advisor

As a former architect / developer at PeopleClaim and its affiliated site FastDue, Abdul brings insight into the online dispute resolution process. He currently leads the Architecture and Technical Design group for Assurance Client Technology Services at EY, and has more than 15 years’ experience designing and developing custom applications from medium to enterprise scale. Prior to joining EY, Abdul worked as a consultant with Magenic Technologies, developing mobile and distributed solutions for various industries including health, risk management, and banking. Current interests include AI and public blockchains.