Founder/President/Director

Nico R. Willis

Mr. Willis leverages his 25 years of experience in the financial services industry to oversee the strategic growth and development of the company. He is currently the CEO of NetWorth Services, Inc., a fintech and SaaS company he founded in 1997. Mr. Willis also serves as the Co-Founder and Managing Director of Agora AltX, creator of the bank and fund administration platform used by IACF.

Throughout his career, Mr. Willis has applied and received four patents for his proprietary software, Netbasis. After a lengthy 10-year process, Netbasis was awarded a patent. Netbasis identifies and accounts for corporate actions, such as stock splits, mergers, spin-offs and dividend reinvestment that may have occurred during the holding period. Solutions developed by NetWorth Services have been adopted by many leading financial institutions, government agencies, Fortune 500 organizations, as well as individual investors. Netbasis provided the technology the IRS used to audit capital gains returns for its landmark 2005 Tax Gap Report. The Netbasis technology became the information used to determine the overstating basis used in the GAO report. NetWorth Services is the only vendor company to ever partner with the IRS in this capacity.

Prior to founding NetWorth Services in 1997, Mr. Willis served in various executive management positions for several well-known financial institutions including Prudential Securities, UBS Paine Weber, and Piper Jaffray. He managed hundreds of millions of dollars in assets. He began his career in the upper quintile ranking as a first-year broker and continued to accelerate his career each year.

Specialties: Mr. Willis is the author of the first visionary book on Robo-Advising, Death of the American Investor and the Emergence of the Global eShareholder. Mr. Willis has appeared on FOX News, numerous radio talk shows and quoted in major publications such as the WSJ, Forbes, USA Today as a subject matter expert. Mr. Willis also co-created and co-hosted a successful radio talk show called “The Wall Street Hour,” featuring financial news and influential guests.

Board Member/Director

Matthew Smailey

Mr. Smailey serves as the Chief Systems Architect and leads the Agora AltX and NetWorth Services’ long-term technology vision and is the lead author of Pathchain™ blockchain technology. Mr. Smailey also oversees the development of the Agora AltX permissioned Hyperledger Fabric blockchain network as well as the Agora AltX platform written in Go.

Prior to joining Agora AltX, Mr. Smailey has served as a Systems Architect, Senior Developer and Manager of Network Operations for LawCent, U.K.-based Monster Marketing, and Vuria, where he established a reputation for greatly reducing data center operating costs while significantly increasing operating performance by migrating infrastructure from clustered to cloud-based hosting environments.

Mr. Smailey’s experience also includes overseeing the successful development of a payment processing service with a strong focus on compliance and security through which thousands of transactions were processed daily.

As Chief Systems Architect, Mr. Smailey provides both Agora AltX and NetWorth (NWS) the vision and leadership in the formation of the blockchain as well as a hybrid graph and relational database environment utilizing NWS graph ID technology within the AWS cloud environment. Mr. Smailey is also responsible for the diverse channels of data transmission and interface capabilities within the NetWorth product line by utilizing the cross-platform API protocols.

Secretary/Director

Marisa Diaz

Ms. Diaz attended Villanova University and has more than 16 years of experience in public relations and communications. Her professional experience includes serving as a Public Relations Executive for Dorland, Sweeney & Jones and The Sage Group in the position of PR/Communications Executive, where she was responsible for Fortune 500 accounts in addition to coordinating vendors and contractors on specific PR events and projects. Additional business experiences include serving as President and CEO of Pro-Sports and Entertainment Management, a management consulting company, where she managed the company staff and retained a clientele of professional athletes and people in the entertainment industry.

As Senior Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, Ms. Diaz effectively articulates the vision and position of NetWorth Services to the media, investors, and potential clients. Her design to implement the CRM initiative within the company has allowed these two departments, in conjunction with the others, to form comprehensive relationships at all points of contact. Ms. Diaz’s efforts are the driving force behind NetWorth Services’ outstanding reputation for its customer service.

Board Member/Director

Matt James

Mr. James is a Visual Strategist for Invest in America Charitable Fund (IACF). He graduated from the University of Advancing Technology and has been working professionally in the graphic arts industry for more than 15 years. Being part of the team that created the branding for Agora AltX including the logo and front-end design of the application is one of the recent projects he is most proud of. Every now and then during a harvest moon, his keyboard and mouse are traded in for an electric guitar and amplifier.