Joshua S. Levine

Joshua S. Levine is a founder and partner of Kita Capital Management, LLC., an information technology consulting, operating and investing firm, since 2006.

From 2007, until its exit with ITG (Investment Technology Group) in 2010, he was the CEO and Director, of ESP Technologies Corp., a financial technology solutions provider to asset managers. He joined ESP as CEO and invested with Credit Suisse, Bear Stearns and Susquehanna Growth Equity. ESP was named to the Inc. 5000, the Red Herring North America 100, and Deloitte's Technology Fast 500. Levine was also a finalist for the 2009 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Under his leadership, annual revenues grew from $12 million in 2006 to over $50 million in 2010.

Prior to ESP, he was the Chief Technology and Operations Officer of E*TRADE FINANCIAL, the online financial services company, where he was responsible for the company's global technology, operations and customer service. In 2001, he moved E*TRADE completely to open-source technologies.

At E*TRADE, Levine was also a member of the companyʼs Office of the President and managed the European business, with subsidiaries in the United Kingdom, Germany, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Israel and South Africa. He brought the European business from a loss of $60 million in 2001 to breakeven in 2002 and profitability in 2003. In 2004 and 2005, Europe had the highest growth rate of all E*TRADEʼs businesses.

He received many industry awards, including InfoWorldʻs “Top 25 most influential CTOʼs”, CIO magazineʼs “CIO 100”, CIO Forumʼs “Top 20 financial IT executives”, Keynoteʼs best transaction speed and reliability, the “Webby” for the best banking and bill pay on the internet, and the “Stevie” for the best technology team.

Before joining E*TRADE in 1999, Levine was Managing Director and Global Head of Equity Technology at Deutsche Bank, where he was responsible for the technology development and systems for Equity Sales and Trading, Equity Finance and Equity Derivatives worldwide. During his tenure, he successfully integrated two major acquisitions, Bankers Trust and NatWest Markets.

Prior to Deutsche Bank, he was a Managing Director at Morgan Stanley serving in various leading technology roles for 12 years.

Levine is currently a board director of Xceedium, a network security appliance company. Previously, he has been a director of Logical Information Machines, a financial technology data provider purchased by Morningstar; Archivas, a storage software company purchased by Hitachi Data Systems; Securify, a network appliance company purchased by McAfee; and StorageApps, a storage appliance company purchased by Hewlett-Packard.

Levine is a board member of DonorsChoose.org, connecting philanthropy and public education through technology and a board member of NPower, helping non-profits with affordable IT services. He is also a Young Associate Director of The Metropolitan Opera.

He was a member of the National Academies committee on “Improving Processes and Policies for the Acquisition and Test of Information Technologies in the Department of Defense”. Levine is a former advisory board member to the National Counterterrorism Center in the Dept. of National Intelligence and former Georgia Technology Authority member, appointed by Georgiaʼs Governor for a 3-year term in July 2000.

He co-authored a textbook, “Application Systems in APL”, published by Prentice-Hall. Levine is a graduate of the Bronx High School of Science and dropped out of Syracuse University to pursue a career in computing. In 2001, he received an honorary D.Sc. from the University of Georgia, Southern Polytechnic State University. Levine is currently licensed by FINRA with a Series 7, 63 and 24.