As a serial entrepreneur, board and advisory board member, corporate finance consultant, and Director of Investor Relations for a public company, Jeff Parness has helped to raise over $150 million in private equity and public financing for every stage company from startup through IPO in all market cycles.

He most recently founded and serves as Chairman of The New York Says Thank You Foundation, a nationwide disaster relief non-profit organization that sends volunteers from New York City each year on the 9/11 Anniversary to help rebuild communities around the United States affected by disaster.

Prior to that Parness served as Executive Chairman and remains an Advisory Board member to TeleContinuity, a telecom disaster recovery company focused on the government and insurance industry and backed by a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce National Institute of Standards. In 2001, he co-founded Elematics, an optical network provisioning Software Company backed by Warburg Pincus and started by VenturiFX, a seed-stage venture capital fund he co-founded.

Parness also helped to raise $77 million for Arbinet (Nasdaq:ARBX), the world’s leading real-time exchange for global telecommunications capacity and the highest single day performing IPO on the Nasdaq in 2004. Parness’ decision-making process in the initial venture capital financing of Arbinet is featured in a Harvard Business School case study, which has been taught at leading universities nationwide.

Parness helped to manage the initial public offering process and served as the first Director of Investor Relations for IDT Corporation (NYSE: IDT), the global telecommunications company started by Howard Jonas, and the parent company of Net2Phone (Nasdaq: NTOP), a leader in Internet telephony.

A graduate of the University of Michigan, Parness served as a White House intern in the Office of Public Liaison for Defense and Foreign Policy under President Reagan.

In May 2005, Parness received the Melvin Jones Fellow Award for Humanitarian Service from the Lions Club International Foundation. Parness lives in New York City with his wife Sandra Hauser, an attorney at Sonnenschein, and his two sons, Evan and Josh.

Mr Jeff Parness

Chairman, New York Says Thank You Foundation

• Staff, The White House Office, Public Liaison for Defense & Foreign Policy (1982)
• Director, Investor Relations for IDT Corporation
• Founder, Elematics