About this blog

I am David Schapiro, CEO of Earnix, and The Optimalist is the first blog on the Web dedicated entirely to price optimization and customer value management in the Financial Services.  Our focus in this blog is business-oriented, although we will occasionally welcome posts containing interesting technical insights. I am a professional seaman by past career and an avid windsurfer, which explains the name of this blog, as well as the photo.

About My Guest Bloggers:

Barak Melnik
Barak is a Strategic Decision Making and Change Management expert for financial institutions. He serves as Vice President of Product Strategy and Business Development at Earnix. Prior to Earnix Barak worked at the London office of McKinsey & Co., serving leading Financial Institutions on a broad array of strategic and operational topics in Europe and in the USA. Barak holds an MBA degree from Wharton Business School of University of Pennsylvania, and a B.Sc in Industrial Engineering from the Technological Institute of Israel (Technion).

Dr. Anand Medepalli
Anand is a senior price and revenue management expert, specializing in the delivery of high-impact price and revenue optimization solutions to large companies. He served as Vice President of Sales at Earnix. Prior to Earnix, he was Vice President of Revenue Management at Manugistics, where he led the strategic direction of the company’s Revenue Management solutions for the travel and transportation industries. Anand holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Iowa State University.   

Elizabeth Macnair
With over 20 years of industry experience, Elizabeth Macnair, PhD, joined Earnix Inc. in 2008 as Senior Banking Consultant. Prior to joining Earnix, Inc., Dr. Macnair was a Senior Vice President for Citigroup in Risk Management for the Commercial Business Group, where she also held leadership positions in risk management and portfolio management for credit card and consumer portfolios and served as the Senior Director for Global Business Modeling. Prior to Citigroup, Dr. Macnair led Global Modeling for the Associates. She led portfolio and modeling initiatives across the globe and in the U.S.

Through her corporate and research experience, Dr. Macnair has developed a broad expertise in the banking industry, including consumer auto, consumer, credit card, home equity, and mortgage lending, consumer retail and deposits, and commercial capital, small business, and middle markets lending. Prior to joining the corporate world, Dr. Macnair was employed as a Professor of Economics whose research focused on banking regulation and regulatory compliance.

Marcus Looft
Marcus Looft is Senior Consultant and technical representative of Earnix in Germany based in Frankfurt. Mr. Looft was most recently the Leading Consultant for Non-Life services at Watson Wyatt in Germany, an international actuarial consulting company and prior to that held actuarial and business roles at the Swiss Headquarters of Winterthur Group, a global insurance company now part of Axa Insurance Group.

Dan Dolberger
Dan manages an independent boutique consultancy specializing in technology innovation marketing. Dolberger’s marketing and business development solutions helps early to mid-stage ventures focus their products and markets, and translate innovative concepts into market realities. Prior to Dolberger’s, Dan served as Director of Marketing at Earnix. Dan holds a Masters degree in Social Psychology from the Tel Aviv University.