Michael J. Brown co-founded Euronet in 1994 and has served as its Chief Executive Officer ever since. He is chairman of Euronet’s board of directors and the Company’s President. An accomplished entrepreneur with 30+ years of combined experience in the computer software and digital payments business, he is actively involved in Euronet’s day-to-day operations while overseeing the company’s business strategy, financial performance and growth across all markets. Mr. Brown’s guidance has been instrumental in developing Euronet’s global cash/digital payments network and diverse products and services that provide Euronet with resiliency to changing market conditions and continual year-over-year growth in the global payments marketplace. Following early successes in his career with Kansas City-area companies Informix and Visual Tools, Mr. Brown founded Euronet in 1994 in Budapest, Hungary, by installing the first independent, non-bank-owned ATM network in Central Europe. Guiding the company through several strategic acquisitions and technology endeavors since then, Mr. Brown has grown Euronet to approximately 10,000 employees and 67 offices worldwide. He has also brought financial inclusion and convenience to businesses and consumers through a payments network spanning 200 countries and territories. A lifelong Kansas Citian, Mr. Brown is an active supporter and past and present board member of many Kansas City-area charities. Please see Mr. Brown’s complete biography here.
Paul S. Althasen has served on our board of directors since May 2003. He joined Euronet in February 2003 in connection with Euronet’s acquisition of e-pay Limited, a UK company. Mr. Althasen served as Executive Vice President of Euronet until his resignation on April 2, 2012. Mr. Althasen is a co-founder and former CEO and Co-Managing Director of e-pay, and he was responsible for the strategic direction of e-pay from its formation in 1999 until April 2012. From 1989 to 1999, Mr. Althasen was a co-founder and Managing Director of MPC Mobile Phone Center, a franchised retailer of cellular phones in the UK. Previously, Mr. Althasen worked for Chemical Bank in London where he traded financial securities. From 2008 to 2016, Mr. Althasen served as a director of Evolve Telecom Ltd., a B2B provider of telecommunication services. Mr. Althasen currently serves as a director of Lodwick Homes Ltd. Since 2008, Mr. Althasen has been a director of Pier Insurance Managed Services Ltd., where he holds joint responsibility for the company’s strategic direction and general management. Mr. Althasen has a B.A. (Honors) degree in business studies from the City of London Business School.
Sara Baack was appointed to our board of directors in February 2024. Since 2022, Ms. Baack has been a Founding Partner at Snowhawk LP, a private investment firm that targets strategic majority investments in businesses that power the economy's digital transition across cloud, connectivity and technology services sectors. She served as Chief Product Officer of Equinix, Inc., a global interconnection and data center company, from 2019 to 2022. Previously, she was Equinix’s Chief Marketing Officer from 2012 to 2019. Ms. Baack currently serves on the board of cloud management firm ProsperOps. Ms. Baack was a director of Splunk Inc. from December 2017 until February 2023. Ms. Baack holds a B.A. from Rice University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School where she was a Baker Scholar.
Michael N. Frumkin has served on our board of directors since June 2020. Mr. Frumkin has more than 25 years of experience in technical and management leadership roles in fast-growth, high-performance technology companies, including Silicon Valley icons like NeXT and Google. He was responsible for critical engineering functions at Verity, Excite, and Google, all of whom went from startups to successful IPOs during his tenure. In 1995, he joined a small 10-person startup that built one of the first full-scale commercial internet search engines that eventually became Excite@Home, a multi-billion dollar public company. In his tenure at Excite, Mr. Frumkin was responsible for core company functions like web crawl and e-commerce engineering. After Excite, Mr. Frumkin spent several years as the Chief Technology Officer of Gamechange, the seed stage collaboration between Accenture Technology Ventures and Softbank Venture Capital, where he was responsible for technical due diligence and providing management guidance to portfolio companies. In 2002, pursuing a desire to go back to his more technical distributed computing roots, he joined Google, where his responsibilities ranged from managing large engineering teams responsible for most of Google’s revenue to overseeing critical internal software infrastructure projects. At various points in time, he was responsible for building the engineering teams, operating AdWords and the initial launch of AdSense, and building Google’s personalization infrastructure. In 2012, Mr. Frumkin founded the Google Accelerated Science research team within Google Research. This team worked with leading scientific institutions and universities around the world to increase the pace of discovery in important scientific research by bringing Google’s expertise in machine intelligence and machine perception to bear on fundamental science problems. Mr. Frumkin retired from Google in 2023. Mr. Frumkin holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT.
Mr. Herrero is currently the Chairman of the Board at Intix, a transaction data analytics fintech for banks and securities houses. Mr. Herrero also serves on the board of Ezra, a fintech company based in the Middle East. Previously, he was Meta’s Global Director of Payments and Commerce from 2016 to 2019. At Meta, he created a global partnership team to deploy and grow Meta’s payments and commerce platform. Mr. Herrero holds master’s degrees in Management from the University of California, Berkley, and Ramon Llulll University, Spain, and a BS in Electrical Engineering from Ramon Llull University, Spain.
Thomas A. McDonnell has been a Director of Euronet since its incorporation in December 1996, and he previously served on the boards of Euronet’s predecessor companies. He has served as Lead Independent Director since September 2014. From October 1984 until September 12, 2012, he served as Chief Executive Officer of DST Systems, Inc., a former stockholder of Euronet. From September 12, 2012, through December 31, 2012, he served as non-executive Chairman of DST Systems, Inc. From 1973 to September 1995, he served as Treasurer of DST Systems, Inc. From January 1, 2013, until his retirement on December 31, 2014, Mr. McDonnell was President and Chief Executive Officer of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Mr. McDonnell is currently a director of ENDI Corp., where he is a member of the audit committee. Mr. McDonnell has a B.S. in Accounting from Rockhurst University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of Finance.
Dr. Andrzej Olechowski has served on our board of directors since May 2002. He previously served as a Director of Euronet from its incorporation in December 1996 until May 2000. From 2005 until 2009 when he retired, Dr. Olechowski was the President of Conseil DG, a Polish consulting company. From 1995 until 2008, Dr. Olechowski served as a Senior Advisor for Central Europe Trust, Poland, a consulting firm. He has held several senior positions with the Polish government where he was Minister of Foreign Affairs (1993-1995) and Minister of Finance (1992). From 1992 to 1993 and again in 1995, he served as economic advisor to President Lech Walesa. From 1991 to 1992, he was Secretary of State in the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations, and from 1989 to 1991 he was Deputy Governor of the National Bank of Poland. From May 1998 to June 2000, Dr. Olechowski served as the Chairman of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A. (Poland). From 2011 to 2020, Dr. Olechowski was a Professor at Vistula University. He is Honorary Chairman of Supervisory Board of Bank Handlowy w Warszawie S.A. (Poland) and sits on the boards of various charitable and educational foundations. He received a Ph.D. in Economics in 1979 from the Central School of Planning and Statistics in Warsaw.
Andrew B. Schmitt has served on our board of directors since September 24, 2003. Mr. Schmitt served as President and Chief Executive Officer of Layne Christensen Company from October 1993 until his retirement on January 31, 2012. For approximately two years prior to joining Layne Christensen Company, Mr. Schmitt was a partner in two privately owned hydrostatic pump and motor manufacturing companies and an oil and gas service company. He served as President of the Tri-State Oil Tools Division of Baker Hughes Incorporated from February 1988 to October 1991. Currently, Mr. Schmitt serves on the board of directors of FreightCar America, Inc., where he chairs the compensation committee and is a member of the nominating and corporate governance committee. Mr. Schmitt served as a director of Layne Christensen Company until his retirement in 2012. Mr. Schmitt holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Alabama School of Commerce and Business.
Mr. Sprong retired after a nearly 40-year-long career at KPMG, where he most recently served as Managing Partner, National Private Enterprise division. During his time with KPMG, Mr. Sprong guided many of the firm’s clients across a variety of industries through various transformations, regulatory changes, turnarounds and periods of rapid growth. Mr. Sprong holds a Bachelor of Science degree from William Jewell College in Liberty, Missouri.
M. Jeannine Strandjord, CPA, has more than 50 years of financial management experience and was employed in three different industries after starting in public accounting on the audit staff of Ernst and Whinney in 1968. For 20 years, beginning in 1985, she held several senior financial management roles at Sprint Corporation. She managed the successful transformation and restructuring of Sprint as Chief Integration Officer from 2003 until 2005 when she retired. Previously, she was Senior VP and Chief Financial Officer of Global Solutions, a $9 billion division, from 1998 until 2003, and was Controller and Treasurer from 1986 to 1998. Ms. Strandjord was a director of American Century Mutual Funds (for six registered investment companies) from 1994 to 2018; was a director of DST Systems, Inc., from 1996 to 2012; and has been a director of MGP Ingredients from 2013 until May 2022. She has also been a director of JE Dunn Construction Corporation, a private company, from 2006 until December 2020. Her current non-profit board position is with the KU Medical Center Advancement Board, which she chairs. Past non-profit boards include Rockhurst University, the Heartland Chapter of the National Association for Corporate Directors, the Kansas City Community Foundation, the World War I Museum, the Truman Library Institute and the Ewing M. Kauffman Foundation. She has been a Director of Euronet since 2001 and is currently the chair of the audit committee. She also served as Lead Independent Director from 2010 to 2014. Ms. Strandjord holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and business administration from the University of Kansas. She was named “National Director of the Year” by the National Association of Corporate Directors in 2020.
Ligia Torres Fentanes has served on our board of directors since December 2022. Ms. Torres' professional experience includes more than 30 years in the financial sector across capital markets, wealth management and asset management, where she held operational, managerial and board positions covering Latin America, Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa. The last 20 years of her professional career were within the BNP Paribas Group. From 2013 until her retirement in 2021, she worked in the asset management division, where she first led the emerging market activities to subsequently become Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Pacific region based in Hong Kong. At present, she is a Director of the Union de Banque Privee (UBP) in Switzerland, Alfred Berg AM (Norway) and the board chair of RAM, an alternative asset management company of Medio Banca Group. Ms. Torres has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Instituto Teconologico Autonomo de Mexico (ITAM) and postgraduate degrees in International Finance and Derivatives from HEC (Paris) and from the University of Paris Dauphine IX. She has followed the Oxford University program on corporate sustainability leadership and the non-executive director program of the Financial Times, focused on corporate governance. She is fluent in English, Spanish, French and Italian.