Growing up, our co-founder, Samara Andrieux, saw firsthand the consequences and the aftermath of what payday loans did to her community, family, and friends.

 

The personal stress and devastation she saw came roaring back as she worked on her Master of Public Health, where she studied data showing the link between economic stress and poor health outcomes.  The research specifically called out payday lending as a source of stress.  

 

While pursuing her career in Public Health, she became frustrated that she was dealing with the symptoms of poor health and not the root causes.   She kept coming back to the link between economic stress and health.  And decided to change course and focus on getting people out of the vicious payday lending cycle.   Fundshine was born from this original mission. 

 

Dave, our co-founder and CEO, was an early Advisor to Samara. After 23 years in the ad tech space, where his primary mission was to drive product sales, he joined as a co-founder because he loved the opportunity to have a positive impact on the folks who have been buying these products and needed help reducing debt.   He brought former colleague Alexey Solvtsov in as CTO.   Alexey also shares a passion for applying his skills to impact customers positively.