Ed Benson

Ed Benson is currently the Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at AIQUEOUS. Prior to this, they served as the Chief Information and Business Systems Officer at Farm Credit Bank of Texas from January 2013 to December 2021. In this role, they were responsible for leading 70% of the organization's resources and annual budget of $98MM. Ed provided operations, product, technology, and financial services for 14 member banks with $35B in combined assets and $1.4B in revenues. Ed also drove automation, cloud, and process solutions in IT, Finance, and Credit to improve operations and reduce risk.

Some of their notable achievements include successfully creating and communicating vision and direction for a $200MM multi-year, major digital modernization effort comprising a front-to-back suite of products for internal users and customers. Ed also directly collaborated with 100+ loan officers and administrators representing 2500 field employees. In addition, they advised and collaborated with the CEO & Board to communicate vision, gain support, and align business and IT strategy - greatly improving culture and reducing turnover by 80%.

Other notable accomplishments include rebuilding the Project Management Office, improving cybersecurity, employing customer-centric technology, and deploying culture approaches to enable a major release and deliver seamless business continuity during COVID-19. Ed also reduced risk to ensure federal SOX, financial, and other regulatory compliance and reporting while streamlining core processes. In addition, they leveraged their finance and business background to negotiate multimillion-dollar contracts to generate higher revenue and EBITDA.

Ed Benson has also served as a voting member of the Bank's Asset Liability Committee leading to continued growth and profitability. Ed has also restructured and merged IT and Business Systems Departments. Under their leadership, contractor staff was reduced by 20% (58 contractors) by focusing on optimization so the team could move faster with better results.

Ed Benson has a Master of Business Administration (M.B.A.) from the Texas McCombs School of Business, a Master's Degree in Mechanical Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin, and an EE in Electrical Engineering and Spanish from The Johns Hopkins University.

Megan Sommer - Technical Project Manager, Raven Mckinley - Technical Project Manager, and Ian Johnston - Technical Project Manager report to Ed Benson. Some of their coworkers include and Sam Starett - Director of Operations. Ed Benson reports to Jonathan Kleinman, Co-Founder & CEO.