Samuel J. Foti (Sam) is Chairman and Co-founder of Abbey Technologies. Sam is a seasoned executive with vast experience in a wide range of businesses focused on financial services and technology.
Throughout his career, Sam has been recognized as a visionary in utilizing technology to create real market advantage. As a long-term consumer of enterprise level technology, he understands the issues and opportunities from a true client perspective. In his current capacity as Chairman of Abbey Technologies, he brings that tremendous business insight to company clients.
Sam began his career at MetLife where he led many of MetLife’s transformation initiatives including the company’s creation of an alternate distribution strategy, its acquisition of Century 21 real estate and the expansion of MetLife’s property and casualty subsidiary.
Sam joined MONY (The Mutual of New York) as the National Director of Agency Operations and held a variety of positions including Chief Marketing Officer, Executive Vice President, and, ultimately, President and Chief Operating Officer. In this capacity Sam played a key role in the demutualization of MONY and its listing on the NYSE. He also engineered multiple innovative growth initiatives including the acquisition of the Advest Group, Lebenthal, and U.S. Financial Life.
Sam has served on numerous Boards including the MONY Group Inc., MONY Life Insurance Company, The Enterprise Group of Funds, LIMRA and The American College, among others. He held the position of Chairman of the Board of both LIMRA and The American College.
Sam received his undergraduate degree from the Wharton School of Business and his masters from the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. He also read law at the University of Oxford, Keble College.
Rick Connors is President, CEO and Co-founder of Abbey Technologies. Rick is in the unique position of having been both a client of technology vendors and a technology vendor. As a financial services executive he was dependent upon technology to deliver the products and services that defined his company’s value proposition. If the technology failed, was late, or exceeded the budget, he saw (and felt) the negative impact firsthand. If it succeeded, he witnessed the great advantage that good technology, properly implemented provided. As the President and CEO of a technology company, Rick saw the obstacles and opportunities inherent in the client/vendor relationship. He saw the importance of treating the clients’ business as if it was his own. Abbey Technology was born from that experience and that of his co-founders. It is a company created for business impact and economic advantage.
As background, Rick began his career at Metlife and later joined MONY as Vice President where he held various roles including Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer and President of MONY International and MONY Annuities.
Upon AXA’s acquisition of MONY, Rick joined AdminServer as President and CEO. AdminServer was a leading edge platform for product development that was recognized as an industry leader by both Celent and Gartner. When Oracle acquired AdminServer, Rick assumed the role of General Manager of the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit. In this role he was responsible for integration of a number of Oracle acquisitions into the Oracle platform for insurance.
Rick has an undergraduate degree from Stony Brook University and an MBA from the University of Richmond. He has served on numerous boards including Mony Life Insurance Company of the Americas, the NFL Alumni Association and the University of Richmond.
Duane Pressley is Senior Vice President and CIO of Abbey Technology. Duane leads Abbey’s innovative vision and is responsible for the implementation of cutting edge tools and techniques to deliver transformational solutions with industry leading levels of speed and efficiency. Under Duane’s leadership, the Abbey development teams understand the How you build software is just as important as What software you build.
Prior to joining Abbey, Duane served as the founding CTO of Graphite GTC. In this role Mr. Pressley was responsible for the design and delivery of a No Code/Low Code platform designed to reduce the time and knowledge required to deliver Enterprise-class software. The platform was a manifestation of Duane’s belief that the future of software development will be characterized using tools/techniques designed to foster collaboration between Subject Matter Experts and Developers by removing or abstracting away technical details.
Duane has held senior leadership positions with both Oracle and AdminServer. As Chief Technology Officer of AdminServer, Duane led teams responsible for the development and delivery of an industry leading Insurance Policy Administration System. The system was recognized by Gartner as the most advanced and flexible Policy Administration System in the industry. At Oracle, Duane served as the Senior Director Software Development for Oracle’s Global Insurance Business Unit where he led efforts to integrate divergent systems into the Oracle global platform.
Duane had also held positions with Microsoft, the Wharton Business School, Rohm and Haas and AstraZeneca. Duane received his formal computer education at Drexel University where he majored in Computer Science.
