Earnee was created by friends, neighbors, and tired parents Michal & Ely Lenik and Ari & Faigy Gilder. The Leniks, after another night of fighting with their kids about homework, knew there had to be a better way to get through the day. They started a family currency system to smooth over daily grind, high-friction moments – and it was life-changing. The Leniks shared their new lifehack with lots of friends, including the Gilders, who were immediately intrigued. With their powers combined, the four friends got to work building a custom app to use with their own children and share with tired, practical parents everywhere.
Earnee Leadership
Michal Lenik, CDO (Chief Design Officer)
Michal firmly believes the best design is invisible and is behind the elegant simplicity of the Earnee app.
She is a seasoned product design manager with almost 10 years of experience in the field. She is currently working at Vanguard as the Manager of Product Design where is responsible for managing stakeholder relations, hiring, design thinking, and team building.
Before joining Vanguard, Michael worked as a Product Design Lead and Manager at Bowery Valuation where she led a team of four designers and oversaw three feature teams.
Ely Lenik, CEO
Ely is a highly accomplished program manager with nearly ten years of experience guiding cutting-edge products from conception to launch…including Earnee, of course.
He is an experienced Director of Customer Success and Support who has worked for companies in the data analytics and technology industries. Since July 2021, Lenik has been working at Torqata Data and Analytics as Director of Customer Success and Support. Additionally, he is a member of Gain Grow Retain, an open community for customer success leaders. Before joining Torqata, Ely worked for Vaporstream, Inc. as Director of Customer Success where he started the customer success organization and created onboarding and deployment processes.
Ari Gilder, CTO
After reaching his Google Bar Mitzvah milestone, Ari was ready for a new, more personal challenge – using his software engineering experience to make the hardest job in the world just a little bit easier.
Ari is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Google where he currently working on improving search quality through semantic modeling and understanding users’ search queries. He has worked on multiple teams and projects, leading teams and contributing to innovative product development including on Google News, the Pixel Camera, and Google Maps. His claim to fame is leading the team responsible for building the “Search Along Your Route” feature in Google Maps Navigation.
Faigy Gilder, CMO
Faigy loves marketing with a purpose. She works with nonprofit organizations to help them market their missions and communicate with their audiences more effectively. After many years working in-house at a wide range of organizations, she decided to open her own shop.
Prior to her current role, she served as the Communications Director for the National Organization of Social Security Claimants’ Representatives (NOSSCR), the nation’s leading association for Social Security disability attorneys and representatives for more than four years. She built and executed communication strategies for the association’s benefits to 2,500+ members and in-person annual conferences with 1,000 attendees.