Andy and Sara Kurtzig
Board of Directors and Co-Founders of JaxFund
Andy Kurtzig
Andy is the founder and CEO of JustAnswer, a San Francisco-based company with an office in Ukraine since 2010. JustAnswer currently has 252 employees and their families struggling through this crisis in Ukraine. JustAnswer’s mission is simple: to help people. The company has democratized professional services by connecting customers with verified and vetted Experts who provide reliable answers at any hour and on any budget. JustAnswer members enjoy round-the-clock access to 12,000+ doctors, lawyers, tech support, mechanics, vets, home repair pros, and more. In the last 18 years, we have helped 10 million customers in 196 countries. Andy has poured his heart and soul into this company and continues to do so during this crisis. In his spare time, he likes to go on dates with Sara and spend 1:1 time with each of his 3 kids. He also likes to ski, play cards, and enjoys fantasy football, the Las Vegas Raiders, Oakland A’s, and Golden State Warriors.
Sara Kurtzig
Sara is the co-founder of JaxFund. She has a background in fundraising after working and volunteering for over two decades for the Arthritis Foundation and Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation causes. She loves being a mom to her three kids and participating in her county’s search and rescue efforts. Sara and Andy and their kids lived in Ukraine in 2019 and were so inspired by the country’s rich history and the people they met. She hopes to get back to Ukraine as soon as possible to help.
Slava Ukraini! (Glory to Ukraine)
Bill Poland
Board of Directors
A real estate entrepreneur, Bill is founder and President of Bay West Group, a commercial and real estate development company committed to creating value in the development of vacant or under-utilized parcels and breathing new life into existing buildings, plus significant new multi-family projects.
Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Bill became involved in directing much-needed supplies of all sorts directly to the Ukrainian people. In early September, he started the Ukraine Freedom Foundation. Bill and his foundation worked closely with Roelof Quintus, who started early on a grassroots effort to deliver essential supplies to help Ukrainians defend themselves and support their many refugees.
Together, Bill, Roelof, and Andy Kurtzig have mobilized a global humanitarian network of volunteers, donors, and partners to provide much-needed supplies to the people of Ukraine.
Lisa Contoyannis
Board of Directors
Lisa Contoyannis joined JustAnswer in 2015, was named to the executive team in 2017, and currently oversees product, conversational AI, and UX. Contoyannis brings more than 20 years of experience at high-growth startups. She joined JustAnswer from Pogoplug, the personal cloud company with over 10 million users, where she was the VP of E-commerce and Marketing. Prior to Pogoplug, Contoyannis was one of the first hires and head of marketing TrialPay, the leading transactional advertising platform, which was sold to Visa in a nine-figure deal in 2015. Previously, Contoyannis was employee number three at Tenebril (maker of PC Mag Editors’ Choice award-winner GhostSurf), where she grew the consumer business from a few thousand a month to more than $10 million a year before selling the company to Process Software in 2006. Contoyannis began her career as a freelance journalist in New York while pursuing her Master’s in Journalism and Mass Communication at NYU. She graduated cum laude with a B.A. in English Literature from Tufts University and spent her junior year as a fully matriculated student at Oxford University. Contoyannis lives in Concord, Massachusetts, with her husband and young family.