Management Team

Prior to serving as Marathon’s chief executive officer, Thiel co-founded and served as chairman of Sprocket, a blockchain and cryptocurrency technology and financial services company whose mission is to reduce the risk and friction of cryptocurrency trading across marketplaces, regions and exchanges by establishing a federation of exchanges that together create a single aggregated global trading marketplace with large scale liquidity, rapid execution, minimal counter-party risk, and price transparency. Prior to that, Thiel served as chairman and chief executive officer of Local Corporation, an $80 million Nasdaq-listed leader in online local search and digital media, mobile search monetization and programmatic retargeting markets with over 240 million unique annual visitors.

During his career while holding the title of CEO across multiple companies, Thiel successfully created in excess of $750 million in shareholder value, efficiently raised more than $150 million through both public (IPO and secondary offerings) and private capital sources, led multiple successful corporate transformations resulting in highly accretive exits, built high output agile product development organizations, and established corporate innovation groups resulting in the creation of new product businesses that generated significant new revenues in their first year.

Mr. Crawford has over eighteen years experience in the technology and business sector with expertise in a wide range of disciplines including new media, mobile marketing, intellectual property, security, and compliance.

In early 2013 Mr. Crawford joined Marathon Digital Holdings (Nasdaq:MARA), as Chief Operating Officer, overseeing numerous aspects of the company's operations.

Prior to Marathon Mr. Crawford served as Chief Information Officer at Modavox/Augme Technologies focusing on internal product development and infrastructure build out. He also worked extensively in the Intellectual Property division to effectuate monetization through licensing, and enforcement, as well as assisting in reducing to practice the company¹s innovations and positioning the patent portfolio as a competitive differentiator. He is a named inventor on several Internet Technology patents pending with the United States Patent & Trademark Office. Mr. Crawford served on the Board of Directors of Augme Technologies from March 2006 through August 2011.

Prior to Augme Technologies Mr. Crawford was a founding member of Kino Interactive, LLC (Acquired by Surfnet Media Group, AKA Modavox/Augme Technologies (HIPP)), a developer of enhanced communication software and digital media solutions, as well as a founder of Audioeye, Inc (AEYE), a patented voice infrastructure technology enabling web compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).

Mr. Crawford received his Master of Business Administration (MBA) from Washington State University.

Mr. Gallagher is a seasoned C-level executive and board member who brings to Marathon over 30 years of experience in capital markets, investment analysis, treasury, investor relations, and financial and operational execution. Prior to joining Marathon, Mr. Gallagher was the chief strategy officer at Global LPG (2021-2022) and held several senior positions at UGI Corporation and AmeriGas Propane, including president and CEO of AmeriGas Propane (2018-2021); vice president finance and CFO of AmeriGas Propane (2013-2018); treasurer (2011-2014) and director of investor relations and treasury (2007-2011) at UGI Corporation; director of corporate development (2004-2007); and director of financial planning (2000-2004) at AmeriGas Propane. Mr. Gallagher also served in various roles of increasing responsibility at both UGI and AmeriGas from 1990-2000. Mr. Gallagher holds a CPA certification in the state of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of science in accounting from Drexel University.

Mr. Lee has over 30 years of diversified accounting and finance experience from public accounting to large public companies in the retail industry. Prior to joining Marathon, Mr. Lee was Vice President of Financial Operations and Financial Planning at Amerigas Propane (2016-2021); held several senior positions at Ascena Retail Group (Formerly Charming Shoppes, Inc.) as Senior Vice President - Controller / Shared Services (2012-2016), Senior Vice President - CAO & Controller (2010-2012), and Vice President - Corporate Accounting (2001-2010). Mr. Lee started his career in public accounting at Ernst & Young, LLP performing audits of public companies, where he progressed to Senior Manager.

Mr. Lee holds a CPA certification in the State of Pennsylvania and a bachelor of science in Commerce Engineering with a concentration in Accounting and Finance from Drexel University.

Prior to joining Marathon, Mr. Salzman served as the Chief Financial Officer and Senior Vice President of the Las Vegas Monorail Company, a private non-profit 501c(4) entity, from 2018-2020. There, he was responsible for overseeing all financial functions including audit, treasury, and corporate finance.  In addition, he was responsible for internal control compliance and management strategy.

Prior to being CFO of the Las Vegas Monorail Company, Mr. Salzman served as the Chief Financial Officer for Wendoh Media and Corner Bar Management for over three years, from 2015-2018.  Through enhanced analytical reviews, budgeting, internal control implementation and reducing overhead, Mr. Salzman was able to save over $1.4 million in aggregate costs and generate EBITDA of over 25% for eight consecutive quarters.

Mr. Salzman holds a Bachelor of Science in Accounting and a Bachelor of Arts in Criminal Justice and Criminology from the University of Maryland, College Park.  He is a Certified Public Accountant.

Swami is an experienced chip designer and crypto and DeFi expert, who brings to Marathon deep technical, regulatory, and market expertise. Swami joins Marathon Digital Holdings from Core Scientific, where he served as the chief product officer, leading the company’s foray into DeFi and heading mining hardware and software optimization. Prior to that, he was the CTO of Apifiny, a hybrid CEX and DEX crypto exchange. Previously, Swami headed an SPV of Quadeye Securities, which pioneered and traded mining swaps, operated cloud mining data centers, and served as the chief advisor to Fortune 50 companies, including Intel Corp, on blockchain initiatives. He also founded LocalPad, a peer-to-peer marketplace and payments plugin that provided “ebay-in-a-box” like functionality to large blogs to monetize their user base. Prior to that, Swami was a portfolio manager and led the high frequency market-making business at Morgan Stanley Program Trading to become a top five market maker in US ETFs. Additionally, he spent over four years as a senior component designer and then tech lead in Intel’s Enterprise Platforms Group. Swami holds three patents in blockchain and trading, an MBA from the Fuqua School of Management at Duke University, and a BTech in computer science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.