Douglas Merrill

Douglas Merrill is the CEO and founder of ZestFinance, a financial services technology company that provides credit alternatives for the underbanked. ZestFinance announced a $19 million round of Series A funding in July 2011 and was one of Forbes’ Names You Need to Know in 2011. Merrill is the former CIO and Vice President of Engineering at Google, where he helped bring the company to its IPO and with related regulatory activities. Google’s current CIO, Ben Fried, took over in April 2008 upon Merrill’s departure. After Google, Merrill served as president of EMI Music’s digital unit. In March 2010, Merrill published the book, “Getting Organized in the Google Era: How to Get Stuff Out of Your Head, Find It When You Need It, and Get It Done Right”. Merrill is also a former researcher with the RAND Corporation and is listed among the organization’s most notable participants. He is a graduate of the University of Tulsa with a major in social and political organization. Merrill attended Princeton where he received Masters and Doctoral degrees in psychology. His academic publications include articles in The Journal of the Learning Sciences, Cognition and Instruction, Reliable Distributed Systems, and a paper in the book series Lecture Notes in Computer Science (1992; 608:103-110). He currently sits on the board of The Filter