About Us | Ellis

Our Mission

We believe that America's competitive advantage has been its historical stance on immigration. What many fail to realize is that college campuses are the modern day Ellis Islands for high-skilled immigrants and entrepreneurs into the US. We believe that at the current rate of immigration, America will lose its grasp as the world leader–although it's up to the regulators in the public sector to decide immigration policy, we believe the private sector, particularly a company like Ellis, can simplify the transition for immigrants into the US to maintain the global brain-drain of ambitious, high-skilled foreign talent.

Our mission is to simplify the immigration journey for the next One Billion Americans.

We serve international students in

250+

colleges and universities

Our team collectively speaks

languages

Get To Know The Team

Sampei Omichi 🇯🇵🇻🇳

founder & CEO

Sampei brings his deep expertise in fin-tech to Ellis where he oversees corporate strategy, business development, and product. Sampei holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Babson College.

Christopher Kelley 🇺🇸

Head of engineering

Chris brings 10+ years of experience in software engineering where he oversees design, engineering, and security. Chris holds a B.S. and M.S. in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Henry Lam 🇺🇸🇻🇳

Chief of staff

Henry oversees customer operations, finance, and special projects. Prior to joining the Ellis team, Henry was at Forward Kitchens (YC W19) where he was responsible for launching 175 brands for the company.

Kirill Chernik

Lead engineer

Kirill is Ellis's founding and lead engineer. Prior to joining the Ellis team, Kirill was a Software Engineer at Landis, where he worked to build out the infrastructure, product, and team as the second engineering hire.

Faith Ching 🇺🇸

Head of customer success

Faith oversees Ellis's Customer Success and Partnership Relations teams. Prior to joining the Ellis team, Faith worked as a Customer Success Manager at a health-tech company.

Chris Whitefield 🇺🇸

lead designer

Chris brings 16+ years of design expertise in brand, product, and user experience. Chris specializes in helping startups build better products and previously led design at the best-reviewed online giving platform with over 100k reviews and 4.9+ stars.

Om Nagarkar 🇺🇸🇮🇳

design engineer

Om is breaking down walls between design and engineering at Ellis. He has experience in startup culture bringing designs to a new level which he leverages with a passion for code and style alike to revamp not only the quality of our services, but the team culture as well.

Pritish Nair 🇮🇳

director of india

Pritish comes with a decade of experience in fintech & education. Prior to joining Ellis, he led growth and expansions at Prodigy Finance, Lunchclub AI and the Indian School of Business.

Nina Nguyen 🇻🇳

Customer success analyst

Nina brings experience in Consulting and Hospitality to Ellis where she supports Customer Success and Partnership teams. Prior to Ellis, Nina worked at KPMG Vietnam in Deal Advisory. She holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of New Hampshire.

Benjamin Donnelly 🇬🇧

Regional manager, southeast asia

Benjamin brings 15 years of experience in international education. Benjamin has extensive experience in student recruitment, education sales, marketing, and management across Asia.

Sehaj Khanna 🇮🇳

Business development manager, india

Sehaj brings 8+ years of experience in consulting and advising students for higher education abroad.

Yunmi Oh 🇰🇷

Regional manager, Korea

Yunmi has 6 years of professional experience in international education and 2 years of experience at an IT start-up. Being a former international student herself, she truly believes that Ellis is the perfect solution for international students for a smooth transition to the US.

Mim Phillips 🇺🇸

Regional manager, usa

Mim combines her professional experience in business and international higher education to build partnerships with U.S. universities, colleges and organizations. She has a M.S. degree from Colorado State University Global and B.S. from Chapman University.

Janet Saldanha 🇮🇳

community manager, india

Janet comes with a rich experience in various industries like Manufacturing, Advertising, and Education. Her expertise is in client management, customer relationship and supply chain management.

Simplify immigration for the next billion Americans