Kurt Avarell holds a master’s degree in accounting from Brigham Young University and a JD from the J. Reuben Clark Law School. As a practicing tax attorney in NYC, Avarell was continually frustrated with the lack of effective software available to help tax professionals accomplish their work in a simple and elegant way. He walked away from his career in order to pursue his vision of modernizing and humanizing the way tax professionals work. He began to code Canopy in his basement in 2014, and is now the CEO of this fast-growing tech startup.