- Matt Bethell
- Walker Minot
- Max Senew
Associates
Matt Bethell
Associate
Walker Minot
Associate
Max Senew
Manager
- Michael Auriemma
- Marc Sacher
Executives
Michael Auriemma
President
Michael has devoted his career to developing the firm that bears his name and the payments industry it supports. Michael began his professional career in New York at Chemical Bank in 1983, moved into consulting in 1989, and in 1994 became President of Auriemma Consulting Group (Auriemma).
Over time, Michael has been instrumental in designing and incubating many of the services Auriemma’s team offers clients today. For example, Michael personally represented companies such as AT&T, GM, Sony, Disney, and many others in the early days of co-branding and acted as strategic advisor on the firm’s earliest portfolio sale transactions. He also conceived and launched Auriemma’s now 19-year old consumer research product, Cardbeat®. In the early ‘90s, Michael developed and facilitated a series of informal gatherings of executives to discuss best practices in functional areas such as Accounting and Collections which has led to Auriemma’s well-known and highly successful Industry Roundtables practice.
Over the last 25 years, Michael has been a frequent speaker, teacher, and writer for the financial services industry. He maintains an impressive network of relationships with executives and leaders throughout the payments ecosystem. He is often quoted by national publications seeking his views about developments and emerging trends in the payments and lending industries.
Marc Sacher
Executive Vice President
Marc serves as COO and CFO of the global enterprise after spending nearly 20 years as a consultant at Auriemma. He joined as the firm’s first Associate and quickly became the key resource supporting Industry Roundtables and Cardbeat. When Marc took over as the manager of those products, he established a solid foundation of value for clients before growing them significantly into the flagship products they are today. In his tenure at Auriemma, Marc has been a key contributor on every type of engagement Auriemma offers and has played a leadership role in developing each practice area within Advisory Services. Therefore, it was a natural segue to transition him to his current role, taking advantage of his years of experience in client management, practice development, and corporate development across all of Auriemma.
Prior to joining Auriemma, Marc worked in the financial services practice at Price Waterhouse and for the Office of Comptroller of the Currency. Marc was an instructor at the ABA’s National School of Bank Card Management and continues to serve as a speaker at a number of leading payments industry conferences. He is also a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.
- Mindy Harris
- John Costa
- Mark Jackson
- Tom LaMagna
Managing Directors
Mindy Harris
Managing Director and General Counsel
Mindy contributes to client engagements across Auriemma’s four lines of business. She brings decades of experience leading legal and compliance functions at card issuers, banks and consumer payment service companies. Her work has involved use of legal expertise and regulatory knowledge to drive development of innovative consumer payment products and services. As Auriemma’s General Counsel, Mindy advises the firm on legal, regulatory and compliance matters and oversees the firm’s legal affairs.
Before joining Auriemma, Mindy was SVP, General Counsel and Compliance Officer of Nordstrom Bank. Mindy holds Juris Doctor and BA degrees from University of Denver, where she was elected a member of Phi Beta Kappa; is a Board member and past President of the Credit Card Bank Compliance Association; and serves on the Board of Trustees of the University of Redlands.
John Costa
Managing Director
John leads the Corporate Finance practice. He brings decades of work experience across the financial service and capital markets sectors. Prior to joining Auriemma, John was the CEO of Promontory Asset Finance Company. John has worked as an issuer, a servicer, and an investment banker specializing in securitization and M&A. His work has often involved the development of new techniques and funding strategies. He pioneered the use of securitization for esoteric assets, and developed unique funding platforms in both the term and asset backed commercial paper markets. John holds a BA from New York University where he graduated Magna Cum Laude, and was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He has held series 7, 63 and 24 securities licenses, and authored a chapter on servicing of sub-prime credit cards for a Fabozzi text book.
Mark Jackson
Managing Director
Mark Jackson serves as both the head of our International Partnerships practice and UK Country Manager. Mark’s reputation as an outstanding commercial thinker complements Auriemma’s leadership in creating and building partnerships around the world. He leverages his expertise to support Auriemma’s clients in partnerships, value proposition development, pricing, analytics, risk, marketing, and product development. Mark has formalized our pursuit of deals on a global stage. He has nearly 18 years of experience in financial services, including at Barclaycard, Europe’s largest card issuer.
Tom LaMagna
Managing Director
Tom helped build and currently leads two global practices at Auriemma: Industry Roundtables and Operational Consulting. The Industry Roundtables business covers multiple functions across six verticals: credit and debit card, auto finance, retail banking, mortgage lending, and brokerage. Under Tom’s leadership, the practice has grown to 25+ groups and 300+ members. The team produces over 250 benchmarks each year and recently launched VIZOR, Auriemma’s proprietary benchmarking tool. As leader of the Operations Consulting practice, Tom brings his 25+ years of payments experience to deliver customized, actionable solutions to clients. His consulting career is complemented by many years first spent at JPMorgan Chase and First Chicago.
- Kathy Castle
- Ed Falco
- Ira Goldman
- Gary Rezak
- Steve Serra
- Michael Viola
Senior Directors
Kathy Castle
Senior Director
Kathy manages a mix of Industry Roundtables across the US and Canada, with a particular focus on our Auto Finance groups. Kathy joined Auriemma after working 20+ years in credit card, mortgage, and installment loan products while at Chase Manhattan Bank and New Century Mortgage. She held positions in marketing, operations management, financial analysis, risk management, and fraud prevention. This well-rounded background makes her a great fit to lead a diversified mix of Industry Roundtables for Auriemma and to serve as a key contributor on related consulting engagements. Kathy has a BS degree in Economics from Cornell University and an MBA in Finance from Hofstra University’s Graduate School of Business.
Ed Falco
Senior Director
Ed has been with Auriemma since 2007 and is responsible for a portfolio of Industry Roundtables. The primary focus of Ed’s portfolio is Collections and Compliance, spanning the Card, Auto and Mortgage industries. Ed is also instrumental in all operations consulting projects within the firm. Prior to joining Auriemma, Ed spent 20+ years in an array of operational and marketing delivery roles at Citi, Bank of America and a subprime lender. Ed’s expertise is in integrating collections strategy with operational delivery, including contact and self-service channel optimization. He earned a BS in Business Administration from the State University of New York and an MBA in Finance from Hofstra University.
Ira Goldman
Senior Director
Ira has been with Auriemma since 2013 and is responsible for a portfolio of Industry Roundtables. The primary focus of Ira’s portfolio relates to customer-facing functions, such as fraud, disputes/chargebacks, marketing operations and debit management. As a 35-year payment industry veteran, he has held senior positions in customer service, operations, finance, and marketing at JPMorgan Chase. He is a strategic thought leader in operational excellence and business process re-engineering. He received an MBA in Finance from Fordham University.
Gary Rezak
Senior Director
Gary is a Senior Director in Auriemma’s Partnership practice. He helps clients plan, build, manage and improve their co-brand and private label partnerships. Gary has over 20 years of experience in credit card marketing, financial services, and management consulting, including 15 years with Citi, managing large-scale acquisition and portfolio management programs. Gary led online acquisitions and had full P&L responsibility for the Citi Hilton HHonors Visa Signature Card and the Citi Chairman portfolio. He also headed the marketing department of NDB.com, a nationally recognized online trading firm, and has significant management consulting experience with companies such as Laventhol & Horwath and Fresh Venture Advisors, a firm he founded. Gary has a B.S. in Hotel Administration from Cornell and an MBA in Marketing/Finance from the Stern School of Business at NYU.
Steve Serra
Senior Director
Steve is a Senior Director in Auriemma’s Partnerships practice. During his tenure at Auriemma, Steve has successfully completed numerous Partnerships projects, including credit card program assessments and co-brand issuer and network RFP processes. Since joining Auriemma, Steve has managed the delivery of numerous significant partnership assignments, including several involving major airlines. He has over 20 years of experience in partnership development, credit card marketing, and management consulting. His diverse background in credit cards includes structuring and negotiating strong business alliances, marketing, and business development. Steve spent nearly a decade with American Express in both the issuing and merchant business gaining expertise in launching and managing loyalty programs as well as leading cross-functional teams. Steve received a BA in Political Science from Notre Dame and an MBA in Marketing from Wharton.
Michael Viola
Senior Director
Mike manages the Operations for the global Industry Roundtables practice and oversees the organization’s benchmarking and analytics infrastructure. He also focuses on a wide variety of consulting engagements that include operational reviews, market studies and assessments, technology evaluations, and more. Before assuming this role, Mike ran several Industry Roundtables in both the US and UK, mostly focused on collections, redesigned Auriemma’s benchmarking infrastructure, and subsequently overhauled that structure again by developing and launching Auriemma’s proprietary tool VIZOR. Mike joined Auriemma in 2003 after several years in the IT sector, bringing with him his technical and analytic proficiency. Mike earned a BS degree in Business Management from State University of New York at Stony Brook with a minor in Information Technology. He served as an Advisory Board Member for the American Banker’s Association (ABA) Bankcard School in 2009.
- Louis Stevens
- Jaclyn Holmes
- David Edwards
- Robert Daniel
- Lindsey Jacoby
- Diana Middleton
- Anita Solaman
- Jeff Tennenbaum
Directors
Louis Stevens
Director
Louis is the Director of Auriemma’s UK Industry Roundtable practice specializing in bringing executives and leaders together in Collections, Fraud, Customer Service and Finance. Louis brings a decade of experience in financial services to the business.
The majority of that decade was spent at American Express. In particular, Louis spent 5 years in the Corporate line of business developing expertise in credit, servicing, B2B risk analytics and underwriting. Louis spent the last part of his tenure at American Express driving the collections portfolio across all lead European markets, spanning the entirety of AMEX’s product offerings.
Jaclyn Holmes
Director
Jaclyn is a Director in Auriemma’s Payment Insights practice. Since joining Auriemma in 2015, Jaclyn directs the firm’s four syndicated consumer research publications (US Cardbeat®, UK Cardbeat, The Payments Report, Mobile Pay Tracker), and is responsible for designing and analyzing research spanning a variety of topics, including consumer payment, borrowing, and investing behaviors, and use of mobile payments, alternative payment providers and individual card products.
She also manages the execution and design of custom research projects and handles day-to-day management of research engagements. Jaclyn’s specialty is research methodology and conducting studies with specific audiences such as mass-market consumers.
David Edwards
Director
David is a Director in Auriemma’s International Partnerships practice. He has over 25 years’ experience developing payment and loyalty solutions within the Travel and Financial space. Prior to joining Auriemma and leading International Partnerships, he had 14 years working as an independent consultant leading projects across a wide range of organisations such as Virgin Atlantic Airways, IHG, Tesco, American Express, Visa, MasterCard, Citi, Chase, Bank of America and MBNA. These projects covered many areas, included developing payment solution strategies, creating and developing partnerships, launching a range of cobranded credit cards and creating payment and loyalty concepts.
Before this venture into consulting, David spent 11 years at American Express with roles that included being Head of Membership Rewards, EMEA, Director of European Business Planning and a range of roles across Corporate Card, Purchasing Card, Travel Services and Merchant Services.
Robert Daniel
Director
Robert is Director of several Auriemma Industry Roundtables, with a focus on customer service, retirement, as well as vendor and workforce management. He has over 15 years of experience in financial services, business development, marketing, and management consulting.
Robert has worked with senior executives at leading Fortune 500 companies, interpreting data from custom benchmarking studies to drive real change in the organization. His experience and expertise has also allowed him to provide executives with best practices and understandings of how industry peers are solving key challenges.
This diverse background allows Robert to help Auriemma’s clients unlock the value in the Industry Roundtables as well as contribute on related consulting engagements.
Robert earned a BS in Business Administration from the Georgia Institute of Technology with certificates in Finance and Management of Information Technology.
Lindsey Jacoby
Director
As a Director in Auriemma’s Industry Roundtables practice, Lindsey is a member of the Leadership team responsible for the strategic vision and growth of the business. She manages and helps develop the Associate team. She also leads the efforts to meet client needs by ensuring the highest quality standards of all Industry Roundtables deliverables. Prior to joining Auriemma, Lindsey worked as a news editor and reporter for trade publications in the public relations and credit union industries. As a reporter for Credit Union Times, she covered auto lending, student lending, fraud, financial literacy, savings, collections, agricultural lending, and wrote a monthly column on the banking needs of Generation Y. Lindsey graduated magna cum laude from Marist College with a BA in Journalism and Communications.
Diana Middleton
Director
Diana is a Director in Auriemma’s Roundtable practice, focusing primarily on compliance, complaint management and customer experience. In addition to her Roundtable role, Diana is responsible for Auriemma’s marketing activities, including thought leadership and press outreach. Prior to joining Auriemma, Diana created and produced large-scale, global conferences for the prepaid, gift card and fintech industries. Previously, Diana was a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering executive education and management issues. Diana earned a BS in Journalism from the University of Florida.
Anita Solaman
Director
Anita is a Director in Auriemma’s Roundtable practice and brings more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry working with the some of the leading global financial institutions across a number of industry sectors. Prior to joining Auriemma, Anita spent nearly 14 years at JPMorgan managing large institutional client relationships, strategic planning, and developing marketing strategy for a multibillion dollar line of business and launching new products. Her experience has also included management roles at AIG and Oppenheimer Capital. Anita has served as the client expert across these organizations to develop solutions for complex issues across multi discipline areas that includes legal, technology, finance, products and operations. Anita earned a BA from John Jay College, CUNY and received an MS from the Milano School of International Affairs, Management and Urban Policy at the New School.
Jeff Tennenbaum
Director
Jeff joined Auriemma to lead business development activities for the Industry Roundtables. He brings a strong background in financial services and consulting, garnered through 10 years at Capital One and subsequent entrepreneurial ventures. During his tenure at Capital One, which began in 1996, Jeff held managerial roles in financial planning and risk management, corporate development, and credit risk management, and also held the positions of CFO of Call Center Operations, as well as Chief of Staff to the CFO of Capital One Bank. Jeff holds a BS in Accounting from the George Washington University and MBA in Finance from London Business School.