- Matt Bethell
- Walker Minot
- Amanda Merrill
- Matt Kravetz
- Parker Clowers
- Max Senew
Associates
Matt Bethell
Associate
Walker Minot
Associate
Amanda Merrill
Associate
Matt Kravetz
Senior Associate
Parker Clowers
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 (ACG).
Over time, Michael has been instrumental in designing and incubating many of the services ACG’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 ACG’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 ACG’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 ACG. 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 ACG, Marc has been a key contributor on every type of engagement ACG 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 ACG.
Prior to joining ACG, 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.
- Marianne Berry
- John Costa
- Mark Jackson
- Tom LaMagna
Managing Directors
Marianne Berry
Managing Director
Marianne leads ACG’s Payment Insights practice which provides syndicated (i.e., Cardbeat®, The Payments Report, Mobile Pay Tracker) and custom research to support strategic initiatives, product development, and competitive intelligence. Before joining ACG in 2002, Marianne developed, launched, and managed successful credit card and loyalty programs, and developed co-brand alliances both as a banker and as a retail partner. She also served as Chief Marketing Officer for Flooz.com, a digital currency company. Marianne cultivated her deep analytic skills in her Ph.D. studies at the University of Michigan, and has applied them in research, marketing, and new product development at Fortune 100 companies, including HBO, Shearson Lehman Brothers, Chase Manhattan and Verizon.
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 ACG, 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 ACG’s leadership in creating and building partnerships around the world. He leverages his expertise to support ACG’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 ACG: 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, ACG’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.
- Robert Daniel
- Kathy Castle
- Ed Falco
- Ira Goldman
- Lindsey Jacoby
- Edward Lawrence
- Diana Middleton
- Gary Rezak
- Steve Serra
- Anita Solaman
- Jeff Tennenbaum
- Michael Viola
Directors
Robert Daniel
Director
Robert is Director of several ACG 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 ACG’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.
Kathy Castle
Director
Kathy manages a mix of Industry Roundtables across the US and Canada, with a particular focus on our Auto Finance groups. Kathy joined ACG 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 ACG 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
Director
Ed spearheads the Operations Consulting practice for the firm. This encompasses leading a wide variety of engagements including: process reengineering, collection reviews, assessing and developing policies and procedures, organizational design and more. Ed previously managed many of ACG’s Industry Roundtables, exposing him to challenges and best practices across a range of functions, including how to balance compliance risk with business delivery. Ed’s experience working for direct lenders includes a wide range of strategic and leadership roles across an array of key players, including Citibank, Bank of America, and Compucredit. He earned a BS in Business Administration from the State University of New York and an MBA in Finance from Hofstra University.
Ira Goldman
Director
Ira is responsible for several ACG Roundtables, mostly related to customer-facing functions and compliance in both credit card and auto finance. 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. Ira managed annual budgets of nearly $200 million and delivered hundreds of millions of dollars in value through cost cutting and revenue growth. He directed Visa and MasterCard on all operational matters to meet Chase’s strategic objectives. During the period he was Department Head – Customer Service, Ira managed a staff of 650 employees in multiple sites, where he significantly increased performance stemming predominately from process improvement. He received an MBA in Finance from Fordham University.
Lindsey Jacoby
Director
As a Director in ACG’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 ACG, 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.
Edward Lawrence
Director
Ed is a Director in ACG’s Partnerships practice. Ed leads the network and processor segments of ACG’s Partnerships practice, delivering projects ranging from client strategy to partner selection and contract negotiation. Ed has more than 30 years of experience as a banker and a consultant in all aspects of credit, debit, and pre-paid card management. He held senior executive positions at Eastern States Bankcard Association (now FDC) and Valley National Bank that spanned the portfolio management, technology, and human resources disciplines. Ed has launched successful co-branded credit and debit card programs, converted portfolios to new processors, and sold both merchant and credit card portfolios. This enables him to bring a broad business perspective to his consulting activities.
Diana Middleton
Director
Diana is a Director in ACG’s Roundtable practice, focusing on retail strategies and card products. Prior to joining ACG, Diana created, produced and hosted some of the largest conferences in the payments and retail industries. She was responsible for a global portfolio of events, educational briefings and leadership summits focused on payments partnerships in the prepaid, fintech, retail and digital currency spaces. Prior to her payments roles, Diana was a staff reporter at the Wall Street Journal, covering executive education and management issues. Diana’s reporting has appeared in Businessweek, People magazine, the Florida Times-Union, and the Miami Herald. Diana earned a BS in Journalism from the University of Florida.
Gary Rezak
Director
Gary is a Director in ACG’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
Director
Steve is a Director in ACG’s Partnerships practice. During his tenure at ACG, Steve has successfully completed numerous Partnerships projects, including credit card program assessments and co-brand issuer and network RFP processes. Since joining ACG, 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.
Anita Solaman
Director
Anita is a Director in ACG’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 ACG, 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 ACG 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.
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 ACG’s benchmarking infrastructure, and subsequently overhauled that structure again by developing and launching ACG’s proprietary tool VIZOR. Mike joined ACG 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.