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Consulting Team
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| ACG clients work with a team of seasoned
professionals who accurately assess
project needs and focus the right resources to create a winning
strategy. This approach ensures that a project benefits from
a variety of perspectives. Clients can always reach a capable
resource at ACG. |
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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 17-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 20 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. (Top) |
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| Marc Sacher,
Executive Vice President—Marc runs the US consulting practice for ACG and serves as the global COO and CFO of the firm. Over the years, Marc has
applied his expertise to the full range of activity at ACG. He is
driven to understand and respond to client needs, and his background
enables him to approach his job from a range of perspectives that
include those of banks, partners/vendors, consumers and regulators.
Prior to joining ACG, Marc worked in the financial services practice
at Price Waterhouse and for the Office of Comptroller of the Currency.
He has been an instructor at the ABA's National School of Bank Card
Management and an Advisory Board member for one of the leading credit
card industry conferences. (Top)
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| Managing Directors |
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| John Costa—John 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 as 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. (Top) |
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| Tom LaMagna—Tom manages our world-wide Industry Roundtables and Benchmark business covering most functions in credit and debit card, auto finance, and consumer mortgage lending. Tom utilizes his experience and business acumen to play key roles in our consulting practice with a focus on operational effectiveness, collections, customer service, organizational effectiveness, project management, and internet optimization. Tom joined ACG after long relationships with JPMorgan Chase and First Chicago. He has extensive experience in e-servicing, collections, customer service, project management, systems development, and financial and loss management. (Top) |
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| Eric Marks—Eric brings to ACG 17 years of top tier management consulting experience in the Financial Services industry, and is known for successfully building and leading teams that consistently deliver value to their clients. His diverse consulting activities have included project delivery, practice leadership, client relationship management and business development roles. During his career Eric has built and managed major client relationships with some of world's most prominent card companies, banks, and lenders. He has delivered and overseen a wide variety of consulting projects involving performance improvement; business and technology strategy; organizational design; market assessment; portfolio valuation; transactional advisory / due diligence; benchmarking; and vendor selection support and contract negotiation. Prior to joining ACG, Eric spent nearly 15 years at BearingPoint / KPMG Consulting, where he founded and led the Corporate Real Estate practice before taking on responsibility for leading several major client relationships across the firm. Eric also designed and led the Key Account program for Navigant Consulting's Financial Services practice, and managed Capgemini's relationship with one of the world's largest banks. Eric has a BA in Government from Lehigh University. (Top) |
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| Patricia A. Sahm—Pat has over two decades of professional services experience in the retail banking and payments industries. She has served clients across a wide range of topics including risk management, CRM/CEX, enterprise data warehousing, real-time decision management, and channel integration. She started her career at TRW Credit Data (now Experian) where she led the initial implementation of automated FICO scores. At the time this revolutionized the credit card industry. During the past ten years she has focused her attention on marketing and technology. While at Donnelley Marketing in 2000 she pioneered the development of real-time, web based delivery of decisions. At Acxiom she created and implemented channel integration strategies for her clients, and oversaw several enterprise data warehouse projects. Prior to joining ACG she was the Practice Manager—NA Retail Banking & Payments at McKinsey & Company where she was responsible for client development, external relations, and knowledge initiatives. Pat has her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University. She received her MBA from New York Institute of Technology and her Doctorate in Management from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. (Top) |
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| Matt Simester—Matt leads the Firm’s UK office where
he has responsibility for growing ACG’s footprint in Europe.
He has almost 20 years of experience within financial services and
he has built a reputation as an outstanding strategist who is able
to use his operational, sales, marketing distribution, and product
P&L skills to develop and implement strategies that deliver high value
returns. Matt has been responsible for marketing and product management
at the Alliance & Leicester Commercial Bank, VP of Marketing at
Affinion and variously Managing Director of a Barclaycard JV and Head
of Value Added Services at Barclaycard Business. Matt has a BA (Hons)
from Anglia Ruskin University and is a member of the Institute of Direct
Marketing. (Top) |
| Directors |
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| Megan Bramlette—Megan balances her focus between supporting European business growth and leading the international Knowledge Management practice, splitting her time between ACG's New York and London offices. Some of her more explicit duties include serving as the Managing Editor of the UK edition of Cardbeat® and providing clients with business intelligence and consumer research services. An acknowledged payments industry expert, Megan has been a featured speaker at industry conferences in the US and Europe and has been quoted in and authored numerous articles and market research reports about the payments industry. Megan joined ACG from Citibank and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Engineering, Operations Research from Columbia University. (Top) |
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| Kathy Castle—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 Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Cornell University
and an MBA in Finance from Hofstra University’s Graduate School
of Business. (Top) |
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Ed Falco—Ed helps clients
move toward executable solutions for their organizations through client
engagements and leadership of ACG Industry Roundtables. He has experience
determining right-party/best-time contact strategy and tools, implementing
alternative payment channels, configuring complex products, supporting processing
platforms and migrating portfolios from one bank to another. His banking
career began in the private-label card division of Citigroup and included operations
projects at Citi, Wells Fargo, Fleet Bank and CompuCredit. (Top) |
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| Mark Jackson—Mark leads the Knowledge Management function within ACG’s UK office in addition to providing general consultancy to clients. With more than 15 years experience in Financial Services, he has a reputation as an outstanding commercial thinker, able to leverage deep skills in Value Based Management, Pricing, Analytics, Risk, Marketing and P&L management to drive high value returns into businesses. Prior to Joining ACG, Mark spent 7 years in senior roles at Barclaycard, Europe’s largest Card Issuer, including as Head of Existing Customer Management and Head of Rewards. (Top) |
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| Peter Jones—Peter recently joined the firm's London office where he is responsible for developing ACG's General Consulting capabilities for Commercial Card and Payment Solutions. He has more than fifteen years of experience in the payments industry and has built a reputation as an excellent strategist and general manager who is able to use his direct marketing, account management, product development and operational experience to craft customer focused strategies.
Peter began his payments career with American Express in New York. His responsibilities included premium card product development, channel management, business-to-business marketing programs and customer engagement strategies on behalf of the US Commercial Card business. Peter then joined the Global Commercial Card team at American Express in London. After a secondment as the Director of Business Development for the European General Manager, he became responsible for a portfolio of global commercial card and business travel clients. He gained international consumer card marketing experience in Europe, Asia, North and South America. Peter subsequently joined Barclaycard Commercial as the Head of Sales and Account Development where his remit was the growth and profitability of large public and private sector bank clients. His global payments experience helped improve the value proposition, sales, servicing and account development processes. Prior joining ACG, Peter spent eighteen months as a Consultant at Pay Tech International, a division of Visa Europe. Peter has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Southern California and a Masters Degree in Business Administration from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College.
(Top) |
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| Edward Lawrence—Ed
has more than 25 years of experience as a banker and a consultant in
all aspects of credit, debit card and pre-paid card management. He held
senior executive
positions at Eastern States Bancard Association (now FDR) 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 gives him a broad business
perspective in his consulting activities. (Top) |
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Chris Malin—Chris, based in ACG's London office, focuses
on developing Industry Roundtables in the UK. He also works on
a diverse range of programs including benchmarking, prepaid cards,
and customer value management and analysis. Prior to joining
ACG Chris worked for Barclaycard and Banco Santander. He has
also worked for organizations at the forefront of their markets
in affinity and prepaid cards. Chris holds a bachelor of Arts
(Hons.) degree in applied sociology, a graduate diploma in management,
and an MBA from Stanford University. (Top) |
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Laurie Roth—Laurie joined ACG in May 2007, bringing
more than 20 years of retail private-label credit card experience
from Federated Department Stores, JCPenney Business Services (subsequently
Alliance Data Systems), Saks Fifth Avenue and nine distinct retailer
brands under Saks Inc. She is adept at credit strategy, operations,
marketing, training and development, incentive programs, loyalty
programs, and co-brand development and implementation. Additionally,
Laurie has overseen several portfolio conversions. (Top) |
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| Robert Taglin—Bob contributes expertise in marketing,
value proposition development, new product
launch strategies, contract negotiation and competitive analysis. His
industry experience
includes Chase Manhattan Bank, American Express and J. Crew. He has
worked in the student, affinity and co-brand markets. Bob earned a
Bachelor of Arts degree in Communications at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, and received an M.B.A. in Marketing from New York University. (Top) |
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| Michael Viola—Mike
joined ACG in 2003 after several years in the IT sector, bringing with
him his technical and analytic proficiency. He manages several Industry
Roundtables in the US and UK. Mike’s extensive functional knowledge
enables him to offer expert advice on various types of consulting engagements
including; operational reviews, market assessments, and expert witness
support. Prior to Industry Roundtable management, Mike was responsible
for the creation and analysis of ACG’s benchmark studies across
multiple lines of business. He is a cum
laude graduate in business management from Stony Brook University. (Top) |
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| Steve Winsch—Steve’s responsibilities are focused on the development of new ACG Roundtables, taking ideas from concept to launch. With a strong background in financial services, Steve brings a unique ability to analyze client needs and develop ACG Roundtable solutions to address those needs. Steve gained extensive experience serving the needs of Global Banks and Financial Services firms in the areas of Global Payments, OFAC Compliance and Anti-Money Laundering while at Accuity. In addition, his experience in Insurance and Ecommerce (International Shipping), allows him to navigate numerous other areas of client’s needs as well. (Top) |
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