The Platform Built to Keep Businesses and Their Payments

For more than 15 years Aaron has served in a wide range of roles in software engineering organizations ranging from individual contributor roles to a variety of leadership roles. He thrives on building high performing teams that deliver software that solves critical problems for customers. Aaron joined PaymentWorks as the 3rd engineer to join the Engineering Organization and now leads the application development side of the Engineering Organization.

What I love about PaymentWorks: We have a great collaborative culture here at PaymentWorks that empowers team members across the company to work together to solve hard problems and deliver value to customers.

My favorite sport: I am an avid distance runner and endurance athlete. I’ve completed endurance events ranging from marathons to ultramarathons to ironman distance triathlons.

Along with co-founding PaymentWorks, Alan has a storied development history, including: co-founding Anyware Fast, acquired by Dimension X, then subsequently acquired by Microsoft shortly thereafter; leading the development and release of Vizact, a standalone Microsoft Office 2000 product which ultimately morphed into the PowerPoint animation engine; and leading the development of an enterprise integration platform licensed to customers including NATO, Airbus and StateStreet Bank. Additionally, he built a real-time threat detection system for NATO, and an engineering optimization system used by Airbus in the design of the A380 wing.

Alan also holds two patents, one related to data management which led to the foundation of PaymentWorks, the other related to surveillance, monitoring and real-time events. Alan holds a BE/CS degree from the University of Waterloo.

My favorite thing about PaymentWorks: We are solving a real problem that makes people’s professional lives better!

My favorite day of the year: Yes, I eat pie every March 14th.

Angela Sarno is a marketing and communications leader with more than 20 years of experience in customer-facing roles at start-up and scale-up companies, spanning communications, marketing, investor relations, and customer success. She joined PaymentWorks in 2019, where she built version one of the company’s fraud operations team and led customer success before assuming responsibility for brand and marketing strategy. Angela is passionate about the role vendor identity plays in protecting organizations and strengthening vendor management, viewing onboarding as a critical gatekeeper for fraud prevention and operational integrity. She is a frequent speaker on these topics and has presented both in person and virtually for Nacha, the Association of Financial Professionals, IOFM, ASBO, Strategic Treasurer, and alongside PaymentWorks channel partners including Chubb, J.P. Morgan, Wells Fargo, PNC, and U.S. Bank.

What I love about PaymentWorks: The stress people have in trying to always be 100% right at their jobs is too much to bear. We eliminate that stress and allow people to focus on their jobs, not on the fear of making a mistake. We have their backs!

My favorite sport: CrossFit. Yes, I am calling it a sport. And I’d love to talk to you about it. Do you have three hours to spare?

Ashley was an early employee of PaymentWorks and as the Director of Enablement was the primary architect of the company’s customer onboarding process.. Ashley has 30 years of progressive, hands-on experience with customer relationships, product management, sales, demonstrations, client recovery, and management. Previous experience at CBORD included creating, executing product, solution architecture and strategies focused on the higher education market. Additionally, Ashley provided and trained on multiple technology solutions at Visual Techniques to meet the educational challenges in K-12 and Higher Education markets.

Additionally, Ashley has had extensive experience in building and owning customer facing processes in both software companies for university and senior living facilities. She oversees responsibilities for Customer Success activities (implementation, support, adoption, advocacy, retention.).

What I love about PaymentWorks: To have the opportunity day after day to serve our customers and provide a platform that makes our customers day to day lives simpler and less stressful – is a win!

My favorite sport: I love watching college gymnastics – especially floor routines that bring out the gymnast personality – thanks to my middle daughter who did gymnastics for 20 years!!!

Dan leads the PaymentWorks sales force and has more than 20 years of experience providing B2B payment and vendor management solutions to organizations across all industries. Dan joined PaymentWorks in 2020, has held multiple individual contributor and leadership roles, and has been integral in growing the team to support the demand in the market. Before joining PaymentWorks, Dan spent 15 years in banking and B2B payment processing, working at successful startups and large Fortune 500 organizations, including Western Union. As a subject matter expert in vendor data management, payment optimization, fraud prevention, and payment security, Dan takes a customer-first approach to enable these outcomes for customers.

What I love about PaymentWorks: The opportunity to sell a service that I truly believe in, which solves so many critical business issues for our customers. There is nothing more fulfilling than hearing directly from an organization, “PaymentWorks is exactly what we’ve been searching for!” The excitement I have every time we receive this feedback never gets old!

Favorite hobby: The only thing better than watching or playing sports is coaching my 3 kids! If you’re ever looking, I can likely be found at a lacrosse, football, soccer, or basketball court/field/pitch near you!

For more than 13 years, Haley has enjoyed working as an individual contributor and leader in banking and financial technology. Her most recent experience working with the Paymode-X team at Bottomline Technologies allowed her to hone operational skills and execute meaningful workflow changes for the team and business. Haley is passionate about leadership, process automation, scaling businesses, and guiding changes that have far-reaching cross-organizational impacts.

What I love about PaymentWorks: First, the people – the passion, industry experience, and drive that the teams have around building a world-class product is unmatched. Also, the problems we’re solving around risk management, vendor onboarding, and payments are so impactful for our customers. I love seeing the measurable changes we can make in the lives of our Accounts Payable and Receivables partners.

My favorite thing to do: I love being outside – gardening and hiking are at the top of my list!

Hayley’s experience includes building successful partnerships from scratch at startups with some of the largest companies in the world including Google, Microsoft, Amazon and CDW.

Notably, she led strategic partnerships for Cisco security ($2B BU) with Microsoft and Google and other CSPs. Additionally, she led a business transformation initiative changing the GTM model to partnerships in order to scale the Cisco cloud security business from $400M to $1B.

Hayley also has extensive experience in startups, scaling fast-growing companies, sales, and business development for both Enterprise and SMB and has been involved in three successful exits with startups. Hayley’s background is in cybersecurity in the cloud, moving to B2B payments fraud has been a fun and interesting transition that allows her to leverage her cyber background.

What I love about PaymentWorks: Seeing Partners, Prospects, and Investors face light up when they learn what we do and how we do it. There is an amazing light bulb moment and then people realize this product can change the world – how we do business, individuals lives, and the fraud landscape. Also I love our customers and partners – they are our biggest champions, advocates, and are truly invested in making our product better.

My favorite thing to do: I love traveling. I am always up for an adventure to somewhere new. However, my favorite place in the whole world is Vermont. When I’m in Vermont I feel like I am home. I love when I’m there, life slows down. Everything seems easier, and the world is a prettier and a kinder place.

Matias is a senior technology executive with over two decades of experience building and scaling engineering organizations and enterprise platforms. He currently serves as Chief Architect at PaymentWorks, where he was the first employee hired and has been instrumental in shaping the company’s architecture, security posture, and operational scalability since its earliest days in 2014. Prior to PaymentWorks, Matias held senior engineering roles at Disney Interactive, Adobe, Macromedia, and Sun Microsystems, contributing to large-scale, mission-critical systems across consumer and enterprise domains. His work centers on building durable platforms and guiding long-term technical evolution in close alignment with business growth.

What I love about PaymentWorks: The passion and energy that comes with working in at a smaller company with big ideas.

My favorite things to do when not working: Cycling and photography

Matt has spent more than a decade building and scaling software teams from startup to growth stage. He has held both engineering and leadership roles, contributing to growth-phase shifts at industry-dominant companies such as sovrn, Automox, and PaymentWorks. At Automox he helped the company build leading products while navigating a 40x organizational growth while leading its Core Services Engineering department, focused on highly reliable and scalable platforms. Across his career he has driven organizations toward stronger communication and faster response to critical events through incident management and observability, building a foundation for resilient products and teams. He joined PaymentWorks in 2022, and as VP of Software Engineering leads a team of world-class engineers building the company’s B2B identity network and payments platform.

What I love about PaymentWorks: The culture. There’s a relentless drive across the team to solve real problems for our customers, and a shared sense of ownership behind it. We believe we’re building something good for our customers and their vendors, and that we’re solving a big problem in the business identity and payments space. It’s a thrill to be part of a team that’s working together collaboratively to solve big problems.

My favorite food: Pizza. But who doesn’t like pizza?

Taylor began his career in product management at the CBORD Group. While online ordering was still very much in its infancy, he was a principal architect of the first-to-market online ordering app focused on the higher ed market, GET. Taylor was also responsible for growing usage of CBORD’s payment platform from 20 customers to more than 200+ during his tenure, growth primarily fueled by the creation of the GET app.

He was an early employee at PaymentWorks, and has been instrumental in several product developments, including the company’s first-to-market payments security guarantee. He currently leads the Product team, responsible for the overall product vision & strategy.

What I love about PaymentWorks: The vision to go big!! We aren’t looking to find a niche or just grow a sales number by 10% each year… We want to fundamentally change the way companies do business with one another. The aspiration is exciting!

My favorite sport/place/hobby: Both types of football- American and soccer. Thailand. Playing guitar and mountain biking. (Not at the same time!)

Thayer has 35 years in B2B payments, starting at American Express, where he invented and then launched the first purchasing card, aka the P-Card, currently running at a trillion dollar annual payment volume. His next stop was Employee Matters, where the focus on payroll operations led to a key insight which was formative in PaymentWorks: with money movement you do not need to take control of funds. Finally with his time at OB10, his exposure to invoicing processing and invoice approval led to the epiphany that was the final key to the foundation of PaymentWorks: the vendor master is the vehicle to achieve payment security. He founded PaymentWorks in 2014 with CTO Alan Greenblatt. Thayer holds a BA from Princeton University.

My favorite thing about PaymentWorks: Building the team we have and seeing people grow and have an impact with their careers and with our customers. I was just the guy with the idea- it’s the people who work here who have made this idea a reality.

My favorite place: Hands down Maine. Spending time there in the summer with my family ranks really high.

Tom most recently worked with Rick Auletta as CFO of Motionsoft and Softgate Systems, resulting in successful turnarounds and sales of both companies. He has also served as CFO for iQ Media Group Inc. and E-Duction, Inc. He was Vice President of Finance at Bank One when it merged with J.P. Morgan, and was founder and CEO of EBL International, Inc., a payroll company focused on small-dollar loans in emerging economies. Tom is a graduate of Penn State University and holds an MBA from Villanova University.

My favorite thing about PaymentWorks: I love simple ideas that deliver outsized results. For most companies, new vendor onboarding is important, but error prone. And changes to vendor profiles introduce significant risk. Companies lose billions of dollars every year to fraudsters posing to be legitimate vendors; it just isn’t possible for every A/P department to be 100% vigilant against fraud. The PaymentWorks platform automates onboarding and updating of vendor records. But more than that, we can indemnify our customers against financial loss. Our proprietary IP and robust data sources provide a firewall between our customers and the fraudsters. It’s rewarding to work at a company that does well by doing good.

My favorite hobby: I like starting home improvement projects. Finishing them is not as fun.