Socure, Idemia and FaceTec add digital identity veterans to leadership

Socure has hired a new advisor and a new chief marketing officer as it seeks hypergrowth with its selfie biometrics and KYC software. Former Kount CMO Gary Sevounts has been named Socure CMO, while fintech and payments expert Eric Woodward has been appointed senior advisor to CEO Johnny Ayers to expedite the company’s vision for the growth.

Sevounts was with Kount before it was acquired for $640 million by Equifax earlier this year, and has also previously served as CMO of cloud networking and security company Aryaka Networks. He has been recognized as one of the Top 35 Marketing Executives by The Wall Street Journal, according to the announcement.

“As digital-first becomes the new paradigm, Socure is emerging as the clear leader in digital identity and fraud solutions,” says Sevounts. “Socure has become the essential ‘must-have’ technology for enabling safe digital interactions involving the exchange of funds between businesses and consumers. I look forward to contributing to Socure’s mission and growth journey and am excited about the opportunity ahead of us.”

Woodward has been engaged in more than a dozen advisory roles prior to joining Socure, relating to digital identity, payments risk and data infrastructure. Before that, he was group president of Zelle parent company Early Warning.

“Socure is becoming the essential solution for large and mid-size banks, FinTechs, buy-now-pay-later providers, online gaming operators, and other industries moving money or working on any type of real-time interactions with customers online and digitally,” he comments. “Part of what attracted me to Socure is their ability to identify customers of all ages, further opening up financial services to many qualified customers who may have otherwise been denied access.”

“Eric and I have known each other since the very early days of Socure, developing an immense respect for one another talking about the future of the digital identity market almost every month for the past 8+ years,” adds Ayers.

Idemia adds CPO

Idemia has appointed Astrid Warren to be its chief people officer, in which role she will oversee the biometrics provider’s human resources strategy.

Warren has more than 20 years of experience, mostly in the high-tech sector and global environments, and most recently served as senior VP of Human Resources for SITA.

“Astrid brings exceptional experience across all facets of human resources strategy and development on a global scale,” Idemia Group President and CEO Pierre Barrial says. “Her deep experience in leading Human Resources in the tech industry – where she has spent her entire career – combined with a proven track record of building high performing, diverse teams who deliver business results across regions and cultures, will be a great asset to our Group.”

“I am honored to be joining IDEMIA, a Group with great ambitions and expertise for the future, and a company whose purpose – to make the world a safer place – is aligned with my personal values,” states Warren. “My job in Human Resources has always been driven by my passion for helping people grow and develop their skills and I look forward to meeting and working with the teams at IDEMIA to help them expand their capability to deliver business results.”

FaceTec appoints SVP of Growth and Alliances

FaceTec has appointed Dean Mericka as senior vice president of growth and alliances to help the company respond to increasing global demand for its selfie biometrics and secure authentication technology.

Mericka has served as CRO of Au10tix and Jumio, as well as SVP of Global Sales at Imprivata during a career spanning 25 years of high-performance team-building, according to the announcement.

“We are so excited to have Dean joining us to help manage the enormous growth we are seeing at FaceTec. His wealth of experience with customers in large, important markets around the world will be a huge asset,” says Kevin Alan Tussy, CEO of FaceTec. “We have the best technology and a hard-earned understanding of what it takes to do digital identity right, preventing both ID fraud and data breaches. We’ve brought on several exceptional business development team members over this past year in places like Singapore, Brazil, and Portugal. And now with Dean, I feel we are taking another giant step forward in our march towards becoming the global standard in Face Authentication.”

“FaceTec has been on the leading edge of biometric authentication and identity verification solutions development for many years. They have created and provide the foundational technology for real-world, highly effective, and scalable identity solutions and have already proven to change how hundreds of major organizations around the world keep their user data and identities safe and secure,” comments Mericka. “The FaceTec user interface is intuitive, the SDKs are simple to implement and easy to manage, and their security is the strongest in the world. I’m really looking forward to helping lead the effort to take this technology to hundreds of millions of new users in 2021 and well beyond.”

Article Topics

appointments  |  biometrics  |  digital identity  |  FaceTec  |  IDEMIA  |  Socure