Caldwell Recruits Chief Marketing Officer for LendingPoint

September 15, 2022 – Toronto-based Caldwell has assisted in the recruitment of Ryan Scully as chief marketing officer of LendingPoint, an AI-driven credit-tech platform. Partner Brian Lawton led the assignment. “We are thrilled to welcome Ryan to LendingPoint,” said Tom Burnside, CEO of LendingPoint. “We believe Ryan’s broad experience and strategic leadership skills will be invaluable as LendingPoint continues to expand its offerings and evolve our brand.” Mr. Scully is a financial industry leader with over 20 years of experience leading brand, marketing, and analytics initiatives, along with customer acquisition, product development, and small business lending. He joined LendingPoint from Liberty Lending, where for the last year he led the development of a challenger brand, personal loan product, and marketing capabilities as Liberty’s chief revenue officer. Prior to that, he spent 20 years at Discover Financial Services, most recently as senior vice president of brand, media, and consumer insights.

In his new position, Mr. Scully will lead new product development, public relations, brand awareness, performance marketing, marketing communications, marketing tech, and the build out of LendingPoint’s personal finance management offering.

“The LendingPoint team has built an incredible platform, powering origination of high-performance loan portfolios for banks, credit unions, and its own balance sheet serving super prime, prime and near prime consumers at the point of sale, on E-commerce platforms and direct to consumer,” said Mr. Scully. “I am excited to be joining this talented team and look forward to helping write the next chapters in the LendingPoint journey.”

LendingPoint provides one-stop financing solutions for consumers, for E-commerce and point of sale partners, and for lending institutions. Its fraud prevention, risk, and asset management algorithms are used to create financing opportunities across the credit spectrum. Its LendingPoint Merchant Solutions platform provides E-commerce platforms, merchants, and other service providers fully integrated, one-stop financing solutions to convert more customers. LendingPoint is a privately held company headquartered in Metro Atlanta, with offices in San Mateo, CA; New York; Chicago; and Dallas.

Veteran Recruiter

Caldwell’s global financial services practice serves clients in the areas of investment banking and capital markets, asset and wealth management, alternative investments, insurance, consumer financial services, and real estate, as well as all shared services and functional capabilities across the financial services sector.

Mr. Lawton is a partner in Caldwell’s financial services practice and a member of the firm’s Richmond, VA office. He brings a unique perspective to search, leveraging 20 years of experience in P&L ownership and strategic leadership roles in the financial services industry. Mr. Lawton has led C-suite and senior executive searches for clients in financial services, hospitality and beyond, focusing on roles in lending strategy, P&L heads, credit, risk management, performance marketing, analytics, operations, decision science, and more.

Chief Marketing Officers

As business becomes more global and complex, and power shifts from producers of goods and services to consumers, the chief marketing officer’s job of planning and coordinating marketing activities has become more challenging, recruiters say. Yet executive search firms are seeing no shortage of assignments for this important C-level position.

Current business landscape demands have only increased the contribution from CMOs, according to the latest research report from Forrester and Heidrick & Struggles. The survey found that CMOs are building strong relationships with the head of product and research and development to prepare their organizations for digital disruption.

“We see CMOs moving beyond functional expertise to assume responsibility for driving overall growth within their organizations,” said Sheryl Pattek, vice president, CMO executive partner at Forrester. “They are evolving into key strategic partners on the executive team and know that collaboration with the rest of the C-suite will be instrumental to their success.”

Here’s a sampling of recent chief marketing officer searches taken from the Hunt Scanlon Media archives:

SPMB, an executive search firm that helps find transformative executives throughout Silicon Valley, has assisted in the placement of Andrew Savitz as the new chief marketing officer of Azul Systems. Dave Mullarkey led the assignment. “Andrew has a tremendous amount of experience across all aspects of marketing, and a proven track record of helping companies effectively message, drive awareness and leads, position products, create new market categories and enable high growth sales,” said Scott Sellers, co-founder, president and CEO of Azul.

CarterBaldwin Executive Search has assisted Christian Community Credit Union in the recruitment of Aaron Caid as chief marketing officer of this mission-driven credit union. “We are excited to have Aaron Caid join the Christian Community Credit Union family,” said Blair Korschun, CEO of the financial institution. “Aaron is a man of faith with vast experience in leading marketing and analytics for companies with millions of customers and accounts. He has chosen to use his talents to help us grow the credit union and to help us better serve our members.”

Following a nationwide search, New York-based retail and consumer focused executive search firm Herbert Mines Associates placed Gil Phipps as SVP and chief marketing officer of Sprouts Farmers Market in Phoenix, AZ. President Brenda Malloy led the search along with managing director Alison Weil and VP Caitlin Kenefick. “We’re extremely pleased to welcome Gil to the Sprouts team,” said Jack Sinclair, CEO of Sprouts. “The experience Gil brings will be instrumental in shaping Sprouts’ long-term strategy to build brand awareness and loyalty with our core shopper, including strengthening and defining our private label business.”