ON Partners Recruits Chief Marketing Officer for Pagaya

June 13, 2022 – Bryan Buck, a partner at ON Partners, recently placed Peter Scherr as the new chief marketing officer for Pagaya, a financial technology company that enables financial institutions to expand access to more customers through its partnerships and artificial intelligence network. Mr. Scherr joins Pagaya from Vroom, a leading E-commerce platform for buying and selling used vehicles, where he served as chief marketing officer. Prior to that, he was CMO at Better, a digital-first homeownership company. Before that, Mr. Scherr was vice president of digital acquisition at American Express, where he was responsible for developing the online customer experience strategy for the U.S. customer card and leading the interactive customer experience strategy for customer acquisition.

Pagaya is a financial technology company working to reshape the lending marketplace, for investors, by using machine learning, big data analytics, and sophisticated AI-driven risk analysis. Earlier this year, Pagaya announced the company had received a $350 million fully committed common equity PIPE. The PIPE will further support Pagaya’s business plan upon the close of its pending business combination with EJF Acquisition Corp.

Top-Ranked Recruiters

With a primary focus on technology, consumer, industrial, and the life science sectors, ON Partners recruits C-level and board talent for public and private companies, as well as venture capital and private equity firms. Founded in 2006, the firm’s consultants work from offices in Atlanta; Boston; Chicago; Cleveland; Dallas; Menlo Park, CA; Minneapolis. MN; San Francisco; and New York. ON Partners is one of the fastest growing search firms and this year is ranked as one of the Top 20 recruiting platforms in the nation by Hunt Scanlon Media.

ON Partners’ Mr. Buck specializes in enterprise technology, consumer products and services, and automotive technology sectors. He serves public corporations as well as the portfolio companies of leading PE and VC firms.

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:

ZRG Partners, a leading search firm backed by private equity firm RFE Investment Partners, recently assisted in the recruitment of Mark Gaydos as chief marketing officer of NASDAQ-traded CalAmp in Irvine, CA. Managing director and technology practice leader Lisa Hooker led the assignment along with Douglas Madden, managing director in the technology practice. “Mark’s proven product marketing leadership, demand generation expertise and deep understanding of enterprise software and technology companies will be extremely valuable to CalAmp as we continue our transformation to a leading software-as-a-service provider,” said Jeff Gardner, CEO of CalAmp.

Mercedes Chatfield-Taylor, a co-founder of Artico Search, has placed Jen Jones as chief marketing officer of commercetools, a platform for next-generation B2C and B2B commerce. In her new position, Ms. Jones oversees commercetools’ global brand, marketing, and corporate communications efforts, including brand strategy and design, customer marketing, demand generation, product marketing, marketing analytics and operations. Prior to joining commercetools, Ms. Jones was chief marketing officer at Dataminr. With offices in San Francisco, New York, and Austin, TX, Artico is off to one of the fastest starts among boutique search firms in recent memory.

ON Partners recently placed David Greenberg as the new chief marketing officer for Conversica, a provider of conversational AI solutions for enterprise revenue teams. Consultant Aaron Clark led the assignment. “We’re addressing a real need with applied AI,” said Jim Kaskade, CEO of Conversica. “I am thrilled for David to join our executive team roundtable. His experience in marketing leadership with practically every high-growth success in the Pacific Northwest will prove vital and contribute greatly to Conversica’s success in 2022. I need a powerhouse marketeer to guide Conversica to market growth and dominance in a time of explosive competition. I couldn’t be more excited to begin the year adding David’s energy and expertise.”