Board Members

Silvio Tavares is an experienced CEO, senior executive, public company board director and thought leader with over 15 years of experience in the financial services and digital commerce industries. Mr. Tavares is the Chairman and founding CEO of The Digital Commerce Alliance, a leading global trade association. DCA founding members include Bank of America, Microsoft, MasterCard, Discover, Fiserv/ First Data among others.

He serves as a Director on the board of CSG International (NASDAQ:CSGS) a leading digital engagement and payment services provider to the mobile and cable industries. He was previously Senior Vice President and Global Head of the Information Products business at Visa, where he led a business unit generating several hundred million dollars in annual sales and successfully launched key new industry leading products in the areas of payment fraud detection, digital marketing and merchant loyalty. Mr. Tavares joined Visa from First Data (now a unit of Fiserv), where he was Senior Vice President and Global Head of the Information and Analytics Business Unit. At First Data, Tavares patented and launched First Data’s U.S. macro-economic spending indicator, among several other groundbreaking data analytics products. He began his career at AT&T where he authored one of the earliest business method patents for web-based payments. Silvio has authored over fifteen granted or pending patents in the fields of digital commerce, electronic payments and payments analytics.

Mr. Tavares earned a Juris Doctor degree from the Boston University School of Law (Oxford University Program), an MBA from Boston College and a Bachelor of Science Degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Tufts University. In addition to English, he speaks Portuguese, Spanish and French fluently.

Paul joined TransUnion in 2015 as the leader of the TransUnion’s Card organization, including both Market Strategy and Market Development. Transunion would become the first data platform to be represented on The CardLinx Association board of directors. Pauls teams at Transunion gather client needs, collect market intelligence and deliver thought leadership and solutions to the market.

Prior to joining TransUnion, Paul spent 12 years at Fifth Third Bank as Director of the Credit Card lines of business. Key contributions over the last decade include developing and leading the strategy resulting in ten-fold growth of the business to $2.6B in assets. A major component driving growth of profitability has been the ability to leverage the knowledge and manpower of key strategic partners such as TransUnion, MasterCard, Argus, Zoot, Vantiv and TSYS. Additionally, Paul was responsible for Fifth Third Student Lending from 2012–2014 and the associated partnership with Sallie Mae.

Paul spent 1996-2003 with Visa Sales and departed as the Midwest Regional Manager.

Alisa Ellis is Vice President, Global Head of Innovation & Emerging Products with responsibility for creating and executing the strategic innovation agenda for Discover Global Network. In this role, she manages the full innovation lifecycle – from idea to incubation – focusing on targeted experimentation, industry standard setting and emerging solution development.

Ms. Ellis joined Discover in 2011, and has had responsibility for developing and implementing a comprehensive product strategy for the Discover Global Network focusing on the areas of mobile/digital payments, security/authentication, data and emerging payment modalities. She also served as a Chief of Staff to the senior executive responsible for Payment Services at Discover, including Discover Network, PULSE and Diners Club International.

Prior to joining Discover, Ms. Ellis held Vice President positions at HSBC North America, including Vice President, Market Intelligence and Vice President, Payment Products, both in the Card & Retail Services Division. Prior to HSBC she held a variety of positions in corporate strategy and finance.

Ms. Ellis holds an MBA in Strategy, Finance and Accounting from the Kellogg School of Management, and a BS in Journalism from Northwestern University.

David is the Founder and CEO of Augeo (augeomarketing.com), a leading loyalty and engagement platform company based in St. Paul, Minnesota. David co-chairs its fast-growing subsidiary, Figg (gofigg.com), a transaction-based digital advertising platform company delivering dynamic consumer offer experiences for financial institutions, banks, fintechs and digital platforms in the United States. The mission of Augeo is inspiring people to achieve more—one interaction, transaction or experience at a time. Augeo has the privilege of designing and supporting enterprise-wide engagement and loyalty solutions for many of America’s most prominent companies, including over 55 Fortune 500 companies.

Neal is the General Manager of Microsoft Earn. he leads Microsoft’s card linking initiatives and leads new initiatives to increase consumer engagement and monetization.  Prior to this role, Neal was Chief of Staff for a number of Microsoft initiatives including Bing Local, Bing Mobile, Bing Maps, MSN, and Local Ad products.

Prior to Microsoft, Neal was a pioneer in the voice recognition industry. He launched IBM’s voice recognition products, he founded two companies that commercialized voice self-service, and for Microsoft he created the industry’s first voice search service.

Mladen Vladic is the General Manager of Loyalty division within FIS, the world’s largest provider of retail payments and banking technologies.

Mladen specializes in banking and retail loyalty solutions as well as emerging payment trends. Under his leadership, FIS Loyalty division has been focused on convergence between banking and retail loyalty space to deliver relevant, real time point-of-sale consumer engagement opportunities and coalitions. Those efforts received five industry recognitions in the last two years including PYMNTS.com POS Innovation Award and Pay Before’s Outstanding Loyalty Program.

Mr. Vladic earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business from University of Pristina, Serbia and Master’s degree in Business Economics from University of South Florida.

Mladen Vladic is the General Manager of Loyalty division within FIS, the world’s largest provider of retail payments and banking technologies.

Mladen specializes in banking and retail loyalty solutions as well as emerging payment trends. Under his leadership, FIS Loyalty division has been focused on convergence between banking and retail loyalty space to deliver relevant, real time point-of-sale consumer engagement opportunities and coalitions. Those efforts received five industry recognitions in the last two years including PYMNTS.com POS Innovation Award and Pay Before’s Outstanding Loyalty Program.

Mr. Vladic earned a Bachelor’s degree in Business from University of Pristina, Serbia and Master’s degree in Business Economics from University of South Florida.

The Founder and Chairman of Collinson Group, Colin is the driving force behind many firsts in travel and loyalty. He established ICLP, the first dedicated international loyalty agency. He launched the first independent global airport lounge access programme, Priority Pass. Later, Columbus Direct was the first in the UK to sell travel insurance direct. Last year Colin created Valuedynamx to be a leading global provider of personalised, targeted, data-driven omnichannel purchase rewards. Today it has Financial Services and Travel clients in 5 continents.

Colin has been recognised with awards such as Loyalty Magazine’s Personality of the Year 2017 and the Loyalty Lifetime Achievement Mega Award in 2011. He is committed to driving innovation, leading product and strategic development. When making investments in start-ups and scale-ups, Colin offers not only financial support but mentoring and strategic guidance.

Erin Warren serves as the General Manager for the Rakuten In Store Network. In this role, she is responsible for building the most rewarding online to offline consumer offer network of card-linked offers for leading publishers and merchants. Prior to this role, Erin was the Senior Vice President of Marketing at Cartera Commerce, a leading provider of loyalty marketing solutions and rewards programs that increase revenue and customer loyalty. Cartera Commerce was acquired by Rakuten, and Erin, along with Cartera’s executive team, led the successful transition to strengthen loyalty marketing solutions for its customers. Before coming to Cartera, Erin was CMO at CollegeWeekLive (an edtech start-up) and VP of Channel Marketing for Sallie Mae. Erin came to Sallie Mae through the successful acquisition of Upromise where she led member acquisition marketing for this coalition-based marketing company. A marketing veteran with 20 years of experience in the industry, Erin has always been motivated by the opportunity to enhance the way companies execute their marketing strategies to attract and retain customers. A former two-time luge Olympian (94’ and 98’), Erin is currently President of the Board of Directors of the US Luge Association as well as Vice President of the US Luge Foundation. She earned her MBA from Babson College’s Franklin W. Olin Graduate School of Business.

Tim DeSoto joined Walmart's M&A/Corporate Development group in the Bay Area in 2016, leading eCommerce acquisitions. He is currently Head of Membership Programs, Partnerships & Innovation for Sam's Club, responsible for crafting scalable, omni-channel programs and partnerships that increase membership utility and loyalty.

Prior to joining Walmart, Mr. DeSoto spent 15 years working at the intersection of digital commerce and content, applying various monetization models in D2C and B2B2C capacities with 1P, co-branded and white-labeled solutions as a Content Provider and eCommerce Platform, globally - establishing partnerships across 27 countries on 6 continents. While living in NYC, he focused on monetizing The Wall Street Journal and other digital assets for Dow Jones, including precursors to today's podcast and video offerings, and helped launch NOOK and its Newsstand subscription platform for Barnes & Noble.

Tim earned his MBA from NYU's Stern School of Business, specializing in Strategy, Finance, and Entertainment, Media & Technology, and a BS from Arizona State University in Finance with a Certificate in International Business.