CORE’s Leadership Team
Meet our Leaders
DAN PAULUS
Chief Executive Officer
As an integrity-driven, highly collaborative leader with an open, no-surprises approach, Dan has assembled, transformed, and led high-performing teams throughout his career. As the critical lead for CORE, Dan has enabled the organization to propel transformative growth. Dan has built a data-driven, forward-looking culture that supports key stakeholders, from customers, prospects, to employees. Prior to joining CORE, Dan spent his career at Naviga, Digital Technology International and Firstlogic.
RAJ LAKHANI
Chief Financial Officer
With a tremendous record of establishing cross-functional partnerships to drive optimal results at technology/software/SaaS/Services companies, Raj now oversees the accounting, financial planning and analysis, HR, treasury, IT, audit, legal, and tax functions at CORE. Prior to joining CORE, Raj spent his career at IBM, Microsoft and Wolters Kluwer and at Private Equity backed enterprises – in both finance and software engineering functions.
PAUL STADLER
Senior Vice President, Product Management
As an experienced product, strategy, and technology leader, Paul focuses on value creation from concept to market realization with efficiency. With his expertise in product strategy, management, process, engineering, and business development, Paul has enhanced CORE’s high performing, scalable architecture and product strategy. With years of fintech and payment expertise, Paul is widely known operating on a fact-basis across product, engineering, and our revenue organization. Prior to joining CORE, Paul spent his career Barclays, eBay, and USA Technologies.
HIREN DESAI
Vice President, Client Operations
With over 25 years in Professional Services, Customer Support, and Development, Hiren has been passionate about taking care of customers and ensuring their satisfaction by delivering proven services, outstanding customer support, and well-tested products that allow for maximum productivity. At CORE, Hiren has successfully led Professional Services, Support, and Implementations teams and built successful vendor relationships. Prior to joining CORE, Hiren spent his career at SunGard and Superion.
ALAN PYRZ
Senior Vice President, Development & Engineering
Alan has more than twenty-five years of experience leading engineering teams in the design, development, and support of enterprise software for the government, healthcare, and fintech industries. Alan has a passion for leveraging process and technology to improve individuals’ lives – both for clients as well as for internal teams at CORE. Prior to CORE, Alan co-founded eGov Strategies LLC.
SHASH CATES
Vice President, Marketing
Focused on CORE’s strategic brand management and marketing strategies, Shash brings with her decades of full-funnel marketing expertise. From brand management, messaging and positioning, partner and direct marketing and sales enablement, Shash oversees the Marketing team at CORE. Hyper focused on strengthening CORE’s market position and brand awareness, Shash drives the marketing strategies to achieve desired business goals. Prior to CORE, Shash spent her career at Cigna, BidSync, Dell/EMC, Workfront, and Instructure.
TRENT SCHOONMAKER
Vice President, Strategic Initiatives & Sales Operations
With an uncanny ability to see patterns in data that lead to developing and driving strategy, while leading high performing teams, Trent has deep expertise in strategizing and executing to growth-driven plans and process. Prior to CORE, Trent spent his career at Naviga and Micro Focus.
Our Payments Practice Executives
BRIAN VOIGT
Executive Vice President | Payment Risk, Compliance & Operations
With over 30 years of payments and financial services related experience, Brian’s background spans multiple areas such as developing and managing teams in Risk, Operations, Program Management, Product Strategy, Product Management, Strategic Business Development and Sales. At CORE, Brian leverages his experience to manage risk and compliance efforts while leading a talented Payments Operations organization. Prior to joining CORE, Brian spent his career at MerchantE, FIS -Worldpay, First Data (Fiserv) and Bank of America.
JOHN THARPE
Executive Vice President | Payment Business Development & Strategic Partnerships
With over 30 years of experience in banking and payments, John’s diverse background ranges from accounting & banking platform integrations, strategic payment consulting, PayFac acquisition & aggregation models (PSP/PF), mobile payments & wallets, eCommerce ecosystems, payment gateways, SaaS POS and terminal manufacturing to developing nascent payment solutions & software. Prior to joining CORE, John spent his career at Sage, IntelliPay, Bank of America, and Spindle.
DAN SLOAN
President, AMS Division
With over 30 years of entrepreneurial success and strategic vision in public and private sector payment solutions, Dan has a stellar history of implementing and directing the organizations operational and fiscal performance. With CORE, he is now specifically focused on expanding existing strategic partnerships and new sales initiatives with CORE’s products. As the founder of Automated Merchant Systems, Inc. (AMS), Dan will leverage his expertise to analyze and make recommendations on the impact of long-range growth initiatives, planning, and introduction of new strategies and regulatory actions.
