Expert Practitioners and Advanced Automation

Kristen Metzger
Chief Executive Officer, Smyyth

Kristen is responsible for Smyyth's Solutions business. She is an expert in enterprise accounts receivable and revenue cycle optimization through automation and is a Certified Six Sigma Black Belt. Before Smyyth, Kristen served as Sr. Vice President Operations for Creditek, the leading BPO firm in order-to-cash, where she managed operations for numerous Fortune 1000 companies, including CPG and Pharmaceutical, and earlier with Accenture Strategy and Business Architecture.

Kristen received a BA in Economics from The University of Vermont and has an MBA in Strategy and Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business.

Shyarsh Desai
Chief Executive Officer, Carixa

Shyarsh is responsible for Carixa, Smyyth's order-to-cash cloud technology business. From 2012 to 2018, he was CEO of Credit2B.com, another Smyyth company, which was a leader in B2B credit decision automation until its sale to a strategic acquirer. Most recently, he served as President of Wellaware, an IoT leader for industrial assets and operations.

Earlier in his career, he was Corporate Development Officer at Global Compliance, and Leader, Strategy and Business Development for Dun and Bradstreet, and held solutions leadership roles at IBM. Shyarsh has degrees from the University of Bombay and an MBA from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

John Metzger
Chairman, Smyyth + Carixa

Smyyth's focus is on Carixa cloud software and services to optimize credit, collections, trade promotion management, and deduction management. John was previously Founder, CEO, and Chairman of Creditek Corp., from start-up to the singular leadership position in A/R BPO, and to its ultimate sale.

John’s early career positions were as Director of Credit, VP Distribution, and EVP Global Operations in the consumer goods industry, and also led a consultancy. Credit2B, another leading company he founded for automated business credit decisions, was acquired by a strategic acquirer in 2018. He is a graduate of Rutgers University.

Joe Chin
Senior Vice President, Sales

Joe is responsible for sales for Carixa order-to-cash software and Carixa-enabled A/R service solutions and has over two decades of financial technology, services, and business information.

His earlier career was with KPMG audit, Dun & Bradstreet, and Acxiom, where he gained knowledge of the global data analytics business. He then went on to lead the sales team at Credit2B, another Smyyth company, until its sale to a strategic acquirer. Most recently, Joe was the Regional North America Head for Coface Business Information.

Joe is passionate about helping clients leverage Carixa SaaS automation and our A/R service solutions to optimize their profits, cash flow, and productivity. He earned his B.S.B.A. in accounting from Georgetown University.

Frank Boni
Vice President, Managed Services & Client Operations

Frank is responsible for Carixa Credit-to-Cash SaaS client operations, and outsource and collection operations. Prior to joining Smyyth, Frank had more than 20 years of experience in commercial receivables management, credit, and collections, including serving as Director of Operations and Sales Support for NCO Financial Systems, Inc.

Earlier in his career, he served in management capacities with Dun & Bradstreet RMS, and Payco GAC Corp. Frank has a B.S. in Business Administration from Hofstra University.

Madhav Kale
Vice President & CTO

Madhav leads Carixa Cloud Suite engineering, with the responsibility for executing and scaling the product vision. Previously, he was Chief Architect and CTO for WellAware, an IoT leader in industrial process control technology. Earlier, he worked as an architect for secure portal solutions at SunGard, workflow solutions at Fidelity Investments, and as CTO for UserTrust, a certificate authority.

His experience also includes cyber security, document processing, scanning technologies, machine learning, microservices architecture, and building highly scalable solutions. Madhav has a BE in Computer Engineering from Pune University.

Joseph D'Apolito
Chief Financial Officer

Joe is responsible for finance, corporate planning, and shared service functions for several Smyyth companies. He has over twenty years' management experience in finance, accounting, and administration with large and mid-sized businesses.

Earlier in his career, CFO and V.P. Underwriting for PHHC, Director of Health Care Reform at Emblem Health, and CFO of a $5 billion unit of Anthem, as well as the CFO of Empire Roofing. Joe is a graduate of Lehigh University with a degree in Finance and Accounting.

Karen McCann
Vice President, Operations

Karen has 20 years of experience in operations, data management, administration, and customer service, including serving as Director, Client Services with Creditek, a leading outsourcing company, and as a customer services executive in the telecom industry.

In addition to managing Smyyth's operations and client services, Karen is the product manager for Carixa, the company's remarkable cloud order-to-cash automation.

Frank Buck
Director, Product

Frank is responsible for Carixa Cloud Suite product management, and he joins the Carixa team with deep experience in invoice-to-cash automation. Previously, he served in senior product management roles with Avalara, a tax compliance software company, Billtrust, an invoice-to-payments company, and Sungard Availability Services.

He has early-career experience with FedEx Ground and Amazon fulfillment. Frank has a B.A. Sociology from Bloomsburg University of Pennsylvania.

Cheryl Westphal
Director, Client Success

Cheryl leads the Carixa Client Success team. Her expertise is in refining the customer experience and ensuring products and features enhance the client’s way of business. She is focused on driving product adoption to guarantee the highest return on investment for our customers.

Previously, she served as the Director of Client Success at WellAware, a leading IoT company. Earlier in her career, she managed a regional training department at United Healthcare. Cheryl graduated from the University of Colorado with a degree in Communications.

John G. Eberhardt
Executive Consultant, Order-to-Cash

John is an expert in order-to-cash management and revenue cycle optimization. He has had executive roles in the global consumer goods and manufacturing industries, including GM-Customer Financial Services at Nikon Americas Inc., Director of Corporate Credit at Pentair, and Director of Customer Financial Services at Coltec Industries Inc.

John's many years of corporate finance experience has included managing global credit collections teams as well as procurement, internal audit, and treasury functions.   He is a graduate of Iona College School of Business Administration

Tom Materasso
Director, Solutions Development

Tom's focus is order-to-cash cycle optimization encompassing client receivables management, collections, deductions, and cash flow improvement. He has 30 years of experience managing and developing systems to automate credit-to-cash operations.

His roles with Smyyth have included product and onboarding for Smyyth’s Carixa cloud automation platform and OTC consulting with F1000 clients. Tom previously served as Account Executive for Sage-Intact, Project Manager-BPO F&A for Accenture, Sr. Project Manager for SunGard, and Sr. Product Manager for FIS/GetPaid. He has an MBA from Pace University.

Andrei Afanassenkov
Technology Advisor

Andrei has been a strategic resource to the Smyyth companies since 2006 including leading the development team for Carixa, Smyyth’s modular credit-to-cash automation platform. Andrei has deep experience in FinTech and enterprise technologies, computer simulation, and 3D modeling, and holds a Masters in Mechanical Engineering from Bryansk University.

He leads Smyyth's infrastructure and software development activities.

Anna Costello
PhD

Anna is a Professor of Accounting at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business prior to which she was an Assistant Professor of Accounting at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business and the MIT Sloan School of Management. Costello received her Bachelor's and MBA from the University of Notre Dame and a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Chicago. Costello's research investigates how information asymmetry between buyers and suppliers impacts the terms in long-term supply contracts, and studies how trade credit between supply chain partners influences firm-specific and market-wide risk.

Her research has been published in the Journal of Political Economy, the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Accounting Research, the Journal of Accounting and Economics, and The Accounting Review.

Kim Zablocky
CEO And Chairman, Retail Value Chain Federation

Associated with Smyyth since 2002, Kim is Chairman of the affiliated Retail Value Chain Federation (RVCF.com), the leading advocate for retailer-supplier trading partner synchronization that champions initiatives to increase industry-wide productivity, profitability, and growth.

Kim is well known for his expertise in customer financial services and serves as an advisor in matters concerning the retail and distribution industries. Kim holds a BA in Political Science from the State University of New York.