Aaron Sparks Email & Phone Number

Seattle, WA, US

Seattle, WA, US

Leading Cognito’s product team and delivering a highly scalable, available, and secure authentication service to support some of the world’s largest consumer web and mobile applications.

Seattle, WA, US

Building Cognito's developer experience team. Working to deeply understand the needs of Cognito developers and remove friction that prevents them from focusing on building their application.

Seattle, WA, US

• Leading the development and implementation of a suite of fraud detection services for multiple business lines.
• Collaborated with data scientists, software engineers, investigators, and business owners to develop BotDefender, a clustering service that detects bot and other high-risk fraudulent accounts.
• Served in multiple roles as we scaled – product manager, program manager, and investigator.
• Developed the product vision, roadmap, capacity plan, requirements, and other key artifacts.
• Prototyped clustering techniques, rules, and scoring in SQL and Python.
• Built and scaled the operational team, training, standard operating procedures, and metrics/reporting package for the service.

• Selected by Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft and current CEO of Intellectual Ventures, to lead his incubator fund’s first social-impact spinout. Took a payments tracking and fraud detection approach from.
• Raised $10MM from Bill Gates in 2 rounds of financing and collaborated with him on the service over the course of more than a dozen meetings.
• Developed a payments ledger and fraud detection service with directional transparency and attributed transactions.
• Successfully piloted the service in East Africa with Pathfinder, an international women's health non-profit.
• Obtained money transmitter licenses and developed the KYC, AML, and compliance program elements required.
• Ran a lean product design playbook in 6 months, including problem space exploration, the development of a high-fidelity prototype, and user testing that yielded a net promoter score of 64 (vs a target of 40).

Bellevue, WA, US

• Responsible for a number of Finance functions including treasury, internal audit, risk management, procurement, insurance, cost allocations, and special projects.
• Led a treasury and legal team that successfully closed multiple, award-winning (e.g. 2015 Adam Smith award for Best Financing Solution) securitization deals totaling more than $500MM.
• Mitigated risk for the management team through the creation of a $100MM+ D&O insurance tower and recruiting/building the audit committee.
• Led multiple cost-cutting initiatives, including the renegotiation of 2 key vendor deals that saved the company millions of dollars.
• Conducted dozens of internal audits and investigations leading to cost recovery and enhanced controls.
• Recruited and led a team of highly talented, ex-Big Four auditors.

New York, NY, US

• Promoted to lead KPMG Forensic's global product development function, including key initiatives for technology development, off-shoring and methodologies.
• Led the creation and global deployment of K-Trace, a fraud detection platform that used rules and a scoring model to highlight signs of financial statement fraud and unusual accounting entries.
• Coordinated the efforts of a dozen country practices to develop a consistent international approach and methodology for investigations, corporate intelligence, and fraud risk management.Led the Seattle office’s.
• Directed several investigations into embezzlements, kickbacks, and financial statement-related matters.
• Recruited and trained a team of specialists that deployed data analytics and other technology approaches to investigations.

Worldwide, OO

• Key member of Deloitte's national SAP Audit and Controls Team:
• Played a key role in the development of the SAP security and controls audit products, including audit workplans, automated tools to review application security, and internal and external training programs.
• Lead key engagements for some of the firm’s largest audit clients including Microsoft, John Deere, and The World Bank.Led the Seattle office's efforts to build a data analysis practice:
• Identified $2 million in lost premium revenue that an insurance client then recovered.
• Performed a procurement cost savings analysis that yielded $10 million in annual savings for a technology client.Managed large consulting project teams on controls implementation engagements.
• Directed a year-long inventory control system implementation project for a large technology client.