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SafeSend Leadership

Meet the people leading the way at SafeSend and working with our phenomenal team of talented individuals in the areas of product development, sales and marketing, technical support and customer success!

Adrian Johnson, Chief Product Officer

Adrian is responsible for the strategic execution of SafeSend’s customer-centric product roadmap. He spent the last 14 years building global product development teams with a focus on cross-functional collaboration. In his roles he’s worked with product, design, and customer experience to ensure that the voice of the client is fully integrated into the development process and user experience. Adrian has a bachelor’s degree in international business from Berkeley College, and an MBA from Northwestern University. In his free time, he enjoys traveling with his wife and two kids. Additionally, he’s an avid marathon runner and triathlete.

Amanda Madonna, Sales Development Manager

Amanda leads the talented Sales Development team with a balanced approach, drawing on a foundation of empathy, creativity, and data-driven insight. Amanda has experience in business development, field marketing, lead generation, sales operations, and even opera directing. Amanda strives to bring innovative strategies to help her team achieve their goals. Outside of work, she is a talented opera singer and enjoys being creative.

Andrea Schwartz, Vice President – Customer Success

Andrea oversees the Customer Success efforts at SafeSend, with a vision in strategy to provide customers with a voice, support, guidance, and knowledge resources. She enjoys helping customers achieve their desired outcomes and tax automation transformation goals. Andrea’s focus is on delighting customers and developing a high-performing customer focused team. Before joining SafeSend, Andrea worked at several hyper-growth SaaS companies where she excelled at creating, adopting, and leveraging customer success best practices.

Andrew Hatfield, Co-founder & Chief Growth Officer

Andrew leads revenue growth, strategic partnerships, and defining SafeSend’s long-term priorities and agenda. He is a recognized industry speaker and thought leader, and enthusiast for emerging technologies that impact tax and accounting firms. Andrew focuses on market dynamics, customer feedback and needs, and profession trends with an eye toward identifying new pathways to growth. For nearly two decades, Andrew has lent his automation technology expertise and deep domain knowledge of the profession to help create innovative software solutions – each providing exponential efficiency gains for tax and accounting professionals.

April Welliver, Senior Director of Sales

April oversees the outstanding Sales team at SafeSend. Her high energy, authenticity, and inspirational style of leadership influences the entire organization. April has more than 20 years under her belt as a dynamic Sales professional in all facets of sales and business development including SDR/BDR, inside sales, field sales, executive leadership, and sales enablement, with 13 of those years focused on technology within the tax and accounting profession.

Dave Griffin, Director of Customer Support

Dave oversees the service experience delivered by the Customer Support team at SafeSend. He is passionate about delivering an experience that customers love. He strives to maximize customer satisfaction with SafeSend products by delivering timely and accurate support through all channels of interaction. Prior to joining SafeSend, Dave spent more than 20 years leading software service teams supporting tax and accounting professionals.

Erika Carlson, Head of People

Erika is responsible for developing and growing SafeSend’s dynamic, authentic, supportive culture. She is an experienced People Operations leader who loves figuring out human-centered ways to help companies grow. At SafeSend, her areas of focus include talent acquisition & onboarding, compensation & benefits, performance management, policy & compliance, employee engagement, learning & development, and team culture. A former software engineer, Erika blends a structured approach to strategy and problem-solving with optimism and flexibility: a necessary balance to support and develop people within a growing organization. She centers her work in curiosity, empathy, openness, and vulnerability. She believes deeply in the potential for people to accomplish exceptional things when they feel challenged, supported, and fulfilled. When she’s not thinking about People Ops, Erika loves biking, books, bourbon ice cream, and being with her family.

Holly Koss, People Operations Manager

Holly handles people infrastructure at SafeSend, including performance management, employee relations, recruiting, payroll, compensation, and benefits. Her main goal – finding exceptional talent to join our team and making them feel valued and included. She does this by partnering with managers to create and maintain processes for employee recognition and development, as well as ensuring the company is offering competitive pay and benefits. Holly has more than 20 years of human resource management experience and is certified as a Senior Human Resources Professional.

Janay Robinson, Marketing Manager

Janay leads the talented marketing team behind SafeSend’s dynamic, innovative, and results-oriented marketing initiatives. With over a decade of experience in B2B SaaS marketing, she is dedicated to leveraging her expertise to propel SafeSend’s growth and expand its reach in the market. Her ability to blend data-driven insights with a deep understanding of customer needs enables her to create impactful campaigns that resonate with target audiences. Janay’s responsibilities encompass strategic planning, campaign management, brand development, market research, and digital marketing optimization.

Jason Peyovich, Director of Operations

Jason oversees internal operational efficiencies, touching every aspect of the business at SafeSend. He ensures that the business stays productive by managing procedures and keeps key decision makers well-informed through data gathering and analysis. Prior to joining SafeSend, Jason spent several years working in all aspects of workflow management using Lean Six Sigma principals in accounting firms, including Peterson Sullivan and KPMG, LLP.

Kathleen Kaag, Executive Vice President - Marketing

Kathleen has served on executive leadership from high growth businesses in Series A, Series C to Series D and +8 years at IBM. She specializes in driving growth and building high performing teams. Kathleen joins SafeSend from her recent tenure at Loadsmart where she co-led the business to a $1B valuation with employee growth from 200 to 750. She served as the SVP, Marketing to introduce a Go-to-Market strategy, add SaaS revenue through two successful acquisitions, and grow the team from 2 to 25. She was recently recognized by PR Daily as one of 2023’s Top Women in Brand Marketing.

Manir Zaman, Vice President - Engineering

Manir is a software technology leader with 25+ years of experience managing and scaling Engineering, Product, and DevOps teams. His passion is to lead results-oriented teams in designing, developing, deploying, and maintaining highly scalable web and mobile solutions. In Manir’s career, he has helped companies create innovative products and solutions, automate business processes, conduct technical due diligence and reviews, grow or turnaround technical teams, and fix reliability and scaling issues. As a highly technical, hands-on leader, he has built high performing distributed software development teams both in-house and offshore. Outside of work, Manir enjoys music, gardening, and traveling with his family.

Matt Smolko, Chief Financial Officer

Matt is responsible for leading the SafeSend financial operations including financial forecasting, month end close, target setting, financial reporting and developing KPIs. By developing a deep understanding of the financials, he empowers the business to make sound, strategic decisions. He enjoys digging into the details and helping set up processes and procedures to improve transparency and efficiency. Matt has more than 15 years of corporate finance experience including 7+ years leading the financial organization for a SaaS business. In his free time he enjoys spending time with his family, following Cleveland sports, and traveling.

Pam Duplacey, Creative Director

Pam is a multidisciplinary creative director with more than 20 years’ experience in design and visual communications; 12 of those specifically serving the tax and accounting profession. She leads the Creative team at SafeSend and is focused on brand development and its integration with customer experience through mediums such as graphic design, storytelling, and video. At the intersection of creativity and technology, Pam’s skills uniquely position her to guide the Creative team on the execution of many projects throughout the year that support the overall Marketing strategy and build awareness in the tax and accounting profession. Pam enjoys all things colorful and is an avid toy collector.

Prafull Trivedi, Director of Engineering

Prafull leads the SafeSend engineering practice, providing technical leadership, mentoring the teams in industry-based best practices across software delivery, infrastructure, and architecture. His expertise lies in building engineering teams, defining culture and processes that enable those teams to grow, and creating repeatable operational success. Before joining SafeSend, Prafull worked more than 10 years for various software companies in categories such as ERP, public amenities, news, B2B, collaboration, and communication.

Rahul Chandran, Chief Technology Officer

Rahul provides expert technical leadership and direction to the software development team at SafeSend. Rahul is responsible for the design, strategy, and deployment of the company’s technology roadmap, including leading the team executing initiatives in product development day-to-day. With more than two decades of experience in the software industry, including key engineering positions at Microsoft® and Intuit®, Rahul has a deep passion for emerging technologies and building best-in-class applications that solve real problems, for real people. The process of turning an idea into something tangible and positively impacting people, remains a source of endless happiness for him. Rahul makes it his mission to work with extremely smart people. In his spare time, he plays poker and pretends to play the guitar, albeit not terribly well. Rahul finds people who refer to themselves in the third person truly baffling.

Sachin Patwardhan, IDC People Operations Manager

Sachin is responsible for building culture and branding for the SafeSend India Development Center (IDC). His willingness to take up the ancillary responsibilities has made him a strong People Operations professional in a short span of time. Sachin oversees talent acquisition, onboarding, policies and compliances, compensation and benefits, performance management, employee engagement, business partnerships for the SafeSend IDC. His unique ability to organize the working process in a way that lets employees demonstrate the full extent of their professional skills helps our team shine. Outside of work, Sachin likes to stay fit through working out and practicing yoga. He also enjoys watching cricket and Formula 1 racing.

Scott Fleszar, Chief Executive Officer

Scott is responsible for running the SafeSend business overall and oversees operational and growth strategies. He has a passion for fostering a dynamic team environment, promoting company culture, and he truly believes that people are the company’s greatest strength. Scott’s focus is on driving growth, delighting customers, and developing a high performing managerial team. He is a customer advocate and has served the tax and accounting profession in various leadership roles at technology organizations for more than 25 years. Scott excels at seeing the big picture to help tax and accounting firms at every level work smarter. In his free time, he enjoys hiking, skiing, golfing, and spending time with his family.

Shannon Jencks, Executive Vice President – Growth & Business Development

Shannon leads the sales revenue efforts at SafeSend, serving as educator, coach, and cheerleader. Her goal is simple – empower clients with the knowledge and tools needed to automate the client touchpoints around the tax engagement process and reduce their work. Before joining SafeSend, Shannon worked with alliantgroup, helping businesses and their CPAs identify government-sponsored tax credits and incentives.

Shivam Tikoo, Director of Product Management

Shivam drives the vision, strategy, user experience, and process execution for the SafeSend Returns Suite product portfolio on the Development team at SafeSend. He is focused on bridging the gap between technology, people, and business processes. Prior to joining SafeSend, Shivam worked on large scale digital transformation projects in diverse industries such as retail, e-commerce, media, entertainment, and telecommunications across multiple continents.

Steve Dusablon, Co-founder & Chief Innovation Officer

Steve drives company innovation and product strategy. Under his leadership, the company released our flagship product, SafeSend Returns® – one of the most unique and innovative solutions in the tax and accounting profession today and a multi-year winner of the CPA Practice Advisor Technology Innovation Award. Steve is a visionary and has a passion for building new products and solving real world problems for our customers. Steve is an entrepreneur at heart, a Certified Public Accountant earned while at Coopers & Lybrand and has experience launching businesses and leading organizations.

Steven Lyon, Senior Manager, Product Specialists

Steven is the Senior Manager of Product Specialists at SafeSend with over a decade of experience in tax return delivery software. He is a respected professional known for his expertise and has demonstrated a strong track record of success in contributing significantly to his company’s achievements. Steven’s dedication to his work and his team have earned him the respect of his colleagues and peers. A proud Army veteran, Steven is based in Meridian, Idaho, and continues to drive innovation and excellence in his field, delivering exceptional results for his company and clients.

Tony Kurek, CPA, Controller

Tony is responsible for overseeing the daily accounting and financial reporting processes of the business. A Michigan-licensed CPA since 2006 with 8 years of public accounting experience and another 14 years teaching accounting at Eastern Michigan University, he ensures the business is in compliance with GAAP and has satisfactory controls around financial operations. Tony utilizes his prior experience serving clients both small and large to guide the business through the growth stage of its life cycle, leading his team with the same focus on development that he employed as a Michigan Association of Certified Public Accountants (MICPA) award winning educator. Outside of work hours, Tony enjoys spending time with his wife and two daughters, staying active by playing basketball, softball, golf and tennis, and catching the latest release out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.