SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Aura, a mission-driven financial technology company that offers affordable loans to hard-working families, today named Anne M. Myong as Chief Financial Officer. Ms. Myong reports to Aura CEO James Gutierrez and will oversee Finance and Accounting, HR, Risk and Collections.
“Anne is a remarkable leader with global financial and operational experience,” said James Gutierrez, CEO of Aura. “As the daughter of Korean immigrants, she aligns with our mission, understands our clients, and is excited to help them on their journey to financial independence. Anne also brings a steady hand and years of proven leadership to help us navigate these unprecedented times. Going forward, Anne will help scale our business across the country and put us on the path to sustained profitability.”
Prior to joining Aura, Ms. Myong served as Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for Walmart’s Global eCommerce business. In this capacity, she led finance, accounting, strategic planning, M&A and integration activities. She joined Walmart in 2011 as Chief Administrative Officer of its retail operation in China and became CFO the following year. During her tenure with Walmart, Ms. Myong served as a member of the board of directors of Walmart Mexico and was a member of the CEO’s advisory board of women leaders.
“I joined Aura because the company’s mission of providing affordable, credit-building loans to the underbanked resonates strongly with me,” said Anne Myong. “As I enter this new chapter, I look forward to playing a meaningful role in scaling Aura across the country and building a strong, profitable business for the long term. This is about more than a business for me. It’s about supporting families that are often ignored and overlooked. It’s about helping borrowers achieve financial independence. And it’s about helping our borrowers become educated consumers so they can achieve their dreams and their long-term financial goals.”
Prior to Walmart, Ms. Myong held a variety of finance, strategy and investment roles in start-up and Fortune 500 technology companies in Silicon Valley and China. Anne started her career with McKinsey & Company in Washington, DC and New York, serving retailing, consumer goods, and pharmaceutical clients. Most recently, Ms. Myong was the Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Walmart Global eCommerce, overseeing a global business with direct-to-consumer eCommerce sites in the U.S., China and Brazil. In addition, Ms. Myong is a member of the Audit Committee and Board of Directors at Align Technology (NASDAQ: ALGN) and a Board Director, Treasurer and Chair of the Finance Committee of Goodwill Industries International.
Ms. Myong received an MBA degree from Harvard Business School and graduated, summa cum laude, with a Bachelor of Business Administration in Computer Information Systems from James Madison University. Anne is a mom to teenage twin daughters and resides with her family in Woodside, California.
Aura uses technology that goes beyond credit scores to determine borrowers’ ability to repay and enables local businesses to administer credit applications. Since late 2014, the company has provided approximately $750MM in loans to nearly 344,000 borrowers at 1,050 partner locations.
Aura loans have saved its borrowers over $475MM in additional fees and interest as compared with predatory options. Two-thirds of Aura’s borrowers have grown their credit score by an average of 312 points after two loans.
About Aura
Aura is a technology-powered Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI) that provides small, affordable loans to working families in America. Aura’s mission is to build financially healthy low-income communities by providing empowering financial services to America’s 66 million underbanked and unbanked. Aura has pioneered a cloud-based lending technology that enables trusted local businesses to submit credit applications for centralized review and approval by its proprietary scoring algorithms.
Currently available in over 1,050 locations across California, Texas, Illinois and Arizona, Aura has provided hundreds of thousands of credit-building, responsible loans to low-income households since launching in 2014. Aura was founded in 2012 by James Gutierrez, Kevin Kang and Randy Wong. All three founders helped create and scale Oportun, a CDFI and one of Time Magazine’s Top 50 Most Genius Companies in 2018.