Meet the Team

About

Executive Profile

As CTO, Darryl brings more than 20 years of innovative software leadership experience to the PenChecks Trust® team. His primary responsibilities include leading the development and performance of PenChecks’ powerful processing platform – Amplify – and the National Registry of Unclaimed Retirement Benefits (NRURB), our website that helps reunite America’s workers with their unclaimed retirement assets.

Darryl also manages the application development team, including hiring new personnel, creating a departmental culture of curiosity and collaboration, and providing the infrastructure and resources to ensure the team can anticipate and meet the complex and evolving needs of PenChecks clients.

Darryl joined PenChecks to be part of its consistent growth and maturation from a tech-enabled financial services firm to a true Fintech business. He also strongly believes in the company’s mission.

“PenChecks’ mission of making complicated things simple for our clients really resonates with me,” he says. “That’s what technology is all about. I also like the idea of reuniting America’s workers with their unclaimed retirement money. People shouldn’t have to miss out on thousands of dollars because they lost track of a retirement account.”

A Bias for Curious Problem Solvers

Curious by nature, Darryl understands the importance of ongoing learning and skill building in the Fintech industry. He sees a big part of his role as providing infrastructure and resources for the engineering development team to grow professionally, and personally. One of his first initiatives after coming aboard involved the rollout of a performance management tool to get feedback from the engineers about roadblocks, challenges, accomplishments and other job performance metrics. His goal is to build a culture of continuous feedback, learning and sharing to ensure the team consistently performs at a high level.

Darryl anticipates adding several new team members in 2022, and curiosity plays a key role in his hiring process.

“In any tech company you always look at a candidate’s technical skills,” he says. “But I also want curious, open minded people who are interested in hearing others’ perspectives. That’s what makes good problem solvers. When you’re curious, you don’t automatically shut down ideas because they sound implausible. Instead you explore them, which often leads to innovative solutions.”

With his extensive background in customer-facing applications, Darryl exhibits another trait you don’t often find in tech companies – empathy for the customer. So it’s no surprise that his #1 goal consists of providing a top-tier online experience for PenChecks clients and their plan participants.

“PenChecks has built a successful business by constantly innovating our technology to improve the client experience,” says Darryl. “That’s why the engineering team continues to focus on making it easier for clients to use our product to do what they need to do.”

A Native San Diegan Who Loves to Surf

Born and raised in San Diego, Darryl learned to surf as teenager and still finds time to hit the waves on a regular basis. When he’s not spending time with his two kids – ages 9 and 11 – he enjoys reading sci-fi, fantasy, and historical fiction. To enhance his own personal and professional growth, he participates in 7CTOs, a global professional development organization for technology leaders.

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