Libertas Funding named Sharlene Carnegie its chief technology officer on Tuesday, handing engineering, security and technology strategy at the fast-growing private lender to a two-decade veteran of UBS, Northwestern Mutual and the hedge fund world. She arrives from Medidata Solutions, the Dassault Systèmes clinical-technology unit, days after Libertas crossed five billion dollars in total loans issued to small and middle-market businesses.
The company built its name on promising loan decisions in hours, not the weeks banks take. That speed runs through a partner few borrowers ever hear about. Libertas holds no bank charter of its own, and every loan it funds is actually issued by WebBank, a Utah-chartered lender whose regulatory comfort now depends partly on what Carnegie builds.
A Wall Street Resume Lands at a Small Business Lender
Carnegie will report to Chief Operating Officer Ralph Scannell, Jr., overseeing engineering, product, platform, infrastructure, information technology, cybersecurity and technology strategy as Libertas scales its systems to match its lending volume. It is a wide remit for a company still built, by its own description, on a partnership-first approach to institutional-grade execution.
Her resume reads like a tour of regulated, high-stakes technology work. At Medidata Solutions she served as senior vice president and head of platform, and acted as chief technology officer, building software used to run clinical trials. Before that she was chief technology officer at Graham Capital Management, a macro hedge fund, and held senior technology posts at Northwestern Mutual and UBS.
| Employer | Sector | Carnegie’s Role |
|---|---|---|
| Medidata Solutions (Dassault Systèmes) | Clinical trial technology | SVP, Head of Platform; acting CTO |
| Graham Capital Management | Macro hedge fund | Chief Technology Officer |
| UBS | Global banking | Senior technology leadership |
| Northwestern Mutual | Life insurance and financial services | Senior technology leadership |
She holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science, with a minor in mathematics, from Iona University. “Libertas has built its reputation on speed, answering in hours where traditional lenders take weeks, and our technology has to match the pace of the business it powers,” said John Paradisi, chief executive officer of Libertas Funding. “Sharlene is a proven leader who knows how to build disciplined, high-performing engineering organizations that deliver with both speed and reliability. Her leadership will help ensure our technology continues to keep pace with our growth.”
The Growth Curve Carnegie Is Inheriting
Libertas, founded in 2016 and based in Greenwich, Connecticut, took five years to fund its first billion dollars. The pace has sharply accelerated since. The company crossed five billion dollars in cumulative loans issued in January, and the firm says its most recent billion arrived in roughly ten months.
Libertas passed four billion dollars in cumulative funding in February 2025 and funded more than $1.1 billion in 2024 alone. It has also started tapping capital markets directly rather than leaning only on warehouse credit lines, and sold its first investment-grade corporate note worth $75 million. That step puts institutional debt investors, not just small business borrowers, in the audience for how well its risk and technology systems hold up under scale.
Carnegie is not the only addition to the bench. In December, Libertas announced a separate round of senior leadership appointments aimed at what the company called its next phase of growth, though it has not detailed how those roles connect to Carnegie’s mandate.
Who Issues Libertas’s Loans?
Libertas is not a bank. The term loans it funds are issued by WebBank, a Utah-chartered industrial bank based in Salt Lake City, then serviced by Libertas under a partnership named in the fine print of the company’s own announcements. WebBank has originated more than $150 billion in consumer and commercial credit since 1997 by lending its charter to partner companies rather than lending under its own brand.
- Industrial Loan Company – a state-chartered bank, most commonly licensed in Utah, that can take deposits and lend nationwide while sitting outside the stricter holding-company rules that apply to ordinary banks; fintech and private lenders partner with charters like WebBank’s to issue loans quickly, then buy, manage or service them under their own brand.
Utah sets no interest rate ceiling, so WebBank can price loans issued through its partners more freely than a bank chartered in a state with rate caps. That freedom is a large part of what lets Libertas promise decisions in hours. It also means WebBank works this way with multiple lending partners beyond Libertas, functioning less like a consumer bank and more like shared infrastructure for the fintech lending industry, and its regulators are watching how well the technology and controls behind that speed actually hold up. Federal Reserve researchers have tracked the broader shift toward this structure, where a bank originates the loan and a fintech partner just services it, across consumer and small business credit alike.
Cybersecurity and information technology appear in Carnegie’s job description for a reason beyond good engineering practice. A bank partner’s tolerance for a fast-moving fintech depends on trusting its systems, and that trust now runs through Carnegie’s department.
An Industry Racing to Out-Build Its Own Banks
Libertas is a small piece of a market that has outgrown its old label as a niche alternative to bank lending. Private credit funds now hold $1.96 trillion in assets, growing at better than 12% a year toward a projected $3.48 trillion by 2031, with mid-sized businesses, too big for a community bank and too small for a syndicated loan, driving much of that demand.
Technology leadership has become part of how these firms compete for that market, not only capital. Credit Benchmark named Dean Smith chief technology officer in May, citing growth in client adoption and platform usage. H.I.G. Capital lists Luis Suarez as its own CTO. Reklaim Credit Solutions elevated co-founder Bob McCarthy into the CTO role this summer ahead of its public launch, putting engineering leadership in place before the product even shipped. The private markets industry now runs a dedicated technology conference, the 2026 Private Credit Technology Summit, built entirely around this build-out.
The pattern extends past finance. Tech Mahindra brought in Amol Phadke as chief transformation officer, tasked with its AI and cloud growth push, a similar bet that a technology bench is now inseparable from the growth story itself.
Why Cybersecurity Tops Carnegie’s Job Description
In a business that moves money, quality is the foundation of speed, not a trade against it.
Carnegie said that in a statement announcing her hire, and it reads like a description of the job ahead of her more than a soundbite. Her mandate spans seven distinct functions, and at a lender promising same-day answers, none of them are optional:
- Engineering – the core systems that price and approve loans
- Product – how borrowers and underwriters actually use those systems
- Platform – the shared infrastructure everything else runs on
- Infrastructure – servers, networks and the plumbing behind uptime
- Information technology – the internal systems Libertas itself runs on
- Cybersecurity – the controls a bank partner has to trust
- Technology strategy – deciding what gets built next as volume climbs
“What drew me to Libertas is a business defined by speed and discipline, and a clear commitment to building technology that can support that pace as the firm grows,” Carnegie said. “I am looking forward to partnering with Ralph and the team to build a technology organization that delivers reliably and scales with the business.”
The Next Ten Months
Libertas has not said when it expects to cross six billion dollars in total funding. Its last billion took roughly ten months. The next one runs through the same bank charter, the same compliance bar, and now, through the technology organization Carnegie is only beginning to build.
