Meet our management team

Ted Sparks, president and CEO

Ted Sparks has more than 24 years of experience in the financial services industry, with a strong focus in education finance at top-tier companies. Most recently, he served as president of Wachovia Education Finance, where he managed all aspects of a $6 billion loan volume, $188 million P&L consumer finance business. Prior to the corporate merger with Wells Fargo, Mr. Sparks increased the portfolio by launching seven new private education loan products that repositioned the business and improved Return on Assets. He also developed a borrower benefit rehabilitation program, delivering back-end delinquency and skip-tracing efficiencies while greatly reducing frequency and expense of defaulted loans.

Prior to his tenure at Wachovia, Mr. Sparks spent seven years as president of USA Funds Services (a division of Sallie Mae), during which he was instrumental in the merger of Sallie Mae/USA Group; pioneered a new sales strategy that achieved the highest efficiency ratio of all Sallie Mae brand teams; and created student success and default prevention programs including USA Funds' Life Skills®, which helped schools reduce cohort default rates by double digits. He has also held various leadership positions outside of education finance in both banking and medical device manufacturing.

Nate Vickery, director of call center operations

Nate Vickery is an eleven-year veteran in the collections industry, which includes nine years of student loan experience. Nate is responsible for understanding our clients' default prevention goals and ensuring appropriate strategies are in place to achieve maximum results.

Prior to joining ECMC Solutions, Nate served as vice president of operations in the student loan division at iQor, one of the largest privately held call center service companies in the world. In this capacity, he ran a world-class, multi-site call center with over 130 agents. He developed and implemented borrower contact strategies, and continually measured results to ensure effectiveness. Nate developed an incentive framework to drive employee behavior to align with client expectations and goals.

Diana Daniels, manager of client relations

Diana Daniels has been actively involved in the student loan industry throughout her career and brings to ECMC Solutions more than 26 years of industry experience. Ms. Daniels joins ECMC Solutions from Horizon Educational Resources, where she led the day-to-day operations, working closely with students to help them manage student loan debt.

Prior to joining Horizon, Ms. Daniels was a regional manager with Nelnet, a diversified student loan company, where she earned the Region of the Year award in 2006. Earlier in her career, Ms. Daniels worked at Bank One Education Finance and was awarded the President’s Award in 1998. She was a founding member of the Council for the Management of Education Finance in Texas and served on the Association of Texas Lenders for Education, as well as the Texas Users Group Board of Directors. She is a current member of the Texas Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (TASFAA) and has served on several TASFAA committees.

Karin Byrd, manager of client relations

Karin Byrd joined ECMC Solutions from Horizon Educational Resources where she was marketing director. She was recently named client relations manager, National Accounts, and will serve as the key contact for large, national clients. In addition to her National Accounts responsibilities, Ms. Byrd's expertise in student loan data management has allowed her to work closely with clients' student loan portfolios and assist them in lowering cohort default rates. She has successfully assisted schools to challenge draft cohort default rates as well as develop new default management plans.

Ms. Byrd is a member of numerous industry associations, including the Association of Private Sector Colleges and Universities (APSCU) and the Texas Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (TASFAA). She also sat on a Default Management Panel for the American Association of Cosmetology Schools (AACS) and has spoken about the importance of understanding student loan data as an aspect of default prevention management.