Jennifer
Thornton

Senior Risk Operations Analyst

• Built Benevity's fraud detection and monitoring program from scratch as the organization's first dedicated fraud hire.
• Recovered over $615,000 in funds through fraud investigations in the first quarter, including $315,000 in the first month alone following implementation of new standardized processes.
• Identified and dismantled two coordinated NPO fraud networks (18 and 21 entities respectively) through entity relationship mapping built into the investigation agent; escalated both cases to ELT with deactivation recommendations that were approved, preventing $112,000 in ongoing losses and surfacing an estimated $489,000 in previously undetected historical losses.
• Built an AI investigation agent for forensic donation analysis, OSINT, and entity relationship mapping, with human-in-the-loop verification, reducing manual investigation effort by 48% and enabling 121 completed investigations in a single month.
• Authored Benevity's STR playbook and end-to-end FINTRAC compliance process; personally files STRs via the FINTRAC web portal, ensuring regulatory reporting obligations are met.
• Partnered with Engineering to build an ML-driven fraud model by validating data, surfacing historical investigation insights, and developing anomaly detectors and tripwires.
• Identified gaps in non-profit KYC/EDD vetting and adverse media monitoring; created AI-assisted OSINT prompts to perform sanctions, PEP, and adverse media checks; delivered gap analysis and vendor recommendations to leadership.
• Developed a comprehensive investigation framework and JIRA-based "front-door" escalation path ensuring consistent, defensible, and scalable case management.
• Implemented a company-wide fraud communication strategy including reusable templates, a dedicated Zendesk queue, and a client-facing intake form for fraud request submission.
• Leads complex investigations into non-profit fraud, collusion schemes, impersonation, and account takeover activity, protecting corporate client giving programs (Top 20 global organizations).
• Established monthly fraud metrics and KPIs to track program impact and provide visibility to senior leadership.
• Created an internal training manual on identifying fraudulent business and banking documentation to reduce onboarding risk.

Senior Policy & Compliance Analyst, Partner Governance

• Investigated complex fraud schemes within Shopify's partner ecosystem, including post-approval code tampering to hijack merchant checkout and coordinated payment instrument fraud rings generating fraudulent app revenue, developing risk-weighted action plans in partnership with Legal to protect merchant safety.
• Monitored partner activity to identify fraud trends, emerging risks, and AML typologies; collaborated with Shopify's merchant fraud team to share intelligence and mitigate risk across both areas.
• Drove consistency across 40+ partner program violation types by developing Figma-based investigation flowcharts mapping collection, review, and decision-making steps; rolled out through structured team learning sessions with iterative feedback and adoption monitoring.
• Built a NotebookLM solution ingesting all Shopify Billing API documentation to evaluate partner exemption requests, reducing exemption requests by 75% and enabling a non-technical compliance team to make accurate technical determinations without pulling product team resources.
• Partnered with Data Science to validate an ML model for detecting fraudulent app store reviews, contributing pattern recognition from investigations including synthetic review structures, marketing language signals, and store age vs. claimed activity anomalies.
• Served as incident lead for high-risk partner incidents, coordinating with Legal, Marketing, Security, and Product to drive timely resolution.
• Provided risk assessments to product teams, combining historical policy knowledge and investigation findings to identify risks and deliver actionable recommendations.

Compliance Manager, Partner Governance

• Managed a team of 7 Compliance Specialists, coaching them into subject-matter experts through targeted development, performance improvement plans, and ongoing feedback.
• Introduced segmented work streams (Security & Fraud, General Compliance, Partnership Terminations) to enhance SLAs, reduce backlog, and streamline operations.
• Served as senior escalation point for critical incidents, collaborating with Legal, PR, and Senior Leadership to resolve complex, high-stakes issues.
• Implemented a QA process for ticket-based work to ensure consistency and communication quality, identifying coaching opportunities to support team member career growth.
• Developed a standardized email template library for each partner program violation type, emphasizing educational enforcement and consistent partner communication.

Strategic Specialist, Partner Governance

• Managed a high volume of complex partner compliance cases through Zendesk, prioritizing high-risk and urgent issues to protect the partner ecosystem and merchant safety.
• Created and optimized workflows in a rapidly scaling department, developing strategies to balance partner community growth while minimizing fraud and compliance risk.
• Participated in the on-call rotation, providing timely communications and incident response during critical partner incidents.
• Collaborated with senior stakeholders across Security, PR, Legal, and Leadership to address and resolve complex cross-functional issues.

Financial Services Specialist

• Managed a high-volume billing and payments queue, handling chargeback monitoring, refund abuse investigations, and Shopify Payments technical issues.
• Founding member of the 1099-K support team; processed corrections and filed Shopify's 1099-K reporting for eligible U.S. merchants.
• Led the Canada West billing and payments team for one year, overseeing 12 specialists with a focus on performance coaching and timely feedback.
• Implemented a QA process for ticket-based work, ensuring high-quality standards and consistent team metrics.

Support Advisor

• Provided frontline merchant support across billing, payments, and platform troubleshooting in a high-volume environment.
• Developed strong product knowledge and customer communication skills that formed the foundation for progression into fraud and compliance operations.