Alexander Abramov is a recognized leader in Technology and Cyber Governance, Risk, and Compliance with strong track record of accomplishments across all three lines of defense – Controls, Risk, and Audit. He had created and led highly effective IT and Cyber risk management programs that addressed regulatory requirements and enabled business growth, expansion, and acquisitions.
As the Head of Information and Cyber Risk at Santander Capital Markets, he had built an IRM function and led Information and Cyber Risk team. Previously Alexander has served as a Director of Information Risk at Bank of New York Mellon, Technology Risk Controller and Lead IRM at JP Morgan, Practice Leader for IT Governance and Compliance and IT Audit Lead at EY, and a Head of Application Development and a DISO at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Over the course of his career, he had
- Created and led IT and Cyber Risk first and second lines of defense for three major global banks and broker dealers.
- Built Cyber Risk / IT GRC consulting practices and supported end-to-end strategic delivery for firms’ clients. Implemented cyber security and infrastructure compliance risk assessment frameworks.
- Addressed and supported closure of SEC, Fed, OCC, NY DFS Operational, IT, and Cyber Risk MRIAs and MRAs.
- Managed and led internal and external IT, Cyber, and Business Continuity Audits.
Alexander has served as the President of ISACA New York Metropolitan Chapter 2017-2019, and as a member of the Board of Directors since 2007. He is a recipient of 2022 and 2023 ISACA NYM Helping Hands Awards for “Outstanding Service for the President, Board, and Membership.”
Alexander holds a Masters in Electrical Engineering (Robotics and Automation), an MBA and CISA, CGEIT, and CRISC certifications. He has co-authored several books (including “Cyber Risk”, “Governance, Compliance and Supervision in the Capital Markets”, and “The Cyber Elephant in the Boardroom”) and has presented at over 30 conferences in North America and Europe on topics of Information and Technology Risk.
Mark Abramson has spent over 20 years applying technology fundamentals to the successful implementation of business solutions working as a technology expert in the area of systems design, software architecture, and data analysis. His professional experience has led to a career of Investigative Data Mining, which includes activities for security and criminal detection, Patent and Claims Analysis, Prior Art Searches, and Expert Witness in computer litigation. Mark has participated in over 35 major cases including one of the largest and longest computer software action cases in the industry.
His skills and experience include:
- Working with Attorneys, Courts and Corporations across the country.
- Clients including major legal firms, governmental agencies as well as many smaller companies and the courts.
- Expert witness testimony in both state and federal courts.
- Data Recovery Services encompassing high-level electronic discovery and recovery for litigation and forensics, including computer forensics, expert testimony, email recovery and tape recovery.
Mr. Abramson holds an Associate Degree in Applied Technology from Rochester Institute of Technology and a Bachelor of Science from the State University of New York.
Martin Baumann most recently served as Chief Auditor and Director of Professional Standards at the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board. In this capacity he was responsible for establishing and interpreting auditing and related professional practice standards for audits of all companies that are registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. He previously served as Chief Financial Officer of Freddie Mac and as a Senior Partner and Global Banking Leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Marty is currently an Adjunct Faculty member at The Washington Campus (washcampus.edu).
His skills and experience include:
- Establishing auditing standards and direction for all audits of public companies filing with the SEC, including US and Foreign Issuers.
- Providing timely guidance and alerts to the auditing profession on emerging practice issues.
- Driving change throughout Freddie Mac as CFO and developing the blueprint for transformation of the financial infrastructure and reporting.
- Serving as Global Client Service Partner for many of the largest banking and insurance companies in the world.
- Serving as the Chairman of the Audit Committee for a nationally recognized not-for-profit organization.
Mr. Baumann is a Certified Public Accountant and holds a Bachelor of Arts in Accounting from Queens College and holds an MBA in Finance from Baruch College. He also completed the Executive Program in Business Administration at Columbia University.
Ben Blackburn has over 30 years of success in driving business transformation and operational improvement initiatives for both multinational and early-stage businesses. He has worked for or consulted with companies ranging in size from start-ups and joint ventures to $140B corporations. He spent the majority of his corporate career with Motorola and Medtronic, primarily in New Business Development or Continuous Improvement roles in the Latin American and US markets. In his private consulting practice, his extended client base includes EssilorLuxottica, Verizon, T-Mobile, TDSynnex, and multiple systems integrators.
Ben possesses strong capabilities on two major fronts: building and implementing new technology-based solutions for these businesses and driving cross-functional teams focused on establishing a corporate culture of continuous improvement. Through his broad experience in go-to-market operations, Ben has attained proficient knowledge in the enterprise, retail, government (SLED), healthcare, technology and telecommunications sectors.
Key Operational and Business Development Accomplishments:
- Led business development team for new wireless messaging business for Motorola in Latin America, growing revenue from <$5M to $160M annually within 4 years
- Developed Motorola’s divisional and corporate strategic staffing programs that placed new indigenous managers in key foreign markets, most of whom eventually led large business units in their respective countries
- Drove process improvement plan for Motorola Solutions’ EMEA region leading a team of 4 DSS Black Belts, resulting in $38M gross margin improvement
- Restructured Lean Six Sigma program for Verizon’s Indirect Channel Program, resulting in channel operational process improvements totaling $20M in contribution margin
Ben holds an MBA in International Finance from the Thunderbird School of Global Management and a BA with a double major in History and Spanish Literature from Oral Roberts University. He attained his Digital Six Sigma Black Belt (precursor to Lean) from Motorola in 2006. He is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA – inactive).
Mark Bolton brings almost 30 years of executive level experience in banking and financial services in the US, UK and EU delivering major business and digital transformation programs. Recent experience includes leading initiatives in AI, Digital Transformation, Cloud Transformation, Customer Experience (notably Gen Z), Process Mining and Optimization and banking Risk and Regulatory.
Over his career Mark has worked for banks such as Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, HSBC, Citi and ABN-Amro and consulted to many others while working for PWC, Accenture, Capgemini and Cognizant.
Mark recently completed the Stanford Graduate Business School Digital Transformation program, holds a Master and is multi-certified in Agile and Waterfall delivery techniques. Mark is an author of the ACMP Global Standard in Change Management and a published thought-leader and public speaker on AI Strategy.
Steve Carr is a transformative business leader with experience in business operations management as well as data analytics. For over 30 years he has had success running his private Data Analytics company and running operations on a publicly held technology firm. He has been involved in all aspects of business management, but his primary talent is problem solving. His people skills combined with experience provided a platform for him to simplify both technical and non-technical concepts. He is a firm believer that technology supports operations.
Steve’s skills include:
- Project Management for both long and short-term projects
- Data Driven Analytics using both desktop and enterprise level tools
- Appending Spatial Data and Location Intelligence to core business data to provide additional insight
- Mapping, Site Selection, Territory Optimization, Demographics, and Modeling
- Managing Mobile and Enterprise Level Solution Development with a location and data concentration
- Managing and Supporting Subscription Model implementation
- Working with both startup and established organizations
- Communication with employees, executives, financial groups, and regulatory bodies
Steve holds a Bachelor of Engineering Degree from Fort Schulyer Maritime College and had achieved the rank of Lieutenant in the USNR.
Yan Cheung has over 20 years of hands-on success in Banking Strategy, Transformation, Program and Project Management, Change Management, Performance Management and FP&A in major global financial institutions such as Bank of NY Mellon, Deutsche Bank and Citigroup. Miss Cheung delivers solid results, reducing costs while increasing revenue by enabling the Enterprise Transformation Strategies, formulating and executing change management and stakeholder management strategies. Adopted Critical Thinking, Design Thinking and Agile iterative process in end-to-end review of process deficiencies and optimization, turnaround strategy and solutioning. Adept in executing client-focused strategies to enhance customer satisfaction, quality, efficiency and financial outcome.
What Direct Managers and Clients say about Yan:
- “Solid program management and project management skills. Thorough understanding of financial implications for projects on P&L.” – Linda Derrick, Global Head of Client Service
- “Yan demonstrated exceptional change management and program management skills supported by a strong financial grounding in the business.” – Tim Keaney, Vice Chairman of BNY Mellon
- “Yan’s insightful analysis was key in decision-making within our business. She has an expert understanding of correlation between the capital markets, government regulations and economic indicators and how they will impact performance. Yan strived for excellence every day and had a tremendous impact in shaping our analysis and presentation” – Pete Rodriguez, CAO, COO, CFO of Asset Servicing
- “Yan’s work in supporting M&A activity and strategic initiatives was exemplary. She developed a process from the ground up that created full transparency allowing her business partners to hold our teams accountable to achieving the revenue and expense synergies. Yan’s exacting standards instilled upon all parties the importance of data integrity which provided an excellent outcome for our business.” – Dan Smith, Chairman of CIBC Mellon
- “Great insight as well as detailed focus. Always on point and prepared. Can’t ask for a better partner in finance.” – Paul Chi, Managing Director, JPM Chase
Yan earned a BBA degree in Finance from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Certificates in Business Analytics (Wharton) & Digital Strategies (Columbia), PMP in process
Paul Chew is a senior Technology and Operations transformation specialist with over 27 years of consulting experience with large professional service firms (PwC and Accenture) and financial institutions (incl. JP MorganChase, Morgan Stanley, UBS, Deutsche Bank).
Paul is skilled in transformation delivery, operational improvement, enterprise architecture, cloud and automation and has specific experience in driving exceptional business outcomes including:
- For CEO of life and annuity provider: development of a strategy to double the number of policies that could be administrated without incremental increase in cost.
- For Head of Operations at European Bank: remediation of a regulatory reporting and compliance program and after severe regulatory criticism and $100M+ fine
- For COO of commercial bank: identification and remediation of root cause of service disruptions, operational risk and delays in their payments service
- For Chief Technology Officer at European Bank: Accelerate cloud migration after targets were missed (7,000 business applications, 70,000 servers, 15,000 databases).
His earlier work experience includes:
- Build of UK’s social security and pension system for 60 million people; reducing queries from 3 days to 7 seconds
- Build of settlement system that settles half of Europe’s trades
- Replacement of all real time pricing that was the root cause of daily outages and was preventing any trading for several hours at a time at a European Investment Bank with annual trading revenues of $10 billion.
Paul is passionate about innovation and is an advisor to the CEO and Board of a number of fintechs. He also authored PwC’s cloud migration planning toolset.
Fred Cohen has over 40 years of treasury and financial risk management consulting experience with both large professional service firms and financial institutions. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, he held several practice leadership roles while continuing to consult to multinational clients on financial and treasury management issues. His industry experience includes Advisory Leader of the Energy, Utility and Mining sector, the Consumer and Industrial Products sector and Cross Line of Service leader for PwC’s sustainability and climate change practice. His functional experience spans several disciplines including: treasury and financial risk management, governance and compliance, enterprise risk management, financial and performance reporting and treasury technology.
Fred consults to global clients on both strategic and highly specialized treasury and financial risk management issues such as:
- Assessment of complex financial and enterprise-wide risk exposures, strategy definition to manage and/or reduce underlying risk and evaluation of value at risk techniques to measure exposure risk and hedge effectiveness
- Development of global business strategies, organizational structure and the design and implementation of performance based reporting
- Requirements definition, selection and implementation of treasury and risk management technology
Mr. Cohen earned his B.A. in political science from Rutgers University, an MBA in finance and accounting from Drexel University and participated in the Executive Education, International Program at the Wharton School. He is a frequent writer on financial risk management, treasury management and climate change issues. He has spoken at numerous conferences hosted by PwC, EEI and EuroFinance and appeared on CNBC’s Squawk Box.
Peter Commons has over 30 years of hands-on experience driving design and development of customer-impacting and revenue-driving software from startups to multi-billion-dollar companies including Apple, Amazon, Groupon and Zendesk. He has led diverse, worldwide, product, engineering, and data teams from back end to front end for internal and external customers in CTO, CPO, CDO, and VP level roles.
His experience includes:
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- Product & technical expert with 10+ years of hands-on development and 15+ years in leadership roles holding 12 patents.
- Experience in multiple business areas including eCommerce, fulfillment, vendor marketplaces, and maintenance for both tech-forward and non-tech forward companies in B2B and B2C environments
- Strong ability to translate between business, technical, and product
- Leader in agile, customer focused, metrics-driven product process & mindset for engineering & technical organizations — for both internal customers and external customers
- Driver of product, technological and cultural change as a leader, advisor, teacher, and conference host.
- Knowledge in creating, building, and managing remote sites worldwide (AMER, EMEA, APAC)
Peter has a BS (with distinction, Phi Beta Kappa) and MS in Computer Science from Stanford University
Stephen Davy is an accomplished Chief Technology Officer and Chief Information Officer with extensive experience that spans multiple industries and companies. He has over 30 years of experience in financial services and consumer product goods.
Mr. Davy spent over 20 years collectively at Barclays Capital and Societe Generale in technology leadership positions. In these roles he led all facets of Information Technology including business process transformation, systems development, technology infrastructure, cybersecurity, and IT risk. He also spent over 10 years at Altria where he was Corporate CIO and Enterprise CTO.
Some of Stephen’s accomplishments include:
- Successfully led several merger integrations in financial services and consumer product goods. These included integration of key system platforms, decommissioning of hundred of applications, consolidation of data centers and new IT governance models. Large cost savings and enhanced business products were achieved.
- Led the transformation to an agile, cloud-enabled architecture that gains in efficiency and productivity. New technologies were implemented that served as key competitive differentiators, leading to business growth.
- Created a technology shared service organization for several operating companies that transformed regional platforms into global platforms with substantial cost savings and enhanced product support.
Mr. Davy earned a M.B.A at Adelphi University in New York. He has served as a mentor for Columbia University’s Executive M.S. Technology program as we well as member of the Technology Advisory Committee as Adelphi University. He also is Vice Chairman of the Board at a large human services non- profit.
Simona DeFeo has over 20 years’ experience program managing large scale, multidisciplinary and multi-national projects in transformation, data governance/management and operational and technology risk with depth in both waterfall and agile program/project management methodologies. Simona is a hands-on trusted change agent who creates networks of inspiration and support while honoring unique diversities, common goals and individual potential. She is a “Firestarter” enabling cooperation and collaboration while continuously developing her own equanimity. As a servant leader who lives life with a deep sense of integrity, courage, voracious curiosity, and generosity, Simona has served and led complex transformation efforts for organizations such as MUFG, Citi, HSBC, Capital One, American Express, Johnson & Johnson, JetBlue, Credit Suisse, UBS, Johnson & Johnson, TIAA-CREF and Italian and Haitian government agencies, amongst many others. She has also a decade of experience in the performing arts – as a producer, playwright and performer to drive cultural diplomacy and social justice.
Simona consults clients on both strategic and highly specialized management issues such as:
- Innovation and research using emerging technologies;
- Design, development, and operationalizing of enterprise-wide data governance/management and data quality programs; and
- Development of enterprise resilience and regulatory reform programs.
Simona earned her Bachelor of Science degree with honors from Widener University, Chester PA
Eric Deraspe is an accomplished financial services consulting professional and product leader with over 25 years of success and experience managing teams, creating new operational processes, establishing sales processes and metrics, formulating strategies, framing metrics, and delivering large programs for great companies. His expertise is mainly in payments, capital markets, banking, and fintech with companies such as Visa, MasterCard, American Express, TD Bank, RBC, CIBC, JP Morgan, and Goldman Sachs.
His experience includes:
- Launched a new B2B payment product for a Payment Network supported by market analysis, go-to-market strategy, and an 18-month roadmap planning
- Launched three major products in chargebacks and merchant administration for a fintech, revamped the customer experience through the UI portals and set up a new professional services P&L
- Led a team in Merchant Services for a major bank delivering the Visa Claims Resolution program and implementing a successful mentoring program
- Managed large capital market programs for AML, sanctions screening, and innovative payments products
- Managed customer experience team and improved premium support adoption as a major software vendor
- Created business intelligence strategy and initial reporting for tech spend at a major payment network
Eric earned his MBA in Finance and Operations from the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas in Austin. He earned his B.Eng. in Aerospace Engineering from Ecole Polytechnique of Montreal. He is fluent in French.
Michael Di Stefano is a successful technologist with over 25 years of leading strategic initiatives in financial services and health care. His strong technical background combined with building and running his own consulting company is a valuable combination for the early-stage companies he has been involved with.
His experience includes:
- Collaborate with business leaders to drive technology direction and delivery
- Identify and apply technology to address key areas of business concern including cyber security, compliance, and partner acquisition.
- Team building, manage, and deliver strategic initiatives
- Technology leader in distributed systems, in-time analytics, public cloud offerings, and commercial/industrial metaverse.
Michael is a published author in the field of distributed computing and holds a patent in distributed event services. He has worked with college students as an entrepreneur in residence in transforming their ideas into a working startup company. He has a Bachelor of Engineering in Engineering Science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a Master of Engineering degree in Electrical Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology
Mr. Dillman is a strong business technologist who has over 40 years of banking experience coupled with strong technology implementation experience, especially in risk management. His risk management experience covers market risk, credit risk, operations risk, and cybersecurity risk management.
Scott spent 20 years working at HSBC and Bank of America where for both he led the Global Currency Trading Sales and Trading. In those roles, besides managing the global currency options risk, he also built and managed the supporting trading and back office systems.
Scott has always been on the leading edge as an innovator and market leader. Key leading-edge accomplishments include:
- Serving on the ISAO committee developing standards to share cybersecurity information, 2017
- Worked with Top 28 US banks to build technology to share cyber data, 2017
- Founded Credit Dimensions, a credit risk management aggregator, 2001
- Developed neural network models to trade futures markets, 1992
- Chaired the first Currency Options Committee at NY Fed, 1985
Scott received a B.A. degree in Economics from Gettysburg College. He also regularly teaches cybersecurity at Northwestern’s Kellogg Business School.
Daniel Doman has more than 30 years of technical and business leadership as both CTO and COO across a number of international business sectors including banking, pharmaceutical, media, advertising, Federal/DOD and travel.
Daniel has 13 years of cloud specific experience with diverse public cloud platforms, virtualization, hybrid and disconnected state cloud architecture and “born on the cloud” design. He has focused on:
- Business and cloud transformation,
- Creating reference architectures, governance, security standards and processes,
- Working for regulated and Federal industries.
- Delivering hands on as a practitioner building highly available global platforms for high-speed transactions, data reservoir, big data analytics, commerce, media and communications.
His clients have included Broadridge Financial, Morgan Stanley, JPMC, Millenium, AIG, Zoetis, Time Inc, IBM, Accenture, DoubleClick, Liberty Travel, OCLC, iStockphoto, WPP, Interpublic, Omnicom and Information Builders. Daniel has built a commercial database and two of the leading ad-serving platforms. 8 of his clients have gone to IPO or been acquired.
Dan graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA
Rebecca Felder has over 20 years of program management experience in the financial services industry specializing in business transformation in the following areas: Compliance, AML, KYC, and other regulatory requirements. She has successfully led large and small regulatory remediations and new business driven initiatives which have required both a business and technology transformation. She has held senior leadership positions in JPMorgan Chase and Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation.
Her experience includes:
- Design and implementation of strategic processes, organizational structure, and operational process improvement.
- Development and execution of large remediation plans to address technology, business, or regulatory issues.
- Establishing a governance process, providing clear status, and reporting to stakeholders, and tracking a project from inception to completion.
Rebecca has been recognized frequently for her leadership and communication skills. She has Bachelors from Hunter College with a major in Computer Science and a minor in Mathematics.
Richard Filippi is a Senior Financial Services Professional with wide-ranging experience in managing large risk and regulatory IT projects, including Basel Liquidity Coverage Ratio (LCR), Dodd-Frank & CCAR. Extensive experience in Credit, Liquidity, in addition to Operational Risks. Richard also brings, significant knowledge of both capital markets and banking products, as well as risk policies and procedures.
- Served with several large global financial institutions including UBS, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and JP Morgan.
- Served as Director of Finance & Risk IT for multimillion-dollar transformational regulatory reporting projects within the Financial Services industry.
- Flexible self-starter with ability to combine industry and operational knowledge with IT project management.
- Extensive experience in Credit, Liquidity and Market Risk.
- Led the liquidation of a large portfolio in excess of $300 million resulting in minimum losses. The portfolio included loans, leases and direct investments in Structured Products (CDOs).
Mr. Filippi presented on Risk & Compliance at various events including SIFMA, Morrison Foerster and at the “Marcus Evans” Liquidity Risk conference in June 2020. Mr. Filippi earned a Bachelor of Science and Accounting degree from Saint Francis College in Brooklyn, NY. He also has completed NY Credit Training at Manufacturers Bank and NY Derivatives Training at UBS.
Mr. Francis has over 35 years of consulting experience delivering significant business results and value through technology. He is adept in building sales and delivery organizations and capabilities, developing go-to-market business strategies, and cultivating high performing teams. He has led and managed a broad range of multi-million-dollar engagements focusing on business and workforce transformation, operations improvement and digital strategy with a proven track record growing business value through the design and implementation of complex change and business transformation programs. He has diverse industry experience including media and entertainment, retail, consumer and industrial products, electronics and high tech, aerospace and defense, oil and gas, and state and federal government. He has designed, led and managed diverse organizations including multiple global account teams, service lines and North American divisions. Brian’s skills and experience include:
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Mr. Francis holds an MBA from the Hankamer Graduate School of Business, Baylor University and a BS degree in Industrial Distribution from the College of Engineering, Texas A&M University.
Joseph Friedman has over 40 years of hands on success crafting and deploying security risk and technology management programs in fintechs, startups, and health care firms. Most recently at the New York Stock Exchange, Bank of America, and Johnson & Johnson, he has established and run numerous security programs which reduce the risk of security architectures. Much of his time is spent innovating new capabilities, leading teams to deploy them globally, and teaching technologists and senior management by example how to understand and analyze their security risk, as he collaborates with them to identify the most effective approach to reducing risk.
Joe helps companies transform by:
- Selling and introducing technical knowledge, products, and processes through direct influencing of technologists, senior and risk management
- Leading and managing cross functional and global staff in technology transformation, innovative technology, vendor relationships, and acquisition integration
- Collaborating closely with risk and executive management as well as technology teams, to evaluate and improve security of applications, networks, systems, and vendor strategy by leading people and teams in defining and effectively leveraging security requirements, policy, products, and processes to identify and reduce risk
- Introducing AppSec, incident response, vulnerability management, external partner connectivity, critical asset identification & classification, risk tracking, training, automation, metrics, among other security programs
Joe earned his Bachelor of Arts in Computer Science from Yeshiva University. He has presented his experiences at financial and security industry conferences.
Christienne Genaro is a Payments subject matter expert with over 20 years’ experience. She has in-depth understanding of business models and stakeholder needs in the credit and debit card industry, encompassing the network, bank and merchant perspectives. Ms. Genaro brings a consultative approach to meeting client needs across a wide range of functions, including strategy, product development, marketing, risk management, collections, customer service, and processing.
Ms.Genaro consults to clients on both strategic and highly specialized credit card and related financial risk management issues:
- Market development for payments stakeholders, including banks, merchants, networks, processors and other 3rd party providers
- Business development, including sales/account management of issuing banks
- Strategy, product development and people management for market players
- Start-up payments services providers
- FinTech banks and service providers
- Emerging payments, including mobile, Faster Payments, and virtual currency
Ms. Genaro is a Board Member of NYPAY, NY’s leading payments industry organization, and a member of the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force. Ms. Genaro earned a Masters of Business Administration, Marketing/International Business from New York University, Stern School and a Bachelor of Arts, International Relations from Brown University.
Aviva Halpert is a Healthcare Compliance Professional with over 35 years of hands-on success in health information management and Healthcare compliance . She has broad knowledge of the HIPAA Privacy and Security Rules, HITECH, the 21st Century Cures Act, and related state regulations in both the Acute Care, Ambulatory and IT Support settings and has extensive experience in creating and presenting training modules, conducting HIPAA security risk assessments, creating and maintaining policies and procedures and conducting Notification of Breach investigations, including interrogation, mandatory reporting and implementing corrective action.
Her experience includes:
- Developing and implementing an integrated HIPAA Privacy and Security Program for a major healthcare system including acute care, the medical school, ambulatory care and faculty practice network (MSMC)
- Developing and implementing a comprehensive Notification of Breach program in compliance with both federal and state regulation including responsibility for identifying, tracking, investigating and implementing corrective action for all HIPAA –related privacy and security complaints and incidents across the health system. (MSMC)
- Developing and implementing a comprehensive, institution-wide training and education program for the HIPAA- related knowledge base (MSMC)
- Cochairing implementation of the Cerner MPI at major medical center. (MSMC)
- Serving as an internal consultant for institutional projects with health information components, including multiple Health Information Exchange initiatives, development of a Patient Access Portal, design of the Accountable Care Organization, development of work-at-home initiatives.
Aviva has been active in professional organizations, serving on the editorial board of the Journal of HIMANYC, as the legislative director of NYHIMA, on AHIMA’s HIE Practice Council, and on the Healthix Privacy/Security Committee. Recognition for her professional leadership, includes receipt of the Mount Sinai Presidential Service Award and the College of Health Related Professions, SUNY Downstate, Distinguished Alumnus Award. She has an MA in English from Queens College, a BA (Phi Beta Kappa, magna cum laude) from Hunter College and a BS with honors from SUNY Downstate.
Yousef Hashimi is a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience building innovative big data, analytics, intelligent automation, and applied AI solutions. He has a proven track record of helping large enterprises realize the value of data and analytics through practical solutions designed to transform customer experiences and optimize business operations. Well regarded as a visionary and empathetic leader, with a reputation for building high-performing, goal-oriented teams that consistently deliver exceptional results. His experience includes:
- Transforming organizations through data-driven technology with deep experience implementing cloud-native NextGen data and AI/ML solutions.
- Leveraging persona-driven design of data and analytics solutions to drive user adoption of analytic insights and intelligent automation capabilities.
- Pioneering cutting edge, first-of-a-kind big data, document intelligence, virtual assistant/chatbot, intelligent automation, and applied AI solutions.
- Creating and delivering strategic yet practical roadmaps for complex data management and applied AI transformation programs.
Yousef has a multi-disciplinary education in both engineering and liberal arts and received a Master in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering from Arizona State University. Yousef is also an Adjunct Instructor at The Heinz School of Information Systems and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University where his course focuses on both the management and technology aspects required to leverage business analytics for competitive advantage within large, complex business enterprises.
Fred Hazan is a Cybersecurity and Technology Specialist with over 30 years of professional experience in the financial services, automobile, pharma, and government sectors focused on a broad spectrum of infrastructure and security technologies.
Fred’s experience includes:
- 7 years from Sr Associate to Sr Principal Consultant running each of the three practices, Advanced Cyber Defense, Mastering Risk and Compliance and Secure Technology practices within TUV Rheinland Cybersecurity where he provided innovative testing, defense, security architecture and risk management consulting leadership to clients with a strategic focus.
- 15 years as a Global IT Director at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) as Service Manager, Architect, Consultant and Strategist for 152 international member firms, enhanced Global Network Internet infrastructure to maximize throughput, improve security and leverage new functionality.
- 9 years across other roles as CTO of e-Market Intelligence as creator and leader of program development of patent pending software that enables targeting of prospect Sweet Spots by their online searches resulting in a predictable increase in closed sales of 10% or better for any medium or large sized company.
- 1 year term appointment at The Department of Treasury (IRS) as Exec Director of Infrastructure Services where Fred directed all aspects of three organizational branches of the government with 225 employees and a $30MM budget where he provided secure end-to-end infrastructure services that supported all filing season applications.
- 12 years managing application development as an AVP at BNY Mellon for critical Bank Custody, Unit Investment Trust, Clearing and trading systems, co-created and managed the development of the bank’s first web application with a staff of 40. Led development of the banks overnight repurchase agreement system and systems consolidation during several mergers and acquisitions.
Mr. Hazan earned a B.S. in Computer Systems and a B.S. in Finance from The American University and he is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) as well as ITIL Management Certified and is an active participant in OWASP and the CSA.
Dorothy Hill has over 25 years of expertise and program leadership in global financial services as well as the technology and governmental sectors. She has designed and supported the implementation of technology from Marketing Technology to US Department of Treasury FATCA solutions and futures trading interfaces with the Tokyo and Osaka Stock Exchanges in Japan. She has worked in the US, UK, Germany, Switzerland, Japan and Hong Kong with Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. She has led teams on Wall Street for ISDA contract negotiation across derivatives & futures trading desks/prime brokerage/funds management, compliance change management, controls frameworks and FINRA registration tracking and reporting. She is a subject matter expert in AML/KYC, OFAC, risk management & reporting (including CCAR, and counterparty due diligence), cybersecurity, data privacy, public company governance, investor activism, client services, and data management (including BCBS 239). Hill has held senior roles and served as a Board member for start-ups in technology (including SaaS) and leadership training.
Her experience includes:
- Change management and leadership of risk, compliance, and technology organizations on Wall Street (banks, broker-dealers, and asset management including hedge funds)
- Cloud business and marketing software, notably leadership and management of SaaS products, business & pricing models, client segmentation, and go-to-market.
- Client relationship management including organizational and technology design for shared services including business enterprise operations and resilience, and incident reporting
- National speaker on cybersecurity, global threat landscape and bad actor categories, data privacy regulations and cybercrime awareness / prevention
Dorothy is a member of the Risk Management Association (RMA), she has an MBA in Finance and Technology from NYU’s Stern School of Business and a BA from Dartmouth College.
Leo Hmelnitsky is an accomplished professional with 20+ years of investment management, quantitative trading, and consulting experience across all asset classes and derivatives. He has 10+ years of large-scale project implementations, focusing on order and execution management platforms, portfolio and risk management, compliance and process innovation. Leo possesses global sales, advisory and strategy management experience. He has led diverse global teams of business and technical personnel across internal departments and 3rd party vendors. Leo has broad knowledge of digital transformation, business intelligence, AI, and machine learning methods.
- Served as a Solution Architect, Client Implementation Lead, and Senior Manager for top tier asset management clients.
- Responsible for global trading of equity, fixed income, FX and derivatives products. Designed investment strategies, market impact & opportunity cost models, and advised clients on portfolio construction and risks.
- Managed trading technology innovation and implementations, including design of EMS platforms, proprietary trading strategies, development of pre- and post-trade analytics and decision support tools.
- Managed a team of traders in the US and Asia and was responsible for opening the office in Hong Kong. Worked closely with Portfolio Management and Trading Technology teams on workflow automation and integration with legacy systems, and a complete revamp of the investment implementation process.
Leo holds a BS in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from Moscow State College of Information and Communication Systems. He earned a MS in Finance and Computer Science at NYU, Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and completed the Business Analytics Program at Harvard University, Business School and School of Engineering and Applied Science.
Donna Marie Howe has over 25 years of hands-on success in identifying, assessing, mitigating and evaluating the impact of market, credit, operational. compliance and regulatory risks, with special expertise in the financial services industry, including banks, broker/dealers, hedge funds. asset managers, exchanges and insurance companies. She has worked with companies across the globe in choosing technology solutions and implementing the same, always using metric-based methods to sharpen design requirements and measure effectiveness. She has expertise in company governance, regulatory risk management, valuation, clearing and liquidity risk, capital optimization, stress-testing, model validation and metric-based innovation. Howe has held senior risk roles in major global banks such as UBS, Deutsche Bank, ABN-Amro, and Santander as well as insurance and asset management firms.
Her experience includes:
- Design and implementation of both global and US stress-testing platforms (CCAR, DFAST, ECB, etc.)
- Executed plan for data legacy compliance and plan for meta-data enhancements to move stress-test and regulatory capital calculations from one-off to BAU.
- Led cross-functional team of Risk, Audit and Compliance to redress issues from Mortgage Commitment Letter issued by FRB.
- Creation of practical, visionary strategy and management of complex technology implementations in Clearing, CDS, and Anti-Money Laundering.
- Designed methodology for measuring effectiveness of business changes to enhance bank culture; including marketing messages, employee incentives and fraud.
- Implemented a series of training seminars on Basle III, Stress-testing, Cyber risk, Blockchain and other technology risk drivers.
Donna has worked with industry groups to broaden access to risk management methods both as a member of ISDA’s collateral management committee and being on the Board of the Global Association of Risk Professionals for 10 years. She has a BA from the University of Michigan, attended New York University’s Graduate School of Economics, and is currently working towards a Master’s degree in Liberal Arts from Harvard University’s Extension School in Mathematics Education.
Aron Jaroslawicz has over 30 years’ experience in derivatives capital markets and structured products, serving as legal advisor and operational risk manager, and leading various regulatory compliance and process change initiatives, for some of the world’s largest investment banks. A sophisticated risk-officer, creative problem-solver and accomplished project-manager, Aron has designed and administered internal and web-based systems within the OTC derivatives markets, for senior-management oversight and regulatory-compliance purposes.
Aron’s skills and areas of expertise include:
- Coordinating a global, multi-year remediation project, relating to margin rules for non-cleared derivatives under Dodd-Frank and EMIR
- Directing change initiatives to front-end trading systems and back-office collateral management systems; implementing accompanying process controls; educating sales-and-trading personnel; and, providing risk sign-offs on corresponding contract negotiations
- Managing 50+ member project team, across Technology, Operations, Risk and Documentation
- Designing bespoke systems to monitor contractual terms and mitigate legal and operational risks related to special purpose vehicles (SPVs) trading.
- Specializing in derivatives and structured notes documentation related to fixed income, credit and commodities products, as well as high-yield, private equity and municipal/tax-exempt transactions.
Mr. Jaroslawicz earned a J.D. in 1993 from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he graduated with honors. He is licensed to practice law in NY and NJ, and maintains Series 3, Series 7 and Series 63 registrations with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA).
Jeremy Kahn is an innovative technology consultant, CIO and attorney with over 25 years of experience. His leadership and consulting experience has crossed the private, public and government sectors. Jeremy has spent the past few years building a consulting organization focused on cybersecurity focusing on the financial, healthcare and hospitality vertical markets.
Jeremy’s areas of expertise include:
- Creating, staffing and managing technology business units.
- Corporate governance, data privacy and cybersecurity.
- Management of enterprise architecture, cybersecurity and application development projects.
- Implementing new technology to achieve core business goals, while maintaining a focus on financial impact on business.
Jeremy is an attorney and member of the NY State Bar Association. He has spoken at a numerous industry events on cybersecurity, disaster recovery and enterprise architecture and conducted CLE classes on cybersecurity. He earned his JD from Brooklyn Law School and he earned his BS in Policy Analysis from Cornell University. Jeremy currently lives outside of New York City with his wife and children where he serves on the school board as their “technology consultant” for the past 15 years.
Michael Katz has over 35 years experience in technology management, systems development, and helping companies achieve business value through technology innovation.
Michael’s skills and experience include:
- Analysis and presentations to executive teams of broad technology trends, typically as part of an overall analysis of technology in the enterprise
- Marketing and customer evaluations of specific projects with the objective of better understanding how to penetrate and grow market share
- Due diligence technical analysis of high tech companies being considered as acquisition targets, partners, or vendors for private equity firms, VCs, and companies
- Project management for IT programs
Michael has worked for a variety of technology companies, assisting them with product definition and product management. He began his career with vendors including IBM, Rolm, and Tandem Computers before becoming the COO and Managing Director for PricewaterhouseCoopers’ World Technology Centre. He has served as a CTO for several early stage companies helping them deploy technology for business advantage. As a consultant, Michael provides his expertise to many large and small companies as well as NGO including the World Trade Organization and various non-profits.
Michael holds a degree in Computer Science from the University of California at Berkeley.
Lars Kielhorn, Ph. D., is an entrepreneurial IT executive with a track record of creating value through the effective and efficient use of technology in complex, rapidly growing or changing companies. He is known for driving innovation and growth across diverse industries and changing the organization’s relationship to technology in the process. With over 25 years of experience, Lars has led transformation initiatives in Biotech/Pharma/Healthcare, Private Equity, Manufacturing, and High-Performance Engineering/Sports ranging from start-ups to large international corporations. Lars is as passionate about new technologies as he is about the people and organizations impacted by them. Lars has held leadership positions at Dorilton Capital Management/Alcority, Louis Dreyfus Commodities, Forest Labs (now Abbvie) and Bayer among others.
His skills and experiences include:
- Leading companies through hypergrowth – organizationally and technologically
- Creating business value through technology transformations
- Unlocking additional value from prior technology investments
- Enterprise application implementations/upgrades (ERP, HR-IS)
- Building IT organizations and services (including shared services)
- Migrating to and leveraging cloud solutions.
Lars earned his Ph.D. and M.S. in Physics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.
John Kneiling has served as a Consultant, CTO, and executive for 30 years. John has served the Financial Services, Software, and related industries in organizations as diverse as Citibank, PwC Consulting, MetLife, and a major health services provider and insurer.
Mr. Kneiling’s skills and experience include:
- Information systems strategic planning and design
- Enterprise, Application, and Data Architecture
- Business Intelligence analysis and design
- Customer Relationship Management
Mr. Kneiling holds graduate and post-graduate Liberal Arts degrees. He obtained a Computer Science Diploma from New York University, where he was subsequently retained as Adjunct Faculty to teach Applied Business Computer Science seminars.
Olivia Knight has 20 years of experience managing third party relationships from a commercial, contractual and risk mitigation standpoint. She has led and developed global Strategic Sourcing/ Procurement and Third Party/ Vendor Risk Management functions in both the First and Second Line of Defense. Her expertise includes building a Vendor Risk Management function from the ground up as well as transforming a global Third-Party Risk Management function in the Financial Services industry. She has led multiple Supply Chain functions with an emphasis on Procurement and Sourcing in Germany, China and the US in the Manufacturing, Technology and Financial Services industries. Her experience allows her to make strategic third-party decisions taking the entire lifecycle and risk exposure into consideration.
Her experience includes:
- Developing and leading large-scale organizational changes pertaining to vendors, such as a vendor re-tiering project.
- Developing and managing mandatory company-wide trainings on third party/ vendor risk to increase awareness and the importance of vendor due diligence.
- Developing and implementing policies, controls, KRIs and KPIs leading to improved compliance, transparency, data integrity and accountability.
- Negotiating complex, multi-million-dollar contracts in the Professional Services and IT categories leading to cost reductions, innovation, an increase in value-add services.
- Developing savings levers for IT categories to drive strategic cost optimization efforts leading to sustainable reductions in operating costs.
Olivia has a Masters of Pacific International Affairs (MBA/ MIA) focusing on China from UC San Diego and a B.S. in International Business and Marketing (Magna cum laude) from CSU, Sacramento.
Richard Koppel has over 35 years of domestic and global experience in management consulting, transformation/change management, and technology operations/partnering. He has lived and worked throughout Europe, Asia, and North America. He maintains a global reputation in technology, enabling innovation for transformational change.
Experience Summary
- Held senior line management positions as CIO, CTO, and Sr VP R&D
- Additional senior roles held include leading change practices at PwC, EY, and Logica
- Credit-Suisse – EMEA regional lead for Data Definition, Governance, and Analytics within the bank’s Risk and Finance and Reporting Group. Responsibilities included: implementation and compliance with BCBS239; multiple workstreams covering Market, Credit, Operational, Liquidity, Economic and Enterprise Risk.
- Credit-Suisse – Global Lead for Post-Merger Integration
- Credit-Suisse – Led workstreams for a multi-billion-dollar cost reduction program.
He is a recognized authority on change & strategy formulation and implementation, having been a Board Member for five years at the Wharton School of Business and lecturer on implementation of business strategy.
Mr. Koppel has a global reputation in software quality management. He has met the International, British, and NATO software engineering quality assurance standards (ISO 9001, BS5750, and AQAP 1 and 13) for software development and meeting the Software Engineering Institutes Capability Maturity Model for Level 4 software engineering.
Richard is a published author in the Harvard Business Review, Journal of the AIIE, and Journal of the ACM. He’s held executive, non-executive, and advisory board member roles throughout his career. In addition to his consulting work, he was a US Government EPA Research Fellow and has lectured at both graduate and undergraduate levels regarding technology, business strategy, and professional skills development. He has a B.Sc. in Engineering from the University of California Berkeley, an M.Sc. in Statistics, and a D.Engr. in Operations Research from Stanford University.
Alex Kramer has over 35 years of experience serving clients through a range of positions in consulting and IT management. Recent engagements have ranged from IT strategy to global sales force systems deployment to Cybersecurity and large-scale data analytics. Previously, as a Partner at PwC and IBM’s Global Business Services, Mr. Kramer focused on CRM, sales and service systems and the customer experience – helping CIO’s and senior IT management cope with the accelerating demands of value creation in this era of connected, mobile and social computing.
Mr. Kramer’s skills and experience include:
- CRM – customer facing processes and systems
- Business Development; strategy and implementation
- Market insight and development
- Data Analytics; products and markets
- Applications Outsourcing
Mr. Kramer has been a frequent speaker at CIO conferences, applications symposia and software vendor forums and has written several papers on the subjects referenced. He holds a Masters in Talmudic Law with undergraduate work in Mathematics and MBA work at Washington University, St. Louis.
Jim Lahren is a seasoned multi-industry, omnichannel marketing leader with expertise in consumer electronics, consumer durables, specialty apparel and digital health. His 30+ year career is marked by his ability to build and lead business teams that effectively drive product innovation, brand development and market expansion.
His experience includes:
- Over 25 years of of e-commerce innovation, from introducing a leading toy brand to the digital marketplace in 1998 to scaling B2B e-commerce operations for a top-ranking global corporation.
- Digital transformation of marketing teams to utilize best in class technologies in creative development, campaign management, and marketing analytics, and customer relationship management.
- Developing and executing robust business strategies, pivotal in launching new products and services.
- Founding a SaaS company focused on elevating customer service within service-centric industries.
Jim earned his MBA in Corporate Finance from the University of Buffalo and his BA in Government and International Relations from the University of Notre Dame.
Ira Lehrman, most recently, served as global head of Nuveen Technology. In this role, he had responsibility for Nuveen’s overall technology strategy, systems design and development, production environments and emerging technologies.
Prior to joining Nuveen, Ira was at Broadridge Financial Solutions, Head of Application Development, Cloud Strategy and Migration for their Investor Communication Solutions Division
Ira has more than 20 years of highly successful Information Technology and management experience in both the technology and revenue generating sides of the financial services industry where he has held a number of senior leadership roles at Broadridge, Athene Asset Management, GH Financials (London), Merrill Lynch and Deutsche Bank.
- Global Enterprise Technology Strategies design and delivery across multi-million dollar transformation initiatives
- Global Technology Cloud and Digital transformation implementation
- Consolidated Global Equity and Fixed income OMS/Portfolio Management Platforms
- Reduction of technical debt/risk with technology modernization leveraging cloud computing
Ira has also served in various acting roles across the securities technology industry with SIFMA/Bond Market Association, FIX FLP Americas, CIO Forum and Wall Street & Technology Association (WSTA). Held FINRA Series 7 and Series 63 Certifications.
Ira holds a Bachelor of Science degree from City University of New York, where he was also a Computer Information Sciences lecturer for several years at CUNY – Brooklyn College.
Hank Leingang is a highly experienced executive and consultant. He drives business improvement, technology innovation, organization development and process change. Hank serves in full time CIO, interim CIO, consulting, executive advisory and coaching roles. He is passionate about business impact and solving complex problems through vision/strategy, technology, architecture, organization and accelerated execution.
Hank has 20 plus years experience leading IT in $100 million to Fortune 100 companies. As a transformational CIO at Bechtel Group, Viacom Inc. and Triangle Industries, Hank led strategic change in operating capability leveraging innovative use of new technologies, process re-engineering and organizational development. Hank also has served as an independent consultant for more than fifteen years.
Hank’s skills and experience include:
- Interim IT leadership
- IT strategy
- Data strategy
- Crisis management
- Operations improvement
- IT process improvement
Hank earned a Master’s in Business Administration from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, and a Bachelor of Science degree in Industrial Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Anna Lekht is an experienced Internal Auditor with over 20 years of significant investment sector experience in the financial services and technology industries. Her expertise is in operational, SOX, compliance, and regulatory auditing. Anna is skilled in performing risk and control assessments and building strategic audit plans that ensure effective control structures.
Her skills and experience include:
- Led multiple audits to provide reasonable assurance as to the adequacy of systems of internal control covering relevant governance, risk management and control processes.
- Represented AXA Equitable Internal Audit Investment team to address the impact of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act on the Company.
- Managed external Quality Assurance reviews that identified opportunities to improve internal audit performance and services.
- Managed and coordinated SAP application development projects utilizing Scrum (Agile) and waterfall methodologies.
Anna is a Certified Public Accountant in New York and New Jersey and holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from Baruch College, Summa Cum Laude.
Bertrand Leroux is an accomplished Fortune 500 technology and C-suite leader with over 30 years of experience leading successful large-scale transformation initiatives including technology innovation and digital transformations. Bertrand has global expertise in world class brands (Activision Blizzard, Vivendi, and Disney) in the media / entertainment, video games and consumer products business in Europe & the US. His career reflects a demonstrated track record in building strong business partnerships, leading high-performing teams, operationalizing strategy in line with the business, and executing M&A transactions across the deal lifecycle. Bertrand is a hands-on leader who instills confidence, drives financial results and customer value, and is a trusted advisor to executive leaders.
His experience includes:
- Defining and executing IT strategy , managing complex technology implementations in line with business strategy and vision
- Digital transformation of company through innovation, technology and new business models
- Implementing standardized flexible technology stack, scaling global IT platforms to support revenue growth, reduce costs and increase business value.
- Enabling scalability of systems through consolidation of multiple ERP systems into one single global ERP
- Delivering significant savings by consolidating overall spend across all company and across multiple categories and managing vendor portfolio
Bertrand is an ambassador of the French Tech in Los Angeles (to promote the emergence of successful start-ups in France), a foreign trade advisor for France (CCEF). Bertrand received both his bachelor’s (Finance) and master’s degrees (Logistics, and IT Organization) from the University of Paris IX Dauphine in France.
Robert Levine has over 25 years of success in managing financial risk and liquidity, underwriting and structuring credit, and designing financial, treasury, and risk architectures and processes. His focus is on banking, wealth management, fintech lending, and digital assets. Robert has led and supported revenue growth as a trader and strategist, holding senior leadership experience at RBC and UBS and acting as a consultant at other banking and digital asset lending organizations. Robert has authored numerous articles and published three financial and risk management books.
His experience includes:
- Optimization of trading and investing strategies given regulatory and business constraints and risk appetite
- Construction of financial valuation and risk measurement models
- Assessment of complex financial and enterprise-wide risk exposures, strategy definition to manage and/or reduce risk, measurement of financial risk, and risk reduction strategies including hedge design and management
- Underwriting, structuring, and managing credit and counterparty risk
- Data analysis, requirements definition, selection, and implementation of treasury and risk management technology
Robert holds a Doctor of Finance from Swiss Management Center University, a Professional Degree in Information Systems from University of California, Berkeley, an MBA from Baruch College, CUNY, and BS in Economics from New York University. Robert holds FINRA Series 7, 24, and 66 licenses, the Certified Treasury Professional qualification, and has passed the examination for the Certified Internal Auditor and Certified Fraud Examiner qualifications.
Bart Lewin has more than thirty years’ experience in the Engineering and Information Technology fields, specializing in the Health Care, Retail, Gaming, and Hospitality Industries. He has expertise in marketing technology; IT infrastructure design; IT compliance (SOX, PCI, HIPPA); intellectual property development and management; product development (software/hardware engineering and manufacturing); organizational management; and IT systems selection and implementation. He has held technical and executive management positions for companies including Chevron Chemical Company, International Game Technology, Inc., and Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc.
His skills include:
- Developing custom software on most popular platforms
- Serving as an expert witness in patent and software contract litigation
- Designing and implementing compliant and secure data and telecommunications networks
- Performing system selection and implementation processes
- Performing the day-to-day functions of a CTO.
Mr. Lewin has published numerous articles in industry trade magazines, has won several industry awards, and is a named inventor on multiple patents. Mr. Lewin holds a BA in Economics from Reed College.
Shuet Loke’s strong foundation in IT Risk Management and Data Governance resulted in consistently delivering strategic software solutions or business outcomes to customers or business under aggressive timelines or challenging environments. Shuet performs well both as an individual contributor and a lead in complex, large or enterprise-wide initiatives with a cross-functional / geographical / cultural team located onshore and offshore. Shuet excels not only in project delivery but also in transformation initiatives such as building or re-engineering PMO, Professional Services, and IT Audit functions.
Her skills and experience include:
- Owns client / business relationship management from product ideation, business case, project execution to customer launch.
- Presentation of program status and risks to Steering Committees and Operating Committees.
- Technology expertise in Big Data, Advanced Analytics, and Digital Transformation including IoT.
- Adept at working in fast-paced and ambiguous environments.
- Governance and risk management mindset on security, privacy and business continuity in speed-to-market.
- Expert in Agile and/or Waterfall methodologies, Certified Scrum Master, Certified SAFe5.
Ms. Loke holds an MBA from the University of Houston and a Bachelor of Commerce from Concordia University, Canada.
Kent Lorentzen has over 30 years of Financial Services Industry hands-on success with a proven track record of creating, transforming and managing significant operations. Kent is a senior business professional with a unique blend of business and technology experiences, effective at liaising between business and IT as well as communicating with integrity to all levels of an organization. He has expertise in the areas of Business Analysis, Financial and Strategic Planning, Project Management and Governance, Risk and Compliance.
Kent’s experience includes:
- Successfully created Wealth Management businesses in both the US and the UK through Business Development, Recruiting Sales Professionals and Compliance SMEs. Built client-facing technology applications and leveraged surveillance applications to create compliant sales and marketing practices and mitigate suitability risk.
- Deployed Project Management, Change Management and Governance, Risk and Compliance Strategies to transform a loss-making Wealth Management franchise into a profitable enterprise. Extensive Business Process Management, Business Requirements gathering, Due Diligence, Workflow Design and Business analysis were required to complete this effort.
- Managed a global bulge-bracket Institutional Equities Division into profitability by deploying aggressive expense management strategies and created geographically oriented Metrics Reporting groups to monitor global support function KPIs for the business. Worked extensively with Compliance and Regulatory Reporting to enhance monitoring of Business adherence to the rules and regulations in NAM, EMEA and APAC regions
Mr. Lorentzen is the Treasurer and Member of the Board of Directors of the NY Pops Orchestra and former Chairman of the Finance Committee and member of the Board of Governors of the Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in Rahway, NJ.
Michael Maffattone is an Information Technology (IT) leader with over 30 years of experience in systems development, integration and operations in the trading, investment, banking and asset management businesses. During his career, he has worked at the U.S. central bank, a top macro hedge fund, the largest endowment and a leading mortgage Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT). His leadership approach over the years has been to work closely with business stakeholders to identify technology options, as well as process and personnel enhancements, and then use disciplined project, data and vendor management practices to implement solutions that meet company goals. Demonstrated leadership abilities include:
- Creating & aligning IT strategic plans to business goals
- Attracting, developing & retaining talented staff
- Implementing innovative technology to increase alpha
- Completing projects on-time and on-budget
- Reducing automation and operating costs
- Providing excellent customer service
Michael has a a B.S. degree in Computer Science, City University of New York and he is a graduate of the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking at Georgetown University (Thesis: Project Portfolio Mgmt.).
Sal Magnone has 30 years of experience building, reenvisaging, and transforming technology centric products, services, teams, and companies. He’s been a successful cofounder, CEO, turnaround CEO, CTO, and Chief Engineer; is very technical, and is very hands on in the data, machine learning, and the distributed computing & high-performance computing (HPC) spaces. Sal is x-PwC, where he was part of the Financial Services CIO Advisory Practice and x-Army, where he enjoyed 12 years of active and active-reserve duty as a United States Field Artillery Officer in both training and combat units.
Sal’s skills and experience include:
- Designing and delivering mission critical, high-complexity enterprise platforms
- Managing high-risk technology projects
- Bringing and keeping business and technology programs in alignment
- Strategic information technology planning
- Organizational change management
Mr. Magnone holds a degree in Computer Science and Operations Research from Saint John’s University in New York City, NY.
Larry started his career at a global consulting firm specializing in financial management, operations improvements, and IT business management and systems. An experienced business advisor with over 30 years of experience, with proven leadership skills and expertise to drive efficiency and control through improving financial and performance management practices including management reporting, controllership and financial reporting, cost analysis, and operating process redesign. Extensive industry experiences with global organizations including F.1000 industrial and bio-pharmaceutical, financial services, and insurance companies. He is an excellent communicator and team player in working with colleagues at all organizational levels.
Larry’s areas of expertise include:
- Implementation of streamlined reporting practices and key performance measures.
- Business management process and systems redesign for shared service organizations including analysis of benchmarks and best practices.
- Information Architecture and systems roadmaps for Finance and Corporate Services.
- Design and implementation of financial management and accounting systems.
- Quality and cycle time improvement programs using Six Sigma methods and tools.
Larry is a CPA, a CGMA, and has held managerial positions including CFO and VP of Business Strategy for software (Oracle/PeopleSoft), and Senior Partner / Managing Director consulting firms. He was an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Graduate Business School, and has authored numerous books and articles, served as editor-in-chief of several periodicals, regularly conducted educational training and webinars, and has served as chairperson of several professional societies and civic committees. His educational background includes a BA Economics and MBA Corporate Financial Management.
Paul Mandel has over 20 years of hands-on experience leading technology transformations and leading technology teams in the services sector. He has led, as CTO, significant growth, transformation, and M&A integration activities for private equity-backed and publicly listed companies. As a member of corporate leadership teams and committees, Paul also has significant governance experience and frequently presents technology topics at the Board level. Paul has held leadership roles in companies such as WPP, NBCUniversal, Oracle, Microsoft, and Booz Allen – managing teams of 200+. In addition, Paul has expertise in cloud migrations, critical security topics such as zero-trust architectures and passwordless technologies, and passkeys.
His experience includes:
- Transformation of organizations by leveraging cloud-based technologies
- Building and scaling technology teams in rapidly growing organizations
- Strategic technology budgeting and vendor management, and
- Aligning technology implementation with organizational goals to drive business outcomes
Paul has an MBA from the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, a Doctorate in Psychology from Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and numerous technology-focused professional certifications, including being a certified Enterprise Architect, a Project Management Professional, and being COBIT certified.
Bob Mankin possesses a business-tested, strategic and operational understanding of what it takes to build and/or transform financial institutions. Bob has successfully built and managed both income and staff organizations as a senior executive in commercial and investment banks. He has also served as an advisor to financial institutions and IT firms.
His skills and experience include:
- Financial institution business and staff management.
- Strategic planning, organization, business development and risk management.
- Subject matter expertise in a wide range of banking businesses including: fixed income, capital markets, mortgages, corporate, commercial, consumer and private banking, and corporate finance.
Dr. Mankin holds a BA degree in Mathematics from Brooklyn College, an MBA in Administration and Policy from City University’s Bernard Baruch Graduate School of Business and a DPS in Finance and Management from Pace University (doctoral thesis: A Comparison of Two Country Risk Assessment Approaches). Bob is a Trustee of the Hudson Institute and a member of the New York Chapter of the Risk Management Association.
Rob Mann has nearly 30 years of consulting and industry experience designing, leading and implementing growth strategies with a focus on technology, product development, innovation and business operations. In addition to advisory services, approximately half of his consulting work entails interim management and hands-on executive roles where he’s conceived, developed and launched new products and businesses for mature and start-up brands. He’s worked across the globe spanning North and Latin America, the Middle East, the UK/Continental Europe, the Caribbean, Greater China, and APAC. Combining creativity with practical business analytics and operating acumen, he’s pioneered new product lines, divisions and ventures from start-ups to Fortune 50 companies. His experience includes:
- Venture, product development, growth and innovation across diverse industries: digital/media/entertainment, CPG, technology, automotive, business services, medical devices, agriculture, building products, etc.
- Innovation and product development/management for iconic brands including Harley Davidson, Kraft/Heinz, Hershey’s, Disney, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Medtronic, Rolls-Royce, Stanley Black and Decker, Bridgestone, Major League Baseball, etc.
Previously, Rob worked for McKinsey & Company, PwC, Kearney, SapientRazorfish and North Highland. In addition to his consulting work, Rob taught in the Marketing Department at the Wharton School for 18 years, where he served as the Director of Consulting and Strategy in Wharton’s GCP. He was handpicked to be the Global Conference Chairman for the Product Development and Management Association where he led events and seminars deemed to be the most successful in the organization’s history. His published works include articles, white papers and book chapters addressing growth, innovation and product development – some of which rated in the top 10% of the consulting industry according to Source Global and ALM, the industry’s observers.
Known for immersive consulting experiences mixing fun and learning, Rob is a sought-out mentor enjoying long, deep developmental relationships with trusted clients, colleagues and students. Rob holds an MBA and BSE from the Wharton School and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania’s College of Arts and Sciences. His continuing studies addressing AI/ML, social media and advanced technologies span MIT, Harvard, Wharton and UCLA.
Andy Mantel has over 30 years of successful business leadership and consulting engagements in financial services, encompassing broad experience in the strategic and tactical aspects of process and technology resources as well as innovative marketing and sales techniques for penetrating new markets and growing businesses. His industry exposure includes retail and institutional banking, mutual funds, brokerage, advisory and wealth management, with extensive functional experience in risk, regulatory compliance, mergers and acquisitions, and retirement services. He has held C-level roles at Fidelity Investments and New York Life. Andy services clients bringing his track record as a high-energy conceptual thinker, tactician and problem solver, who excels in client relationships.
Notable accomplishments include:
- Expert guidance related to supervisory regulatory matters, remediation responses, action plans and reporting.
- Development of deal-to-close, transitional, and post-conversion operating models, transition services agreements, communications, and implementation strategies.
- Development and execution of risk/fraud identification and loss remediation programs including retail banking, commercial lending, ACH/wire, information and physical security, data transfer, HR, wealth management, GL, payments.
- Conception, design, and integration implementation of professional services businesses to achieve scalable best practices and overall decreases in costs.
Andy holds a Bachelor of Music degree from the New England Conservatory and received his MBA from Columbia Business School. He has been a frequent speaker at financial seminars and industry conferences. Among other interests, he is a classical pianist and composer, writer, college student mentor and tennis enthusiast.
Albert Mayo is a transformation and change leader with over twenty years of experience leading software development, data, enterprise applications, and IT operations teams across the Education, Psychological Science, e-Commerce, Telecommunications, and Manufacturing sectors. He has extensive C-level experience in fast-paced, dynamic and multicultural environments. He excels at bridging the gap between business and technology strategy and building both enterprise and customer-facing technology solutions. Albert has a strong history of servant leadership by building, growing, and retaining highly performing technology teams. He is sought-after for business acumen and deep strategic insight that create a competitive advantage.
His experience includes:
- Leading Agile development teams in support of membership, publishing, and continuing education operations in alignment with CRM and ERP strategies, focusing on optimizing operational efficiencies and customer experience.
- Spearheading personalization strategies through the design and implementation of data warehouse/analytics solutions to generate a 360-degree customer view centered on driving customer engagement.
- Leading Agile development of SaaS K-12 accreditation and school improvement learner-centric platform designed for the administration of multi-language certified and custom surveys, conducting classroom observations, administering institutional performance diagnostics, generating improvement plans/strategies, and managing virtual and onsite school evaluations for over 36,000 schools in over 85 countries.
- Adapting a proprietary school improvement platform solution to effectively address state department of education compliance requirements and federal education accountability requirements, used to hold schools and districts responsible for raising student achievement.
Albert earned his Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA. He earned his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from the University of Maryland in College Park, MD. He is fluent in Spanish.
Dan Nellius offers clients the benefit of 35 years of experience as a Partner at PwC Consulting, an executive at IBM Global Business Services and a CEO of a private equity portfolio company.
Dan’s skills and experience include:
- Business model transformation and new market entry;
- Software as a Service (SaaS) and Amazon Web Services (AWS);
- Business Process Optimization and Operations;
- Customer Relationship Management (CRM) – Sales, Services, Marketing, & Partnerships
- Information Technology Strategy and Planning;
- Resolving Complex turn-arounds for Projects, Programs and Businesses.
Dan earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Arts and Sciences at University of Delaware – 1982.
Gene Neyer has over 35 years of experience in Money Movement and Payments with large global banks, leading and emerging fintechs and market infrastructures. His roles included SVP, Head of Money Movement Platform at U.S. Bank; Head of Industry and Regulation for Finastra; Head of Product Management for D+H/Fundtech and Head of Product Development at Deutsche Bank.
His experience includes:
- Product Management
- Product Marketing
- Go to market Strategy
- Global Payment SME – particularly focused on Payment Hubs
- Payments Modernization & Transformation
- Payments Architecture
- Vendor Selection
- FinTech
Gene has been recognized frequently for his product leadership, including receipt of numerous industry awards. He holds Executive Master in Technology Management from Wharton/University of Pennsylvania and a M.S. & B.S. Degrees in Mathematics from City College of NY.
Lucy Pearman is a transformative business leader with over 20 years industry and management consulting experience in delivering complex change initiatives in fast-paced and highly regulated environments. She has a proven track record in leading sizable, cross-functional teams across international markets in the design and implementation of cutting-edge business solutions that reduce costs, drive greater efficiencies and revenues while ensuring ongoing compliance needs are met. She is experienced in delivering all aspects of change from remediation through to digitization and has been instrumental in re-designing operating models for Foreign Banking Organizations to adhere to IHC regulations.
Lucy’s skills and experience include:
- Digital Business Strategy
- Operating Model Design & Implementation
- Enterprise-wide program management
- Process Improvement
- Change management
Lucy holds professional certificates in Project Management (PMI), Process Improvement (LEAN Six Sigma) and Creative Design Thinking (LUNAR). Most recently completed advanced studies in Digital Business Strategy and Organizational Design for Digital Transformation from MIT Sloan School of Management.
Rick Pfeiffer is a business leader with a 28-year track record of accelerating growth, restoring profitability, leading innovation, and managing disruptive change in the financial services industry. He also has provided his expertise in the Energy sector. He successfully led start-up ventures (GE Capital, India) and corporate turnarounds (AIG’s Global Consumer Finance Group) by developing high performance and collaborative teams from strategy development to execution.
His skills include:
| • Management Transformation | • Cultural Change | • Driving innovation |
| • Operational Expertise | • Team Building | • Change Management |
| • Relationship Management | • Cross-Divisional Initiatives | • Government Affairs / Liaison |
| • Corporate Integrations | • System Implementation | • Process Optimization |
| • Customer Product Segmentation | • Cost Analysis and Reduction | • Negotiating |
Rick received his BA in Biology from Amherst College and his MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia. He has filled board and senior executive roles.
Kevin Pilarski has over 40 years of experience as a leader with extensive expertise in orchestrating organizational turnarounds, spearheading marketing initiatives, implementing regulatory reforms, and driving operational excellence across diverse sectors. He specializes in devising and executing strategies that fuel revenue growth, expand market presence, and secure competitive advantages. He is adept in capital markets, auditing, compliance, private equity, hedge fund due diligence, payment systems, relationship building, wholesale funding, and retail/institutional investment regulation.
- Improved balance sheet and cash flow by converting existing debt to equity, managed $30M capital raise and increased operational efficiency toward stabilizing financial footing and forward runway to profitability.
- Analyzed existing business operations as part of acquisition due diligence and valuation models prior to letter of intent and go forward business plan.
- Evaluated existing operations, identified potential efficiencies, and developed strategies to increase EBITDA by 30%+ in merged entities, through post-closing synergies and cost-saving initiatives.
Mr. Pilarski earned his B.S. in finance from the Farmer School of Business at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, and an MBA from the Booth School of Business at the University of Chicago. He has participated in the Executive Program in Negotiations, Behavioral Finance and Leadership at Harvard University.
Shelley Pittman is a digital transformation senior executive providing companies a competitive edge by incorporating strategy, modern technologies, and methodologies and specializing in the digital transformation with retail and commercial banking and FinTech. She is focused on the latest implementation strategies and technology innovations for the digital world. She has been a Partner at Accenture, IBM, KPMG, and recently, Practice Leader for Slalom’s Financial Service Strategy Practice.
Shelley’s skills and experience include:
- Specializes in retail and commercial banking, FinTech, automotive financing, equipment leasing and asset management industry
- Product focused Agile digital design, architecture, and governance including Robotics Process Automation (RPA).
- Core banking transformation and digital transformation
Shelley has a B.S. in Accounting from Syracuse University and is prior licensed C.P.A. in New York and Florida.
André Politzer has over 30 years experience as an executive and consultant applying a combination of entrepreneurial, marketing, consumer data and digital expertise across industries such as Finance, Hospitality and Travel, High-Tech and Telecom, Energy, Real Estate, Transportation, Luxury Retail and Healthcare. He speaks fluently English and French. He creatively connects the dots between traditional and new digital multi-dimensional and multi-cultural environments with a focus on:
- Emergence and evolution of customer segments with a vertical approach
- Intersection of human behavior, data analytics, with hyper-personalization and related technologies
- Transformation of strategies to ensure sustainable client acquisition, loyalty and revenue growth
- Innovation of best practices and new ways to think about loyalty, financial and risk trends
- Training and coaching stakeholders designing and delivering programs adapted to cultural transformations
- Cross-departmental and Cross-Enterprise communication during transitions such as post-merger alignment strategies
- Challenging “shiny object” trends and syndromes in Artificial Intelligence, Deep Learning, FinTech and InsurTech
André is universally recognized by his clients, colleagues and peers as one of the most specialized and influential customer engagement consultant & mentor. He has a diverse background spanning both EMEA and North America working for 25 years as a senior executive in several companies forming new divisions or start-ups. He worked with prominent organizations such as THF Hotels, ADP Networks, Merrill Lynch Capital, Air France, Marvin Davis Entertainment (21st Century Fox), IDT Telecom and Johns Hopkins Health.
André holds a bachelor’s degree and an MBA in Economics from Université Paris IX Dauphine (France); a Hospitality Management Masters’ Degree from the Swiss International Institute of Management of Glion (CH) (a Cornell University affiliate); and a Graduate Certificate of Coaching from the University of Texas at Dallas (UTD).
Phil Pyburn is a Digital Transformation leader with deep product and process experience in asset management, banking and insurance across front, middle and back office operations. He has extensive experience with all investment products and asset classes, including public/private equity, public/private credit, derivatives, FX, life insurance/annuities, and structured products. His work spans all segments of financial services operations, risk management and regulatory compliance.
Previously Phil was the Global Practice Area Director for Capital Markets with Slalom Consulting and a Partner at the Ernst & Young Center for Business Innovation. He was also a professor of IT Management and Finance at Boston University, University of South Florida and the University of Charleston.
Phil’s recent roles have included:
- Digital transformation strategy and planning
- Design and implementation of Lean operations methodologies in financial services
- Operational and financial process analysis and documentation
- Digital transformation program and project leadership
- Financial modeling and business case development
- Project and product implementation plans and roadmaps
- Evaluation of risk management and regulatory compliance programs
- Introduction of Lean, Agile, SAFe and Six Sigma programs and practices in IT and operations
Phil holds a master’s degree in Finance and IT from the M.I.T. Sloan School of Management and a Doctorate in IT and Operations from the Harvard Business School. He is a certified Six Sigma Master Blackbelt, SAFe® Program Consultant and Scrum Master.
Jim Ranton is a results driven advisor. He has a successful track record improving sales and profit performance, for both emerging and established companies, in diverse industries. He advises organizations in developing and implementing talent strategies that align with desired outcomes. His areas of expertise include organization performance planning, talent management, compensation design, labor relations strategy and acquisition integration. He is recognized for his ability to partner with the CEO and his or her executive team to support major growth initiatives and develop a high performance, metrics-based system and culture. He has worked for large (PepsiCo, United Technologies), mid-size (Citizens Utilities, New York Racing Association) and small growth companies (Surescripts).
Jim’s skills and experience include:
- Human resources strategy
- Culture change
- Executive coaching
- Organization performance planning
- Reward system evaluation and design
- Talent management
Mr. Ranton received a BS degree in Industrial and Labor Relations from Cornell University. In addition, he holds an MBA from the International Management Center at ESC Rouen in France, and a MS degree from the Krannert Graduate School of Management at Purdue University.
Patricia L. Raufer is a senior business executive with a passion for making ideas real. She has led game-changing initiatives in consumer networks and built foundational digital transformation initiatives in payments, digital media and travel industries. Patricia is skilled at negotiating in complex environments to drive both strategy and execution to deliver results. She combines expertise in business, technology and design to conceptualize, develop and launch products and services. Patricia is comfortable with ambiguity to define and deliver digital transformation initiatives. She is customer and client focused, known for getting things done, and skilled at engaging, enrolling and collaborating with team members, colleagues, partners, vendors and stakeholders in executing the vision.
Patricia’s areas of expertise include:
- End-to-end design, development and execution of large-scale digital initiatives.
- Design Thinking / Human Centered Design including ideation, personas, ethnographic research, and affinity clustering.
- Business Models including value propositions, key stakeholder assessments and partner relationship management.
- Platform Integration including multi-sided platforms in payments (merchants + consumers) and travel (providers + passengers).
- Customer Experience Design including innovations in products and customer loyalty rewards programs.
- Commercialization Processes addressing speed-to-market, launch campaigns, marketing and ongoing product and program management.
- Iterative Development including Minimum Viable Product prototyping, pilot test development and results tracking.
- Product Management including all phases of prioritization, design and development in waterfall and agile environments.
Patricia holds an MBA from University of Southern California, a BA in Economics from Rutgers University and a Certificate in Design from Parsons, The New School. Patricia also teaches the Innovation Essentials course (Design Thinking and Business Models) at Jefferson University Kanbar College of Design, Engineering & Commerce.
Sabyasachi ‘Sabby’ Ray has over 30 years of hands-on experience in the financial services industry. As COO within Life and Retirement insurance he has managed Operations, Third Party Administrators, Real-Estate, Procurement and Vendor Governance, and Regulatory Compliance. As CEO of Consumer Finance business, he oversaw multimillion-dollar Asia business. He has led global organizations and demonstrated success driving business strategies through operational transformations harnessing data insights, and innovative technologies to enhance customer experiences. He has executed large-scale projects including M&A and divestitures in multinational environments, with strong people management skills and a collaborative approach to diverse teams.
His experience includes:
- Setting up operations, including oversight of control environment and fostering a culture of customer experience throughout the organization.
- Business Transformations to optimize balance sheet and streamline operations by divesting non-performing businesses and leading operational excellence across existing business portfolios.
- Building businesses and leading businesses with direct P&L oversight
- Driving M&A Integration and Divestitures
- Operations & Distribution Re-Engineering through Centralization, Automation and Outsourcing.
Sabby has been recognized frequently for his business leadership including receipt of numerous awards. He has a Master of Business Administration from the India Institute of Management (India, Bangalore) and a Bachelor of Engineering in Electronics and Electrical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology and Science (India, Pilani),
Mr. Rogers is an outcomes-anchored professional with a proven track record of partnering across a broad spectrum of stakeholders in dynamic environments to foster operational excellence and build scalable organizations. He examines challenges in the context of the business, specifically snapshots of the company – past and present – to suggest planning, resources, tactics, and roadmaps that are strategically informed and aligned. David maps the data and the people to the organization’s processes, tooling, and control frameworks to reveal opportunities to improve performance. His experience includes vertical (global, organizational) transformations of nonprofit organizations and privately held companies.
- Three years to transform IEEE’s $130 million conferences business from a support team chasing tickets to a strategic partner of the organizers enabled by automation.
- Two year initiative to modernize data management, product management and user support capabilities worldwide (and in multiple languages) while Head of Information for Morasha Olami.
- Professionalized internal operations supporting clients and backoffice teams as CIO / Director of Corporate Development at Knowledgent, a Big Data Consultancy.
Mr. Rogers has also led tip-of-the-spear client engagements during his management consulting career. Most recently, he supported diverse teams helping companies adopting big data and advanced analytics into their operations. Some examples include
- Life Science / Biotech (Celgene, Novartis, Sanofi),
- Insurance (Guardian, The Principal, Zurich Insurance) and
- Cable/Cloud/Telecom (Comcast, Cox, Rogers, Sprint, Virtustream – A Dell Business).
Mr. Rogers has accumulated experience protecting companies by implementing control frameworks (SSAE16 SOC 2 Type II), and aligning them with industry standards (NIST, ISO 27001, PCIDSS, HITRUST) and legislation (Sarbanes-Oxley, EU Privacy, GDPR, HIPAA).
David has a Master of City and Regional Planning (MCRP) from the Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Policy and an undergraduate (BA) in Political Science, both at Rutgers University in New Jersey.
Mr. Sakamaki has a 30 year career in Information Technology supporting project management, supply chain business design and processes, system design and development, software evaluations and marketing primarily in the Japanese market. Harry also has experience helping place private equity investments.
Harry’s skills and experience include:
- Supply chain management and customer relationship management
- IT strategic planning and blueprinting
- Supply chain solutions evaluation and process design
- Corporate strategy and products evaluations for private equity investments
Mr. Sakamaki holds a MS in Operations Research from Stanford University.
Sachin Sangtani has over two decades of experience in consulting and information management. He has led large, transformational development teams as Chief Business Technologist for Client Intelligence (IBIE) at J.P. Morgan and as Program Manager at several other organizations, including Dairy Farm Group, the third largest FMCG retailer in Asia. Sachin has also led regional presales and professional services teams within product companies in the Business Intelligence space. Sachin has deep technical skills in the entire Business Intelligence stack, including the Hadoop ecosystem, columnar databases and BI front end tools. With diverse experience in a variety of verticals like Retail, Financial Services, Hospitality and Technology, Sachin is able to lead and drive complex projects to deliver value from and transparency of data to executives and key stakeholders across large organizations.
Sachin’s experience and skills include:
- Architecting and building the Client Intelligence platform (IBIE) within J.P. Morgan’s wholesale bank, providing a 360 view of a client’s profitability across all lines of business
- Designing and building a reference architecture and governance for Dairy Farm Group on BW for HANA as part of a five-year SAP transformation
- Managing the deployment of a large reengineering effort for Prime Services at Credit Suisse, with a focus on migrating the Prime Services Data Warehouse (PSDW) from Sybase to Oracle
Sachin Sangtani holds a Bachelor of Science (Magna Cum Laude) from Bentley University.
Andrew Sawyer has over 30 years of experience as an IT business professional with diversified experience focusing on IT effectiveness and solving the business challenges by carefully aligning requirements and goals with the power of technology. Mr. Sawyer has a clear understanding that business needs should dictate decisions regarding IT. He excels at bridging “the gap” between IT and business organizations, helping them to be successful in meeting their strategic goals, as well as communicating with integrity to all levels of an organization. Mr. Sawyer’s career includes the following experiences and skills:
- Created a long-term sourcing strategy and developed IT (ITO and ADM) sourcing transactions that delivered over 32% savings over five years with $4.5M savings in the first year, with improved Service Levels and other key transaction terms.
- Led renegotiation of existing IT managed services (ITO and ADM) vendor yielding a 12% reduction in costs, while significantly improving SLAs and enhanced the ability to manage vendor by improving the vendor management process (SMO)
- Managed several IT Effectiveness projects, advising CIOs and leading to improved performance of the IT organizations in the area of Governance, Financial management, and better alignment with their stakeholders.
- Interim IT Director/CIO that led an IT stabilization effort in a crisis management situation: resolved security vulnerability, secured business-critical applications, initiated PMO standards, created detailed IT cost analysis, established Vendor management and governance practices, and supported the new CIO transition.
Mr. Sawyer holds a BS in Mathematics from the University of Delaware, an MSE in the Management of Technology from the University of Pennsylvania/The Wharton School of Business, and is PMP certified.
Stefanie Shelley is a long time Chief Marketing Officer and Operating Executive in financial services and tech-driven business solutions. Stefanie works with CEOs and C-Suite leaders on strategies to drive growth, transformation and value creation. Ms. Shelley has a unique blend of marketing and general management experience with the ability to see the “big picture” and align for growth. She helps clients see their vision and opportunities in a different way and find the best solution to build a path forward and deliver success. Ms. Shelley has extensive experience in marketing, product, strategy, client experience, sales and human capital management.
Stefanie’s skills include:
- Extensive experience in the financial services and tech-driven business solutions industries.
- Wide range of experience with large global companies, middle market companies and start-ups
- Marketing and growth strategies; branding, repositioning, go to market strategies, digital marketing and marketing automation.
- PR and communications skills; building thought leadership and expanding media presence
- 20 years of experience in digital transformation since the launch of the internet in the year 2000
- Strong skills in human capital management; organization, talent development and team building
- In addition to functional skills, adept at change management, group facilitation and coaching
- Acts with a broad strategic perspective, structured thinking and a sense of urgency
- Strong executive presence, emotional intelligence and communication skills
Stefanie holds an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and a BA, Cum Laude with Honors in Economics from Colgate University. Stefanie also holds a Brain Based coaching certificate from the Neurological Leadership Institute.
Sanjeev Sinha is a senior executive with over 25 years of international experience. He has built and led large global teams to deliver outsourcing, data analytics, digital, and consulting services, to clients in diverse industries. As a Business Unit Head and CEO, he has guided organizations in meeting financial targets, evaluating prospective investments/acquisitions, creating capabilities to develop new business and deliver a superior customer experience. Sanjeev has held leadership positions at Startek, WNS Global Services, Firstsource Solutions, Crisil (S&P), and Icra (Moody’s). He has served on boards and on audit committees.
His experience includes:
- Devising and executing digital transformation strategies and managing complex P&L accounts.
- Developing digital and analytics services while leading a global team of over 2,000 members in the US, UK, Argentina, Poland, China, and India, to add new clients across North America, Europe, and Asia.
- Strategic planning and management of complex technology implementations, including guiding the assessment and selection processes.
- Creation of new digital offerings in the contact center and back-office space with technology partners to reduce costs and provide new revenue streams.
- Acquisition and integration of a data analytics company. Identification and evaluation of potential acquisition opportunities across digital/technology domain and business process outsourcing.
Sanjeev has a PhD in Business Administration from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, a Post Graduate Diploma in Management (MBA) from the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Ahmedabad, India, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Birla Institute of Technology, Ranchi, India. He also has a certification in Corporate Governance from The Wharton School (Executive Education)
Adam Steinberg is a collaborative and innovative Business Consulting and Go-To-Market Executive known for building, growing, and managing high performance consultative-led businesses at enterprise scale. With more than 35 years of business change experience, he has demonstrated success in creating top performing domestic and global market-facing direct sales and partnerships and alliances organizations from scratch and scaling faltering organizations by assessing people, process, and offerings. He is a hands-on strategic account and portfolio leader accountable for sales, revenue, and profit attainment, often along industry dimensions.
Adam’s experience includes:
- Led dozens of enterprise-level strategic business change programs, primarily in the front office.
- Established trusted advisory relationships with client C-Suite and senior leaders engaging in reimagining business processes user experience design, solution ideation, and delivery of business outcomes
- Functional areas of expertise include: Cognitive/AI and digital solutions, advanced analytics, IoT, and development of industry-specific repeatable solutions.
- Significant cross-industry consulting and IT services experience with depth in Media & Entertainment, Telecommunications, High Technology, Retail/CPG, Hospitality, Financial Services, Automotive and Manufacturing.
Adam holds a BS degree in Applied Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.
Len Steinmetz is a hands-on, analytical, results-driven executor offering wide business expertise and very deep technical knowledge in overseeing the strategic planning, development, and management of transformative technology solutions, implementing and integrating enterprise systems, and translating vision and strategy into action plans for project portfolios.
Len is a collaborative, decisive leader and resourceful data engineer with demonstrated successes as a strategic program implementor, project manager and director of diverse, cross-functional teams implementing cutting-edge software solutions that align enterprise applications with organizational objectives to enhance efficiency, productivity, and agility.
Len’s approach is designed to foster innovation, and optimize business processes, focusing on data-driven decision-making, and compliance with industry regulations, maximizing the value of technology investments, and driving digital transformation for sustained business growth and competitiveness.
Len’s recent experience includes:
- Developing AI strategy including C level AI / GenAI dashboard use cases for evaluation of areas of opportunity for process optimization, cost reduction and revenue growth.
- Developing AI roadmaps, data and tooling strategies including appropriate people, process and technology for both on-prem and in the cloud implementation,
- Model Analysis and Validation for trading activity review involving millions of transactions and discovery of patterns of anomalous activity dimensions (time, price, and volume) in the Equities and Fixed Income areas using statistical techniques AI/ML models for anomalous activity detection.
- Three lines of defense Compliance and Risk program development and implementation for KYC, AML and OFAC regulatory Transaction Monitoring, Investigation and Reporting.
Len has an MBA in Finance from Pace University, a BA in Economics and Engineering from CUNY, NY and has done Executive MBA work in Banking at INSEAD in Fontainebleau, France, and Supply Chain work at the University of Virginia, Darden School of Business
John Stone has over 30 years of information technology experience in development and management of software platforms, products, and custom applications. He has led development and transitions for on-time delivery, predictable ROI, and measurable business results. Known for leveraging market and technological evolution and change, John is experienced in leading and coaching globally distributed teams. Former Corporate CTO and Andersen Partner, John has consulted at companies ranging from startups to Fortune 100 on projects that include due diligence, Agile transformation, IoT solutions, data analytics, large-scale software development, and project rescue.
Some of John’s accomplishments include:
- Leading development of the operations center for the 2022 FIFA World Cup that receives telemetry from hundreds of thousands of devices and enables real-time event management via interactive digital twins of all 8 stadiums.
- Scaled Agile transformation of a F500 company’s product implementation organization for improved consistency and outcomes.
- Development of automated support for ERP data warehouse operations that proactively identifies incidents and implements corrective actions before they can impact the business.
John holds BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering from NYU, has authored books on software engineering, is SAFe certified, and holds a patent on digital twins collaborating over high-speed networks.
Alan Streeter served as Managing Director, Head of Corporate Technology at Jefferies Group LLC, a global Investment Bank. Alan served the firm for 15 years, with responsibility for all aspects of Technology related to Operations, Clearance and Settlement, Middle Office, Finance and Accounting, Corporate Data Regulatory and Compliance and Human Resources. With approximately 40 years of industry experience, Alan is an acknowledged expert in Capital Markets Technology. His breadth of management experience, of mentoring and enabling collaborative approaches to problem resolution have been the hallmark of his career as is his perseverance and attention to detail through Program execution. His experience includes:
- Successfully completing a multiyear global Compliance Technology transformation project including implementation of a multi-product trade surveillance platform, a leading AI enabled e-communication surveillance platform, a Robotics Process Automated workflow, a new employee trading surveillance and Firm Disclosure and Questionnaire product, a refresh of the Anti-Money laundering platform, and a new learning and training platform,
- Instituting a robust Corporate Data Platform with hundreds of feeds ensuring data integrity across critical control functions specifically Finance, Risk and Treasury
- implementing multiple cost efficiency strategies including offshoring a one-hundred-person applications development group to India resulting in a 30% per year savings and an improvement in the quality of the support.
- Enabling multiple straight through processing initiatives, retired mainframe technologies, completed industry and regulatory initiatives including T+2 and CAT and ensuring cohesive coordination between the front office and back-office technologies.
Alan earned a B.A. in Communications from Brooklyn College and held a recent FINRA Series 99 Operations Professional license and previous Series 7 and 63 licenses.
Greg Taffet has over 30 years’ experience as a CIO with deep enterprise expertise, providing Fractional, and Interim CIO services, Digital transformation, Systems implementations, IT management, and optimization, to companies across the country developing strategies using technology to achieve business goals. His experience includes:
- Managing full project lifecycle for Digital Transformation of business systems and processes to implement ERP, CRM, and other key business systems.
- Due diligence for companies pre/post-merger or acquisition on systems, integration, processes, and resources to assure a smooth and cost-effective transaction.
- Working with the business to design and implement custom systems to help companies stay profitable and ahead of the competition.
- Developing cybersecurity plans
- Technology contract review and negotiation.
- Working with startups and rapidly growing companies
Greg was honored with the 2017 CIO of the year Apogee Award and was recently recognized as a CIO of the Year finalist. He received the 2012 Universal Access Award for positively impacting the lives of many in several communities. He is a requested speaker on Technology and business. Mr. Taffet holds a bachelor’s degree from Franklin and Marshall College and a master’s degree in Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology.
Obi Taiwan is a senior technology and strategic leader with over 25 years of experience in business and technologies, digital transformation, strategies, and consultancies together, with global, cross-industry experiences. As a CIO and CTO, Obi has managed all information and communications technology operations, accountable for end-to-end service delivery across the company, including hospital clients, governmental clients, and regulatory agencies. He has served as a Council Member to the International Workforce Development Foundation and has led as an Executive and Officer of Portfolios in Government, Healthcare, Cyber-Security, Advanced Digital Transformation, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence.
His experience includes:
- 20+ years of Information Technology Experience.
- 10+ years of Information Security Experience.
- Working with all stakeholders – C-Level Executive Management experience at the United Nations, AETNA, Anthem BCBS, MEDSiS, DaVincian Healthcare, WellPoint.
- International Experience Managing Operations In US, LatAm, EMEA, India, SE Asia, China.
- Cloud Migration, DevSecOps, MicroServices, Container Technologies, IT Due Diligence for Mergers/Acquisitions, IT Management Consulting, Legacy Systems Consolidations.
- Responsibilities in Security Domains categorized by ISC2, including Security & Risk Management, Asset Security, Communications & Network Security, Identity & Access Control Management, Security Engineering, Security Assessment & Testing, Security Operations Software Development.
Obi earned his LL.M. in International and Aviation Law from the Royal Military Academy in England. He earned his B.Sc. in Aviation Technology and Aeronautics Engineering from the Nigeria Defense Academy in Kaduna.
Mr. Trojan is an international business lending and technology expert, thought leader and speaker. He specializes advising/consulting on:
- Global Strategy
- FinTech
- Banking/Bank Partnerships
- Technology, including Blockchain
- Operations
- Credit Risk Management
- Regulatory/Legislative Affairs
From 2012-2017, Mr. Trojan was the CEO of the Commercial Finance Association (CFA), the global trade organization representing the asset based lending, supply chain finance, trade finance, and factoring industry.
Mr. Trojan earned a Master’s in Business Administration (MBA) in Finance, a Bachelor’s of Science in Computer Science, and a Bachelor’s of Science in Electrical Engineering, all from Washington University in St. Louis.
Alex Vayner is focused on helping small and mid-sized companies turn data into insights and profits. Alex works across all industries, driving transformation of companies into insight-driven enterprises through the use of machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, and cognitive technologies. He has spent his entire career in data & analytics, with his last five roles focused on building and running high performance data science teams, products, and capabilities in consulting and corporate environments.
- Analytics expertise in Financial Services including Fintechs, Health Care, Manufacturing, Retail and Real Estate.
- Leadership and responsibilities at the Partner level at several firms (KPMG, Capgemini)
- SME thought leadership in AI and Machine learning
Alex earned his bachelor’s degree in mathematics from University of Florida and his master’s degree in applied mathematics from Georgia Tech. He lives with his wife, three children and golden doodle in Atlanta, GA.
Peter Wild has over 40 years of hands-on success in the Audit and Information Technology management fields. During the last 15 years, he has played a leading rôle in managing the audit of Anti-Money Laundering and Sanctions Screening {AMLSS} business processes, and the related computer applications, for a number of major US and foreign financial institutions. He has also developed and presents training courses in these areas for a major global association and has provided advisory services in financial crime detection and prevention.
His experience includes:
- For a major financial institution, managed information technology {IT} and operational audits of AMLSS, financial applications and IT infrastructure and cyber security.
- Developed and presented live and online training on AMLSS for a major global association and also a number of major financial institutions.
- He has played a leading rôle in developing a number of AMLSS advanced certifications
- He is a frequent speaker, at major conferences, on various AMLSS topics.
- Advised a foreign government agency on designing AMLSS examinations.
- As the Director of Information Systems planning for a major retailer renegotiated major software and disaster recovery contracts. Also managed the project to create a centralized Client/Server Payroll & HR business function.
Peter has been recognized frequently for his leadership, including receipt of a number industry awards. He was educated in England and moved to the USA during 1980 and he is dual citizen. He is a lifetime Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (FCA) and holds the CAMS Audit Advanced Certification (CAMS Audit).