Meet the Speakers

Jayne-Anne is the Founder and Executive Chair of Snoop, and an Adviser to Salesforce UKI. From 2007 to 2018 she was the CEO of Virgin Money. A Chartered Accountant, she spent six years at Norwich Union (now Aviva) before becoming one of the founders of Virgin Direct in 1995. Three years later, she set up the Virgin One account, which was acquired by the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2001. She subsequently spent five years at RBS before returning to Virgin as CEO of Virgin Money.

In November 2016 she was appointed as the UK Government’s Women in Finance Champion, and in July 2017 she became a founder member of its Business Diversity and Inclusion Group. In 2018 she was named Leader of the Year at the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards. She is Chair of the Prince’s Foundation and Trustee of the Tate. She sits on the UK Government’s Industrial Strategy Council, Mayor of London’s Business Advisory Board, CRUK Corporate Board, Financial Inclusion Policy Forum and Lloyds Culture Advisory Group. She was made a Dame in the 2019 New Year’s Honours list.

Julie Page is Chief Executive Officer of Aon UK Ltd and is responsible for the strategic management, statutory and governance oversight of Aon UK Ltd, delivering on the firm’s global vision, financial goals and statutory and regulatory agenda.

In addition, Julie leads Commercial Risk, Health and Affinity Solutions providing a range of risk, insurance and health and benefits services to clients. With over 30 years in the insurance broking sector, Julie has a worked with clients across all segments, including Consumer, SME, UK and Global Corporate and many industry segments. Julie is President of the Chartered Insurance Institute (CII), a member of the CBI Presidents Committee, a member of the FCA Practitioner Panel and an industry champion for diversity and inclusion, holding roles as a committee member of Inclusion@Lloyds. Julie was a Board Director at BIBA as the Chair of one of its Advisory Boards and more latterly as Deputy Chair until standing down in July 2019. In 2017 Julie was a recipient of a Business Insurance ‘EMEA Women to Watch’ award.

Joanna was appointed the Bank of England’s Chief Operating Officer in July 2017 and previously was the Executive Director of Human Resources. Joanna has spent most of her career at the Bank and has worked in many areas including Banking Supervision, International, Markets and Private Office. She headed the Statistics Division as her first Head of Division role, and also led Customer Banking during the financial crisis. Her career has also included a secondment to the Border Agency. Joanna currently has responsibility for the day to day management and transformation of the Bank including Finance, Technology, Information and Physical Security, Human Resources, Property and Procurement. She sits on the Bank’s Board (‘Court’), Remco and Arco.

After an Economics degree at Fitzwilliam, Joanna studied for a PGCE and spent two years as a Maths & PE teacher at a secondary school in Kent.

Joanna is a School Governor at a state school for 11-16 year olds, and a Non Exec Director at Persimmon.

Interests include walking, running and swimming, and she has three children.

As President of Capital One Canada, Dr. Jackson is responsible for the company’s strategic direction and operations in Canada. Within Capital One, she champions diversity, serving on the Advisory Board for the Black employee resource group and mentoring many women throughout the organization. This year, Dr. Jackson was the keynote speaker at Boss Women Media’s 100 Women Sitting at the Table in the U.S. celebrating women in leadership and was one of 20 Canadian leaders selected for the global mentorship program CEOx1Day, giving university students the opportunity to learn directly from top executives. As a member of the Executive Leadership Council and a Board member and committee chair of the BlackNorth Initiative, she works to advance the Black community in business, finance, and leadership across Canada and the U.S. Dr. Jackson served on the Advisory Board for Elevate, a not-for-profit offering tech, innovation, and sustainability programming.

Colleen is responsible for Visa’s Global Treasury Function including: Global Cash Management, Capital Markets, Insurance, Financial Risk Management, and Settlement Operations. Colleen is co-lead of Inclusion & Diversity for Finance, a part of the Gender Inclusion Council and on the steering committee of Women in Finance. Colleen serves on Visa’s Pension Benefits Committee, is a member of Visa’s Political Action Committee Board and is Treasurer of the Visa Foundation. In addition, Colleen is a member of the Board of Directors of CurrencyCloud.

Ms. Ostrowski formerly was SVP, Treasurer, and Head of Investor Relations at Mylan. Prior to joining Mylan in 2014, she was Vice President, Corporate Finance and Treasurer at ITT Corporation.

Colleen began her Treasury career at Pfizer Inc. in 1999. Colleen worked in various Treasury roles during her 11 year career at Pfizer, including managing Treasury Operations, leading Asia Pacific Treasury activities, Finance Director of the Pfizer Dublin Treasury Center and prior to leaving led the Pension Investments and Finance Group with responsibility for over $20 billion in assets globally.

Colleen was also Treasurer of the Investment Committee for the Pfizer Foundation during her time there, as well as, Vice Chair of the Investment Advisory Group for the PhRMA organization. She is a former member of the Investment Committee for the American Benefits Council and presently a voting member of Pennsylvania State Investment Council since 2010.

Colleen received her MBA from Pennsylvania State University and B.S. in International Business from Juniata College.

Laurie Stewart celebrates more than 31 years at the helm of Sound Community Bank. In that time, she led the conversion of the organization from a $38 million credit union to a commercial bank which grew to be more than $871 million in assets. Stewart maintains a long history in community banking and participation in industry affairs. Stewart served as the Chair of the American Bankers Association, representing the Nation’s $18.6 trillion banking industry and the employment of more than two million workers. She also holds a position on the board of directors for the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco’s Seattle Branch. Previously, Stewart served as Chair of the Board of Directors of the Washington Bankers Association (WBA), where she helped create the WBA’s Executive Development Program. In addition, Stewart was one of 14 bankers selected to serve on the inaugural FDIC Advisory Board in 2009, and in 2012, she was named to the Community Bank Advisory Council of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. In 2019, she was named Community Banker of the Year by American Banker and received an Executive Excellence award from Seattle Business Magazine. American Banker also named her as one of its Most Powerful Women in Banking in 2011, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. Stewart served as Chair of the Board of Directors for the National Arthritis Foundation. She is a returning member of the board of the Woodland Park Zoo after serving as Chair and she is a founding member of Jamestown S’Klallam Tribe Community Development Financial Institution, currently serving a second term.

Kome has over a decade of Business Strategy and Operations expertise in financial services. Kome serves as Vice President - COO of Global Markets Operations Engineering, managing a $120m portfolio. Prior to her current role, Kome led the technology risk regulatory affairs function, focused on cybersecurity policy. Kome has assumed a number of executive management and strategy roles, working as Chief Of Staff of European Technology at Goldman Sachs and Chief Of Staff of Global Operations at J.P. Morgan Chase in London. Kome is a motivated, values-driven executive leader with a recognized international track record of delivering results, working with C-suite executives to identify new business opportunities and create solutions in competitive, global environments. Kome graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in International Business, Finance and Economics from the University of Manchester. Kome is an advisory board member of The L8Bloomers, a social platform for millennials. Kome’s passion lies in mentoring young black professionals in fintech and building pipeline talent.

Louise is CEO of Confused.com – the UK’s first comparison platform. Louise has spent her career disrupting stereotypes, having applied for the role of CEO while heavily pregnant and taking on the role with an eight-week old newborn underarm. A founding Board member of FinTech Wales, an organisation creating FinTech talent and investment, Louise is an active, driving force of the sector across Wales. She was recently named as a ‘Standout 35’ senior leader in Innovate Finance’s Fintech Powerlist and is the driving force behind Confused.com being named as one of Business Cloud’s Welsh Top Tech 50.

Maha is the Chief Payments Officer at Pay.UK responsible for running the payments operations of BACS, Faster Payments, Image Clearing Services and related managed services.

Maha is an experienced international business leader with a strategic focus and a long term vision. She has extensive payments knowledge across the payments chain from systems to end user.

Maha’s career in payments has spanned multiple geographies since 1995, covering various markets in retail banking as well as wholesale and institutional cash management. Her payments knowledge includes acquiring, issuing, payables and receivables, liquidity management and working capital solutions. She has performed a wide variety of roles from sales, strategy and product to governance, risk and control. Maha has a keen interest in observing and participating in the many exciting changes that are unfolding in the payments environment.

Prior to joining Pay.UK, Maha was the Head of the Payments Supervision Department at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Maha joined the FCA to set up the first Payments Department and was responsible for crafting and implementing FCA supervisory strategy for the UK Payments Sector.

Maha is passionate about leading and motivating teams to high performance by creating a culture of positive challenge and continuous improvement. The heart of her approach is to be a champion of diversity in all its forms, with a focus on inclusion and a drive to contribute to meaningful change.

Caroline brings a wealth of global experience from a career spanning 30 years within the financial services sector encompassing senior regulatory, strategic, commercial, operational, investment banking, and client-led roles. Caroline was appointed CEO of FSCS on 13 May 2019. She sits on the Board of Directors and is Chair of the Executive Committee. She is responsible for leading the Scheme’s strategy to be a trusted compensation service which raises confidence in financial services and delivers excellence to customers. This includes being prepared for any type of financial services failure and informing work on preventing future failures.

Between 2009 and 2017 Caroline held senior positions at Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS). Caroline’s last role was Managing Director of Regulatory Affairs. She was responsible for defining and delivering the bank’s strategic and proactive engagement and profile with its global regulators, advising the Bank Board and Executive on its regulatory engagement and compliance, as well as monitoring bank-wide upstream regulatory risks and delivering mandatory regulatory change programmes.

Prior to this, Caroline was Director of RBS’s Corporate Services Division, where she was responsible for the global strategy, operations, service delivery, financial performance and risks of one of the largest cost areas within RBS. From 1995 to 2009 Caroline worked at ABN AMRO, undertaking a number of leadership and transactional roles within Group Shared Services, Finance, Change Management and Structured Finance.

Caroline is the Chief Executive of the Money and Pensions Service (MaPS), having previously been the Partnerships and Commissioning Director. She is responsible for leading the organisation through its transition year as it develops an ambitious new National Strategy and Corporate Strategy.

Caroline joined from the Money Advice Service, where she was Head of UK Debt Advice, responsible for developing the sector’s target operating model and building industry partnerships to support the development of the debt advice quality frameworks and standard financial statement.

Previously, Caroline was the Chief Executive Officer of the Institute of Money Advisers and has a wealth of commissioning experience.

Elena is CEO of Penguin Portals – a global network of comparison platforms which includes Confused.com. Elena has been on a mission to launch comparison platforms across Europe since 2004. In 2009 she successfully launched Rastreator.com, Spain’s market-leading comparison platform for financial service products, and held the position of CEO until 2015. She has been named one of the top 100 female leaders in Spain on two occasions. Her ambition is to replicate the same success she achieved in launching Rastreator.com by starting up comparison platforms across the world and empowering even more people to make better decisions about financial services.

As Chief Banking Officer at Starling, Helen is responsible for the commercial propositions within the bank including lending, SME and Retail Banking, Marketplace and Starling’s B2B Banking Services. She joined Starling, a leading digital bank, in 2018 from Santander, where she worked from 2007. Previously she undertook roles in Product, Pricing and Strategy at Alliance & Leicester and NatWest.

Since joining Starling Helen has led many key projects including the development of Starling Kite, a debit card for kids and the rapid launch of government backed loan schemes, the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBLIS) and Bounce Back Loan Scheme (BBLS). Both loan schemes are providing support to small business customers across the UK during the COVID-19 pandemic.

She was recognised as one of the top 50 customer experience professionals in the country in Marketing Week’s CX50 list twice (in 2019 & 2020) and was recognised by Women in Banking and Finance in 2017 as a shortlisted finalist in the Champion of Women category. She was also included in Innovate Finance’s Women in Fintech Powerlist in 2019. She represented Great Britain in archery at the Athens Olympics in 2004.

Millie Gillon is a native New Yorker and Singapore transplant who has a wealth of knowledge about innovation and strategy, and combines this with the use of data and design thinking to reshape the client experience and innovation.

Millie is currently the Global Head of Client Experience at Standard Chartered Bank. Prior to joining Standard Chartered, she led co-innovation for Citi and American Airlines at Mastercard. Millie has held senior product and innovation roles at Prudential Financial, JPMorgan Chase and American Express, where she concurrently earned her Masters in Communications and Leadership Studies and her Six Sigma Black Belt.

Sophie Javary possesses more than 30 years’ experience in investment banking, having worked over a broad spectrum of transactions from privatisations and equity capital markets transactions to M&A and complex debt deals as well as restructurings. A graduate of HEC with a year abroad (Brazil, NY), she started her professional career in 1981 at Bank of America in Paris and then at Banque Indosuez. She joined Rothschild in 1994 to head equity capital markets which was her specialty until 2008. She became a General Partner of Rothschild in 2002 and managed ABN AMRO Rothschild in Paris from 2001 to 2008. She then became joint head of European restructuring and joint head of debt advisory in Paris from 2008 to 2011. In February 2011, she joined BNP Paribas as Senior Banker for a portfolio of very large clients for whom she has since been coordinating the Bank’s global relationship. From January 2014 to end 2018, Sophie Javary has been in charge of all corporate finance activities (M&A advisory and equity capital markets) in EMEA. She has been appointed Vice- Chairman CIB EMEA in December 2018 and now focuses, as an executive sponsor, on

providing strategic advice and developing overall investment banking business with major strategic corporate clients and private equity funds. Sophie Javary has been the senior manager of the BNP Paribas team that advised the French Government and acted as global Coordinator of the privatisation and IPO of La Française des Jeux (FdJ) in November 2019. She is a member of the G100 (100 top executives of BNP Paribas). Sophie Javary is a director of the Elior Group and a member of the board of directors of the very active NGO Europa Nova, which promotes the idea of Europe through a non–political agenda. Since February 2019, she is also a director at the board of Adevinta and, more recently, at the board of Euroclear. She lectures in finance at HEC. She has been decorated with the French “Légion d’Honneur” and is the mother of three children.

Delia König is Managing Director of the Identity Unit at Solarisbank, the tech company with a banking license. She manages and oversees the business unit that has built a platform comprising cutting-edge customer identification solutions for fintech, banks and other digital companies looking to offer a smooth onboarding process for their customers.

Prior, she was working as an IT Consultant in Germany’s largest financial services-focused consultancy, zeb, and gained experience as a Product Manager and entrepreneur. Delia studied Information Systems at the University of Münster and holds a Master’s degree in Digital Banking from Stevens Institute of Technology.

Ute is based in Frankfurt and Heads the Financial Institutions Group. She manages a team with a diverse portfolio of large clients and coordinates the bank’s global relationships. She has gained more than 20 years of experience in investment banking having worked over a broad spectrum of transactions such as for Financial Institutions, Public Sector entities, Diversified Corporates, Energy and Transport companies. The mandates range from M&A, privatisations, debt and equity capital markets transactions to complex financing deals. Ute started her career in an advisory role at Citigroup in Corporate Finance / M&A before moving onto an origination and advisory role in Capital Markets. Ute has worked in Munich, London, New York and Tokyo. Throughout her career she has been passionate about diversity in organisations be it by different mindsets, gender, nationality or other qualities. She is a sponsor of female development and is active as a mentor and in women‘s networks. She holds an MSc in Finance and Economics from the House of Finance, Frankfurt University, is a CIIA charter holder of ACIIA and holds a certificate of executive education of INSEAD, Fontainebleau.

Rina is the Global Head of Funds Transfer Pricing at Deutsche Bank, where she is responsible for pricing liquidity and funding usage by the business divisions. Recently, she led a revamp of the firm’s FTP framework to enhance its effectiveness as a balance sheet steering tool, and to better support funding cost optimisation.

Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Rina spent 6 years at Credit Suisse, in New York and London, working in the Investment Banking Division. She began her career at HSBC, advising private clients on international tax issues.

Rina holds an MBA from NYU Stern and an undergraduate degree in Accounting from Georgetown University.

Akrati Johari is Co-head of the North America Digital Innovation team at J.P. Morgan’s Corporate and Investment Bank. She has extensive experience working in Strategy, FinTech, investments and acquisitions, Corporate Finance, and Investment Banking.

She joined the Digital Innovation team in 2018, which the firm created to ensure we were at the forefront of innovative digital transformation and to pursue internal and external partnerships, including those with FinTechs to be at the frontline of the changes that were happening in the competitive landscape.
Prior to her current role, Akrati was in the Corporate & Investment Bank Strategy team at J.P. Morgan and has worked with several senior leaders at the firm on a wide range of high priority projects such as growth initiatives, cost efficiency plays, and setting the firm’s technology and operations agenda. Earlier this year, Akrati led a minority investment in a middle and back office provider to enable growth of JPMC’s Hedge Fund Services and Strategic Middle Office. The result amounted in savings for the firm by retiring legacy platforms. She has also finalized a strategic partnership with another innovative FinTech in the insurance accounting space to offer a custody and accounting solution to insurance clients.

She is currently engaged in several initiatives across our Investment Banking franchise of how we provide innovative solutions to our clients, including growth in private assets. In this effort, she is evaluating several M&A and strategic investments for the firm. She also recently closed such a minority investment in a FinTech which focuses to provide data on private companies. She has already recently partnered to develop a solution at the firm related to Loyalty Programs, including pitching to clients on the new structure and signing a strategic agreement with a FinTech in the space. Akrati started off her career in Investment Banking covering Financial Institutions at Goldman Sachs.

Akrati has an MBA from Columbia Business School and B.A. in Finance and Accountancy from
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Outside of the office, she is involved in many community initiatives and is on the Board for a non-profit (Bond Street Theatre) where she focused on empowering women and children through the use of art and theatre in conflict zones.

Vivienne is Managing Director and Chief Privacy Officer at the London Stock Exchange Group, leading the global Privacy Office and overseeing global privacy strategy and practice. Previously, Vivienne was the Chief Privacy Office at Refinitiv and Thomson Reuters, and Managing Director and Global Head of Privacy Legal & Head of International for the Intellectual Property and Technology Law Group at Citi. Prior to joining Citi in 2000, Vivienne worked in private practice in London. Vivienne chairs the International Regulatory Strategy Group Data Working Group, is on TheCityUK EU Technical Advisory Group, and is the Vice Chair on the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors of the International Association of Privacy Professionals (IAPP).  Vivienne is also on the Business and Law Advisory Board of St Mary’s University, the Alumni Advisory Board of Pembroke College Oxford University, and is on the Founding Editorial Board for the Journal of AI and Ethics. Vivienne was recognised in the 2019 PrivSec200 list of privacy and security professionals across Europe. Vivienne is on the Advisory Board of Women in Banking and Finance, having been President and CEO from 2017-2020. Vivienne is a recognized gender champion and leader having been awarded the Champion for Women Award at the Women in Banking and Finance Awards for Achievement 2016. Vivienne received the 2019 WeAreTheCity Rising Star Editor’s Choice Award in recognition of her tireless efforts in the diversity space, and as an individual who is pushing for change within her industry. Vivienne placed in the top 20 Executive Women Role Models in the HERoes List 2020, was awarded Woman Solicitor of the Year in the Law Society Excellence Awards in 2020, and has many years of experience leading a broad range of diversity initiatives and groups both within firms and across sectors. Vivienne was awarded an OBE in the Queen’s New Year’s Honours in 2021 for services to financial services and gender diversity.

Margo is based in Brazil, where she has been for over twenty years. Prior to moving to Brazil, she worked in London for twenty one years and was also in Germany for two years. A British citizen (Scottish) by birth, she was brought up in Mexico and Nicaragua and has over 40 years of industry experience working for reinsurers, reinsurance broking firms and insurance companies across various geographies. Throughout her career, she has held a number of positions and has worked for reinsurers such as Munich Re, Swiss Re and SCOR as well as broking firms Willis, JLT and Sedgwick. Additionally, Margo’s client perspectives were further enhanced by a two-year stint as Executive Director of Allianz in Brazil. She has been involved in many territories including the UK, Ireland, Iceland, Japan, the Caribbean, North and South America and, of course, Brazil. Now retired, she continues to be involved in the business as a non-executive director of a Brazilian insurance and reinsurance group and is also president of AMMS (the Brazilian insurance industry’s diversity and inclusion association). She is actively involved in various charities in Brazil that help children, the elderly and dogs and cats.

Vartika Ambwani has extensive experience in various areas in the technology ecosystem and is an early Fintech leader. She’s currently a Vice President at Silicon Valley Bank’s FinTech Growth team which focuses on post-Series A venture-backed clients with annual revenues between $5M and $75M. Vartika is responsible for new business development and portfolio management which involves managing relationships with founders, C-level executives, VC/PE investors, Corporate VCs, and industry influencers. She also focuses on commercial lending which includes origination, structuring, pricing, and deal diligence for venture debt deals, and working capital lines including warehouse credit facilities.

Prior to SVB, Vartika led Operations at two late-stage (Series B and Series C) FinTech startups in San Francisco. Vartika is a CPA, CMA (Ontario, Canada) and completed her degree in Business Management from Ted Rogers School of Management at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada, and was Forbes 30 Under 30 Fellow in 2018.

Gina Taylor Cotter is the SVP of Kabbage Product Line Strategy and Integration for Global Commercial Services. She is known as a leader who is customer first and challenges the status quo, successfully driving large-scale strategy and business transformation initiatives. In her current role, she is responsible for defining the strategy and overall integration efforts of the Kabbage acquisition. Kabbage will allow American Express to provide enhanced ‘beyond the card’ products and capabilities to help our customers simplify and digitize their financial management processes.

During her 23 years with American Express, Gina has specialized in areas such as customer acquisition, product management, risk management, strategy and business operations. Most recently, she led the Global Business Financing team for the last four years and in that time launched several digital-first products such as Business Loans and Early Pay and most recently, she enabled American Express business customers to access financial support provided under the SBA Paycheck Protection Program.

Prior to her role as SVP of Global Business Financing, she was previously Vice President and General Manager, Corporate Payments Product Management serving medium and large clients globally with a comprehensive T&E and B2B product suite. She has also served as Vice President and General Manager, Customer Acquisition, where she was responsible for leading the customer acquisition and cross-sell strategy for the small business division. Previously, Gina served as Vice President, Risk Management working in various underwriting and customer management functions.

Gina currently serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Trustees of Village School in the Pacific Palisades. Gina graduated Wilkes University summa cum laude and holds an MBA from Drexel University, where she taught microeconomics as a teaching assistant. Gina resides in Los Angeles and is married with three children.

Kathryn Petralia is the President and Co-Founder of Kabbage, a data and technology company providing small business cash-flow solutions. Before co-founding Kabbage, Kathryn spent nearly 15 years with fintech and ecommerce startups.

After graduating from Furman University with an English degree, Kathryn pursued her interest in technology to launch a number of successful startups. She also served as Vice President of Strategy for Revolution Money, which was acquired by American Express, and was the director of corporate development for CompuCredit. In 2017, she was named to Forbes’ 2017 list of the World’s Most Powerful Women. Kathryn recently co-founded Drum, a platform reinventing sales infrastructure by connecting businesses to their ideal customers through an infinitely scalable sales force.

Kathryn serves on the boards of CARE USA, Fannie Mae Advisory Board, The Woodruff Arts Center, Padsplit, Rented.com, and the Atlanta Chamber Music Festival.

Rakhi Kumar is Senior Vice President at Liberty Mutual, where she leads efforts to integrate sustainability across the global enterprise. She chairs the company’s Climate Council and is guiding the the implemention the recommendations of the Task Force on Climate-Related Disclosures (TCFD).

Rakhi joined Liberty in May 2020, prior to which she led State Street Global Advisors’ ESG Investing and Asset Stewardship activities. Rakhi has also worked at Moody's Investors Service, the Institute of International Finance, and Booz Allen among other organizations. Rakhi is a globally recognized leader in the area of sustainability and was recognized as such by the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD).

She has also been identified as Boston's 100 Most Influential People of Color by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, The Boston Foundation and Get Konnected!, and is a recipient of the Abigail Adams Award for her work in promoting gender diversity on corporate boards. She is an Advisory Board Member on the Millstein Center for Global Markets and Corporate Ownership at the Columbia Law School and has earned her MBA (2002) from Yale University and her Bachelors of Commerce (1995) from Bombay University. She is also a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India since 1997.

Audrey Blackmon is a 28+ year payments industry leader. As the SVP of Business Development – Americas for Verrency, she leads Business Development and strategy for North & South America. Prior, she has held leadership roles at First Data, Worldpay and Vantiv as well has several start-ups.Audrey brings many years of both professional and non-profit experiences . Audrey serves as a Board of Directors for Women’s Network In Electronic Payments, she a co-Founder/past President of the Southeast Acquirers’ Association, serves as a mentor to Fintech startups at Plug and Play Tech Center in Silicon Valley; on the Board of Advisors at Acies Ai and several other startups and has served as a mentor/speaker at Money 2020 Rise Up Academy for 2 years. Outside of the payments community, Audrey had serves as a Child Advocate for CASA and is an Advisor to the Board of Directors of Upbring a non-profit for foster care youth.

Monica Long is the GM of RippleX at Ripple. Throughout her career, Monica has helped technology companies drive fundamental change in the financial industry. Before joining Ripple, Monica worked in corporate communications at Intuit. Prior to that, she supported startup clients in various B2B and B2C sectors, with several in fintech, including Prosper.

Elena leads Remitly’s international operations. Since joining the company in 2018, she has driven the rapid growth of Remitly across territories outside North America, adding 13 new send countries, and opening up a migrant audience of more than 60 million people. Before joining Remitly, Elena worked at the Expedia Group as the UK & Emerging Markets EMEA General Manager for HomeAway, and prior to that as Director of Product for Hotels.com where she led a team that developed and executed Global Content strategy and product expansion into vacation rentals. Elena has also worked at BoozAllen and Barclays Bank. She holds an MBA from London Business School and a Master of Economics from MGLU Moscow.

Magdalena Krön, Rise Global FinTech Platform Director at Barclays, is building a network of the most transformative technologies in financial services today. Magdalena is leading Rise’s mission to bring technology, talent and trends in FinTech together to accelerate innovation for Barclays and the financial industry as a whole. In her current role Magdalena keeps one foot in the startup world and another foot in the corporate world as she’s facilitating connections between the two. As an advocate for improving gender diversity in finance and tech, Magdalena is actively supporting D&I initiatives and is also co-founder and advisor for Geek Girl Meetup UK.

Marla Sofer is Director of Partner Development for the Financial Services Industry at Microsoft. She has led partnerships at high growth Fintech companies since 2015, driving partner-related revenue through integration, collaborative marketing, co-selling, and corporate development initiatives. Before diving into Fintech, Marla led institutional partnerships at BlackRock and J.P. Morgan quantified in billions of dollars. She has been a champion of gender diversity, founded two employee women's networks, and served as a non-profit leader dedicated to social justice.

Sarah holds twenty years of experience in banking and finance. She has held leadership positions in retail, corporate, global markets and private bank divisions. Starting in banking at seventeen, her leadership journey commenced at twenty-one when she became the youngest Bank Manager in her home state. Sarah has generated billions in new revenue for her employers and is a firm advocate for seeing more women become leaders in their field.

After graduating from a Master in Finance in Paris Dauphine University, India joined Societe Generale Americas for a 18 months VIE (Internship program) in the Finance department. She was then hired in Paris as a product controller in Equity Derivatives for 2 years but quickly came to realize that her mission in NY had just started and there was a lot more she wanted to accomplish. In 2013 she joined Societe Generale New York to bring the expertise she learnt from Paris and develop the team even further. She moved within the organization from expert to manager throughout the years in Equity Derivatives. More recently India took over Equity Derivatives and Fixed Income P&L and Market risks certification team. In 2020 she won the Women in Finance "Rising Star" award from Markets Media.

Kymberly is a managing director at Charles Schwab in the risk management department. Her career at Schwab started in the accounting department where she managed the technology accounts. Technology was so interesting that she moved to the risk management department as a developer and later on started to manage the firms risk and compliance products. The past two years, Her team has been working on a data transformation project that will enhance Schwab’s governance risk and compliance ecosystem enabling Schwab employees to effectively and efficiently manage risk through simplified, intuitive and insightful GRC processes and tools. She is passionate about mentoring women to grow and succeed in their careers with confidence and curiosity.  

Joy Harper is a finance professional at Google who enjoys discussing tax, finance, technology, and a bit of fashion. Currently, Joy is on the Finance Systems and Integration team at Google. Prior to this role, Joy led the Treasury Tax initiative at Google. Before joining Google, Joy worked at BlackRock where she oversaw the taxation of financial instruments, $3T AUM in securities lending, information reporting and withholding, the Automatic Exchange of Information, and more. From 2003 - 2014, Joy worked at EY in various offices providing tax advice to clients in international tax, financial services, and capital markets in San Francisco, London, D.C., and Cleveland. She has extensive public speaking, general finance, capital markets, treasury, and tax experience. Joy studied African-American History and Accounting at Miami University, earned a Masters of Accountancy at Case Western Reserve University, and rounded out her education with a Juris Doctorate from the Cleveland-Marshall College of Law. Lastly, Joy was an Advisory Board Member (Finance) of Citizen Schools a non-profit that equips young people with the skills, access, and beliefs they need to thrive as students and succeed as adults in the modern economy. She also helped found a non-profit in San Francisco,

called The Recharge Group, which focuses on aggregating and accelerating black wealth and philanthropy in Silicon Valley. This group recently merged with the Coalition of Black Excellence where Joy served as the Chief of Staff. She has moved on to serve on the Northern California ACLU Finance and Investment Committee which advises on a $30M investment portfolio.

Saira Rahman spent more than 11 years at B&F Capital Markets, a provider of interest-rate swap services which works with both regional and community banks across the US. When she left the firm in 2019, she oversaw eight of the banks’ portfolios with more than $50 billion in assets, across seven states. She then had a brief stint working in commercial and retail banking at Alpine Bank, a $5 billion community bank based on Colorado. Rahman now heads up finance at digital challenger HMBradley, which recently raised $18.25 million. Alongside this, she is also an investor in the Washington-based Female Founders Alliance, which is trying to change the measly 2.19% of venture capital dollars invested in female-founded companies today.

Laura Lutton is head of asset management solutions for Morningstar, Inc., where she leads sales- and product-development strategies for Morningstar’s asset manager client segment.

Before assuming her current role in 2019, Lutton was the North American practice leader, manager research, for Morningstar Research Services LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Morningstar, Inc. There she directed the firm’s manager research analyst teams in the United States and Canada. Lutton was a leader on the Manager Research team for more than a decade, previously heading asset-class teams, as well as the firm’s parent research and ratings on mutual fund firms. She is also a founding member of Morningstar’s Women’s Initiative.

Lutton holds a bachelor’s degree in government and international studies from Colby College and a master’s degree from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism.

Kate has worked in financial services for over 20 years. Through a number of diverse roles in marketing, product development, technology and payments, the common thread for Kate is the delivery of great customer journeys and solutions. Kate has a strong focus on innovation, driven by consumer demand and global market movements. Kate actively works with fintech companies and this has given her further insight into the types of problems that customers experience and how to go about providing relevant and meaningful solutions. Kate now leads the Standards & Strategy team at Pay.UK with the purpose of driving innovation in the payments ecosystem and enabling a vibrant UK economy.

Jen is the Growth Director for the Fintech Innovation Lab (FIL) and part of Accenture’s financial services team. Jen spends the majority of her time working on business development and managing large sales transactions but loves the flip side of her role - working with Celin, the lab team, our cohorts, and Alumni to support the growth of the FIL programme and the Fintechs we work with.

Anna has six years of experience in trading exotics. She currently serves as a Director on the index exotics trading desk at UBS in NY where she is responsible for trading and risk managing light exotics and structured products on US indices.

Prior to that, Anna was a hybrids and QIS trader at Societe Generale in NY for five years. She played an important role in the development of structured products mixing different asset classes including equities, rates, forex and credit. She also held internships in quantitative research at JP Morgan in NY and index exotics trading at Societe Generale in Paris.

Anna has always acted as an advocate for diversity and inclusion in this male-dominated world.

She is convinced that bringing together a team with a diverse set of backgrounds and perspectives will lead to innovative thinking, which is key in the financial world, and exotics specifically.

Anna has a quantitative background, holding an MS in Engineering from Telecom SudParis and an MA in Financial Mathematics from Columbia University. Outside of work, she is involved in charity and participated in Steptember Challenge for United Cerebral Palsy during the past few years. Anna was also finalist of the 2020 Women’s Bond Club (WBC) “Rising Star” program.

Dr Alexandra Dobra-Kiel is the Banking & Capital Markets Insights Lead for Deloitte in the UK. She is also a Behavioural Science Advisor for Just Ask Max, the first online safety service for families. Her expertise includes behavioural science and corporate strategy. Prior to Deloitte, Alexandra worked at Accenture, Accenture Institute for High Performance and Duff & Phelps, where she advised C-suites and Boards. She is a published author in leading US and European journals (e.g., Academy of Management, CFA Professional Investor, European Business Review, Revue Banque) and gained prestigious awards and scholarships (e.g., Academy of Management, Falling Walls, Swiss National Science Foundation). Alexandra’s passion for behavioural science has also led her to act as a Member of the Ethics Steering Committee at the CFA UK and as a Guest Lecturer at Warwick Business School. Alexandra holds a PhD from the University of Warwick and a Masters from the University of Cambridge.

Nina Mohanty currently works with the magnificent team at Klarna making payments smoooth (yes - three O's!) and reimagining a better way to shop. Prior to Klarna, Nina worked at London-based Open Banking start up, Bud, to build out a financial marketplace and rethink the way we interact with financial services. She has been a steadfast believer in delivering technology that can better customer’s financial lives and financial literacy since her days at Starling Bank and Mastercard. Nina is a fiercely passionate feminist and vocal advocate of diversity (of all kinds) in the workplace.

Sharniya has worked for NatWest for almost a decade, with experience spanning Personal and Commercial Banking. Previous roles involved her supporting customers with their financial needs and hosting educational business events to encourage them growth and businesses to exceed their expectations.

In 2017 Sharniya was awarded the RBS Women’s Opal award recognising her contribution to female entrepreneurs. In 2019 Sharniya was recognised as a Rising Star in Diversity by We Are The City.

In her current role Sharniya manages a customer led strategic programme of inclusion activities for clients.

She is passionate about diversity and inclusion and empowering those who are underrepresented in their industries.

Sharniya holds a BSc (Hons) in Psychology and has a Masters in Events and Exhibitions Management.

Ana is Director, Head of Business Development in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), overlooking business development across 38 countries in Central Asia, CEE and Northern Africa. Ana is managing Business Development teams in Tokyo, Beijing, Seoul, Dubai, Washington DC and London. She is focused at finding innovative ways of delivering more business across variety of countries and sectors that EBRD operates in. Previously Ana was Partner, Head of Markets at KPMG, where she joined from CEO role at Serbian Export Credit and Insurance Agency. Ana was also Head of the Representative Office and Vice President for Citibank in Western Balkans, and she also worked at The World Bank, JP Morgan in London, and at the National Bank of Serbia where she was Chief of the Cabinet to the Governor. Ana holds MA in International Relations from the University of Westminster, and BSc in Economics from Belgrade University.

Dr. Ruth Wandhöfer has been instrumental in shaping the future of finance during her impressive career over the last 19 years. She operates at the nexus of finance, technology and regulation and is passionate about creating the digital financial ecosystem of the future. She is a very influential female leader in the technology space, promoting the understanding, deployment and business models of our digital future across financial markets and processes.

With a diverse career across regulatory policy development, banking, Fintech/Regtech mentoring, investing and consulting she finds herself at the centre of the evolving digital ecosystem of players with the ability to advise, accelerate, promote and enable technology players to become an integral part of the new financial ecosystem. Ruth began her career in banking. After a distinguished career of over a decade with Citi, Ruth is now an independent Non-Executive Director on the boards of Permanent TSB, Gresham Technologies and Digital Identity Net as well as a Partner at Gauss Ventures – a VC firm focused on early stage FinTech investment.

Diana Paredes is the CEO and Co-Founder of Suade, a software platform that enables financial institutions to understand and deliver their regulatory requirements. Prior to founding Suade, Diana had a successful career in investment banking, covering all asset classes at Barclays and Merrill Lynch, across sales, trading & structuring. Whilst working in the industry, she saw an opportunity to innovate and launch her current Fintech/Regtech startup. She believes that a data-driven approach to regulation is the key to preventing the next financial crisis.

Multi-award winning executive (Growth 500 List 2018, 2019, 2020) with MSc in Business Psychology and Honours Bsc. in Cognitive Science. Laura brings her academic expertise in Positive psychology, AI and Learning to the table with a new vision for more inclusive and dynamic ways of doing business and communicating in the 21st century. She has been published over 30 times and is ranked as a Top 100 Canadian Professional for her focus on systems and innovation with any business she engages with. Her thought leadership in the areas of real estate finance, workplace equality, technological adoption and leadership have earned her frequent spots on conference panels. Laura is the Chief Operating Officer of Canada's #1 Fastest-Growing Mortgage Brokerage and is the Host of the Brokers Playbook webcast series.

Olga is a global innovation expert, specializing in women and finance, sustainability, and gender-smart investing. She has been broadly recognized for her transformational achievements to change the financial services industry for women and gender equality with features in the global press such as Sky News, BBC News, CNBC, the Financial Times, Bloomberg and The Guardian and won numerous awards including ‘Inspirational Woman of the Year 2019’ by CityWealth Magazine and a place on the Senior Leaders in Fintech Powerlist by Innovate Finance. Following her career at UBS she has co-founded her own start-up – SmartPurse (https://smartpurse.me) –a fintech-ed-tech venture revolutionizing financial education. She writes the blog "Women & Money" as a columnist for Watson-News and serves as a trustee at the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women. Olga has two children and lives in Zürich and London.

Dora joined the Azimo team in 2014 and brings a wealth of experience from across the financial sector.

As COO, Dora has been instrumental in building up Azimo’s network of partners across more than 200 countries and scaling the business into new markets. It’s a constantly evolving role as the company is growing so fast – day-to-day tasks can involve anything from banking relationships and strategic partnerships to fundraising and international expansion. She now also runs the Risk & Compliance and Operations teams across the group.

Prior to Azimo, Dora has clocked up her fair share of air miles during her global career. She started out as a derivatives trader in Chicago, built her own options trading business in Germany, worked in international banking in London and Frankfurt, and joined a start-up advisory in Africa. Along the way, she has worked for the likes of ECB, Deutsche Börse and PayPal.

She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA from INSEAD.