OUR SPEAKERS
Katherine Avery
Founder at Chimayo Consulting, LLC
Katherine Avery is an enterprise risk executive and founder of Chimayo Consulting, a boutique advisory firm helping financial services organizations build the governance infrastructure required to operate responsibly at the intersection of traditional finance, digital assets, and AI-enabled processes. With more than 20 years of experience spanning capital markets, commodities trading, banking, and regulatory compliance, Katherine brings a practitioner's authority to the governance and risk questions that matter most to financial institutions navigating digital transformation.
Katherine's speaking draws on direct, institutional-scale experience with digital asset risk. As Global Head of Operational Risk at StoneX Group, a Fortune 50 financial services firm with diversified exposure across physical commodities, financial derivatives, and digital assets, she directed enterprise risk strategy across a $4B+ global organization, led risk integration for numerous acquisitions, and governed model, third party risk, and emerging risk domains including digital asset operations. Prior to StoneX, she held senior risk leadership roles at S&P Global Energy, Bank of Oklahoma Financial, and BBVA Compass, where she built enterprise risk frameworks across trading, wealth management, broker-dealer, and various banking business lines.
Katherine is a credible and engaging voice for audiences that include compliance professionals, risk practitioners, fintech founders, regulators, and institutional investors. She speaks from experience, not theory, and is known for translating complex regulatory and governance concepts into frameworks that practitioners can actually use.
Mark Majeske
Senior Vice President of Faster Payments at Alacriti
As Senior Vice President of Faster Payments at Alacriti, Mark leads the overall corporate faster payments strategy and product development of the Orbipay Payments Hub. Mark also currently serves in the Faster Payments Council Board Advisory Group and chairs their Cross-Border Payments Work Group. Previously, Mark led product development for the RTP® network, the FedNow® Service, and Zelle® at FIS. In addition, Mark was part of the team that designed, developed, and launched the RTP network at The Clearing House. He also worked in the financial industry in digital payments product development.
John San Filippo
Co-Founder and Publisher at Finopotamus
John San Filippo, co-founder and publisher of Finopotamus - Fintech News for Hungry CUs, has enjoyed a 40-year career in financial technology. John was the marketing director at Symitar/Jack Henry for 16 years and also guided Bluepoint Solutions (later sold to Alogent) to unprecedented growth. When he made the move to tech journalism, he became the very first technology reporter for The Credit Union Journal and has written for every major credit union publication. In 2005, he co-founded Credit Union Business magazine and served as its executive editor for two years. Outside the industry, John was the editor of ComputorEdge magazine and also authored a number of mass-market computer books. He's qualified as an expert witness on computers and the internet in California Superior Court.
Olga Baldwin
Lead of Third Party Risk Management at StoneX Group
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Olga Baldwin is the Lead of Third Party Risk Management (TPRM) at StoneX Group, a Fortune 100 company. With over 18 years of experience in TPRM, she oversees the development and execution of a comprehensive Global Third Party Risk Management program. Before joining StoneX, Olga implemented and managed TPRM programs at multiple banks and gained valuable experience in the insurance and airline industries. She has extensive expertise in establishing TPRM and Vendor Risk Management (VRM) programs, system implementations, change management, regulatory examinations, and audits. Olga earned her BA from CUNY's Hunter College and an MBA from CUNY's Zicklin School of Business.
Jairo Riveros
President, Americas & Head of the Office of Strategy Management at
Paysend
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Jairo Riveros is President of the Americas and Head of the Office of Strategy Management at
Paysend, where he leads the company's commercial growth, strategic direction, and market
expansion across the United States, Canada, Latin America, and the Caribbean. He works
closely with global teams and ecosystem partners to accelerate innovation, build strategic
partnerships, and expand Paysend's next-generation payments infrastructure.
With more than 25 years of experience in payments, fintech, banking, and corporate strategy,
Jairo has held senior leadership positions at Mastercard, TIAA, Deloitte, and AIMCo. He also
serves as an Independent Board Director at Skandia Latin America.
Paysend is a leading global payments platform connecting over 25 billion payment endpoints
across more than 170 countries and territories, enabling consumers, businesses, and
enterprises to move money instantly, securely, and seamlessly worldwide. Under Jairo's
leadership in the Americas, Paysend is expanding its Enterprise API platform, embedded
finance capabilities, and digital asset initiatives to help financial institutions and technology
companies deliver innovative cross-border payment experiences. His work focuses on
transforming how money moves globally through strategic partnerships, modern payment
infrastructure, and emerging technologies such as stablecoins and tokenized money.
Urvashi Nain
Director of Product Management at Visa
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Urvashi Nain is a senior payments strategist and Director of Product Management at Visa, with extensive experience leading initiatives across correspondent banking, cross-border payments and global payment infrastructure.
Her work focuses on the intersection of payment modernisation, artificial intelligence and strategic transformation, exploring how emerging technologies can enhance payment operations while recognising the continuing importance of resilient settlement infrastructure. Drawing on extensive operational experience across cross-border payment corridors, she brings a practical perspective to the opportunities and challenges facing financial institutions as they modernise payment ecosystems.
Urvashi is passionate about helping banks and payment providers navigate the next generation of payment innovation, with particular interests in AI governance, payment infrastructure, operational resilience and the future of intelligent payment ecosystems.
Christian Crisan
Managing Director – Financial Services Strategy and Advisory at Splunk
Christian is a seasoned executive with over 26 years of experience in various functions including Global IT operations management, technology planning, solution implementation and strategic consulting. Prior to joining Splunk, Christian has spent 8 years in various leadership roles at HPE, where he evolved the solutions and go-to-market strategies for the Financial Services vertical. Christian has also held leadership roles at Amdocs, IBM and Idhasoft. Christian has helped some of the largest global Financial Services companies to evaluate and adopt technology solutions and has extensive experience in Retail Banking, Capital Markets, Investment Banking and Trading.
Gail Burgos
CEO at PayTech Women
Gail Burgos is Chief Executive Officer of PayTech Women and founder of Burgos Consulting
Group, Inc. A respected payments industry leader, she spent 25 years with TSYS, a Global
Payments company, where she held executive leadership roles in diversity, equity and inclusion
and information technology. She has also served as CEO of Girls Inc. of Columbus, Georgia,
and on the board of PayTech Women. Dr. Burgos holds a bachelor’s degree in business
administration, a master`s degree in human resource management and a doctorate in
organizational theory and leadership. She is a passionate advocate for developing leaders and
advancing greater inclusion across the payments industry. paytechwomen.org
Jason C. Honeycutt
Chief Compliance Officer and Senior Vice President of Compliance at Netspend
Jason Honeycutt is a Texas licensed attorney and a board certified criminal law specialist. He holds both the AML (CAMS) and Advanced AML (CAMS-Audit) Certifications issued by ACAMS. He is a former chair of two Texas Bar Association committees: Minimum Continuing Legal Education and Advertising Review. He now serves on the Texas Lawyer’s Assistance Program Committee. His legal experience includes State prosecutor, Federal prosecutor (United States Department of Justice, United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas), and as a private practitioner of law in civil litigation and criminal defense work. His trial experience as a State prosecutor ranges up to murder, including numerous white collar criminal matters and drug cases. His federal prosecutorial experience on the U.S.-Mexico border includes public corruption, drug trafficking, and money laundering. He was involved in thousands of criminal cases while acting as a prosecutor. As an AML/BSA/OFAC Officer, Jason has implemented complete program overhauls of two financial institutions. Jason’s AML programs have received a total of 3 FinCEN Awards.
Prateek Sangal
Head of Digital and Customer Platforms at EverBank
Prateek Sangal is Head of Digital and Customer Platforms at EverBank, where he leads omnichannel strategy and customer experience transformation. A 20-year financial services technology executive, he has previously held senior digital leadership roles at OneMain Financial, US Bank, JPMorgan Chase, and Barclays Bank, including leading the digital integration of US Bank’s acquisition of MUFG Union Bank.
Ramon Ramirez
Director of AML Operations at Western Alliance Bank
Ramon Ramirez is Director of AML Operations at Western Alliance Bank, where he developed the
institution's anti-money laundering program as it scaled from a $17 billion to a $100 billion bank. A
Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist who has worked in financial crimes since 2015, he specializes in money laundering and digital currency monitoring, building the transaction monitoring, enhanced due diligence, and investigations programs that safeguard faster payments and digital channels across cryptocurrency, digital assets, and other high-risk sectors. He engages directly with federal regulators and law enforcement on complex AML matters.. His frontline perspective is grounded in earlier service as an investigative analyst for the DEA and as a highly decorated U.S. Army law enforcement leader across U.S. and NATO installations. He holds a master's degree from Webster University and is based in Phoenix, Arizona.
Bo Berg
Technical Strategist & Innovation
+30 Years of Financial Services Expertise | Austin-Based FinTech Leader | Cutting Edge Digital Asset Innovation | World-Class Execution
With three decades leading technology innovation in financial services, I bring a unique blend of institutional banking expertise, a deep background in systems architecture, and bleeding-edge crypto/digital assets insight to the rapidly evolving FinTech landscape.
Founder of and currently leading the Digital Assets Work Group at The US Faster Payments Council, I collaborate with industry leaders to shape the future of payments, focusing on stablecoin and blockchain integration.
As an IT strategist and architect, I specialize in bridging the gap between traditional banking systems and emerging technologies, inclusive of navigating a complex regulatory environment. My rare combination of deep institutional experience, comprehensive systems architecture and implementation skills, and forward-looking mastery of digital finance positions me as a key "bridge" executive, translating complex technical requirements into tangible business outcomes.
Lloyd Nelson
SVP, Head of U.S Digital Assets at Howden
After 15 years building and scaling technology startups, Lloyd Nelson brought a builder’s perspective to insurance. As SVP and Head of U.S. Digital Assets at Howden, he works with leading crypto, fintech, and technology firms to strengthen resilience, manage complex operational and third-party risks, and build the risk infrastructure required for institutional adoption.
Michael Angjeli
Senior Finance Director at Lightspark
Michael Angjeli is Head of Treasury at VelaFi, where he leads global treasury, liquidity, FX risk
management, and trading. He has more than 15 years of experience across institutional FX, fintech, digital assets, and global payments.
Prior to VelaFi, Michael worked at Wise, focusing on FX risk management and treasury solutions
for its global payments platform.
He previously spent more than a decade at Brown Brothers Harriman trading G20 and
emerging-market currencies for institutional clients.
Michael has also held senior leadership roles in digital asset trading and liquidity management.
His current focus is building scalable treasury infrastructure at the intersection of traditional
finance, cross-border payments, and stablecoins.
Melissa Pottenger
Industry Expert
Melissa Pottenger is VP of Partnerships, North America at Yuno, where she spends her days
working with the region`s best partners to make digital payments faster, safer, and (dare we say) more delightful. With 20 years in payments under her belt, she`s basically watched the industry
go from swiping to tapping to "just look at your phone and it`s done". These days she`s obsessed with digital identity, passkeys, and tokenized credentials — the tech quietly making passwords extinct. When she`s not talking shop on stage, she`s wrangling two kids in Austin, TX, and probably losing at least one argument about screen time. Come say hi — she promises not to make you memorize another password.
Laura Gibson-Lamothe
Executive Director at Georgia Fintech Academy
Laura Gibson-Lamothe is Executive Director of the Georgia Fintech Academy, a statewide talent initiative of the University System of Georgia connecting students with careers across fintech and financial services. With more than 20 years of experience spanning banking, fintech, consulting, and technology, she has held leadership roles with organizations including Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Ally, Protiviti, and Featurespace. Laura is an active leader in Atlanta’s fintech ecosystem and serves on the boards of Fintech Atlanta and the TAG Fintech Society, as well as the Executive Committee of PayTech Women. Her work focuses on strengthening the connection between industry and higher education while building the next generation of fintech talent. She has been recognized among Georgia Trend’s Georgia 500 and as a Women in Technology Woman of the Year in STEAM.
Vinay Nilakantan
Head of Product, North America at Wise
Vinay Nilakantan is the Head of Product for North America at Wise, where he leads Wise’s product suite across the US and Canada. He is responsible for scaling and growing Wise’s consumer and business services, blending both product and operational experience to drive Wise’s growth and future innovations in this market. Vinay has 20+ years of leadership in product management within the startup and fintech landscape with past roles in Adyen and AffiniPay and others.
Venu Yeluripati
Head of Partner Experience at Global Payments
Venu Yeluripati is a Senior Vice President, Head of Partner Experience at Global Payments (for Platforms), where he leads partner and merchant experience across a payments portfolio spanning software partners and merchants. He brings deep, hands on expertise across the payments stack, from partner onboarding and MID/merchant boarding to risk, chargebacks, and payfac operations, with a track record of turning payments infrastructure into a driver of partner growth rather than just a processing utility. Earlier in his career at Tipalti, he ran global customer success and operations processing multi billion dollars in annual global remittance while scaling customer success into a profit center. He's built and led payments-focused teams across geographies and regularly partners with product, risk, and compliance leaders to navigate the regulatory complexity that comes with moving money at scale.
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Xavier Ferguson
Associate Director of Product Management at OneMain Financial
Xavier Ferguson is a financial services product leader with more than 15 years of experience driving digital transformation across payments, lending, insurance, and customer experiences. As Associate Director of Product at OneMain Financial, he leads enterprise payments strategy supporting over 4 million customer accounts nationwide. His work focuses on modernizing payment experiences, increasing digital adoption, strengthening reliability, and balancing customer convenience with security and risk. Xavier has led initiatives spanning digital wallets, payment authentication, self-service experiences, and emerging technologies designed to create simpler and more trusted customer journeys. Prior to OneMain, he spent more than a decade at USAA in product, lending, insurance, and enterprise transformation roles. He brings a practical financial services perspective to the evolution of digital identity, passkeys, tokenized credentials, and wallet-based authentication. Xavier is passionate about how trusted digital identity can reduce friction, strengthen security, and reshape the way consumers interact with financial institutions.
Amber Thetford
Chief Product Officer, Card Issuing at Onafriq
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Amber Thetford is Chief Product Officer for Card Processing at Onafriq, a leading pan African fintech headquartered in South Africa that is expanding financial access across the CEMEA region. With over a decade in the fintech space, she leads product strategy and execution for Onafriq's card processing business, working closely with partners and distributed teams across the U.S. and Africa to bring
secure, scalable payment products to market. Based in Tulsa, Oklahoma, Amber holds degrees from the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University and is actively pursuing her Executive-MBA degree at MIT Sloan. Outside of work, she's balancing very active schedules of her two children.
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Haider Mannan
CEO at BIGTXN
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Haider Mannan is the CEO of the UK-headquartered data processor and provider firm BIGTXN,
and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of sanctions.com. He has over 20 years of experience in data
management, and risk & compliance data, across the securities markets globally. He is a data
scientist and subject matter expert in traditional and digital assets, specialising in global sanctions and investment monitoring solutions, within the pre- and post-trade lifecycle. Haider is actively involved in the assessment of emerging risks in the investments and payments domains. Through his research and work on digital assets risk, he was appointed to the Digital Token Identifier (DTI) Product Advisory Committee in March 2025. In February 2026, Haider was selected as an Ambassador for the Association of Sanctioned Certified Specialists (ACSS), for his contributions to community engagement, professional outreach, and support of the global sanctions and export controls community.
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Michael Heller
VP, Proposition at Dow Jones Risk & Compliance
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Michael Heller joined Dow Jones in 2013 and currently serves as head of Financial Crime
Compliance (FCC) proposition where he is responsible for corporate strategy including
development and go-to-market, globally, for the FCC business. He draws from a background as
an attorney, sales executive, and consultant to ensure clients building efficient compliance and
risk management programs leverage the right data and technology.
Michael`s career has been focused on bringing transparency to global business. Subsequent to
completing his law degree, he worked as a consultant with the Business Intelligence Group, and
later the Anti-Money Laundering Group at Goldman Sachs & Co. in New York City. Michael
has also served as CCO and counsel at Abacus Wealth Partners in Los Angeles. He is a member
of the State Bar of California.
Christine Cooper
Senior Director of Product Management at Ripple
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Christine Cooper is Senior Director of Product Management at Ripple, leading product strategy for institutional payments infrastructure that helps financial institutions move value globally using blockchain and digital assets alongside traditional fiat. She works
closely with customers and partners to build products that simplify cross-border payments, improve operational efficiency, and enable the next generation of global financial services. With experience leading cross-functional product organizations at Square and Meta, Christine is passionate about translating complex technology into practical solutions for enterprise customers. She frequently speaks on the future of payments, fintech innovation, digital assets, product leadership, and how financial institutions are adopting new technologies to modernize global money movement.
Anil Kumar
Senior Director at Visa Inc.
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Anil Kumar is a Senior Director at Visa Direct based out of Austin, TX, leading strategic solutioning efforts across North America. He works closely with banks, remitters, fintechs, and payment providers to deliver innovative money movement solutions spanning real-time payments, cross-border transfers, and account-based payment capabilities. With over 20 years of experience in payments and financial services, Anil has helped some of the industry's leading institutions navigate payment modernization and digital transformation. He is currently focused on emerging payment innovations, including stablecoins, digital assets, and next-generation settlement models. Anil brings a unique perspective at the intersection of payments, technology, and financial innovation.
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Adi Iyer
General Manager, Financial Services at Fluz
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Adi Iyer is General Manager of Financial Services at Fluz, where he runs and scales the company's payments, fraud and fintech platforms. His career sits where corporate strategy meets fintech, with roles at Amazon, American Express, HelloFresh and FanDuel. Most recently, at FanDuel, he built the payments and fraud department from the ground up. His expertise covers payment rails, pricing and consumer loyalty, and he enjoys making the complicated world of payments easy to understand. Outside of fintech, you'll find him running the trails around Austin or on the pickleball court.
Rebecca Mulholland
Senior Policy Advisor at Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA); Associate Partner, Allon Advisors
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Rebecca Mulholland is Senior Policy Advisor for the Financial Data and Technology Association (FDATA), with extensive experience in the financial technology and financial services space. She has spent more than six years with FDATA where she leads the association's legislative work on issues ranging from open banking and consumer-permissioned data access to financial data privacy and competition. Rebecca works directly with key members of the United States House of Representatives' Committees on Financial Services, Small Business, and Energy and Commerce as well as with the United States
Stephen Kenneally
Senior Vice President Payments at American Bankers Association
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Stephen Kenneally works at ABA on issues related to a range of payment systems including check, ACH, card, wires, as well as coins and paper money. He spends an increasing amount of time focused on instant payments such as Fednow and TCH RTP and the emerging stablecoin ecosystem. He is the former Chair of the International Banking Federation Payments Work Group and he is a former elected member of the board of the FasterPayments Council and serves on Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance Consumer Payments Advisory Committee.
Steve earned an MBA from The George Washington University and a BS in Finance from Boston College. He is also an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP).
Harsh Dev
Director, Global Head of Risk Platform at PayPal
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Stephen Kenneally works at ABA on issues related to a range of payment systems including check, ACH, card, wires, as well as coins and paper money. He spends an increasing amount of time focused on instant payments such as Fednow and TCH RTP and the emerging stablecoin ecosystem. He is the former Chair of the International Banking Federation Payments Work Group and he is a former elected member of the board of the FasterPayments Council and serves on Nacha’s Payments Innovation Alliance Consumer Payments Advisory Committee.
Steve earned an MBA from The George Washington University and a BS in Finance from Boston College. He is also an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP).
Peter Papaioannou
Chief Product Officer at IXOPAY
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Peter Papaioannou is the Chief Product Officer at IXOPAY, bringing over 20 years of experience leading fintech and commerce platforms at scale. Before joining IXOPAY, he served as VP of Product at Everyware, where he spearheaded product vision and grew annual recurring revenue by 4X. He also held senior leadership roles at Global Payments and Visa, where he managed global product strategies and scaled B2B SaaS analytics platforms. With deep expertise in launching 0-to-1 solutions, embedded payments, and AI-driven tools, Peter drives IXOPAY’s product transformation, focusing on customer adoption and delivering high-impact outcomes in the evolving landscape of agentic commerce.
Steve Mott
Principal at BetterBuyDesign
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Steve Mott is a 40-year veteran of the electronic payments and security industry. His payments consultancy, BetterBuyDesign, specializes in payments landscape and strategic assessments; analyses of transaction economics and fees; innovative uses of debit and banking networks; evaluations of authentication, security and fraud mitigation technologies; and handicapping of business prospects for alternative payment types and venues—especially for online and mobile commerce and real-time payments. Steve is an acknowledged pioneer in online commerce (named one of “Top 25 Unsung Heroes of the Internet” in 1997 and one of the “Top 25 Most Intriguing Minds for the New Economy in 1998”) and has served as an SME in digital and mobile payments and security for the Federal Reserve and other industry organizations.
Steve also advises investment firms on industry trends and developments, conducts business valuations and M&A/due diligence support, and serves as an expert witness in patent, trade secret, antitrust and commercial agreement matters. He participated extensively with the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Initiative, including as an elected Steering Committee member of the Secure Payments Task Force. He is a founding member of the Faster Payments Council, where he has been elected to its Board of Directors twice. He has spoken at more than 200 payments conferences, and written extensively for publications such as Digital Transactions and n*genuity Journal, over the past decade.
Chastity Murphy
Former U.S. Treasury, Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Manchester
Chastity is a former Senior Advisor for Financial Institutions, managing the cryptocurrency, digital assets, consumer protections, and financial inclusion portfolios. Chastity was previously a senior economic policy advisor for Representative Rashida Tlaib, pioneering legislation on e-cash, stablecoins and digital assets. As a policy advisor, she managed Tlaib’s Financial Services Committee and worked on anti-austerity, financial reform, racial equity, and financial inclusion policies. Chastity also worked with Representative Marcia Fudge as a legislative aide. Chastity has also been a cooperative education student and analyst at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. In 2020, Chastity was featured in the Forbes article “Women of Color Hill Staffers Talk New Economic Policy Making, Digital Cash Without Blockchain.” Chastity lives in Washington, D.C., and has a political science and economics B.A. from South Carolina State University.
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Jo Davenport
SVP, Fraud Director at Third Coast Bank
Jo Davenport is a seasoned financial crimes and fraud leader with extensive experience developing and executing strategies to detect, prevent, and investigate fraud across the financial services sector. As Director of Fraud, Jo leads efforts to strengthen fraud risk management, enhance investigative processes, and implement innovative approaches to combat evolving threats. With a deep understanding of fraud trends, operational risk, and customer protection, Jo is passionate about helping organizations balance security, compliance, and customer experience. She regularly collaborates with industry peers, technology partners, and regulatory stakeholders to advance best practices in fraud prevention and financial crime mitigation.
Chris B. Kennedy
(PhD, MBA, CFA) - Managing Director Strategic Technology and AI at Regions Bank
Chris is an enterprise strategy and operating executive at Regions Bank, where he has payments
transformation,AI strategy, and technology at scale. He brings experience across finance, risk,operations, and business growth, along with more than a decade of executive and business
teaching experience at UNC Kenan-Flagler and Duke Fuqua. Outside work, he coaches youth soccer and enjoys fitness, chess, science-fiction, and building with AI.
Linda Mahy
CEO and Founder at Connective IQ. Inc.
With over 35 years of global banking and payments consulting experience, Linda Mahy is the CEO and Founder of Connective IQ, a firm that assists Tier 1 Banking Executives and Fintechs in navigating core banking and payments transformation journeys. Linda is a specialist in these two supply chains and has an intimate knowledge of the needs and solutions across the Financial Services Value Chain.
Linda leverages her extensive talent network and deep domain expertise to deliver strategic, innovative, and customer-centric solutions for her clients. She also has decades of experience in alliance and partner management, M&A, and VC advisory. Linda is passionate about leading the industry's convergence and innovation, and empowering her clients to achieve their goals through Strong Customer Success experience.
Pamela Clegg
Head of Growth Strategy at Inca Digital
Pamela Clegg is the Head of Growth Strategy at Inca Digital, where she leads global strategic initiatives and partnerships that advance Inca’s mission to deliver transparent, OSINT-first crypto intelligence to governments, financial institutions, and crypto-native enterprises worldwide. Her work focuses on scaling next-generation intelligence programs, identifying emerging risks in the digital asset ecosystem, and translating complex multi-source data into actionable insights. Pamela previously served as Vice President for Latin America at IVIX, supporting government agencies with AI-powered intelligence solutions. Prior to that, she held senior roles in global crypto investigations and compliance at Ciphertrace/Mastercard and United Texas Bank, collaborating with regulators, law enforcement, and financial institutions across the world. She brings more than a decade of international investigative and operational experience from her tenure with the U.S.Government, primarily throughout Latin America. Pamela has trained and spoken globally on cryptocurrency, AML/CFT, and digital-asset risk for organizations including INTERPOL, the United Nations, EUROPOL, IRS, USSS, and Basel Governance. She holds an MBA from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, a B.A. from the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS). Languages: English, Español, Português.
Urooj Siraj
Head of Information Security, Card Fraud
Urooj Siraj is a cybersecurity and AI security leader at Capital One, where she provides
strategic security leadership across the Card Fraud technology portfolio, overseeing
security risk for critical fraud prevention capabilities. She partners with executive
leadership to influence technology strategy, guide security architecture decisions, and
drive risk-based decisions across complex financial services platforms. Her leadership
spans enterprise threat modeling, application and API security, third-party risk, and the
integration of security into large-scale technology initiatives. As an AI innovation leader,
she developed several award-winning generative AI solutions designed to accelerate
threat identification and scale security assessments. She also leads cross-functional
initiatives to advance generative AI capabilities and workforce readiness across Capital
One's cybersecurity organization. Her contributions also include patented innovations in
AI security, autonomous threat reasoning, and intelligent cyber defense. As a
recognized industry speaker and AI governance professional, Urooj brings an executive
perspective on balancing innovation, security, and business risk as financial institutions
embrace agentic AI and the future of digital payments.
Debjit Saha
Vice President of Engineering & Product for Risk & Compliance at MoneyGram
As Vice President of Engineering & Product for Risk & Compliance at MoneyGram, Debjit Saha drives tech-forward solutions to modern operational challenges. He focuses on unifying siloed fraud, AML, and sanctions systems to combat increasingly sophisticated financial crimes. Debjit’s career spans deep compliance, risk analytics and technical program managment, including prior specialized risk management leadership at Apple. Additionally, he brings valuable strategic consulting expertise from his time at Deloitte and EY, where he advised global financial institutions on developing data driven Financial crimes programs. Debjit earned his MBA with Dean's Honors from The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. At the forefront of modernizing regulated money movement, his work focuses on breaking down organizational silos, establishing audit-ready data lineage, and scaling explainable AI models responsibly.
Emily Compton
BSA Manager at Axiom Bank
Emily Compton is a BSA Manager at Axiom Bank where she leads a partner monitoring function. Emily’s recent efforts include developing AI assisted processes for BSA/AML Program functions. Emily’s recent experience also includes Program remediation and maturity efforts to strengthen transaction monitoring and due diligence. Emily previously worked at Dell and has experience in fraud mitigation, strategy development, audit, and regulatory compliance.
Xhelil Vukel
President at BackdPayments
Xhelil Vukel is President of BackdPayments, the B2B payments division he built from the ground up at Backd. BackdPayments helps distributors, manufacturers, and other B2B organizations close their payments and credit gaps with flexible payment terms. Over his career, Xhelil has helped thousands of businesses grow revenue, streamline operations, and improve customer experience. With deep expertise in product development, go-to-market strategy, and process optimization, he is passionate about transforming the B2B landscape through technology and innovation
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Rich Perez
Chief Innovation Officer at Texas Bankers Association | President, TBASCO
Rich Perez is Chief Innovation Officer of the Texas Bankers Association and President of TBASCO. He leads Innovation Magnet, a multi-state program serving 700+ community banks, built TBA's Digital Assets Consortium, and co-chairs the Product and Technology Council at BankChain Alliance, now backed by 43 state bankers associations. A 20+ year digital transformation veteran (16 at Harland Clarke/Vericast), he helped create Texas State University's Foundations in Fintech
Elizabeth Davidson
Former Regulatory Counsel | Special Assignment at PNC
Elizabeth Davidson is a bank regulatory attorney based in Dallas who works with banks, payments companies, and fintechs turn regulatory change into practical, examination ready compliance. Most recently, she served as Regulatory Counsel at PNC on a special assignment focused on the Basel III Endgame proposal, where she prepared the initial draft of the bank's public comment letter. Before that, she was Regulatory Counsel and Vice President at Comerica Bank, advising on consumer protection, BSA/AML, IT controls, and third-party risk. She previously served as Regulatory Counsel at Mastercard and at Finicity, a Mastercard company, supporting open banking and payments products. Her work centers on bridging legal requirements and technical realities by partnering early with product, technology, and compliance teams so that new offerings launch with defensible controls and clear ownership. She began her career in private practice and as a legal intern at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission. Elizabeth earned her J.D. from the University of Iowa College of Law, where she wrote for The Journal of Corporation Law, and is the author of "A Middle Ground for Cryptocurrency Regulation: Using Delaware’s Incentive-Driven Private Ordering Model" (2019) and "An Algorithmic Approach for Choice-of-Law," published in the ABA Information Law Journal (2019). She is particularly interested in how innovation and technology can drive more efficient and effective legal outcomes in financial services
Shanelle Davis
Managing Director, Head of Operational Resilience at Charles Schwab
Shanelle Davis is a Managing Director and Head of Operational Resilience at Charles Schwab, where she leads enterprise-wide efforts to ensure the firm can withstand, adapt to, and recover from operational disruption in an increasingly complex risk environment.
In her role, Shanelle oversees recovery strategy governance and the validation of resilience capabilities across Schwab’s critical products and services. Her work helps safeguard clients, maintain market confidence, and preserve operational continuity during periods of stress. Operating at the intersection of business, technology, and regulatory expectations, she is focused on translating resilience frameworks into practical, executable outcomes that can be sustained at scale.
With more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, Shanelle brings deep expertise in operational risk, resilience, and regulatory supervision. She began her career as a bank examiner with the Federal Reserve System, where she assessed financial institutions’ adherence to banking laws and regulations. That foundational experience continues to inform her pragmatic, regulator-informed approach to resilience, crisis preparedness, and recovery planning.
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Jeffrey Gapusan
Managing Director, Financial Services Industry (FSI) at SIA
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Jeff is a seasoned finance and FinTech executive with deep industry expertise, a vast commercial network, and a record of architecting strategic partnerships for both enterprise and early-stage firms. He currently leads Fintech & Payments efforts as a Managing Director at Sia, a global strategy & consulting firm.
He is also a Forbes FinTech Contributor and guest speaker and panelist at global Fintech events including Money 20/20, ETA Transact, and Fintech South. Before his career in FinTech, he worked on the fixed income trading floor at sell-side and buy-side firms. Jeff also flew more than 4,000 hours in the EP-3E as a U.S. Naval Flight
Where America’s Payments & RegTech Leaders Redefine the AI Era
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