Speakers

Jay is currently serving as the Head of Data Governance for Financial Crimes Compliance at State Street Bank and Trust, where his role involves overseeing data management priorities and ensuring compliance with financial crimes regulations. Jay has demonstrated his leadership skills throughout his career by successfully leading various initiatives, including cloud transformation programs, building scalable data lakes, and enabling on-demand analytics.

With extensive experience in Credit, Market, and Operational Risk Management domains, Jay has a proven track record of leveraging data analytics to derive valuable insights and make informed decisions that mitigate risks and improve operational efficiency. Jay also has extensive experience working with Front-office and Currency Management systems supporting sales and trading teams. He has hands-one experience in graph data modeling, data fabric and data mesh architecture, and their application in mapping data domains within the financial services industry.

Jay has also utilized machine learning techniques, predictive analytics, and simulation to tackle credit risk and anti-money laundering challenges, resulting in optimized processes. He has been an early advocate for adopting Generative AI in enterprise applications while incorporating ethical considerations.

His knowledge and experience extend to the fintech industry, covering emerging technologies, digital banking, cryptocurrencies, and disruptive technologies. As an entrepreneur, Jay founded a startup and successfully launched a payment processing app, integrating it seamlessly with core banking platforms. Jay is also a frequent speaker on financial crimes compliance, risk management, predictive data analytics, product development and blockchain/crypto compliance topics at various industry conferences.

Jay brings a strong executive presence, an entrepreneurial mindset, and a keen ability to generate innovative ideas and solutions backed by empirical data. His expertise lies in data governance, financial crimes compliance, risk management, cloud transformation, and the successful adoption of cutting-edge technologies to drive business growth and operational efficiency.

Asha Saxena is a strategic and innovative leader with a track record of building successful technology companies over the past 30 years. She is the author of the bestselling book The AI Factor – How to Apply Artificial Intelligence and Use Big Data to Grow Your Business Exponentially and the founder and CEO of Women Leaders in Data and AI, a global leadership organization brining world leaders together to create a fair digital world with parity and equity.

Asha is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, teaching graduate classes on entrepreneurship and served as entrepreneur-in-residence at Columbia Business School. She also served as a partner at CEO Coaching International, a management services company focused on building, turning around, and selling successful businesses.

In the past, Asha served as the CEO of a healthcare data analytics company, built an e-commerce platform, and was the president and CEO of Future Technologies. This company provided data analytics solutions to Fortune 1000 companies and was recognized at the World Economic Forum as a “Global Growth Company for 2007”.

Asha earned her BS in engineering, computer science from Bangalore University in India, an MS in data science, major in machine learning  from Southern Methodist University, and executive management education at MIT and the London Business School.

Adam’s career in Data Management within the Financial Services industry since 1998 spans the full spectrum of data capabilities with global, national, and regional scopes.  Currently, he leads the enterprise-wide data capability transformation at Federal Home Loan Bank of New York as Director of the Data Management Office, including data architecture, analytics, data governance, database administration, and DataOps.

Evan Fire joined Pzena Investment Management in 2003 and has held several roles during his tenure, including Chief Information & Operations Officer and Chief Information Security Officer, responsible for the oversight of the Portfolio Accounting, Portfolio Implementation, Trading & Settlement, and Information Technology groups at the firm. An impassioned leader, with a reverence for the pursuit of excellence and an unwavering commitment to teamwork; he carefully balances the ever-changing global relationship between corporate operations, IT and cyber security. Throughout his career, Mr. Fire has helped Pzena Investment Management by implementing innovative, technology-first, solutions designed to create operational efficiency and has been instrumental in developing strategy to meet growing regulatory demands. Prior to joining Pzena Investment Management in 2003, he served as a Relationship Management Assistant at Brown Brothers Harriman and prior to that he worked as a Client Service Representative at Sanford C. Bernstein & Company. He earned a B.S. in Management and Finance from the School of Management Honors Program at Binghamton University.

Tom has been in the market data services and data management sector for over 25 years and is known as a forward-thinking data strategist - traditional and non-traditional - with deep experience in the financial services industry, across the buy side and sell side.

He is an industry leader with a deep understanding of content needs by asset class and security types, business strategies, and their use cases at the desktop and programmatic API level for alpha generation, utilizing consolidated and low latent connectivity, research and sentiment.

He has helped dozens of companies with their real-time and reference data needs to source and deliver scalable, cost-effective managed solutions (deployed and cloud), e.g., banks, hedge funds, asset and investment managers, insurance companies, custodians, etc.

He has assessed, built, and managed best-in-class teams encompassing vendor management, sourcing, data distribution technologies and expense management. 

Peter Ku is a senior enterprise software and financial services industry strategist with over 27 years of experience working with leading enterprise software providers for the global banking, capital markets, and insurance industry. As Chief industry strategist for banking, capital markets and financial services at Informatica, he is responsible for defining and leading Informatica’s sales, marketing and industry solution strategy globally. Mr. Ku is a 14+ year Informatica veteran with previous roles leading the company’s Vertical Industry and Business Consulting Services, Global Industry Solutions Marketing, and Platform Solutions Marketing for data warehousing, data migration, and data governance.  

Florencia is the Product Executive for Customer Insights and ChaseNet Analytics within JPMorgan’s Payments business. The Payments & Commerce business at J.P. Morgan combines Global Payments and Merchant Acquiring to provide integrated solutions to clients around the globe. She focuses on unlocking value for clients across the firm by productizing insights from Payments data. She has end-to-end Product Management responsibilities and is accountable for Customer Insights across SMB (digital product live to +500K businesses), MMBSI/EMM (digital product live to 2K clients), CB, and CIB (digital product in JPM ACCESS and custom insights). For ChaseNet (the 4th largest processing network in the US), Florencia’s analytics team maximizes profitability with a data science approach to pricing.

Florencia is an innovator helping differentiate the firm by leveraging big data assets and developing intelligence products meant to help businesses improve their marketing and operational efficiency by understanding their underlying Customers. She ideated, pilot and launched Customer Insights to all processing Small Business Clients. Florencia was featured in a Forbes Article as an expert explain how businesses can use Payment Tech to Outmatch Business Rivals.

Before joining J.P. Morgan Chase, Florencia was a strategy consultant at McKinsey and Company focusing on financial services in the New York and Buenos Aires offices for 5+ years. She also worked in Strategy and Operations at Google and has startup tech experience (SmartLine).

Florencia has an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, with an exchange at the London School of Economics and Political Science focusing on Entrepreneurship and Strategic Management. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Thomas Sullivan is a Managing Director at Societe Generale in New York, where he is the Head of Business Development for Digital Assets. Through the SG-Forge subsidiary, Societe Generale has been recognized as a market leader, providing innovative services to issue, transact, and manage digital-native financial products registered on blockchain. In collaboration with the SG-Forge team, Tom spearheads the tokenization and blockchain efforts for Societe Generale in the Americas.

Tom has over 20 years of experience in securities and banking, focusing on the intersection of operations and innovation. In his seven years at Societe Generale, he has managed various operations divisions, including securities settlements, collateral management, FX, and payments. Tom has spearheaded several blockchain related initiatives, and in 2022, he led Société Générale’s successful implementation of the Broadridge Distributed Ledger Repo platform. He is an active member of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, participating in SIFMA’s Digital Assets Working Group.  

Before Societe Generale, Tom was the Head of Broker Dealer Operations at Commerzbank, where he managed securities settlements, securities lending support, and asset servicing. With the merger of Commerzbank and Dresdner Bank in 2009, Tom coordinated the integration of the operational platforms of the Firms. He graduated from New York University with BA in Economics and holds Series 7, 24, and 27 registrations with FINRA.

Kim joined BMO in August 2021 from RBC where she was the Global Head of the Client, Banking & Digital Channels Technology group across Capital Markets.  Kim developed and implemented a comprehensive client data strategy adopted by Capital Markets, sunset legacy applications and united the global salesforce under a single CRM instance.  Collecting and connecting client touchpoints with external data sets allowed her team to proactively source opportunities and recommendations using advanced AI and machine learning to deepen client relationships and increase wallet share.  Kim held multiple roles at RBC over 15 years supporting the business in various capacities from running Global Fixed Income Production Services to Head of Fixed Income Sales and Credit Trading technology.

Prior to joining RBC, Kim ran Front Office technology at Mizuho as well as the API Connectivity Development team at ICAP and was part of the initial launch of BrokerTec. She has also held multiple positions across the street with Kidder Peabody, Deutsche Bank and Chase Securities. Kim received a BA from Stockton University in accounting.

Randy Gordon has worked in the financial industry for over 20 years and has spent the last decade in data governance leadership roles. He is passionate about data governance because he believes reliable, trusted data is the foundation of strong decision making, advanced analytics, and innovation.

Randy currently is Head of data governance for Cross River Bank. Previous employers include Citi, Moody’s, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch. Randy holds an MS in management – financial services from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and a bachelor of music degree from Hartt School of Music, University of Hartford, where he majored in cello performance. Randy is a columnist for TDAN.com (The Data Administration Newsletter) and frequently speaks at industry conferences. He also has tutored portions of Risk.net’s “BCBS 239: Effective risk data aggregation and reporting” course in 2022 and 2023 and will do so again for Risk.net’s upcoming course held May 21-23, 2024.

The views expressed by Randy are his own and not those of Cross River Bank nor any of his previous employers.

Hazel inspires people to make a positive impact and initiate change rather than wait for someone else to solve the problem. She quickly mobilizes high-performing teams to execute strategy by crafting a shared vision and connecting people across the organization. 

Hazel's entrepreneurial spirit enables her to translate business problems into innovative solutions. As a result, she tackles complex, thorny problems head-on, integrating people, processes, data, and technology to orchestrate seamless solutions. 

Beyond her professional pursuits, Hazel helps women elevate their careers, embrace joy, and unlock their full potential through engaging storytelling on stages such as TEDx and direct mentorship.

Arvind has over 30 years in Fortune 500 companies leveraging diversified and comprehensive understanding of technology, business and operations processes. 

Top benefits/impact to your business

• A ‘Data as an Asset’ Champion - Defining data principles, policies, frameworks and processes to establish a data foundation based on lessons learned from implementing data management capabilities across multiple organizations.
• A Data Evangelist, Strategist and Subject Matter Expert - applying extensive experience building a data management program including curation, governance, analytics, quality and sourcing of data to meet regulatory expectations.
• A Leader in Data Management, Collection and Strategy – establish protocols across multiple business units/LoBs resulting in development and execution of enterprise-wide strategy to leverage all available data assets to drive actionable, analytical insights to enable and support business in value creation of beneficial solutions across the enterprise.
• A True Partner with Chief Compliance Officer and Chief Legal Officer - as their 'data counterpart' to understand regulatory and compliance expectations w.r.t data privacy (GDPR and CCPA) to define data control framework, data policies for Cloud storage and ensure compliance with internal policies and Federal/State level expectations.

Impacting US regulatory reporting

• Verified and corrected (where required) 5400+ customer records originating in 7 source systems; including 3378+ external and 2022+ internal customers and counterparties
• Identified and corrected 4800+ reference data records, across 480+ customers for accounting code, customer type, residence country and risk country
• Updated direct risk of 290 customers resulting in a move of $29+ billion
• Updated indirect risk of 670 customers resulting in a move of $33+ billion
• Updated customer type of 65+ customers resulting in a move of $7+ billion

Impacting Basel/BSBS 239 and CCAR reporting

• Improved categorization of entities through consistent industry classification schema – resulting in reduction of ~100 hours/quarter manual effort, closing 6 issues from the FFIEC 101 Exam with a ~$3.3Bn Exposure at Default (EAD) impact across schedules and 9 issues sighted on the Y9C Exam ~$2.2Bn impact across the Country Exposure Report (009)
• Improved Risk Weighted Assets (RWA) reporting by ~$330mm

Julia is an Adjunct Professor at the NYU Stern School of Business, CEO of Data4Real, LLC, a Board Advisor to several startups and Chair of Technology Advisory Council of Women Leaders in Data and AI (WLDA). 

She is a recognized thought leader in data driven digital transformation with over 25 years of experience in building technology and business capabilities that enable business growth, innovation, and agility. Julia has led transformational initiatives in many financial services companies such as Voya Financial, Deutsche Bank Citi, FINRA, Freddie Mac, and others. 

Julia is a much sought-after speaker and mentor in the industry, and she has received recognition across the industry for her significant contributions. She has been named to engatica 2023 list of World’s Top 200 Business and Technology Innovators; received 2022 WLDA Changemaker in AI award; has been named to CDO Magazine’s List of Global Data Power Women three years in the row; named Top 150 Business Transformation Leader by Constellation Research in 2019; and recognized as the Best Data Management Practitioner by A-Team Data Management Insight in 2017.

She holds a Master of Arts in Economics from New York University.   

Yury Blyakhman is a Managing director at J.P. Morgan Chase in New York. He holds the position of Chief data officer for Rates, Fixed Income Financing, Commodities, Currencies, and Emerging Markets (CEM) businesses at JPMorgan. Yury also heads the Rates and Currencies and Emerging Markets Quantitative Research (QR) AAO team, which is responsible for providing analytics, automation, and optimization quantitative support to trading, sales, and automated trading strategies groups globally.

Steve serves as a trusted advisor to investment and finance line of business senior leaders on their business data strategies that enable them to achieve their business objective and key results. He establishes guiding principles and frameworks around data ownership, data quality, data sharing and data insights that are leveraged to increase the level of trust and the field of use of investment and finance data, data that is both produced internally and procured externally. Steve develops technical patterns and prescriptive guidance for building investment and finance platforms that power key business capabilities in the end-to-end investment lifecycle. He provides the senior technical leadership with his depth of subject matter expertise with cloud data technologies and platforms that ensure business and cyber resiliency, business scalability and business performance.

Experienced operational risk executive with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Skilled in data risk management, data governance and strategy; negotiations of trading and financing contracts (including ISDAs); risk mitigation around operational, counter-party, regulatory and legal risk. Business understanding of robotics processing, machine learning and other artificial intelligence for data capture and validation around contracts. Broad knowledge supplemented with MBAs from London Business School and Columbia Business School.

Michael Korby is the Head of data strategy, FICC at Balyasny Asset Management, joining the firm in 2017. As Head of data strategy, FICC, Michael is responsible for ensuring that all of the data needs of the macro, commodities and credit businesses are met and exceeded. Michael drives the strategic vision for data solutions for these businesses, overseeing the teams that deliver sophisticated data products to investment professionals. Before Balyasny, Michael was the Head of application development and a Senior vice president at Highbridge Capital Management, joining the firm as a Senior software developer in 2005. Michael has 26 years of experience in data and technology. He earned both his master of engineering and bachelor of science in computer science from Cornell University.

Jennifer is the Chief Data Officer at DWS Asset Management. Prior to this role, she served as Head of sustainability, culture and talent for Deutsche Bank. She joined the bank in 2019 from Deloitte, where she spent two years as a Managing director in the risk advisory practice, specializing in data solutions for large, multinational financial institutions. Before that, Jennifer was a Managing Director at Citigroup, where she spent 18 years in the risk management organization in a number of leadership roles. In her last role at Citigroup, Jennifer was Head of risk systems and technology, where she was responsible for the decision-making, strategy, architectural design, execution and management of Global Risk Management’s core systems and infrastructure. This included the oversight and execution of multiple large-scale regulatory programs with the goal of remediation, mitigation and prevention of issues from Citi’s global regulators. Jennifer was also responsible for various enterprise-wide initiatives, including the firm-wide reconciled Risk and Finance Data Warehouse, the firm-wide Data Roadmap and the build out of Data Governance and a Data Office for Risk Management.  Jen holds a BS in economics and mathematics from Saint Vincent College in Latrobe, PA and has completed graduate studies in economics at Boston College.

Dr. Tasitsiomi is a business savvy executive with 15+ years’ experience delivering alpha as well as strategic direction to organizations. Through her work at BlackRock, Goldman Sachs and Prudential Financial, she has a proven track record in guiding sizable, cross-functional teams in the profitable use of data science - ranging from classical statistics, math and science methods to the most cutting-edge machine learning (ML) & Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms - leveraging both traditional & alternative, small & big data.

In her more recent role, Dr. Tasitsiomi has been heading the data science effort at T. Rowe Price where she has been instrumental in the production and seamless integration of innovative investment signals with the firm’s fundamental investing approaches. Furthermore, she oversees the technology innovation initiative, responsible for formulating the strategy for the secure adoption of generative AI.

Iro earned a PhD in astrophysics and a master’s in physics from the University of Chicago and is a well-published research author (Google Scholar [scholar.google.com]). After that & before entering finance, she was a Lyman Spitzer Jr. fellow and a Cotsen lecturer at Princeton University & the Princeton Society of Fellows.

Experienced data and IT financial services executive with over 25 years of experience managing data products and platforms, leading large-scale transformational projects. Successfully led enterprise-level global engagements with specific focus on data strategy and master data management in investment banking, asset and wealth management businesses. Responsible for the identification and implementation of strategic recommendations. Created unique solution for ESG data working with the ESG vendors and clients.

Julie is Global Head of Data & Analytics and a member of the BNY Mellon Senior Advisory Council.  Prior to BNYM, Julie was CEO of the artificial intelligence company Everstream Analytics.  Everstream is a pioneer in large complex data management and predictive supply chain analytics, serving enterprise organizations across multiple sectors – with many direct analogies to our business. 

Previously, she has held executive leadership positions at SAP Ariba, J.P. Morgan, and American Express and was CEO of the healthcare tech company, HealthPay24. At both Everstream and HealthPay, Julie multiplied revenues and substantially increased share of wallet through partnerships and sales programs, drove market-leading innovation, and elevated the stature of the companies through strategic alliances with the World Economic Forum, UNICEF, and other globally recognized organizations.

Arunima Sinha is a vice president on the Global Economics team at Morgan Stanley, focusing on applied macroeconomics. Before joining Morgan Stanley, she was an associate professor at Fordham University, a visiting researcher at the markets group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and a visiting scholar at the economics research departments of the Federal Reserve Banks of New York, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Arunima’s research examines monetary policy transmission using quantitative methods. Her academic research has been published in peer-reviewed international economics journals, and she has presented her work at various central banks and international economics conferences. She has a Ph.D. in economics from Columbia University.

Samim Ghamami is currently an economist at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, where he works with the senior management on the reform of the US Treasury market and several other SEC capital market initiatives. Ghamami is also a senior researcher and an adjunct professor of finance at New York University, a senior researcher at UC Berkeley Center for Risk Management Research and the Department of Economics, and a senior advisor at SOFR Academy. 

Ghamami has been a senior economist at Goldman Sachs and Millennium Management. He has been an adjunct associate professor of economics at Columbia University. Ghamami has also been an associate director and a senior economist at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Office of Financial Research, and an economist at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

Ghamami’s work has broadly focused on the interplay of finance and macroeconomics, and on financial economics and quantitative finance. His work on asset management, banking, economic policy, financial stability, financial regulation, risk management, and central clearing has been presented and discussed at central banks and international financial institutions. He has been an advisor to the Bank for International Settlements and worked as an expert with the Financial Stability Board on post-financial crisis reforms in 2016 and 2017. Ghamami also served on the National Science Foundation panel on Financial Mathematics in 2017 and 2018. Ghamami received his Ph.D. in Mathematical Finance and Operations Research from USC in 2009. His publications have appeared in different journals including Management Science, Journal of Applied Probability, Mathematics of Operations Research, Journal of Financial Intermediation, Journal of Credit Risk, Journal of Derivatives, Quantitative Finance, and Journal of Risk. 

Dessa Glasser is FRG’s Principal for the data strategy advisory and analytics practice, providing innovative solutions to clients in data, risk, and analytics. She is an independent board member of Oppenheimer & Co. Inc; and chair of the Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF).

Before joining FRG, Dessa was the Managing director at JPMorgan Chase, responsible for the Capital Stress Testing Analytics and was the Chief data officer for Asset and Wealth Management. As Deputy director of the Office of Financial Research, she received the US Treasury Exceptional Service Award. Dessa was the Chief risk officer for Bunge and held senior positions at Credit Suisse, Merrill Lynch, IBM, and KPMG.

Dessa has a B.S. from Fairleigh Dickinson University and a Ph.D. and M.A. in economics from Fordham University, where she is on the advisory board for the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

Elena Treshcheva is a Program manager at Exactpro, an independent software testing services provider for financial market infrastructures. Elena contributes to research and technical documentation on the latest Exactpro test methods, aligning the firm’s AI testing approach with the unique regulatory environment and diverse technological landscape of the US market. She believes that the AI testing approach will catalyze transformative shifts in the financial system's quality and resiliency and is eager to share this message with industry professionals. 

In addition, Elena is frequently involved with the firm’s educational initiatives, including autonomous driving and software testing and ISTQB CTFL training courses, as well as internal training on technical documentation and requirements analysis. 

Elena joined Exactpro in 2017 as a QA analyst focused on post-trade systems and market data processing. Later, she transitioned to research and business development before leading the technical documentation practice from 2021 onwards. Before Exactpro, Elena worked in academia, starting her career in 2008 as an assistant professor in general and applied linguistics. After obtaining her PhD in 2012, she secured a tenure of an associate professor in general and computational linguistics. During her time in academia, she also served as the head of a university research laboratory and was responsible for digital corpora projects.

Financial data and technology professional with experience leading large programs for AI, analytics & big data, CRM, AML/KYC, digital payments & cash management and investment & wealth management.

Debbie leads the product management team for BNY Mellon’s Middle Office  Solutions group. She has responsibility for product definition and delivery, as well as client implementations. Prior to this role Debbie was global head for the Data Governance practice area as part of BNY Mellon’s OMNI Digital Services strategic advisory, responsible for assisting clients with the design and implementation of data oversight frameworks and processes. Debbie joined BNY Mellon in 2018 to lead the rollout of the enterprise data management framework globally and was the primary data liaison for regulatory agencies and internal audit. She has more than 25 years of experience in financial services and technology and has advised on market trends, product positioning and strategy as well as guiding financial institutions on technology adoption.

Prior to joining BNY Mellon, Williams directed the marketing and business development efforts for the Risk Analytics business at S&P Capital IQ. Prior to S&P Capital IQ, she held significant roles as Head of Marketing and Business Development at R2 Financial Technologies, Director of the Basel II Program for RBS Citizens Bank, and spent nearly two decades advising global financial institutions on technology adoption as co-founder and COO of Meridien Research and The Tower Group.

Debbie is based in Wellesley, MA. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Vassar College and a master’s degree in Business and Entrepreneurship from Babson F. W. Olin Graduate School of Business. She is a member of the steering committee and previous regional director for the Boston region and a founding member of PRMIA (Professional Risk Management International Association). In her spare time, Debbie mentors start ups in the FinTech space through MassChallenge FinTech, Babson College’s Blank Center for Innovation and as part of BNY Mellon’s Ascent Program.

Prasanna Ramaswamy is a senior technology executive with progressive experience in global companies leading large-scale transformations with expertise in Digital Transformation, Innovation, Data Management, Enterprise Architecture, Infrastructure & Cloud Migration, Big Data/Advanced Analytics, Business Intelligence & Application Development. Passionate about talent development, building and leading high performance engineering teams to operate with commercial intensity and move at market speed to deliver impactful results by applying technology to transform strategy to real business outcomes. Proven ability to define and drive enterprise strategies/roadmaps, promote innovative solutions and to optimize the use of data and technology to enable business growth.

Core Competencies: IT Strategy & Execution ♦ Digital Transformation ♦ Enterprise Data Management & Architecture ♦ Solution Architecture ♦ Business Intelligence ♦ Big Data ♦ Cloud Migration ♦ Predictive/Prescriptive Analytics ♦ Emerging Technologies & Innovation ♦ Application Development ♦ Java/J2EE ♦ Leadership, Mentoring & Talent Development

Senior 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. Created and led highly effective IT and Cyber risk management programs that supported closure of legacy regulatory findings and enabled business growth, expansion, and acquisitions.

Trusted partner to executive, business and technology stakeholders with the unique ability to effectively conceptualize and articulate pragmatic solutions to complex operational risk, control and cyber issues.

Built high performance global cohesive teams, advancing cross-functional collaboration to develop and implement best practices, methods, and techniques.

Accomplished speaker and co-author of three books on Cyber Risk and Governance.

Board Chair / CEO for non-for profit and Advisory Board member for technology firms.

• CISA, CRISC, CGEIT, FINRA Series 99
• MSEE / MBA / Ph. D. Candidate Computer Science
• FFIEC, COSO, COBIT, NIST, and ISO 27001 frameworks and guidelines

Senior executive in Information Security and Technology Risk Management with strong experience in striking the right balance between cost, operational effectiveness and technology risk as a component of operational risk management. Hands-on operations experience with a proven record for driving transformation and recovering troubled projects. Strong executive presence to lead teams and drive consensus with senior leadership to deliver business outcomes. 

My goal is to solve business problems and 'take away the pain' as opposed to just deploying technical point-solutions. This requires a top-down, business-risk driven approach, which provides an end-to-end solution that translates a strategy vision into real operational execution. 

Specialties: Technology Risk Management, IT Strategy, IT Governance, Privacy, Network Architecture and Management, IT Security, IT Audit

Lori Pierson, Group Vice President – HCM Transformation Practice for Oracle, has thirty years of internal and commercial experience in Human Resources. Lori leads a team of former HR executives who are passionate about HR transformation. The Transformation team helps clients plan, prepare and move to the cloud, taking into consideration unique business objectives, employee experience goals and the influence of artificial intelligence. Lori and her team partner with customers to help maximize their investments and strategically respond to changing business dynamics impacting HR.  

Lori is an accomplished and experienced human resources leader in technology implementation and as an executive level HR business partner.  Lori brings a breadth and depth of experience to support our clients. With twenty years’ experience in HR and IT, Lori has experience leading a global implementation of Oracle HCM Cloud where she lead process and system design, organization change management, HR and business alignment as well as user acceptance testing.

Stuart Neilson is a data scientist with 20 years of experience, and expertise on a wide variety of predictive modeling techniques and data management processes, with a particular focus on credit risk.

Kristof was the Head of Responsible AI at J.P.Morgan Chase during the integration of Large Language Models at the firm. Prior to that, he was leading Responsible AI at PayPal. He has also held various other quant and risk roles at major financial institutions and holds a bachelors in mathematics and a masters in applied math from the Budapest University of Technology and Economics.

Russell is a former managing director who was responsible for the strategic oversight and implementation of Great Lake Advisors' operations, performance, risk, and information technology systems. He joined Rothschild & Co Asset Management US in 2016 and the industry in 2002. Previously, Russell worked at Times Square Capital Management overseeing operations and performance, and, before that, at EMS Capital, L.P., Hawkstone Capital, Bear Stearns Asset Management, Elliot Management and Pricewaterhouse Coopers where he audited clients in the asset management industry. Russell has a BS in Accounting, Finance, and Operations Management from the University of Delaware and an MBA from the Zicklin School of Business at Baruch College.

John Bottega is a senior data management strategist and executive with over 40 years of experience in the finance industry. Over his career, John has held various roles in supporting an organization’s data strategy and data implementation objectives. In 2006, John became one of the first Chief Data Officers in finance with his appointment as CDO at Citibank. He went on to hold the role of CDO in both the public and private sectors, serving as CDO for Bank of America, and holding the post of CDO for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

As the former Chief Data Officer at Bank of America, John was responsible for driving the enterprise data management strategy. This included championing the data management policy and standards, establishing and operationalizing data governance, working with technology to define the data platform, infrastructure and tool simplification, and supporting the bank's data scientist team in their efforts to drive improved information analytics.

As the Chief Data Officer for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY), John worked with domestic and foreign regulators on financial sector data management and data quality. While at FRBNY, John led the effort to define and establish the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier), a global information standard for unique entity identification, key to enabling and strengthening systemic risk analysis in support of global financial stability. John also served as a Senior Advisor to the Director of the Office of Financial Research (OFR), an agency established by the Dodd-Frank Act within the US Department of the Treasury, responsible for the analysis and monitoring of industry-wide systemic risk.

Today, John is the President of the EDM Council, a non-profit professional trade association, focused on elevating the practice of data management through best practices, data standards, research and education. The EDM Council supports over 250 organizations comprised of over 10,000 members, helping them successfully advance their data programs within their firms, while creating a global network for data management community collaboration.

John has been a frequent speaker for over 20 years at industry conferences and industry symposiums. He is a former member of the US Department of the Treasury, Financial Research Advisory Committee to the Office of Financial Research; a current member of the Data Coalition Financial Transparency Act Task Force; Data Coalition Open Data Standards Task Force; CPA-Canada Data Governance Committee; WatersTechnology Advisory Board member; member of the Advisory Board of NewVantage Partners, and member of the Board of Directors of ACTUS, a non-profit association focused on the improvement of systemic risk monitoring and financial market transparency.

Kiet is the founder and CEO of PEER DATA, an innovative startup that is building a data asset management platform to empower data consumers, providers, and owners to transform data into assets.  Previously, Kiet was senior partner and head of APAC Financial Services at IHS Markit, a provider of financial information, analytics and solutions which was acquired by S&P Global in 2022. He joined Markit in 2005 and played a pivotal role during his 17 years at the firm, including the buildout of the loan ecosystem, facilitating the creation of new tradable asset classes, and building and managing nine-figure data businesses. Kiet started his career at Blackrock as a fixed income analyst. 

Anthony joined Waters in October 2009. He is the Editor-in-Chief of WatersTechnology Group, running all editorial operations for the publication. Prior to joining Waters, he was a senior associate editor covering the banking industry at American Banker. Before that, he was a sports reporter at daily newspaper The Journal News.

If you have any questions about our editorial processes, you can contact Anthony at: anthony.malakian@infopro-digital.com.

Max is editor-at-large at WatersTechnology.  Max is editor of Inside Market Data and Inside Data Management. Max joined then-Risk Waters Group (prior to its acquisition by Incisive Media) in 2000, and has worked as a reporter on Risk Magazine, FX Week, Trading Technology Week (now Sell-Side Technology) and Buy-Side IT (now Buy-Side Technology), before joining IMD as European reporter in 2003. He moved to New York as US reporter in 2005, and became editor in 2006.

Max lives in Astoria, New York with his wife and twin girls, and enjoys playing rock music, wine tastings, and market data.

Mark has over 30 years’ experience in global capital markets, consulting and associated technologies, focusing on risk management, front- and middle-office platforms and data management. Before Chartis he held executive positions in large global financial institutions, consultancies and FinTechs, in various roles including platform and software development, solution architecture, large-scale program management, vendor selection and implementation, and strategy development and execution.

With a background covering the front, middle and back office, Mark brings to Chartis a holistic view of business, technology and regulatory issues across the enterprise, and how these issues can be addressed by leveraging appropriate technology solutions. His primary focus has been risk technology, and his work in this area includes: leading the global teams for risk technology at RBS Capital Markets and AIG; working with middle- and front-office technology teams at Barclays Capital; extensive consulting experience with major consulting organizations including EY and Deloitte; and extensive vendor experience, including time at Algorithmics and Misys (now Finastra). Mark has an MA from Oxford University and is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.

Sakshi Sharma has over 12 years of multi-platform professional journalism experience as a financial news editor and reporter at global news organizations in New York, London and Mumbai at Euromoney, CNBC and Bloomberg. Over the past ten years she specialized in infrastructure and energy finance news across the Americas with a deep understanding of financial markets, project finance, asset management, institutional investors, capital markets and various debt & equity instruments. In her current role, as Americas commercial content lead and an editor with Infopro Digital’s Ignite team, she provides financial industry clients with compelling thought leadership content across its brands - Risk.net and WatersTechnology.

Nyela is a reporter for WatersTechnology, based in our New York newsroom.