Ignacio Sarquis is a technology leader recognized for driving large-scale digital transformation in the banking industry. Since March 2021, he has served as Chief Information Officer of Santander Bank, leading the vision and execution of innovation-driven programs that align with Santander’s global strategy and accelerate the Bank’s growth in the U.S.

During his 14+ years at Santander, Ignacio has spearheaded some of the organization’s most ambitious technology initiatives. He oversaw the launch of a next-generation digital platform designed for scale, agility, and rapid innovation, empowering Santander to meet evolving customer needs in a highly competitive market. He also led the successful go-live of Gravity, the Bank’s U.S. core modernization initiative, which migrated its core system to the cloud as part of the multi-year Horizon Program.

These milestone projects have positioned Santander as a technology-forward financial institution and underscore Ignacio’s pivotal role in shaping the future of banking.

Ignacio earned a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires and an MBA from Hult International Business School. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts, and continues to champion innovation, operational excellence, and technology’s role in driving sustainable business growth.

Mary Joseph is Senior Vice President of Strategic Investments at Citi, where she drives global investments in fintech and B2B SaaS startups for Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS). Previously, Mary honed her expertise in fintech M&A advisory within Citi’s Investment Banking group, and as an investor at GreenHouse Capital, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage fintechs across Africa and the Middle East. Throughout her career spanning diverse roles and geographies, Mary has championed the growth and empowerment of early-stage companies reshaping the global fintech landscape, with a particular emphasis on emerging markets. Mary holds an MBA in Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship & Innovation from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in Sociology and Business Management from Columbia University.

Rene Schuurman is a global product manager for CashPro API in Bank of America’s Global Payments Solutions division. He has global product responsibility for portfolio management, strategic partnerships, and complex integration requests for all segments and markets.

As head of National Sales and Customer Relations, Erik Van Bramer is responsible for setting and implementing the strategy for managing the relationships and financial services offerings for financial institutions across the Federal Reserve System.

Prior to assuming his current role, Erik held multiple national sales roles of increasing responsibility within the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Customer Relations and Support Office (CRSO). Erik was promoted to assistant vice president and national account executive in 2010. He was promoted to vice president in 2014 with responsibility for leading the group which managed the relationships for the large and complex financial institutions.  In 2018 Erik was appointed Senior Vice President and National Sales Director.

Erik started his Fed career as a financial services analyst in 1998 with the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City and transitioned to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in 2005.

Education

Erik holds a bachelor’s degree from The Colorado College and has done additional graduate studies at The Lake Forest Graduate School of Business and obtained his graduate certificate from the Graduate School of Banking at The University of Colorado.

Lizzie leads Product Strategy & Transformation for all Commercial Card products and clients segments, ranging from small business to Fortune 100. She has spent most of her career in strategy, consulting for Fortune 100 clients to venture-backed startups. She has led teams to launch new products, define go-to-market strategies, create operating models, and ideate customer-centric offerings, among other functions. She received her MBA from Chicago Booth, and has been selected as one of 30 women future leaders in payments by Money 20/20 in 2021 and for ETA Transact’s Forty under 40 leaders of the payments industry in 2023.

With 10+ years of experience in technology leadership and digital strategy, currently serving as Senior Vice President, Director of Technology at Citizens. Focused on driving enterprise-scale digital transformation through Mobile & Web, Conversational AI, and platform engineering, ensuring secure, resilient, and intelligent customer engagement.

Hailong “Harry” Wang is Director Analytics and Head of the MRM Innovation Lab at Fifth Third Bank, widely recognized as a thought leader and catalyst in digital model lifecycle management. Harry pioneers next-generation agentic ecosystems that elevate productivity, drive innovation, and enhance risk management across financial services. A trailblazer in Domain Knowledge Agentic AI, Harry is shaping the future of AI in the industry. He is a sought-after conference speaker on Agentic AI, hyperautomation, and digital transformation, sharing actionable insights from nearly 20 years of experience spanning banking, insurance, and commodity trading. Throughout his career, Harry has built and led top-tier quant/data science teams, established industry best practices, and delivered transformative solutions in loss forecasting, capital markets, fraud, scorecards, AI/ML, and Generative AI. His deep expertise in aligning AI innovation with SR11-7, NIST, and industry regulations ensures responsible and scalable adoption of AI across the sector.

Melisa Albas is a thoughtful leader in data-driven innovation, focused on applying AI and analytics to enable smarter decisions and more meaningful member experiences. At Tru Cooperative Bank, she transforms complex data into practical, human-centered strategies that drive measurable impact. With a background in AI/ML, customer insights, and loyalty ecosystems, Melisa has led award-winning initiatives rooted in real-world problem solving. A former analytics entrepreneur, she brings a collaborative, execution-focused mindset to addressing challenges through the responsible use of data and emerging technologies.

Tisha Dey, CTP Vice President Global Transaction Banking Tisha Dey started her career with BMO Harris Bank in 2015 and has held several roles throughout the organization from Capital Market Compliance to Sales. Her current role is with the US Treasury & Payment Solutions team as a Vice President, leading and managing Capital Market clients and collaborating with Corporate Banking partners in the Business Services and Technology sector. Tisha has prior experience of over 15 years working in diverse financial roles with PepsiCo, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Chase Bank that adds to her wealth of knowledge and international experience. Tisha seeks to grow the Treasury & Payment Solutions business through effective communication and persuasive negotiation to ensure a positive customer experience. Tisha has earned her MBA and MS degrees from DePaul University in Chicago and holds CTP certification since 2021.

Kathryn Albright is EVP of Global Payments & Deposits at Umpqua Bank, a $52B asset bank headquartered in the Pacific Northwest, with locations throughout the Western half of the U.S. At Umpqua, Albright is responsible for the development and delivery of commercial and business banking solutions, as well as the sales, onboarding and client experience teams for Treasury, Card, Merchant and International Solutions. Albright has over 30 years of financial industry experience at U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Regions Bank and BBVA. Albright has been recognized as a “Top 25 Most Influential Women in Payments” in 2024 and 2022 by American Banker, a “Woman of Influence” in 2024 by the Portland Business Journal, one of the “Most Powerful Women in Banking” for six consecutive years by American Banker, and an “Outstanding Woman in Business” twice by the Denver Business Journal. Albright is a CTP (Certified Treasury Professional), AAP (Accredited ACH Professional) and holds a B.S. in Finance from the University of Tennessee, as well as an MBA from the University of North Carolina. She is currently attending the Pacific Coast Banking School at the University of Washington.

Jamie Heidrich is the Vice President and Head of Consumer Digital – Account Experience & Non-Monetary Servicing at Fifth Third. In her current role, Jamie drives strategic priorities for the Bank’s digital channel experiences, focusing on improving customer engagement, satisfaction, and household retention. Jamie and her team strive to deliver innovative products and experiences that exceed customer expectations, positioning Fifth Third to thrive in a digital world. Since joining Fifth Third in 2012, Jamie has held several roles across the organization, gaining extensive cross-functional experience. This diverse background has enabled her to ensure that Fifth Third continues to keep the customer at the center of everything they do. During her tenure, Jamie has overseen the Bank’s key risk indicators program, played a pivotal role in maturing third-party risk management, and grew business management operations practice within Digital. Jamie earned a BA in Communications from Xavier University.

Caitlyn Mullins-Smith is a payments risk and ACH expert specializing in audits, risk assessments, and strategic consulting for financial institutions. As Vice President & Director at NEACH Payments Group, she works closely with banks, credit unions, and fintech partners to strengthen compliance programs, manage risk, and identify new revenue opportunities across the payments ecosystem.

With over a decade of experience in banking and payments, Caitlyn brings a practical, real-world perspective shaped by hands-on operational roles and executive-level advisory work. She has deep expertise in ACH origination, third-party oversight, fraud monitoring, and the evolving regulatory expectations impacting financial institutions.

In her role, Caitlyn leads complex engagements including ACH audits, risk assessments, payments strategy development, and operational transformation initiatives. She frequently works with institutions navigating growth in treasury management, commercial ACH origination, and faster payments, helping them balance innovation with sound risk management practices.

As a member of the Product Management team at Verafin, Nick’s primary focus is working in the account fraud space. He joined Verafin in 2018 in a training role and remains a key part of the customer-facing business in his role in Product Management — serving as a bridge between the customer community and Verafin’s product development teams and working to build our crime fighting capabilities.

Paul LaRusso is the CEO of Akoya, a technology platform that enables financial institutions and fintechs to give consumers greater control over their financial data — improving security, privacy, and trust across the financial services industry. Prior to Akoya, Paul spent over a decade at JPMorgan Chase, where he led the firm’s open banking strategy, launched its first mobile applications, and served as Board Co-Chair of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), driving industry standards for open banking. He holds an MBA from Georgetown University and a BA from Bucknell University.

Patricia Montesi is the Co-Founder and CEO of Qolo, where she leads the company’s mission to build the payments infrastructure that modern banks and B2B platforms actually need. She brings decades of experience inside payments infrastructure, having worked at the companies that built the rails before founding Qolo to close the gaps they left behind. Under her leadership, Qolo became the first modern processor to win a top-25 commercial card relationship with a major U.S. bank.

At LexisNexis Risk Solutions John is responsible for developing the global Payments strategy, leading the Payments portfolio and supporting our global Clients with solutions to improve their Payments Efficiency

Richard Galvez, Ph.D., is an astrophysicist turned AI scientist serving as Director, Applied AI at Everpure. He holds a PhD in Theoretical Physics from Syracuse University and completed postdoctoral AI research at NYU and Vanderbilt, later joining the NYU Center for Data Science as faculty and conducting AI research at NASA Ames, with 30+ publications at the intersection of heliophysics and artificial intelligence. His career spans academia, startups, Fortune 100, and government agencies, with deep expertise deploying AI/ML systems at global scale across digital health, robotics, defense, geospatial AI, and scientific computing. His current focus is benchmarking storage platforms to optimize performance across diverse AI/ML workloads. He lives in Austin, TX, with his wife and Shiba Inu, Watson — all equal contributors to ongoing mad scientist experiments.

Strategic Banking and Financial Services leader with 20+ years of experience driving enterprise transformation, platform modernization, and AI-led operating model reinvention across global financial institutions. Trusted advisor to CXOs on aligning technology investment with measurable business outcomes.

Eli Wachs is the Co-Founder and CEO of Footprint, the AI operating system for risk. Footprint gives compliance teams at leading banks, fintechs, and digital commerce platforms the end-to-end agentic infrastructure to review more cases, in more depth, in less time. A serial entrepreneur, Wachs started two companies before graduating from Stanford — including one that tracked the spread of infectious disease, launched and shut down two years before Covid. After a stint in private equity at General Atlantic, he founded Footprint in 2022 with a mission to make it impossible for cartels and corrupt regimes to move money. In 2025, he was named to Forbes 30 Under 30.

Michelle is a payments aficionado and evangelist. As a managing director in the KPMG Deal Advisory & Strategy Practice, Michelle serves as a trusted advisor to clients in the Payments & Fintech space, as well as, clients across industry verticals as it relates to payment functions (e.g. payment acceptance, disbursements, chargebacks). She focuses on Performance Transformation, Value Creation, and Target Operating Model engagements but serves as a subject matter professional on M&A deals (e.g. commercial due diligence, operational due diligence, integration & separation). Michelle has also spent time as Head of Payments at an online marketplace and a pre-Series A start-up. She regularly speaks at various payment conferences and has had several payment articles published. She received her operations management degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology and MBA from University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business.

Chris leads KPMG’s Financial Services Technology practice and is the head of AI, Data, and Technology Strategy nationally. He has assisted some of the largest Financial Institutions in world shape and implement their technology agendas. Chris’s 20+ years of experience in industry and consulting ranges from assisting clients migrate off of legacy technologies such as mainframes to architecting and deploying digital native banks, to working with financial institutions to implement and quickly realize value from their AI investments.

Oren Buskila is Co-Founder and CEO of Cobalt, a company helping banks and financial institutions understand the real structure of their technology environments through continuous discovery and operational intelligence. Prior to Cobalt, Oren held senior technology and product leadership roles in large scale software and enterprise technology organizations, where he focused on complex systems, digital transformation, and building products for highly regulated industries. At Cobalt, he works closely with leading financial institutions to help them accelerate modernization initiatives, reduce transformation risk, and prepare their organizations for AI adoption.

Philippa O’Hagan is Head of Deployment Execution at HappyRobot, where she leads the team responsible for getting AI agents live and delivering value for enterprise customers, including strategic deployments for financial services clients. Before HappyRobot, Philippa spent over three and a half years at Palantir Technologies as a Deployment Lead and Enterprise Lead, working closely with U.S. government clients to operationalize complex data and software deployments.

Basile Senesi is Chief Revenue Officer at F2, the AI platform used by leading banks and asset managers including Jefferies, Bain Capital, Western Alliance, Live Oak Bank, and Monroe Capital to run credit and investment workflows. Previously CRO at Arc Technologies and VP of Sales at Fundbox, where he helped scale the direct-to-SMB lender to $150M in ARR and launched the embedded Intuit QuickBooks partnership that put credit into the hands of 100,000 small businesses. He is an active angel investor across fintech and enterprise AI.

Luis Landivar is Head of Solutions Consulting at Naehas, where he helps financial institutions modernize how personalized products, pricing, offers, and customer communications are brought to market. He works with leadership teams to align technology with business and regulatory requirements, helping institutions launch faster, reduce operational risk, and manage complex product lifecycles at scale.

Shanthi Shanmugam is the Co-founder and CEO of Casap, an agentic AI platform that automates dispute resolution and fraud prevention for financial institutions, and a 2026 Inc. Female Founders 500 honoree. Before Casap, she spent six years at Robinhood scaling operations through hypergrowth, seeing firsthand how manual processes drained resources and hurt customer experience. She founded Casap to give financial institutions the tools they deserve and deliver faster, fairer outcomes through AI.

Diana Rothfuss is Global Product Marketing Director for Financial Services at SAS. She works with financial institutions around the world on AI, risk, fraud, and decisioning strategies, with a particular focus on governance, trust, and business impact. Diana is a frequent industry speaker, host of Brewing Curiosity: Banking Unfiltered, and serves on the board of the Identity Theft Resource Center.

Brian Burke, a seasoned leader with over 20 years of experience in identity data and product development, is the Vice President of Product with AtData. Known for driving innovation, Brian spearheads the evolution of AtData’s email-centered identity and marketing solutions. Previously, he served as VP of Product for Verisk Marketing Solutions, successfully navigating the acquisition of Infutor – where he led the product team for years – by Jornaya and the formation of Verisk’s marketing division. His extensive expertise encompasses product management, design, and software/database development, including a notable leadership role at LSSiDATA.

Aaron David Colcord is the Founder and CEO of Voyager AI, drawing on an extensive background that ranges from building early mobile banking infrastructure at mFoundry to developing large-scale AI programs. Previously serving as Senior Vice President for Data Platform Engineering at Associated Bank and in leadership roles at Thrivent and FIS, his career is defined by deep expertise in modern data platform architecture. He consistently applies this technical foundation, along with deterministic calculated logic and innovative engineering methodologies, to solve complex challenges within the financial technology ecosystem.

Gordon leads RDC.AI’s positioning as a global thought leader in Predictive and Agentic AI for business and commercial banking. He has over 30 years of experience in business strategy, digital transformation, and product development, and over 20 of those working in Financial Services.

Jasmine Mercado along side Luz Mercado are Co-Founders of Vida Financial Blueprint, a multilingual AI-powered B2B platform that helps banks and small businesses work more efficiently to close commercial real estate loans faster — without requiring any connection to the bank’s core systems. With 17+ years of commercial lending experience, she brings a banker’s insider perspective to solving the financing-access gap she witnessed firsthand across big banks, community banks, and CDFIs. A Stanford accelerator alum, Jasmine is also a Realtor and Board Member to a Bank and CDFI.

Gustavo Menezes is Head of Payments, North America at Thales CDI, where he brings more than 15 years of experience in business and sales strategy across the payments industry. Based in Austin, Texas, Gustavo has built his career managing commercial teams across Latin America and North America. His work centers on Modern Card Issuance and Digital Transformation for Financial Institutions. He brings a cross-regional perspective on how banks and Fintechs are modernizing payment infrastructure across the Americas.

Toffer Grant is the CEO / Founder of PEX, an AI-enabled spend and expense management platform that empowers thousands of organizations across industries such as construction, nonprofits, education, and media production. Since launching PEX in 2007, he has led its growth from a corporate card solution into a full-service platform saving finance teams hundreds of hours annually while delivering enterprise-level controls to businesses of all sizes.

Prior to founding PEX, Toffer was an early employee at Clarity Payment Solutions, a pioneering prepaid issuer processor acquired by TSYS, and earlier held roles at the William Morris Agency and DoubleClick. With more than two decades of experience in fintech, payments, and digital innovation, he brings unique insight into how technology and AI are reshaping financial operations for the modern enterprise.

Rahul Dubey is the North America Chief Growth Officer at Publicis Sapient, leading the firm’s growth organization and cross-industry business development initiatives across the region. Based in New York, he works directly with enterprise clients to navigate digital business transformation by combining Publicis Sapient’s proprietary AI platforms, such as Sapient Slingshot, Sapient Bodhi, and Sapient Sustain with deep industry expertise. Rahul focuses on helping enterprises modernize legacy systems, deploy AI responsibly, and deliver measurable business outcomes.