Banking & FinTech

Why organisations work with Stephen Foerster Co-author with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press), a working intellectual map of modern finance built from direct interviews with ten of its pioneers, including six Nobel laureates. He can take a board through how its current investment frameworks were actually constructed, with the people who built them on the page. Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance, with more than fifty papers in outlets including the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Financial Economics. The analysis is the kind that has to hold up to cross-examination. Has built and delivered executive finance programmes for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and Alcan, specifically for senior leaders without a finance background. A sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board and former chair of Foundation Western’s Investment Committee. The fiduciary discipline he teaches is one he has exercised. Biography highlights Professor of Finance at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987 PhD from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; CFA designation since 1997 Co-author with Andrew Lo (MIT Sloan) of In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio (Princeton University Press); featured in The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column; Axiom Business Awards silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing Author of Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks: Stories to Make You a Smarter Investor (Wiley, 2024); Axiom Book Awards bronze medal in Investing More than fifty published articles, including in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal Federal Court qualified expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance; sitting member of Western University’s joint pension board Biography Most boards and investment committees making consequential capital decisions are not staffed by finance specialists. They sign off on portfolio risk and long-horizon investment choices with frameworks they have not built and a century of market history they have not had time to absorb. In Pursuit of the Perfect Portfolio, co-authored with MIT Sloan’s Andrew Lo and published by Princeton University Press, takes ten of modern finance’s most consequential figures, including six Nobel laureates. The book traces how investors actually came to be taught to think about risk and return. The Wall Street Journal Bookshelf column featured the book; Axiom Business Awards gave it the silver medal in Personal Finance and Investing. The 2024 follow-up, Trailblazers, Heroes, and Crooks (Wiley), uses episodes drawn from a thousand years of market history to make the same lessons stick for senior decision-makers. That historical method runs through Foerster’s work with institutions. He has taught at Ivey Business School, Western University, since 1987. He holds a PhD from Wharton and the CFA designation, and has won Ivey’s Teaching Innovation Award and the Dean Carol Stephenson Excellence in EMBA Teaching Award. He has designed and delivered executive education for Bank of Montreal, BMO Nesbitt-Burns, the Canadian Securities Institute, and other major Canadian institutions. The focus is consistent: translating finance for senior leaders who do not come from a finance background. He has also sat on the other side of the table. He sits on Western University’s joint pension board and previously chaired the Investment Committee of Foundation Western. He is Federal Court qualified as an expert witness on investment management, portfolio management, and corporate finance. His more than fifty published papers appear in the Journal of Financial Economics, the Journal of Finance, and the Financial Analysts Journal. He is currently writing the authorised biography of William F. Sharpe, the 1990 Nobel laureate whose Capital Asset Pricing Model still underpins how most institutions measure investment risk. Key speaking topics Portfolio management and asset allocation Capital markets and long-term investing Investment decision-making and risk management Modern portfolio theory in practice Behavioural traps in investing Lessons from market history Corporate finance for non-financial executives Ideal for Boards and investment committees with fiduciary responsibility for pensions, endowments, or corporate treasury CFOs, treasurers, and finance leaders responsible for portfolio and capital allocation decisions Senior executives without a finance background who oversee investment risk Asset managers and investment professionals interested in the intellectual lineage of their field Audience outcomes Where modern portfolio theory came from, and where its assumptions break down in real markets Sharper questions to put to investment managers and finance teams Which investment lessons from market history are durable, and which are products of their era Enough working knowledge to engage substantively with capital allocation and investment risk without a finance background

Why organisations work with Arunjay Katakam He has spent over a decade inside the GSMA and Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation portfolios building the financial infrastructure that brought a billion people into the formal economy, so he speaks about inclusion as an operating problem, not a values statement. His book Generation Hope sets out a five-principle model (growth, participation, opportunity, stability, sustainability) that boards can map directly onto strategy, pricing, and product decisions. He has co-founded three startups, mentored 20-plus emerging-market fintechs through DFS Lab, and built ventures at Catalyst Fund, which gives him real authority on scale-up economics rather than commentary. He brings operator credibility on cross-border payments, digital public infrastructure, and zero-fee payment design, all areas where boards now face direct regulatory and competitive pressure. Biography highlights Author, Generation Hope: How Inclusive Economics Can Help Us All Thrive (Otterpine, 2024). Author, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, a practitioner guide to profitable money-transfer operators. Strategic Advisor, Interledger Foundation. Founder and CEO, Yooz, a cross-border remittance company. Founder, Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating ventures aimed at poverty alleviation by 2030. Co-author of two GSMA State of the Industry reports on mobile financial services for the unbanked; former EY consultant; mentor to 20-plus inclusive fintech startups via DFS Lab. Biography Most organisations describe inclusion as a values problem. After a decade inside the GSMA and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, building the rails that brought a billion people into the formal economy, the case is sharper than that. Inclusion is an operating problem, with measurable consequences for pricing, distribution, and risk. That is the argument behind Generation Hope (Otterpine, 2024), which sets out five principles: growth, participation, opportunity, stability, and sustainability. The book gives senior leaders a usable frame for redesigning commercial strategy when the extractive model is running out of road, not a moral lecture. The operator background is what makes the case credible. Arunjay Katakam co-founded three startups, including one acquired by Twitter, ran cross-border remittance company Yooz, mentored more than 20 emerging-market fintechs at DFS Lab, and built ventures with Catalyst Fund. His earlier book, The Power of Micro Money Transfers, is a working manual for building profitable payment operators on zero-fee economics. He now advises the Interledger Foundation on open payments infrastructure and runs Inclusive Action Lab, a non-profit incubating moonshot ventures aimed at ending extreme poverty by 2030. The throughline is consistent: commercial discipline applied to inclusive design, with the numbers to support it. Key speaking topics Inclusive economics as a commercial operating model Cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure Open and decentralised finance Scale-up leadership in emerging-market fintech Zero-fee payment design and unit economics Generation Hope: rebuilding growth around participation and sustainability Ideal for Boards and ExCos rethinking growth strategy under regulatory, customer, and capital pressure Financial services leaders (CEO, COO, Chief Strategy Officer, Chief Sustainability Officer) navigating cross-border payments, fintech disruption, and inclusion mandates Innovation and venture-building teams inside large institutions backing inclusive products Foundation, development finance, and policy audiences working on financial inclusion Audience outcomes A five-principle model audiences can apply to their own pricing, product, and strategy decisions A clearer view of where inclusive economics changes unit economics rather than just narrative Specific examples from cross-border payments and digital public infrastructure that show what works at scale A practical agenda for boards on how to position growth strategy for the next decade

Why organisations work with Rodney Williams He has built two venture-backed fintech companies from concept to scale, including SoLo Funds, the only Black-led Certified B Corp fintech in the US, with over 1 million loans funded for 1.5 million users. He raised more than $40M for LISNR with clients including Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo, giving him operating experience inside the commercial functions of global brands rather than a venture-capital perspective from the outside. He brings a working operator’s view of financial inclusion that does not collapse into advocacy, anchored in his testimony to federal regulators and direct experience designing products for working and middle-class consumers. Named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, a recurrence that is unusual and signals durable founder relevance rather than one moment of attention. Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute, with the framing capacity that programme selects for, which translates to a keynote that argues rather than just narrates. Biography highlights Co-founder and President, SoLo Funds, the largest community finance platform in the US, with over 1 million loans funded since 2018. Founder and Chair, LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission company backed by Visa with over $40M raised. Former Brand Manager, Procter & Gamble, leading digital strategy and ecommerce for Pampers North America. 2019 Henry Crown Fellow, Aspen Global Leadership Network. CNBC Disruptor 50 honouree in 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019, and 2023. Cannes Gold Lion (2015); Ad Age 40 Under 40 (2012); Black Enterprise Tech Entrepreneur of the Year (2016); Ebony Power 100 (2018). Biography SoLo Funds has facilitated more than a million loans to working and lower-middle-class Americans since 2018, and it did so by treating its users as both borrowers and lenders to each other. The business depends on a functioning peer community, not on a marketing community. That distinction sounds semantic until a leadership team tries to operationalise it. Rodney Williams co-founded SoLo Funds after building LISNR, an ultrasonic data-transmission platform he scaled to over $40M in funding with commercial deployments at Visa, Ticketmaster, Jaguar Land Rover, and Lenovo. Before LISNR, he ran digital and ecommerce strategy for Pampers North America at Procter & Gamble, which is where he learned how large consumer organisations actually think about customer acquisition, retention, and brand economics. That sequence matters. He has built community-led commercial models inside a $300B consumer goods business, inside a B2B technology company selling to global brands, and inside a fintech that has become the only Black-led Certified B Corp in its category. The arguments he makes about community as a commercial mechanism are operating arguments, not theoretical ones. He has been named to the CNBC Disruptor 50 list five times across nine years, including 2023, and is a 2019 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute. His most pointed contribution for a corporate audience is on what financial inclusion actually requires from product, regulatory, and capital partners once advocacy ends and operations begin. SoLo’s growth has placed him in direct conversation with federal regulators, congressional offices, and tier-one investors including Serena Ventures, ACME Capital, and Endeavor Catalyst, and he speaks from inside those conversations rather than from a panel about them. Key speaking topics Community as commercial operating model Founding and scaling venture-backed fintech Financial inclusion and the underserved consumer Brand building inside large consumer organisations Inclusive capital raising and founder ecosystems Disruptive product strategy in regulated markets Black entrepreneurship and category creation Ideal for CMOs, brand leaders, and growth executives at consumer-facing organisations rethinking community as a commercial channel. Boards and leadership teams of banks, fintechs, and financial services firms reassessing the underserved-consumer opportunity. Founders, venture investors, and corporate venture units focused on inclusive innovation and scale-up discipline. DEI, ESG, and impact leaders looking for a founder-operator voice on inclusive commercial outcomes rather than advocacy framing. Audience outcomes A concrete view of how community functions as an operating mechanism inside a commercial business, not as a brand layer. A founder-operator perspective on building, financing, and defending an inclusive product inside a regulated category. Arguments and case material on why the working and lower-middle-class consumer is structurally underserved, and what product responses actually move the market. Direct experience and pattern recognition from raising capital as a Black founder, applicable to inclusive investment and founder-development programmes.

Why organisations work with Omar Christidis He has spent a decade mapping the MENA digital economy at a depth no global consultancy replicates: 30+ Arabnet conferences, 15+ original research reports and direct visibility into more than 650 regional startups. He sits inside the deal flow as Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, so his read on what is actually getting funded in the region is operational, not commentary. His advisory work with the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program and the Aspen Institute UK gives him a policy-grade frame on technology that translates well to boards weighing geopolitical exposure alongside digital strategy. He is one of the few speakers who can hold a serious technology conversation in both English and Arabic for a regional C-suite audience, with the Yale and Booz analytical pedigree to back it up. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of Arabnet, the MENA-focused digital events, media and research company, founded in Beirut in 2009. Partner and Board Member, Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 investments in Lebanese startups. Advisory Board Member, Strategic Foresights Program, Middle East Institute, Washington DC. Faculty Member and Moderator, Aspen Institute UK. BA and MBA, Yale University; former consultant at Booz & Co. MENA. Named Global Finance Magazine Top Innovator for the Middle East (2018); featured in Forbes, CNN, CNBC Arabia and Sky News Arabia. Biography The MENA digital economy is no longer an emerging-market footnote. Over the past decade it has produced unicorns, regulatory frameworks for fintech and e-commerce, and a regional venture industry that now writes cheques large enough to keep founders at home. Few people have shaped that shift more practically than the founder of Arabnet. Arabnet was launched in Beirut in 2009, after Omar Christidis left a role in private wealth management in New York during the financial crisis and a stint at Booz & Co. in the MENA. The company has since organised more than thirty regional tech conferences, published over fifteen original research reports on the Arab digital ecosystem, and supported 650+ startups, becoming the standing forum where founders, corporates and investors meet. His credibility is built on access, not opinion. As Partner and Board Member at Flat6Labs Beirut, a $20m accelerator with 33 Lebanese investments, he sees what is being funded. As an Advisory Board Member of the Middle East Institute’s Strategic Foresights Program in Washington and a Faculty Member at Aspen Institute UK, he sees how regional technology decisions are being read in policy circles. The result is a speaker who can tell a Gulf board what the next wave of digital challengers actually looks like, where capital is moving, and which corporate innovation playbooks travel and which do not. Global Finance Magazine named him Top Innovator for the Middle East in 2018; the World Economic Forum named Arabnet a Top 100 Arab World Startup the year before. Key speaking topics MENA digital economy and startup ecosystem Corporate innovation strategy Digital disruption and emerging business models Tech investment and venture capital in the Arab world Future of media and advertising Fourth industrial revolution Banking and fintech in the Middle East Ideal for Boards and C-suites of regional incumbents in banking, telco, media and retail facing digital challengers Global corporates entering or scaling in MENA who need a regional read on customer behaviour and competitive risk Investors, family offices and sovereign funds allocating to MENA technology and venture Government and policy audiences shaping digital, fintech and innovation regulation in the region Audience outcomes A current, named view of where MENA digital capital is flowing and which sub-sectors are concentrating A working frame for distinguishing genuine regional disruptors from imported business models that will not survive local conditions Specific examples of how incumbents in banking, retail and media have responded to digital challengers in MENA, and what worked A sharper read on how Gulf and Levant regulators are shaping the operating environment for technology businesses

Why organisations work with Sheena Allen She built and ran a venture-backed US digital bank to closure and is willing to talk in detail about what the regulatory environment, capital cycle, and category timing did to it. Practitioner perspective, not commentary. She bootstrapped a five-app mobile studio to millions of downloads before raising a dollar, so her view of fundraising versus self-funding comes from having done both. She is a credible voice on financial inclusion grounded in market reality, not advocacy posture, having designed product for banking-desert communities and seen what compliance and unit economics impose. She speaks to the non-technical founder problem with authority because she has built tech companies as a psychology and film major, including her current AI-product work through MindFull AI. Biography highlights Founder and CEO of CapWay, a Y Combinator Summer 2020 fintech and digital bank backed by Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures. Founder of Sheena Allen Apps, a bootstrapped mobile studio with five apps and millions of downloads. Currently leads CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio and research organisation, and builds AI-native products through MindFull AI. Co-host of the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor. Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree. Featured in Google’s Webby Award-winning documentary series Black Women in Tech and in the film She Started It; author of The Starting Guide. Biography CapWay was a venture-backed US digital bank built to serve customers in banking deserts. It raised from Backstage Capital, Fearless Fund, and Khosla Ventures, went through Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 cohort, and closed in 2024 after the wider fintech regulatory environment turned against companies that depended on partner banks. Sheena Allen ran it from founding to wind-down. That arc is the spine of her work as a speaker. She talks about fintech not as a category to admire but as a category that punishes founders who underestimate compliance cost, capital cycles, and the dependency on infrastructure they do not own. After the Synapse collapse and the Evolve Bank breach, she was direct in the press about why the business could not raise another round. Before CapWay, she bootstrapped Sheena Allen Apps from her dorm room at the University of Southern Mississippi into a five-app mobile studio with millions of downloads. She studied psychology and film, not computer science, and she has built every venture since by assembling technical teams around her rather than coding herself. That is the perspective behind her current work at CREAM Factory, a fintech venture studio, and at MindFull AI, where she ships AI-native products as a non-technical founder. She is a Forbes 30 Under 30 honouree, co-hosts the Rich Lessons podcast with Sevetri Wilson Taylor, and was featured in Google’s Black Women in Tech series and the film She Started It. Her book, The Starting Guide, walks first-time founders through the operational decisions she made early and would now make differently. Key speaking topics Building venture-backed companies in regulated categories Financial inclusion and the economics of banking deserts Bootstrapping versus venture capital as founder strategies Non-technical founders and how they actually ship product AI tools for small teams and solo operators Mobile product strategy and pre-development planning Women and underrepresented founders in fintech Ideal for Founder programmes, accelerators, and venture studios looking for an operator who has built and closed a regulated business. Financial services, fintech, and banking conferences seeking a practitioner voice on financial inclusion and partner-bank risk. Diversity and inclusion programmes inside banks, payment networks, and large tech companies that want substance over symbolism. Innovation and product audiences inside non-technical industries that want to hear how non-technical founders ship. Audience outcomes A clearer view of how capital cycles and regulatory shifts decide which fintechs survive. Specific lessons from inside a Y Combinator-backed digital bank that closed, including what she would do differently. A grounded read on financial inclusion as a market problem, not a campaign theme. Concrete examples of how a non-technical founder builds and runs product teams, including with AI tooling. A useable mental model for choosing between bootstrapping and venture capital at different stages.

Why organisations work with Cheryl Campos She has built the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, VCFamilia, and has used it to channel more than $10M of LP funding to emerging Latine fund managers. That is an operating result inside venture capital, not a panel statement. She knows how to take a FinTech platform from early stage to unicorn. As employee #10 at Republic, she led venture growth and partnerships through the company’s run to a $1BN valuation. Her LaFamilia Foundation work is backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer, which gives corporate audiences a credible reference point for what serious inclusion investment looks like in practice. She holds an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Harvard economics degree, and pairs that with an investor’s view of where capital actually flows. Her speaking range covers FinTech, venture, identity and community building, which makes her usable for inclusion programming, leadership offsites and FinTech-sector events without changing speakers. Biography highlights Co-founder and CEO, LaFamilia Foundation, backed by J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. Co-founder of VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. Former Head of Venture Growth and Partnerships at Republic, employee #10, scaling the platform to a $1BN valuation. Scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and investment partner at The Community Fund. Former Investment Banking Analyst at Barclays, Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance. BA in Economics with honours, Harvard University. MBA, Stanford Graduate School of Business. Named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31. Biography Latine founders raise less than 2 percent of venture capital, despite Latine consumers being one of the fastest-growing economic groups in the United States. Closing that gap is not a marketing problem. It needs operators who can build new pipelines of investors, founders and limited partners, and move real money through them. LaFamilia Foundation was set up to do that work. As co-founder and CEO, Campos runs two communities under the foundation: VCFamilia, the largest global community of Latine venture capitalists, and FounderFamilia, a network of 500+ Latine venture-backed founders. VCFamilia has facilitated more than $10M of LP funding into emerging Latine fund managers. FounderFamilia has directed over $1M into early-stage startups through its national pitch competition. Corporate backers include J.P. Morgan, AWS, Comcast and Gunderson Dettmer. The operating credibility comes from Republic. Campos joined the FinTech investment platform as employee #10 in 2018 and led venture growth and partnerships during its run to a $1BN valuation. She is also a scout for Lightspeed Venture Partners and an investment partner at The Community Fund, with prior experience as an investment banking analyst at Barclays in the Financial Institutions Group and Structured Finance team. Her academic background sits on top of that operating record. Campos holds a BA in economics with honours from Harvard University and an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business. She was named to HBCUvc’s 31 Under 31 list of emerging venture capital talent, and is a frequent voice in FinTech and venture programming on inclusion, community building and capital access. Key speaking topics Community as a capital-access mechanism in venture and FinTech Latine representation in venture capital and entrepreneurship Inclusion in financial services and technology Building investor and founder pipelines from scratch FinTech growth and scale-up operating lessons Identity, career path and reinvention Ideal for DEI, talent and ERG leaders inside banks, asset managers and FinTech firms looking for substance beyond sentiment programming. Venture capital firms, family offices and corporate venture teams building Latine or wider underrepresented founder pipelines. Heads of community, marketing and partnerships at FinTech and platform businesses scaling user and investor networks. Industry conferences on FinTech, entrepreneurship and capital markets that need a credible voice on inclusion as an operating discipline. Audience outcomes A working view of how community structures inside venture and FinTech move capital and talent, not just sentiment. Specific reference points for what corporate-backed inclusion programmes look like when J.P. Morgan, AWS and Comcast are the partners. Practical lessons from inside a FinTech platform that scaled from employee 10 to unicorn status. A clearer read on how Latine founder and investor networks are forming and where corporates can plug in usefully.

Why organisations work with Brett King He built one of the first mobile-only banks. Bank 4.0 is grounded in operating experience at Moven, not theory borrowed from outside the industry. He has briefed governments and regulators, including advising the Obama administration on fintech policy, and continues to advise central banks and regulators on technology transformation. Two of his books, Augmented and Bank 4.0, became sustained international bestsellers, with Bank 4.0 recognised as Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019 under a PwC-audited process. Breaking Banks and The Futurists give him a continuous, current read on what fintech operators, regulators and technologists are actually doing, week by week, in more than 180 countries. His thesis stretches beyond banking. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-authored with Richard Petty, sets out four scenarios for an economy reshaped by AI, automation, inequality and climate, which makes him a useful voice for boards thinking beyond their own sector. Biography highlights Founder of Moven, an early mobile-only banking startup launched in New York in 2011. Author of Bank 4.0, Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane, Bank 2.0, Bank 3.0, Breaking Banks and The Rise of Technosocialism (with Dr. Richard Petty). Inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights in 2020. Host of Breaking Banks on VoiceAmerica and co-host of The Futurists podcast. Advised the Obama administration on fintech policy; advises bank boards and regulators internationally. Keynote stages include TED, Web Summit, The Economist events, SIBOS, Singularity University, IBM World of Watson and CES. Biography Most large banks were designed around branches, products and quarterly earnings. The industry now competes with software companies, payments networks, embedded-finance providers and increasingly with AI agents that sit between customers and money. The question for boards is no longer whether to digitise. It is what kind of institution they want on the other side of the next decade. Brett King has been close to that question for fifteen years. He founded Moven in New York in 2011, one of the first mobile-only banks, and used the experience as the basis for Bank 4.0: Banking Everywhere, Never at a Bank, which mapped how value, distribution and trust move when the branch is no longer the unit of banking. The book was named Top Book by a Foreign Author in Russia in 2019, under a PwC-audited award process, and remains widely cited inside the industry. His range stretches further than banking. Augmented: Life in the Smart Lane tracked how AI, sensors, biotechnology and smart infrastructure compound into a different operating environment for business and society. The Rise of Technosocialism, co-written with Richard Petty, takes the argument forward, setting out four scenarios for a world in which automation, inequality and climate force political economies to rewire. That body of work is why central banks, regulators and global financial institutions invite him into rooms where the question is structural, not tactical. Two podcasts keep his perspective current. Breaking Banks, which he hosts on VoiceAmerica, has become a reference point for fintech operators worldwide. The Futurists, which he co-hosts, gives him a regular working dialogue with technologists and researchers across AI, space, biotech and energy. His induction into the Fintech Hall of Fame in 2020 reflects the operating record, not the podcast catalogue. Key speaking topics The future of banking and financial services Embedded finance and the platform economics of money Artificial intelligence and the automated economy Fintech, regulation and the role of central banks AI, inequality and climate as forces reshaping political economy Long-range technology foresight for boards and regulators Ideal for Bank, insurer and asset-manager boards and executive committees setting digital and AI strategy Central bankers, financial regulators and policy bodies working on payments, digital assets and AI governance Large enterprises whose business model is exposed to fintech, embedded payments or AI-driven disintermediation Conferences and summits in financial services, technology and futures-of-industry programmes Audience outcomes A sharper read on where banking, payments and customer trust are moving over the next decade. A grounded view, from an operator, of what works and what fails when incumbents try to digitise. Named scenarios for how AI, automation and climate may reshape labour markets, capital and policy. A practical agenda for board-level discussions on AI deployment, fintech partnerships and regulatory exposure.

Why organisations work with Ashlea Atigolo She has co-built a generative AI product, Finley AI, that has been recognised on the WealthTech100 2024 list, so the advice she offers boards is grounded in shipped technology rather than commentary. She brings a regulated-industry lens. Her work spans wealth management, private equity and fintech, where the question is not whether to deploy AI but how to do it without breaking trust, compliance, or customer relationships. She is a credible voice on women in AI without leaning on the topic alone. The named recognition (TechRound Top 64 Women in Tech, Great British Businesswoman finalist, Fintech Powerlist) sits alongside the technical and commercial credentials. She is equally fluent as a keynote speaker, panel host and workshop facilitator, which makes her a flexible fit for AI summits, leadership offsites and investor-facing events. Biography highlights Co-founder of INATIGO, a generative AI venture builder. Co-founder of Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024. Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners, advising executives on generative and agentic AI adoption. Former Co-Founder and Co-Managing Director of City Wharf Private Wealth, awarded Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. Listed on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology (2022) and named on the Fintech Powerlist. Speaker and host at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit. Biography Most organisations have an AI strategy. A much smaller number have AI in production, talking to customers, sitting inside regulated workflows and answering to a compliance function. Ashlea Atigolo works at that second layer. As co-founder of INATIGO and its flagship product Finley AI, listed on the WealthTech100 2024, she has built generative AI systems for personal finance rather than written about them. Her route into AI was operational, not academic. Before INATIGO she co-founded City Wharf Private Wealth, where her co-leadership won Europe’s Most Innovative Wealth Management Model at the 2021 WealthBriefing European Awards. That background gives her advisory work a distinctive cast. She understands wealth, private equity and fintech as live operating environments, not case studies, and her current role as Managing Partner at Consult Venture Partners is built on that. Her independent recognition is dense and recent. She has been named on TechRound’s Top 64 Influential Women in UK Technology, included on the Fintech Powerlist, and shortlisted as a finalist for the Great British Businesswoman Awards in technology. She has advised Adobe directly and has been engaged through GLG, AlphaSense and GuidePoint by executives in fintech, private equity and financial services. On stage she is most useful to organisations that need a builder’s view of generative and agentic AI: what to deploy, what to delay, how to govern it, and where the human still has to sit inside the workflow. She hosts and keynotes at Fintech Week London, Fintech Connect and Chatbot Africa AI Summit, and is equally credible in a board workshop as on a main-stage panel. Key speaking topics Generative and agentic AI in financial services AI product strategy and deployment in regulated industries Conversational and empathetic AI design Responsible AI, trust and governance Fintech and wealth management innovation Women in AI and inclusive technology teams Leadership through technological disruption Ideal for Boards and executive committees in financial services, wealth management, private equity and fintech sizing up generative or agentic AI investments. CIO, CTO, CDO and Head of Innovation audiences moving from AI pilots into operating deployment. Fintech, AI and wealth-management conferences looking for an operator-speaker rather than a commentator. Internal AI summits, leadership offsites and women-in-tech programmes inside large enterprises. Audience outcomes A clearer picture of where generative and agentic AI is genuinely production-ready in regulated industries, and where it is not. A working vocabulary for governance conversations: agents, guardrails, oversight, human-in-the-loop. A view of how a builder, not a vendor, sequences AI adoption inside a regulated business. Named examples of fintech and wealth-management deployments that buyers can take into their own strategy conversations.

Why organisations work with Robin Speculand Direct, exclusive access to the inside story of DBS Bank’s transformation from «best bank in Singapore» to repeated «World’s Best Bank» winner, captured through C-suite interviews and translated into a method other organisations can apply. Proprietary implementation assessments and tools, including the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, that give leadership teams a structured way to diagnose where their strategy is breaking down. Co-author with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez of the Strategy Implementation Playbook, the most current step-by-step reference work in a field most consultancies still treat as adjacent to strategy. Two and a half decades specialising solely in the implementation problem at Bridges Business Consultancy, with foundational client engagements at Singapore Airlines and a global luxury group, and current work extending the same discipline into AI and digital transformation. Biography highlights Founder and CEO, Bridges Business Consultancy Int; co-founder, Strategy Implementation Institute; co-founder, Digital Leadership Specialists. Author of nine books, including World’s Best Bank (Amazon #1 bestseller, translated into seven languages) and Implement (2024). Co-nominated for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award (2021) with former DBS CEO Piyush Gupta. Educator for Duke CE, IMD, and adjunct faculty at Singapore Management University. Frequent speaker at the Global Peter Drucker Forum and ambassador for the Forum in Singapore; featured on CNN, BBC, CNBC, Channel News Asia, and Forbes. Author of six Harvard-listed case studies on DBS Bank’s digital transformation. Biography DBS Bank was, for years, an unremarkable regional player. A decade later, it had been named World’s Best Bank by Euromoney, Global Finance, and The Banker in successive years, and Harvard had filed it among the most significant digital transformations of the era. Robin Speculand had direct access to the C-suite throughout. World’s Best Bank: A Strategic Guide to Digital Transformation is the published account of how the change was actually executed, not a retrospective tribute. That access matters because most strategy literature stops at the decision. Speculand founded Bridges Business Consultancy in 2000 specifically because he saw executives talking about strategy with almost no operating language for implementation. Twenty-five years later, the field he helped name has its own institute, of which he is co-founder, and a body of work that includes nine books, six Harvard-listed case studies, and the Strategy Implementation Playbook co-authored with Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez. His 2024 book Implement: Doing it Right in a Digital World extends the same discipline into AI-era transformation. His proprietary tools, the Implementation Compass and the Ticking Clock model, give boards a way to locate where execution is breaking down: governance, pace, capability, behaviour, or measurement. Singapore Airlines was an early client. A global luxury group used the work to anchor its first digital programme. The teaching footprint, Duke CE, IMD, Singapore Management University, NUS, reflects how seriously serious institutions now take implementation as a discrete competence. He was co-nominated with then-DBS CEO Piyush Gupta for the Thinkers50 Ideas into Practice Award in 2021, the practitioner counterpart to the main Thinkers50 ranking. The point is not the recognition. It is what the nomination signals: that the lessons of one of the decade’s most-studied transformations have been codified in a form other organisations can use. Key speaking topics Transformation in an AI-driven world Strategy implementation Digital transformation Execution and operating discipline Lessons from the DBS Bank transformation Leadership in change programmes Organizational Agility Ideal for CEOs, COOs, and chief strategy officers leading enterprise-wide transformation Boards governing multi-year digital or operating-model change Banking and financial services leadership teams benchmarking against DBS Senior teams preparing strategy off-sites where implementation, not formulation, is the constraint Audience outcomes A clear language for diagnosing where their own strategy is breaking down in implementation The DBS playbook is a comparable, not a case study, with the levers their own organisation can pull A structured view of transformation as governance and capability work, not a technology purchase Specific instruments (Implementation Compass, Ticking Clock), leaders can take back into their next strategy review

Why organisations work with Manisha Tank Five years hosting the Singapore Fintech Festival, the largest fintech gathering in Asia, gives her live editorial command of a 7,000-seat stage and a working knowledge of the sector’s senior players. A 25-year anchoring career across Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International means she interviews from a position of subject fluency, not a script. She has put questions to CEOs, founders, policymakers and heads of state on live broadcast television. She moderates the Milken Institute Asia Summit and hosted Earthshot+ during The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in 2023. Both events demand a host who can move between climate finance, technology and policy in the same panel without losing the room. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, so corporate communications teams are buying a known editorial product, not an unknown. Based in Singapore. A buyer running a regional summit in Asia gets a host who understands the regulatory, political and capital context their senior speakers actually operate in. Biography highlights 25-plus years as an international broadcast journalist for Reuters Television, BBC News and CNN International. Former anchor of CNN’s News Stream from Hong Kong (Asian TV Awards, Best TV News Programme) and Talk Asia. Host of the Singapore Fintech Festival for five consecutive years. Moderator at the Milken Institute Asia Summit and host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize Singapore 2023. Host of the podcast Tank Talks Asia, and producer of corporate podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture. Winner, Summerson Goodacre and Daily Telegraph Wealth Management Award for Best Industry Commentator, 2007. Read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. Biography Running a senior conference stage is a different craft from delivering a keynote on it. The host sets the editorial pace, frames the question the panel is actually there to answer, and decides when to press a CEO and when to move on. Get it wrong and a marquee event reads as flat. Get it right and the room produces the material that gets quoted for the rest of the year. That is the work Manisha Tank has done for two and a half decades. She spent the formative part of her career as a financial news reporter for Reuters Television, posted to New York to cover the Nasdaq and the NYSE in the late 1990s, then anchored business and main news bulletins for BBC News in London. She joined CNN International in the mid 2000s and fronted News Stream from Hong Kong, which won Best TV News Programme at the Asian TV Awards, and the long-form interview series Talk Asia. Now based in Singapore, she has built a second career as the editorial host of the region’s most senior business stages. Five consecutive years at the Singapore Fintech Festival. Recurring moderation work at the Milken Institute Asia Summit. Host of Earthshot+ at The Earthshot Prize week in Singapore in November 2023, the investor-facing day of Prince William’s climate prize. She produces and hosts long-form branded podcast series for Standard Chartered CCIB and Accenture, and her own podcast, Tank Talks Asia, interviews senior figures from across the region. Her subject anchors are fintech, financial inclusion, sustainability and digital transformation. Her award for Best Industry Commentator from the Daily Telegraph and Summerson Goodacre dates back to 2007. The continuity is the craft itself: she remains one of the few hosts in Asia who can hold a CEO panel, a head-of-state interview and a climate finance session in the same programme without losing the room. Key speaking topics Conference hosting and main-stage moderation Panel moderation for senior leadership audiences Fintech and financial inclusion in Asia Net zero transition finance and sustainability Digital transformation and emerging technologies Corporate podcast hosting and branded audio Ideal for Senior business and finance summits in Asia that need an experienced editorial host on the main stage. CEO-level panel sessions on fintech, sustainability or digital transformation where the moderator needs to push without breaking the room. Corporate communications and marketing leads commissioning long-form branded podcast series with a recognisable broadcaster. Investor days, awards nights and after-dinner programmes that require an emcee with broadcast pedigree. Audience outcomes A programme that runs to time, with sessions that end on the question the audience came to hear answered. Panels that get past prepared talking points, because the moderator knows the subject and the speakers. A senior audience that stays in the room for the second half of the day. A set of session clips and quotes the marketing team can use long after the event.

Why organisations work with Alex Wood First-hand operator knowledge of social engineering, impersonation and mule-account networks, drawn from years inside the work rather than modelled from the outside. Active advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces, so the material reflects current regulatory and policing priorities. Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian on the fraud mindset and social engineering, giving risk, compliance and customer-protection teams a structured view of how scams are designed. Co-presenter of BBC Radio 4’s Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, a weekly national broadcast that keeps his case base current rather than historical. Biography highlights Co-presenter, BBC Radio 4 Scam Secrets, alongside journalist Shari Vahl and criminologist Dr Elisabeth Carter Advises the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority and UK police forces on fraud mindset and social engineering Consults for Tier 1 banks including NatWest and risk firms including Experian Author of the forthcoming memoir Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency Trained classical violinist, Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music; early performances at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall Named speaker at Counter Fraud 2023 and UK Cyber Week 2024 Biography Most fraud controls assume the attacker is a technical problem. The last decade of evidence says the attacker is a psychologist with a laptop. What banks, insurers and regulators rarely get in the room is the working logic of the person on the other side of the transaction, and that is what Alex Wood brings. Wood trained as a concert violinist at the Purcell School, Royal Academy of Music and Royal College of Music, and performed at the Royal Festival Hall, Royal Opera House and Wigmore Hall. A repetitive strain injury ended the career in his early twenties. What followed was a decade of fraud, including a 2015 conviction for impersonating the Duke of Marlborough across London hotels and a later sentence tied to banking fraud. He was released from prison in 2022. Since then he has become a working advisor to the Home Office, the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office, the Cabinet Office, the Financial Conduct Authority, UK police forces and Tier 1 banks including NatWest. His focus is the mule-account economy and the social engineering playbooks that defeat otherwise strong controls. He co-presents the BBC Radio 4 series Scam Secrets with Shari Vahl and Dr Elisabeth Carter, dissecting live cases with forensic detail. His memoir, Facing the Music: From Her Majesty’s Palaces to Her Majesty’s Prisons, is represented by Andrew Lownie Literary Agency, and a documentary on his story is in production with Mindhouse Productions, the company founded by Louis Theroux. For a risk committee briefing, what Wood delivers is specific: how a criminal chooses a target, how a customer is moved into a mule role, and where in a bank’s own process the decisive second of hesitation was lost. Key speaking topics The fraud mindset and how sophisticated scams are designed Social engineering and impersonation at scale Mule accounts and the retail-banking fraud perimeter AI-enabled fraud and the near-term threat surface Informal value-transfer systems and underworld banking (Hawala, Daigou) Counter-fraud culture inside large financial institutions Ideal for Heads of financial crime, fraud and compliance at banks, insurers and law firms Risk and customer-protection teams rebuilding fraud prevention programmes Internal audit, AML and onboarding functions facing mule-account and impersonation pressure Counter-fraud conferences, regulator-facing events and financial services leadership summits Audience outcomes A working view of how fraud is designed from the offender side, not the detection side Specific frames for spotting social-engineering and impersonation pressure earlier in the transaction path A read on where AI-enabled fraud and underworld banking are pushing the near-term threat surface A speaker whose BBC Radio 4 co-presenter role keeps the material current with national-level fraud reporting