Leadership

Kimberly (Kim) Ford is Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. Kim is the first to serve in this role, and she is responsible for managing the daily operations of the organization and working with the FPC board and membership to execute on the FPC’s strategic plan while ensuring inclusive and transparent dialogue with all FPC stakeholders. FPC members include business end-users, consumer organizations, financial institutions, payment network operators, technology providers and others.

Prior to her Executive Director role, she was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Government Affairs for First Data, a Fortune 300 financial services company that provides payment technology and services to more than six million merchants and financial institutions around the world. She was responsible for development and implementation of the company’s policy strategy and political advocacy engagement across the globe and was First Data’s registered lobbyist in the United States and European Union. Before First Data, Kim served as Regional Director for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida, and she served in lobbying and communications roles for several Florida-based business trade associations prior to that.

Kim is a well-recognized and popular speaker on a variety of payments issues at industry and client conferences, and she has served as a subject matter expert witness to testify in front of the U.S. Congress as well as at various state legislative bodies across the country.

She is based in Washington, DC.

John is CEO of the Merchant Advisory Group. As CEO, John leads the strategy for ensuring the ~150 top merchant’s voice is heard to drive positive change and innovation in the payments industry that serves the merchants’ interests through collaboration, education and advocacy. Since joining the Merchant Advisory Group in August of 2019, John has expanded the Merchant Advisory Groups effort through the creation of the MAG Tech Forum and the development of a formal educational strategy.

Prior to joining the Merchant Advisory Group, John enjoyed a 20 year career at Walmart holding various leadership positions in Payment Acceptance, Marketing and Financial Services. As part of the a leadership of the Walmart Payment team, John helped shape and implement a comprehensive strategy which increased the ease of payments in an Omni-channel environment while ensuring Walmart could deliver on its brand promise of helping its customers save more so they can live better.

John has participated is several key payment stakeholder groups including Chairing both the Merchant Advisory Group and the U.S. Payment Forum Steering Committee. He also participated in the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payment effort, holding a steering committee seat as well as a seat on the Governance Framework Formation Team.

He has been recognized within the industry for his ability to find common ground and drive positive outcomes from opposing views.

John attended Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, IL, where he received his Bachelor’s Degree and currently lives in Bentonville, Arkansas.

Reed Luhtanen is Executive Director of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. Reed is responsible for managing the daily operations of the organization and working with the FPC board and membership to execute on the FPC’s strategic plan while ensuring inclusive and transparent dialogue with all FPC stakeholders. FPC members include business end-users, consumer organizations, financial institutions, payment network operators, technology providers, and others.

Reed has extensive experience in the payments industry and has served on myriad industry bodies, most recently an officer on the FPC Board of Directors; the Federal Reserve-sponsored Governance Framework Formation Team, which created the U.S. Faster Payments Council; and the Corporate Advisory Group for The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments System. Prior to joining the FPC, he spent 15 years at Walmart, departing as senior director of global treasury, where he was responsible for the company’s payments-related public policy and public relations initiatives, network and processor relationships, and establishing Walmart’s payments acceptance strategies.

In 2015, Reed was recognized as one of PayBefore’s “Top Ten Payments Lawyers” and The Electronic Transactions Association honored him as a member of its “Forty Under 40” class in 2019. He has a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Arkansas’ Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences and a J.D. from the University of Arkansas School of Law.

He is based in Bentonville, AR.

Perry has worked at Target since the year 2000, most of that time in payments-related roles.  In his current role as Director of Payment Acceptance he leads the team responsible for Card Network and Acquirer/Processor relationships, including the accounting and chargeback functions.  Prior to that he supported Target’s REDcard program when Target issued payment cards out of its two owned banks.  During his tenure at Target he has worked on a wide range of topical payments issues, including credit card portfolio economics and sales, Target’s 5% rewards program, debit card reform and routing optimization, and other efforts to manage acceptance costs.  As a result, he brings some understanding the various perspectives of the different stakeholders in the retail payments space.  Before Target, Perry worked for five years at Exxon in various finance and marketing roles.  Perry has a law degree from the University of Minnesota, maintains an active bar certification in Minnesota, has an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a Chemical Engineering Degree from Ohio University.

Tom Feltner is Center for Responsible Lending’s director of research, based in the Durham, North Carolina office. Feltner leads the organization’s applied research program and connects research findings with CRL’s state and federal policy agenda. He is currently conducting research on payday lending, student lending, and debt buyer practices.

Before joining CRL in January 2017, Feltner was director of financial services at Consumer Federation of America, a Washington, DC based research and policy organization. At CFA, Feltner conducted research on payday lending, military financial protections and auto insurance pricing practices in low-wealth communities and communities of color. Previously, Feltner was Vice President of Woodstock Institute, a Chicago-based financial services reform organization where he led consumer credit research, advocacy and program evaluation. Feltner currently serves as vice chair of the board of directors for the Durham-based financial justice organization Reinvestment Partners. He is a previous member of the consumer advisory councils for JP Morgan Chase, Capital One and American Express and a former member of the Illinois Residential Mortgage Advisory Board.

Feltner lives in Durham and enjoys road cycling and cooking and is active in Durham politics.

Adam Rust is a Senior Policy Advisor for the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. His portfolio includes policy issues related to fintech, payments, and consumer credit. .

Prior to NCRC, Adam was Director of Research at Reinvestment Partners, where he led the organization's policy, research, and comment-writing on financial services. He has testified before Congress and in the CFPB's field hearing on prepaid debit cards. After participating in the Governance Formation and Framework Team, Adam was elected to serve as a Consumer Interest segment representative on the Faster Payments Council Board of Directors in 2019

Mike Bilski, North American Banking Company’s Chief Executive Officer, is a third generation banker with 40 years of solid banking under his belt.  As a founder of North American Banking Company, he embraces the idea of banking with no boundaries and utilizes his expertise in information technology to keep the product line ever-evolving.

Never one to accept the status quo, Mike continually explores ways to create value for the client and holds the staff at North American to the same high standard.  “We’ve worked to build a team of people who are great at what they do, know how to have fun, and have an interest in giving back to the community.”

Mike loves all things outdoors. Wanting to share that experience with others has inspired him to co-chair Friends of Camp Knutson, a camp for people with special circumstances. Mike is a former board member and secretary/treasurer of NACHA, the Automated Clearing House Association and a current board member of UMACHA, the Upper Midwest Automated Clearing House Association.

Roy DeCicco is a Managing Director for J.P. Morgan’s Corporate and Investment Bank – Treasury Services Group. Based in New York, Mr. DeCicco manages the firm’s relationship with payments and clearing market infrastructures and strategic payments- related initiatives with industry associations, public policy authorities, international market infrastructures and other financial institutions.

These responsibilities provide for active engagement with key industry organizations. Mr. DeCicco is the Chairman the Accredited Standards Committee (ASC) X9 Board, the convenor of the ISO Real-time Payments Group and the co-chair of the SWIFT Payments Market Practice Group. He is also a member of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY Payments Risk Committee Working Group, the ABA Payment Systems Administrative Committee and the U.S. Faster Payments Council Board.

Bob currently serves as Director, President and Chief Executive Officer of Community Bankers Association of Ohio, CBAO Service Corporation and CBAO Insurance Agency, Inc. He is also manager of Community Bank Insurance, LLC and co-manager of Community Banking Initiatives, LLC. He is a Professional Insurance Agent holding active major and limited lines insurance licenses in Accident & Health, Casualty, Life, Property, Variable, Credit and Crop in Ohio.

He graduated Valedictorian of his 1972 high school class. He received his Associate of Science Degree in Banking & Finance from International University and his Board of Regents Bachelor of Arts Degree in Banking & Finance from Fairmont University.

Bob is a graduate of the Stonier Graduate School of Banking, the National Consumer Credit School, the BNY Mellon Commercial Lending School, National Mortgage Lending School, and the West Virginia School of Banking. He was awarded the Basic, Standard, General and Advanced Banking Certificates from the American Bankers Association (ABA) in Washington, DC and has served as an Adjunct Professor for Bank Administration Institute (BAI), American Institute of Banking (AIB), colleges and universities.
He also served as fellow and instructor for the Bank Sim and Bank Exec computer simulation games. During his career he has been involved in seven mergers and acquisitions, successfully leading the integration team to maximize profitability while limiting cultural disruption.

He has been employed in the community banking industry for more than 43 years, having held positions as Director, President, Chief Executive Officer, Regional Executive Vice President, Executive Vice President, Regional Vice President, Senior Vice President, Senior Lending Officer, Vice President, Cashier and Assistant Cashier. He has served as President and Chief Executive Officer of two community banks, one of which he was the founder, on four community bank and three community bank advisory board of directors during his career. He has been a guest speaker at numerous civic organizations, shareholder, and director meetings.

Bob has facilitated strategic planning, Board of Director Self-Assessment, and CEO Evaluation for community banks of different charter types, publicly listed, and closely owned institutions.

Ms. Doyle is President of EPCOR, a not-for-profit payments association which provides education and support to member organizations to help them maintain compliance, improve operational processes and mitigate risk and fraud of the U.S. payments systems.  She currently serves as Interim Board Member on the Faster Payments Council, various NACHA committees and the Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank Payments Advisory Group. Prior to EPCOR, Ms. Doyle was Senior Vice President, Electronic Payments Channel Manager for Commerce Bank where she was responsible for Electronic Payments product management, product development, product strategy, and ACH risk compliance and reporting. She began her banking career at First National Bank of Omaha as a business financial analyst, bank operations manager and operations officer over ACH and wires. She has been actively engaged in various payments organizations for many years including the NACHA Board of Directors, Federal Reserve Banks Faster Payments Task Force, American Bankers Association Payments Administrative Committee, Faster Payments Task Force (FPTF), Governance Framework Formation Team (GFFT) and the Kansas City Federal Reserve Product Advisory Group. Ms. Doyle graduated from the University of Maryland-Asian Division with a BS in Business Administration and earned an International Business Certificate while working in Japan. She earned her Master’s Banking Certificate from the University of Omaha in 2000 and her Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) certification in 2006.

Jim Kaitz is President and CEO of AFP, an association that represents over 16,000 treasury and financial professionals globally. The organization established and administers the Certified Treasury Professional® and Certified Corporate Financial Planning & Analysis Professional® credentials, setting standards of excellence in finance. The AFP Annual Conference is the largest networking event for corporate finance professionals. He was formerly EVP and COO of Financial Executives Institute, a professional association of over 14,000 senior financial executives representing 8,000 companies in the United States.

Prior to joining FEI in 1988 as the VP of Government Relations, he was Manager, Trade and Business Affairs at Baxter Healthcare Corporation. He was Director, Government Relations for the Scientific Apparatus Makers Association and joined FEI’s Washington Office in 1983. He was legislative assistant to the Honorable James Shannon (D-MA), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee.

He is a 1978 graduate of Georgetown University.

Steve Kenneally works in the Center for Payments and Cybersecurity at ABA on issues related to emerging payment technologies such as faster payments, virtual currencies, and P2P payments as well as legacy systems such as checks, ACH, and wires. He served on the Interim Board of the U.S. Faster Payments Council and currently serves on The Clearing House Real Time Payments Advisory Committee, NACHA’s Consumer Payments Advisory Group, and the Mid-Atlantic ACH Association’s Operations Committee. He also chairs the International Banking Federation’s Payments Work Group. Prior to joining the ABA in 2005, he served at the United States Department of the Treasury. Steve earned an MBA from The George Washington University and a BS in Finance from Boston College. He is an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP).

Matt Friend is a Vice President with Visa. He has global responsibility for Visa’s Strategy and go-to-market for real-time payments. Matt is also interim Vice Chair of the U.S. Faster Payments Council.

Previously at Visa, he was Global Strategy and Business Operations lead for Visa Direct and prior to that he led North America Product Strategy, Initiatives and new Product Development. Prior to joining Visa, he was a Managing Director at Accenture where he was Global Strategy lead for Payments as well as head of Accenture Payment Services in North America. Prior to Accenture, Matt served in a similar role as a Principal at Booz Allen.

Matt has over 23 years of experience in retail, commercial and cross-border payments covering strategy, customer-centric product development, operations, enterprise risk, digital (mobile, analytics, etc…), large-scale transformation, business process reengineering, operating model development, and supervisory and regulatory structures and compliance. Matt has worked closely with financial institutions, payment providers, retailers and technology companies in applying his experience as well as at the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Reserve. Matt previously served as Director at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, Financial Management Service.

Andrea Gilman is senior vice president of new payments and commercial products in the North American region; she is responsible for creating product and commercialization strategies that will drive significant growth from real time payments and b2b payments. Previously, she was senior vice president of business transformation for Franchise Development where she led a global change effort across the payments industry to expand the account number (BIN) supply and ensure that customers are prepared for growth and innovation in digital payments. With a passion for tackling ambitious challenges, building powerful cross-functional partnerships and leading from strategy through to execution, Andrea has held several positions at Mastercard across product development, operations and go-to-market. She led the Global Marketing and Product Integration team for Prepaid Management Services, creating unique offerings and winning new business by leveraging the best capabilities of Mastercard and Access Prepaid. In her previous role, Andrea delivered on a global product roadmap to enable simpler, more efficient ways to shop and redeem offers in the Digital Payments group. Before joining Mastercard, Andrea held marketing roles at Time Warner, IBM and iWon.com. She holds a Master of Business Administration from New York University, Leonard N. Stern School of Business with a concentration in Technology and Marketing, and a Bachelor of Arts from Bowdoin College, magna cum laude. A founding member of World 50’s Women Executive group, she enjoys spending time with family, learning to play golf and meditating.

Steve Ledford works with payments leaders on strategic issues facing financial institutions and leads initiatives to address them, including RTP, The Clearing House real-time payments program. Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Ledford was a partner with Novantas, a financial services consulting firm. Before that he was a leader in McKinsey’s global payments practice, and was President of Global Concepts, a consulting and research firm specializing in payments and cash management. Mr. Ledford is a graduate of Wofford College with a BA in Economics.

Kevin Christensen is senior vice president of market intelligence and data analytics at SHAZAM. Kevin leads the company’s enterprise-wide governance and utilization of information and is responsible for providing insights that aids in the development and execution of the company’s strategic goals. Additionally, Kevin currently serves on the Board of Directors of the US Faster Payments Council and serves on the board of directors for Nacha. Prior to joining SHAZAM in 2004, Kevin worked for the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) for 10 years as both a safety and soundness and information technology examiner.

Gene Neyer advises FIs, Fintechs and central infrastructures on various aspects of Payment Modernization. He is an Executive Advisor to Icon Solutions, board member of US Faster Payments Council and has recently completed Real Time Payments engagements for Central Infrastructures in Africa and Asia. Previously, Gene was a Head of Industry and Regulation for Finastra, and an SVP, Head of Product Management for D+H and Fundtech. Gene has almost 30 years of experience in product management and IT Leadership at some of leading financial services vendor and banking organizations.  He is a current & past representative to EBA, Fed, IPFA, TCH and other industry organizations. He has written and lectured on various aspects of global payments, real-time payments and blockchain and is a regular speaker and commentator at business seminars and conferences.

Mr. Neyer holds Executive Master in Technology Management from Wharton/University of Pennsylvania and a M.S. & B.S. Degrees in Mathematics from City College of NY.

Deborah Phillips is senior vice president of payments and technology policy for the Independent Community Bankers of America® (ICBA). She also serves as senior vice president, industry relations for ICBA Bancard, ICBA’s payments card subsidiary. In her dual roles she advocates payments and bank technology policy issues before financial regulatory agencies, private-sector organizations and Congress on behalf of the nation’s community banks.

Phillips has nearly 20 years of payments-related experience. She most recently served as managing director of payment strategy at Jack Henry & Associates, where she leveraged her expertise in market intelligence, product development, and payment strategy. Prior to her 12-year career at Jack Henry, Phillips served as vice president of marketing for a large payment processor, where she managed corporate communications. She also worked as director of marketing and member services at one of the largest regional payments’ associations.

Phillips is a well-known and respected payments veteran. She is vice chairman of the board for the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), and chairman of the FPC Operations Committee. She was a member of the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task Force and was elected to serve on the Task Force’s Governance Framework Formation Team. Phillips has also been active on various industry councils, including serving as chair of the Nacha Internet Council, and as a member of the Nacha Innovation Alliance Advisory Committee since its inception.

Phillips holds a Bachelor of Science in communications from Northwestern University and is an accredited ACH professional.

Pat Thelen is a seasoned financial services executive with 25 years’ experience transforming the transaction services business and a champion of faster payments.

Pat is currently a Vice President at Ripple, where he manages global accounts, focuses on building out its global network, advocates for capabilities that meet client demands, and provides industry leadership for the evolution of real-time payments.

In positions as Managing Director in JPMorgan Chase’s treasury and security services division and President of UMB’s bank product and services, his teams implemented innovative solutions that revolutionized the way corporate and retail clients transact.  Modernization efforts resulted in award-winning digital capabilities for customer satisfaction and risk management.

His career began with Ernst & Young LLP and Carreker Corporation (now Fiserv), where his teams engaged with the top U.S. financial institutions and developed new global markets.

Pat serves as an industry expert and thought leader with previous roles as the board of director chairperson for NACHA, chairperson for The Clearing House real-time payment advisory committee, member of EPCOR and WesPay board of directors.  He participated in the Federal Reserve’s ACH and Cash product advisory councils, ABA payment systems administrative committee, Visa’s senior client council, and CEB treasury management executive circle.

Pat is a proud Jayhawk, earning a degree of Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, with distinction, from the University of Kansas, and he is a Certified Treasury Professional®.  He is pursuing a degree at the ABA Stonier Graduate School of Banking and Wharton Leadership Certificate from the University of Pennsylvania.

Pat is active in the Kansas City community serving on several not-for-profit boards with missions dedicated to youths including The Family Conservancy and The Boys Scouts of America.

Elizabeth Grice is Director of Marketing & Communications for the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time, and with near-immediate funds availability. She joined the FPC in 2019 and is responsible for the organization’s marketing and communications efforts across all channels.

With broad marketing and communications knowledge, Elizabeth has over 20 years of experience in all areas of public relations and marketing including media relations, corporate communications, product PR, content marketing, branding, social media, and crisis mitigation. 

Prior to joining the FPC, Elizabeth served as AVP/Head of Communications for National Planning Holdings, one of the largest independent broker-dealer networks in the U.S., where she oversaw media relations, and employee and financial advisor communications. She has also held senior corporate and marketing communications roles at global financial services and technology companies that include First Data, TTEC, and Transamerica. 

Elizabeth graduated from Colorado State University with a Master of Science in Technical Communication and holds a bachelor’s degree in Media Study from SUNY Buffalo. She is based in Denver, CO. 
 

Angela Hendershott is the Director of Operations of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. Angela is responsible for strategic oversight of the FPC work groups and daily operations of the FPC.  She serves as the interface with members and industry stakeholders to execute on the FPC’s mission to advance the faster payments through inclusive and transparent dialogue with all FPC stakeholders. FPC members include business end-users, consumer organizations, financial institutions, payment network operators, technology providers and others.
Prior to the FPC, Angela was a Senior Executive in Financial Services and holds 20+ years of knowledge instituting operational excellence across the value chain. She was the Executive Director at Deluxe Corporation, a fortune 1000 company and provider of customer life cycle management and payment solutions.  She was the senior executive responsible for engineering and technology solutions that served thousands of financial institutions and millions of small businesses.  Angela held payment industry leadership roles such as the Vice Chair of the Board of Directors and Chair of the Finance Committee for the Accredited Standards Committee X9, in the Financial Services Industry.  She has an exceptional record of success as a trusted source to move and inspire innovation through people, process, and technology.  

Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer sets the vision and strategy for the organization to continually advance the ubiquitous ACH Network so that it remains one of the largest, safest and most reliable payment systems in the world. Ms. Larimer also works to advance Nacha’s role in creating and furthering broadly adopted payment and financial messaging rules and standards to enable interoperability and reduce friction for providers and users.

Ms. Larimer brings three decades of experience in financial services and payments, with more than two decades of service in various roles at Nacha, including Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice President, ACH Network Administration and General Counsel. Prior to joining Nacha, Ms. Larimer practiced law with the Lending, Banking and Public Finance Group of Bryan Cave LLP, formerly Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, and worked at NationsBank, now known as Bank of America.

Antonia Stroeh leads the Business Payment Innovation team in North America for Mastercard. Her remit is to build and commercialize new B2B and B2C products that provide our customers with more choice, simplicity and efficiency – across payment rails, and even beyond payments

She joined Mastercard in August 2012 and has worked in several Global and Regional product roles, leading product commercialization and digital inclusion efforts across multiple markets.

Before joining Mastercard, Antonia spent four years in India as Vice President at Pine Labs, a Sequoia-funded fintech, where she incubated and commercialized new products in retail payments, consumer loyalty and fleet cards.

She started her career in strategy consulting, most recently at Bain & Company, working with Fortune 500 companies to improve salesforce effectiveness, enhance user experience and operational efficiency. Antonia has a BA from Princeton and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Cathy Lesser Mansfield recently joined the Case Western Reserve Law School faculty as Executive Director of the Master of Arts in Financial Integrity Program and Senior Instructor in Law. Prior to joining the CWRU faculty, she was a Professor of Law at Drake University Law School, served as a Policy Analyst with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and was a Visiting Professor of Law at Georgetown Law School. Professor Mansfield teaches a variety of consumer, payments and commercial law courses, is a co-author of the National Consumer Law Center’s Consumer Banking and Payments Law manual, and speaks nationally about consumer protection issues. Professor Mansfield also teaches a course called “Holocaust and the Law.” She is the composer and librettist of an opera, entitled The Sparks Fly Upward, that follows three German families in Berlin, two Jewish and one Christian, through the Holocaust, and she is founder and Executive Director of The Sparks Fly Upward Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to educating people about the Holocaust, genocide and tolerance through presentations of Sparks, and ancillary activities.

As Senior Director of Payment Acceptance at Walmart, Matt Howarter has responsibility for driving Walmart’s innovation and operational efficiency initiatives to deliver a convenient, safe, and secure payment experience to customers when shopping across all channels and brands. He has 17 years of experience in the payments space, including 14 years at Walmart, spanning across business and technology. Regardless of his specific role, Matt has been recognized by industry leaders for consistently putting the customer experience first and working collaboratively across the industry.

Prior to returning to Walmart in 2019, Matt spent 3 years leading the product management and platforms organizations at Bank of America Merchant Services. In that role, Matt had responsibility for identifying and delivering a suite of products and capabilities that supported merchants of all sizes across many different industry verticals. Matt currently serves on the Board of Directors of the U.S. Faster Payments Council, where he chairs the QR Interface Working Group.

Matt has a BS in Computer Information Systems from Emporia State University and currently resides in Overland Park, KS.

Carl Slabicki is the Head of Strategic Payment Solutions for BNY Mellon’s Treasury Services. In his current role, Carl is responsible for our Payables and Receivables product group that delivers specialized solutions to optimize payment flows for our multi-segment corporate client base, our bank clients in a private label capacity and our strategy to selectively partner with FinTechs to enhance and scale our services across the market.

This product group focuses on providing holistic payment services to support the full spectrum of payables and receivables while optimizing our client’s payment flows and services by leveraging new networks and capabilities such as Real-Time Payments (RTP®), Tokenized Payments® now available with Zelle®, ACH, Check Processing and Specialized Industry Solutions. 

Mr. Slabicki serves on the Board of Directors for the U.S. Faster Payments Council, is the Chair of Early Warning Services’ Wholesale Payments Advisory Committee and is a member of the ABA Payment Systems Administrative Committee and The Clearing House’s Real-Time Payments Business Committee.

Prior to joining BNY Mellon in 2014, Mr. Slabicki was the Treasurer for the Wurth Group of North America Inc. which is the regional in-house bank, holding company and shared service center for the Wurth Group.

Mr. Slabicki graduated from Muhlenberg College with bachelor’s degrees in Economics and in Business Administration and is a graduate of SIFMA’s Security Industry Institute at Wharton. He is a Certified Treasury Professional (CTP), an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP) and a member of the Association for Financial Professionals (AFP).

Peter Tapling is a 30-year practitioner in payments, fraud, risk, and identity. He has been on the forefront of many innovations – PKI, OOBA, mobile authentication, faster payments, blockchain and others. Peter runs PTap Advisory, a consultancy which provides strategic advice to financial institutions, technology service providers and investors.

Kimberly (Kim) Ford is Senior Vice President, Government Relations, at Fiserv. She is responsible for development and implementation of the company’s policy strategy and political advocacy engagement and represents Fiserv’s political interests as the company’s registered lobbyist in Washington, D.C.

Kim joins Fiserv from the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC), a business trade association focused on accelerating the implementation of faster payments in the U.S. She was the first Executive Director of the organization, responsible for managing the daily operations of the organization, developing the strategic plan, growing the membership base, and raising the public profile of the association.  

Prior to her FPC work, she spent 15 years at First Data, starting her career there as Manager of Public Policy and rising to become Senior Vice President, Global Head of Government Affairs. During her tenure at First Data, she authored several laws designed to cultivate a more favorable economic climate for financial services providers to thrive, she oversaw the creation of the federal political action committee, and she served on the board of multiple industry associations, including the Electronic Funds Transfer Association, the Innovative Payments Association, the Secure Payments Partnership, and the Card Coalition. 

She was Regional Director for U.S. Senator Bill Nelson of Florida prior to First Data, and she worked in lobbying and communications roles for several Florida-based business trade associations before that. 

Kim is a well-recognized and popular speaker on a variety of payments issues at industry and client conferences, and she has twice served as a subject matter expert witness to testify in front of the U.S. Congress. 

She is based in Washington, DC.  

Stuart Dwyer leads Global Payment Partnerships for Microsoft Corporation.   This role spans Microsoft’s partnerships with card networks, wallet providers, payment processors, acquiring/issuing banks, and peer merchants.   Stuart’s team is focused upon driving incrementally better payment performance for all of Microsoft’s businesses and identifying, evaluating, and implementing the right blend of payment solutions and experiences for Microsoft’s customers in any given market. Providing customers with a simple, secure, and relevant way to pay is central to this.  Stuart has also held senior roles within Microsoft’s Transactional Risk Management group, with responsibility for risk management strategy and product integration, where he established and implemented new industry mechanisms for transactional data sharing and risk mitigation.

Prior to Microsoft, Stuart held transactional risk management and payment product leadership roles at FIS as well as serving as a senior officer in the Royal Australian Air Force. Stuart holds graduate Degrees from Deakin University in Melbourne Australia and is a graduate of the Australian Defence Force Academy and University College at the University of New South Wales.

Stuart Lives in Sammamish, Washington and remains an avid world traveler.

Charles Harkness is Senior Vice President, Strategic Operations Officer at Corporate One Federal Credit Union. He has 39 years of experience in the financial services industry, joining Southeast Corporate FCU in December of 2002 as Payments Technology Director prior to the merger with Corporate One FCU in 2012.

Charles gained an extensive knowledge of payments operations and technology during his 22 years of service with the Federal Reserve Bank where he served as Financial Services Director for the Atlanta District. During the last 5 years, Charles actively participated on the Faster Payments Task Force, the Governance Framework Formation Team and the Faster Payments Council’s interim board.

As IS4B’s Global Payments Services Executive, Michael Black is a Transaction Banking professional with forty plus years of experience in Product Management, Sales, Operations, Financial Crime Compliance and Regulatory Compliance. Considered an industry expert in the US and Global Clearing payment space with active participation in BAFT industry led initiatives and committees. His expertise in marketing/sales, business strategy/growth, P&L budgets and process engineering provides an energetic and flexible proven leader dedicated to problem solving maximizing on his strong interpersonal and organizational skills.

Tony Cook is Executive Vice President of Payment Operations and Real Time Payments at FirstBank, headquartered in Lakewood, Colorado. Tony has worked in various roles since joining FirstBank in 2008, including lending, branch strategy, and retail support, but has spent the majority of his career focused on payments. In his current role Tony oversees ACH, check, and wire operations as well as strategic payments initiatives such as FirstBank’s faster payments efforts. Tony also has extensive experience leading and implementing large scale projects, working with software and technology providers, and strategically managing back office operations.

Tony graduated from Colorado State University with a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration and is an honors graduate of the Graduate School of Banking at Colorado.

Tim Dwyer is Vice President, Assistant Treasurer leading Treasury Services team for the Nationwide Insurance companies. His areas of responsibility include Cash Management, Cashflow Forecasting, Banking Relationships, Credit Management, Payments, Capital Markets, and Structured finance.

Prior to Nationwide, Tim worked at Bisys and Midland Life Insurance Company. He holds a BA from Ohio University and MBA from Capital University.

Bridget Hall is on the Solution Leadership team for Real-Time Payments, focusing on customer-centricity and the strategic execution of the solution. Bridget works with industry partners to deliver ACI's payments experience around the globe. She has extensive experience in commercial analysis, operations and solutions innovation and is currently focused on the realization of real-time payments.

Bridget’s experience at ACI also includes driving solution innovation through product management for ACI’s UP Retail Payments solution, as well as other operations and finance roles. Previously, Bridget worked in the securities industry at financial advisory firms, brokers/dealers, and clearing firms in their accounting, finance and operations teams. She is ACI’s representative for the US Faster Payments Council, helping to enable Americans to safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time with near-immediate funds availability. Bridget is based in Omaha, Nebraska, and is an avid Huskers fan.

Currently Mary Gilmeister is the President of Macha, and an Accredited ACH Professional and a National Check Professional (NCP). Mary has been President of WACHA/Macha for 28 years. Mary is also President of Payment Advisory Resource (PAR) a subsidiary of MACHA. Mary has served on the NACHA (National ACH Association), Marketing Committee, the NACHA Board of Directors and chaired a Nation Wide Direct Deposit Campaign in 1998 and participated on the Federal Debit Collection Improvement Act of 1996. In addition, Mary has chaired many national rule making committees for NACHA and has served on many panels. Mary has participated in developing a program with the State Bar Association of WI and participated on a program for the state to change legislation on Financial Elder Abuse. She is actively working with the CFPB in establishing networks and speaking on Financial Elder Abuse. Mary speaks nationally at the NACHA conference, and other conferences nationwide.

Currently, Mary also participates in the following NACHA Committees:

• Steering Committee for NACHA's Innovative Alliance
• Government Relations Advisory Group

Mary has 40 years of experience in the Financial Industry. She has worked as a branch manager, cash management officer and manager of operations deposit and loans and training coordinator.

Mary holds a Certificate from Carroll College in Not for Profit Management and a Bachelor of Science in Public Administration from Carroll College.

Rusiru Gunasena is Sr. Director of JHA PayCenter and has the overall responsibility for the implementation of Jack Henry’s Faster Payments strategy. Leading the team, he is responsible for implementing real-time payments for community banks, credit unions and fintech partners.

Rusiru has experience as an entrepreneur and a diverse leader involved in start-up ventures and Fortune 100 companies worldwide across multiple industries.

Jorge Jimenez is Chairman of Juniper Payments, which delivers clearing and payment services for 3,000 financial institutions such as Instant OnWe, ACH, Wires, Cheques, and International.

Throughout his 20-year career in payment systems, Jorge has helped financial institutions capitalize on the latest payment innovations, while implementing new payment infrastructures for entire countries. He received an MBA in 2001 from a joint program between the London School of Economics and Bocconi University of Milan. That same year, Jorge joined the operational arm of the Italian Central Bank, SIA Group, where he was first Project Director for the new European Clearing House (STEP2) and was later in charge of developing the payment infrastructure for Central Banks in Latin America and Africa.

Jorge has worked with governments and Central Banks in over 50 countries, including the Federal Reserve where he was Product Development Director for their International ACH solution. He currently advises the U.S. Treasury on foreign policy as it relates to Payment Systems, and Financial Inclusion. He is pursuing a PhD in Economics and is the proud recipient of the 2019 Rich Oliver Leadership in Payments Award.

Josh Karoly manages payments at Netflix in California. Throughout his career he has worked in payments to enhance the ecommerce consumer experience. This has included the development of payment strategies to optimize revenue, the addition of meaningful payment methods, as well as international expansion.

Prior to Netflix, Josh managed payments at SurveyMonkey, the world’s largest online survey platform, and before that at Ancestry.com, the world’s leading online family history resource. He obtained his undergraduate degree from BYU and his MBA from Westminster College and enjoys spending as much time as possible with his wife and five boys.

Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer sets the vision and strategy for the organization to continually advance the ubiquitous ACH Network so that it remains one of the largest, safest and most reliable payment systems in the world. Ms. Larimer also works to advance Nacha’s role in creating and furthering broadly adopted payment and financial messaging rules and standards to enable interoperability and reduce friction for providers and users.

Ms. Larimer brings three decades of experience in financial services and payments, with more than two decades of service in various roles at Nacha, including Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice President, ACH Network Administration and General Counsel. Prior to joining Nacha, Ms. Larimer practiced law with the Lending, Banking and Public Finance Group of Bryan Cave LLP, formerly Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, and worked at NationsBank, now known as Bank of America.

Steve Mott is a 38-year veteran of the electronic payments and security industry. His payments consultancy, BetterBuyDesign, specializes in payments landscape and strategic assessments; analyses of transaction economics and fees; innovative uses of debit and stored value networks; evaluations of authentication, security and fraud mitigation technologies; and handicapping of business prospects for alternative payments types and venues—especially for online and mobile commerce.

Steve also advises investment firms on industry trends and developments, conducts business valuations and M&A/due diligence support, and serves as an expert witness in patent, trade secret, antitrust and commercial agreement matters. He has served as a subject matter expert and advisor for several industry organizations and regulatory groups, and participated extensively with the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Initiative, including as an elected Steering Committee member of the Secure Payments Task Force. He is a founding member of the Faster Payments Council, and was elected to its inaugural advisory group. He has spoken at more than 200 payments conferences, and written extensively for Digital Transactions and n*genuity Journal,over the past decade.

Devon Marsh has been with Wells Fargo for 24 years. He works in the bank’s Payments Industry Relations Office within the Treasury Management & Payment Solutions group. Devon partners with lines of business to ensure they remain informed, engaged, and coordinated with respect to payments industry issues. He also monitors industry developments, establishes policy objectives, and advocates in forums outside Wells Fargo to promote the bank’s perspective regarding payments.

For much of his career, Devon led a team that provided operational risk management support for electronic payment products. He is a past chairman of the Risk Management Advisory Group as well as the Accredited Payments Risk Professional Oversight Board at Nacha.

Devon holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the United States Naval Academy and an MBA degree from Brenau University.

Gene Neyer is an SVP at U.S. Bank responsible for the Architecture Strategy of the Funds Transfer business line. He is an Executive Advisor to Icon Solutions and board advisor to the US Faster Payments Council. Previously, Gene was an advisor to FIs, FinTechs and central infrastructures on various aspects of Payment Modernization; a Head of Industry and Regulation for Finastra; and an SVP, Head of Product Management for D+H and Fundtech. Gene brings decades of experience in Product Management and IT Leadership at some of leading financial services vendor and banking organizations. He is a current & past representative to EBA, Fed, IPFA, TCH and other industry organizations. He has written and lectured on various aspects of global payments, real-time payments and blockchain and is a regular speaker and commentator at business seminars and conferences.

Mr. Neyer holds Executive Master in Technology Management from Wharton/University of Pennsylvania and a M.S. & B.S. Degrees in Mathematics from City College of NY.

Judy Nguyen is a Vice President of Network Product Development and Management at American Express. She is responsible for designing, developing, and managing the network services, capabilities, and solutions required to support new payment products.

Judy has nearly 15 years of payments-related experience. Prior to joining American Express, Judy worked for a boutique management consulting firm focused on the global financial services industry where she led client engagements focused on strategy and large-scale transformations spanning business, technology, and operations. Prior to that, Judy was at JPMorgan, where she worked in various business management and strategy roles across the cash and liquidity management, securities services, and wealth management businesses.

Judy graduated from Cornell University with a B.S. in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering.

Michael Sklow is global head of Payments, Ledgers and Controls within Enterprise Operations at Goldman Sachs. He is co-head of the Americas Disability Interest Forum. Previously, Michael was global head of Treasury Operations. Before that, he held roles in Liquidity Operations and Merchant Bank Operations. He joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 2005 and was named managing director in 2017.

Michael is co-chair of the SIFMA Treasury Banking Subcommitee and a member of the Federal Reserve Payments Risk Committee Working Group. Michael earned a bachelor's degree in Economics and master's degree in Business Administration from Fordham University.

Connie Theien serves as the senior vice president of industry relations and leads efforts to engage payments stakeholders in advancing strategies for improving the U.S. payment system and in collaborating to encourage implementation and adoption of faster payments in the United States. Theien leads stakeholder engagement by supporting various industry and Federal Reserve work groups and initiatives. She also leads the engagement strategy for the Fed Payments Improvement Community, a group that includes thousands of stakeholders from across the payments ecosystem, to improve the end-to-end speed, efficiency and security of payments in the country.

As part of the Federal Reserve’s payments improvement leadership team, she established and managed the Faster and Secure Payments Task Forces, a coalition of 500+ stakeholders that worked from 2015-2018 to lay important groundwork for advancing payments speed and security.

In her tenure at the Federal Reserve, Theien established national marketing in 2004 and industry relations in 2013. Prior to coming to the Fed, she led marketing and public relations efforts for nonprofit, retail and academic organizations. Theien holds a B.A. in speech communication from the University of Minnesota and an M.B.A. from the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management.

For decades to date, Steve Wasserman has consulted numerous ERP clients integrating payables and receivables payments and other streamlined automation. More recently, Steve has started helping banks and other financial services with their journeys to “Banking Into The Future”. Steve co-founded a successful Fintech company, IPP, working with the unbanked over 20 years ago. A series of acquisitions and name changes ended in an acquisition by PayPal for over $300m.

He founded Vments, in 2017, based upon a patent pending Enterprise Digital Banking (EDB) Platform and Ecosystem design. Its core enables payment requests and real time clearing and settlement through “Smart Transactions” and optional use of its non-crypto Virtual Fiat Money as well as through other Faster Payment or legacy settlement methods.

Steve is very active in industry work group collaborations through the US Faster Payments Council (US FPC), the Fed organized Business Payments Coalition, and the FedNow Community. He is also on the Board Advisory Group of the US FPC.

Laura Weinflash is vice president and FI Journey Master at Early Warning. In this role, she is focused on solving big strategic challenges by optimizing the experiences of the company’s FI customers and ensuring their voices are heard as Early Warning innovates on behalf of all FIs to solve.

Prior to this recent role, Laura led payment strategy and innovation for Early Warning. She was responsible for creating solutions to enable customer delight including developing and launching Zelle® for small business, enabling eGreeting solution through Zelle, leading the development of machine learning-enabled risk services for Zelle, and leading the design and implementation for the enablement of Zelle transactions over TCH’s RTP.

Laura began her career with Early Warning in 1999, leading product development initiatives and increasing market coverage of the Deposit Chek solution from 40 percent to more than 90 percent and built solutions for small FIs as well as the asset search and verification.

Prior to joining Early Warning, Laura was with Bank One Corporation (now JPMorgan Chase) for more than 11 years in key leadership roles, including as National Small Business Risk Manager, where she managed an $11B loan portfolio. While there, she introduced statistical modeling and automated business loan decisions for small businesses through the creation of an innovative scorecard-lending process.

Laura earned her M.B.A. in Finance from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio and her Bachelor of Applied Science in Marketing from Hillsdale College in Michigan. She currently serves on the Enterprise Payments Advisory Board and the Faster Payments Council. She has participated in the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments task force and she is also a frequent speaker at faster payments industry events. As an innovator and big thinker, Laura holds several issued patents and pending patents.

John is a payments business executive with a focus in financial services, with specific expertise in banking, technology, and business development. John has over 10 years of payments experience working with various global banks and another 15 years at various FinTech companies.  

John has held various solution delivery roles, including business analyst, project manager and solutions architect.  Most recently, he’s held leadership roles in business development at BottomLine, Volante and currently at Mindgate Solutions.  John’s extensive and diverse payments background offers him a unique perspective, that has proven him to be an invaluable resource to his clients and the organizations he serves.

Bev Kennedy leads JPMorgan’s Top Client program which focuses on the overall merchant experience ensuring merchants have the resources available to improve the customer experience, optimize approvals rates and cost of acceptance while keeping their payment infrastructure safe and secure.

Bev has an extensive background in payments and is very passionate about the industry. She has served on several boards, all related to payments. Although a technologist by training, she spent years consulting with numerous financial institutions of all sizes regarding payment strategy and has experience with both the issuing and acquiring sides of payments. Bev is the inventor of many patents in the payments and healthcare space.

Bev holds an MBA from Georgia State, is a major foodie and enjoys all things equestrian.

Scott Harkey is the EVP of Financial Services & Payments at Endava, a global consulting and IT services firm. Scott joined Endava through the acquisition of Levvel, where he spent the last 7 years as Chief Strategy Officer guiding the company’s Financial Services & Payments work across a number of banks, digital wallets, merchants, acquirers and startups.

Prior to joining Levvel, Scott was a Technology Executive at Bank of America managing the bank’s Digital Wallet technology. In this role, he was responsible for accelerating the bank’s progress to becoming a leader in digital payments through the launch of multiple strategic payment products.

Scott holds a number of payment related patents, was voted one of the top “40 Under 40” by both the ETA and the Charlotte Business Journal, is a frequent speaker on digital wallets and payments, and plays an active role in fostering a Fintech culture in the Charlotte community. He holds an MIS degree from UNC Charlotte and an MBA from NC State University, and lives in Charlotte, NC with his wife, daughter, and twin boys.

Vladimir Jovanovic leads the Innovation team at PSCU, with primary responsibilities for strategic direction of the company’s Faster Payments, AI and Enterprise Authentication & Identity efforts.

His career with PSCU includes leading the Debit, ATM and Prepaid portfolio where he exercised the ability to interpret customer feedback into well-defined features that ultimately lead to the creation of solid business value for all stakeholders.

With over 20 year of payment industry experience, Vladimir is a proven payment strategy leader, focused on providing products and services that position PSCU and its Owner credit unions for success.

As PSCU’s lead of Innovation, he’s passionate about harnessing the power of creative disruption with his team, focusing on new technologies and innovations with potential to create new business models. He is dedicated to connecting people, and empowering collaboration and innovation to build impactful products and bring them to market. 

Craig has over 30 years' experience working with banks with their corporate payments and banking needs. He has been with ACI for over 20 years, providing specialist consulting and solutions to banking customers as they have prepared for the next change in payments. 

Based in the United Kingdom but working globally, Craig has worked on some of the largest industry initiatives including major SWIFT upgrades, the introduction of SEPA and PSD2, CLS and more recently ISO20022 and the global roll-out of real-time payments.

Craig is currently Head of Real-Time Payments driving ACI’s growth and strategy for immediate payments around the world. Working with customers, prospects, and industry players alike, he helps to ensure that ACI's products are industry-leading and are always ready to help our customers maximise the opportunity of payments change.

Booshan founded Finzly, with a vision to bring modern banking experience to delight the customers and the bank associates. Having achieved success in Forex and Trade Finance products at Finzly, and positioning it as #1 choice among US banks, Booshan aims to transform the payment, treasury and banking technology with a new operating system for banks - BankOS.

Before founding Finzly, he was International Technology manager at Wells Fargo. He was one of the faster payment proposer and a member of US Faster Payment Task Force. Booshan received his Engineering degree in Computer Science from Anna University, completed CFA Level 1, Machine Learning at Stanford University (online), and Accounting at Wharton University (online). 

Jon has more than 20 years of experience in various payments, card and research, and development roles. He has been responsible for major payments product launches, managed research and competitive intelligence functions, and led the development of industry-first card technology.

Prior to joining TD, Jon worked at Citibank where he launched CitiPay, the first proprietary bank digital wallet in the U.S. Before Citibank, Jon was the Head of Competitive Intelligence, Consumer Products at Bank of America. In that role, he focused on branch comparison studies and ongoing competitor benchmarking. Prior to that, Jon worked in R&D developing the first customer-facing instant issuance kiosk to print out payment cards as well as health care payment systems. In 2007, one of his products won Payment Product of the year at the Payments Symposium in Las Vegas. While at Bank of America, Jon also held leadership positions in Credit, Portfolio Quality, Marketing and Research.

Jon started his career at MBNA as a Customer Service Representative (CSR) and believes speaking to 200 customers every day was the most influential learning experience of his career.

Brad Ganey is senior vice president and chief operating officer of Catalyst Corporate Federal Credit Union. As a member of the executive management team, he oversees all payments operations, member services and operations analytics for Catalyst Corporate. Payments operations include faster/real-time payments, ACH, remote deposit services, item processing and support services, research/adjustments, wire transfers and card services.

Brad serves on several boards of directors, including Aptys Solutions, LLC, Western Payments Alliance (WesPay) and TranzCapture, LLC. In addition, Brad serves as the managing director of TranzCapture, LLC and its related operations, which represent the largest check processing operation in the credit union industry.

Brad joined Catalyst Corporate in 2000. He was previously employed by the Federal Reserve Bank, where he held several management positions at the branch and district levels. His background also includes commercial banking, where he served as an operations analyst and held various management positions in item processing and cash management. Brad attended Jacksonville University in Jacksonville, Florida, majoring in business administration.

Gail Hillebrand participates in the Faster Payments Council for the National Consumers League. She led the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Division of Consumer Education and Engagement from its inception in 2011 through early 2020. The offices comprising this division developed financial education approaches for community-based service providers, developed web content for the public, and performed education and policy work with respect to four special populations: older adults, post-secondary students, active duty military and veterans, and economically vulnerable people. The Consumer Response complaint handling office was also part of this division for some of her tenure. Gail served on the CFPB’s Executive Committee and other Bureau governance and policy committees.

Prior to joining the CFPB, Gail was with Consumers Union, the nonprofit publisher of Consumer Reports, for over 25 years. There she engaged in consumer policy and advocacy work; and led a team focused on consumer protection in financial services. She worked on a wide variety of consumer financial services policy issues in the California legislature, other states, and in Congress.

Gail’s publications address topics including payments, credit reporting, preemption, and the Uniform Commercial Code Revision process. In payments, she is the author of Before the Grand Rethinking: Five Things to Do Today with Payments Law and Ten Principles to Guide New Payments Products and New Payments Law, 83 Chicago-Kent Law Review 2, 769 (2008), https://www.law.berkeley.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Before-The-Grand-Rethinking.pdf.

Gail has testified multiple times in Congress and in state legislatures. She was appointed by two California governors of different parties to serve on the California Board of Accountancy. She is a member of the American Law Institute and the American College of Financial Services Lawyers. She has been a recipient of the National Consumer Law Center’s Vern Countryman Award. Gail holds a BA in Economics from the University of California at San Diego and a JD from Berkeley Law School.

Sri Iyer has over 18 years of experience in the Payments industry. Sri is currently VP of Solution Consulting at FIS. In this role, Sri has global responsibility for providing industry leading Real-time payments solutions to FIS’s customers.

Previously, Sri has held various Product management and strategy roles at Mastercard, Fiserv and ACI Worldwide. Sri was also part of the Federal Reserve’s Faster Payments Task force.

Sri holds an MBA from Robinson College of Business, Georgia State University.

Deborah Baxley is an International mobile/cards payment/FinTech consultant, recognized expert in the industry, and creator of growth strategies for new and existing markets with more than 20 years’ experience consulting to cards and payment companies. She has managed and delivered over 100 strategic consulting projects for more than 60 clients in fifteen countries, advising issuers, acquirers, networks and processors on product direction and competitive positioning, delivering millions of dollars in new revenue or operating cost savings.

Deborah is recognized for insights on the future of payments through frequent keynote speaking and writing, and as Chair of US Payments Forum Mobile and Contactless Payments Working Committee, charter member of the Faster Payments Council, and co-founder of NYPAY.

Lou Grilli is a senior innovation strategist at PSCU, tasked with building and shaping a superior payment and member experience capability for PSCU and its Owner credit unions. Lou’s long career in payments includes product management, product development and thought leadership in credit, debit, loyalty, mobile payments and digital wallets. He has spent the last six years in roles dedicated to the credit union industry.

Scott manages SHAZAM’s product innovation function. He develops new product concepts and explores emerging opportunities in financial services. He also participates in industry collaboration through groups such as EMVco, Secure Technology Alliance, Debit Network Alliance, and US Payments Forum to help solve issues associated with payments adoption and use.

Scott’s career at SHAZAM began in sales with a progression to marketing manager where he created SHAZAM’s first project management and product management functions. Leading the product team, they successfully launched many programs, including bill payment, chip card issuance, and one of the first mobile applications for real-time P2P transfers.

Most recently, in his innovation role, Scott began participating in the industry’s drive to faster payments by authoring SHAZAM’s proposal to the Faster Payments Task Force. He’s currently contributing to the Faster Payment Council’s QR code workgroup.

Payments and technology innovations are fascinating, but Scott’s stayed in the industry for over 25 years because he enjoys working with his peers and people in banking and retail.

He values equal, non-discriminatory access to the payment system. He has a passion to find solutions that allow the business forward in a way that benefits all stakeholders.

Andrew Haskell is the Director and Product Line Manager at BNY Mellon managing the Immediate Payments suite of solutions within Treasury Services Product Management. In his current role, Andrew is responsible for BNY Mellon’s strategy and development of USD Immediate Payment solutions such as Real-Time Payments and Tokenized Payments® now available with Zelle®. Andrew is Chair of the U.S. Faster Payments Council’s Fraud Information Sharing Work Group, Co-Chair of the Aite Group’s Payment Innovation Council, and member of other work groups and committees with TCH, Early Warning Services, BAFT and others.

Prior to Immediate Payments, Andrew managed a wide range of payables and receivables products including: Wire Transfer, Account Reconciliation, Positive Pay, Controlled Disbursement, Online Cash Management Portal, and Electronic Bill Presentment & Payment. Andrew is a Certified Treasury Professional® and holds a Master of Business Administration, Master of Science in Finance, and Bachelor of Business Administration, all from Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA.

Barry is the Principal at TransactionBanker.com, a payments consultancy company. He is a recognized expert in wholesale banking and has been involved in operations and systems transformation and modernization related projects for global banks and software firms as both a line manager and consultant for more than 45 years. Throughout his career, he has managed day to day operations for major money center and super regional banks. He has planned, organized, directed and managed major banking initiatives—including leading payment systems transformation efforts and other critical software installation projects for financial services organizations around the world. He is a past member of the BAFT Board of Directors and currently serves as a member of the BAFT Payments Committee and the U.S. Faster Payments Council where he serves as the Chair of their Cross-Border Payments Work Group.

Christine Delaughter is Member Services Manager of the U.S. Faster Payments Council (FPC). The FPC is an industry-led membership organization whose mission is to facilitate a world-class payment system where Americans can safely and securely pay anyone, anywhere, at any time and with near-immediate funds availability. Christine is responsible for managing the daily membership operations of the organization and working with the FPC Work Groups and membership to execute on the FPC’s strategic plan while ensuring inclusive and transparent dialogue with all FPC stakeholders. Additionally, Christine will oversee the member certification process being developed in conjunction with Nacha. FPC members include business end-users, consumer organizations, financial institutions, payment network operators, technology providers, and others.

Prior to the FPC, Christine was a certified director of healthcare volunteer services, and has 25+ years of experience in operational management of complex membership programs. Christine has developed and lead mission-driven programs consisting of members in ages ranging from teens to senior adults with diverse educational, professional, and cultural backgrounds. While working in the healthcare industry, Christing has extensive leadership involvement with her own professional societies, serving as president of the Virginia Society for Directors of Healthcare Volunteer Services and Vice-President for Leadership Development & Certification with the Society for Healthcare Volunteer Leaders, a national-level professional association. Christing also has extensive experience in conference and event planning and management, fundraising and 501(c)3 leadership, and program and membership development.

Christina earned her bachelor's degree in Business Administration from James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. She lives with her husband and their two boys in Mount Jackson, located in the heart of the beautiful Shenandoah Valley of Virginia.

Sumit Arora is a Senior Vice President and the Head of Ecosystem Enablement within Wells Fargo’s Enterprise Payments Strategy group. In this role he is responsible for developing and executing strategies with payments industry bodies for bank’s future payments initiatives, to help consumers and institutional customers move money seamlessly and securely. With a financial services background, Sumit has led several payments initiatives in the industry, ranging from new products to modernizing existing frameworks, from early envisioning to implementation and operations. Sumit has extensive experience in working with the world's two leading card networks across their different lines of businesses..

Sumit joined Wells Fargo from Deloitte Consulting where he was an associate partner and a senior leader in Deloitte's payments practice, helping his clients navigate dynamic disruptive markets from delivering strategy to full implementation across the payments value chain. Prior to Deloitte, Sumit was Senior Principal Consultant at Atos Syntel where he provided hands-on strategic direction with overall delivery responsibility of high visible business and technology consulting, solutions and managed services for Fortune 100 multinational financial services cards and payments account. Prior to Atos Syntel he held a variety of software engineering and management roles at Infosys Ltd.

Sumit is an author, speaker and contributor to numerous articles, papers, podcast, and conferences. He is a recipient of Business Elite’s “40 Under 40” prestigious award, a program that identifies outstanding young Executives and Entrepreneurs in the world’s business, visionaries, and innovators changing the way things are done. He is one of the distinguished elected Board of Directors at the U.S. Faster Payments Council where he represents the large financial institution seat on the table. He is also an Advisory Board Member of Phoenix chapter for the customer experience certificate program at University of California, Irvine. Sumit earned his bachelor's in engineering degree from Delhi University.

James Sellick is a Director in Ripple’s Customer Success team for the Americas, managing relationships across North and Central America. With Ripple, James has also served in roles in Europe and Southeast Asia, implementing Ripple’s real time cross border payment solutions within banks and payment companies.

Prior to Ripple, James worked in payments at Santander UK implementing new payments technologies along with projects to reduce fraud and financial crime risk across the bank. James started his career at Ernst & Young defining and implementing digital banking strategies at some of the UK’s largest banks.

Albert serves as the Senior Vice President of Strategy for Bankers’ Bank in Madison, WI. He has over twenty-five years of experience in the field of banking and treasury management, and has spent the last ten years focused on Payments, Fintech, and Banking as a Service spaces. Prior to Bankers’, he spent ten years at Visa, Inc. running one of Visa’s Tier 1 commercial banking portfolios, served on Visa’s commercial business strategy team, and taught conflict communications as a faculty member of Visa University. He has served on the boards of two Series A Fintech startups and currently participates in a variety of pro-bono efforts for the start-up community. Albert holds a B.A. in History from Indiana University and a Master of Science in Social Psychology from George Mason University..

Moa Agrell, Senior Banking Partnerships Manager, is focusing on building out and maintaining Trustly’s banking partnership portfolio and open banking partners in North America. Moa has been part of Trustly’s Banking Relations team in Europe since March 2018 and transitioned to the North American team in early 2021. Moa is currently based in Stockholm, Sweden and she is relocating to the US in 2022. Prior to Trustly Moa worked for a Swedish FinTech Online Bank and Stockbroker Avanza and has extensive experience in relationship focused roles. She has a Masters Degree in International Economics from Utrecht University in the Netherlands.

Dean Nolan serves as Vice President of Faster Payments and Commercial Card in the Treasury Management division of Fifth Third Bank. He is responsible for the bank’s instant payment and commercial card solutions and platforms. His background includes more than 20 years of experience in payments, having previously served as Vice President of Enterprise Payment Solutions and Vice President of Merchant Services at Fifth Third Bank and Director of Debit, Prepaid, and HSA solutions at Fifth Third Processing Solutions.

Before joining Fifth Third, Dean held leadership positions in payments at Metavante/FIS, Bank of America, Wachovia/Wells Fargo, MasterCard, and most recently First Data/STAR. He’s also ventured into the start-up arena during his career, holding executive roles at an early stage cybersecurity start-up and later stage payment analytics provider.

Rob is the Chief Revenue Officer for Open Payment Network (OPN) Rob Brings 14+ years of sales leadership and Go To Market strategy in SaaS. He was a 12 plus year veteran of the SaaS Experience Management company, Qualtrics. Advising multiple tech startups with their go to market strategies.

After completing his bachelor’s degree in Economics at Brigham Young University, Rob joined Qualtrics as an early stage startup with about 30 people in the company as an Account Executive. There, Rob worked with brands of all sizes, including Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Disney. In less than two years Rob was promoted to a leadership role, managing his own team as well as other sales teams within the company. He was closely involved with cross functional work with product, engineering, technical sales, sales operations, and marketing.

As part of Rob’s leadership position, he helped take multiple products to market, most notably, CX (Customer Experience) and BX (Brand Experience). As a Qualtrics employee for 12 years, Rob was there for every major round of funding, starting with the initial joint investment of Sequoia and Accel Partners, to Insight Partners, and finally the part of the largest VC-backed enterprise software acquisition in history when Qualtrics sold to SAP in 2019. Rob was part of the leadership team that set up the Sales Operating Rhythm and Management Operating Rhythm for the sales teams.

For over 6 years, Rob represented all of sales and partnered with marketing and sales operations to set up all sales incentives and gamification for Qualtrics X4 registration, supporting the team in getting record attendance for X4 events. During his tenure at Qualtrics, Rob transitioned from running exclusively SaaS sales teams, to running teams that sold both software and services, accounting for the largest region by headcount, and by quarterly targets of over $40M per quarter. For Rob’s last two consecutive years at Qualtrics, his region secured a top 3 position for employee engagement and manager effectiveness across all departments out of 100’s of teams, measured multiple times per year. Rob earned a spot at Presidents Club for 7 consecutive years, qualifying each year the option was available for his role.

Travis Dulaney is a Founding Member of Timeis.io a Proof-of-Concept firm dedicated to helping companies realize the benefits of faster payments while meeting regulatory compliance.

Previously the Founder & CEO of PayFi, a payment processor connecting Community Banks to the real time payment schemes and successfully exited in September of 2020.

Travis’ experience provides businesses with the visibility necessary to get a product to market and helping validate “product market fit” and the team with the experience to deliver the product to the market quickly. Mr. Dulaney has over 25 years of Financial Services experience, specializing in Payments, Processing, and Banking across vertical markets providing vision, insights, and creative solutions.

Travis Dulaney has held executive positions with FIS the #1 FinTech company as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Government Services; VP of Product Development for eFunds Systems a payment switching and card processor; Travis’ experience ranges from software development to Six Sigma process engineering, Product Design and Operational Management providing him a unique ability to have vision across corporate functions.

Andrew Gómez has nearly a decade of experience researching account-to-account payment systems globally and has supported numerous industry players on six continents, including clearing houses, payment associations, government regulators, technology providers, and various fintechs. He has advised clients on topics as wide-ranging from ACH migration to real-time payments, cross-border payment regulations, data standards, global payment system modernization, and account-to-account payment fraud.  

Andrew is a member of various payment associations, including the Frankfurt Payments Network; the US Faster Payments Council, where he is a member of three working groups; and the Payments Innovation Alliance Advisory Committee for Emerging Payments. Andrew has presented at various payment conferences, including Nacha’s Smarter Faster Payments (2018 & 2022), the Payments Innovation Alliance meetings, the Frankfurt Payments Network, and various smaller conferences held by regional payment associations in the United States.

Ronald Herman is the founder and chief executive officer of Sionic (Sionic Mobile Corporation). He is responsible for strategy, business development and day-to-day operations of the company. Herman has 25 years of executive technology leadership experience ranging from early-stage start-ups to Fortune 500 companies.

Since early 2000, Herman has focused exclusively on mobile communications technology, including location-based services, mobile marketing and more recently, cloud computing-based mobile commerce.

A proven entrepreneur, Herman co-founded two technology companies prior to launching Sionic Mobile. The first was divided into automotive services and sold to Carlson Marketing Group and the healthcare practice sold to EDS, bringing him to Atlanta, Georgia. Herman then joined Arthur Andersen Business Consulting to build the firm’s Advanced Technology Group. In 2001, Herman co-founded IntelliOne Technologies, a location-based services company. In a span of nine years, IntelliOne completed two acquisitions and raised $40 million in private, venture and strategic capital prior to its acquisition by a Canadian partner in 2010.

In 2010, Herman founded Sionic Mobile, providing seed stage capital and bringing forward key staff members and stakeholders from IntelliOne.

Sheila Noll serves as Executive Vice President/Chief Operations Officer of Midwest Independent BankersBank (MIB).  As a member of the Executive Management Committee, she participates in providing organizational leadership, direction and guidance related to community bank servicing across the Midwest.

She has more than 26 years of correspondent banking experience and provides a wealth of knowledge in bank operations through current and past participation in a number of banking-related committees outside of MIB, such as Chairperson of the Graduate School of Banking in Colorado (GSBC) Alumni Advisory Board; GSBC Board of Trustee Member; Faster Payments Task Force member with the Federal Reserve Bank; the Faster Payments Council; RTP Advisory member; FedNow Pilot Contributing Member; the ICBA Operations & Payments Committee; the Bankers’ Bank Operations Council; and the ABA Correspondent Bank Work Group.

Sheila earned her bachelor’s degree in Finance from Central Missouri State University (now University of Central Missouri), in Warrensburg, Missouri. She subsequently graduated with honors from the Missouri Bankers’ Association School of Bank Management as well as the Graduate School of Banking in Colorado.

Sam Pate is an EVP and Chief Information Officer at Citizens Bank and Trust in Alabama. His responsibilities include Information Technology, Banking Innovation, Payments and Strategic Planning. Sam has 30 years’ experience working in community banking operations. He has served as President/Vice President and Board member on several different regional Core Banking user group affiliations. Sam has also served on State banking committees on various projects. Payments have always been a focus of his as one of his first projects as a banker was to help implement ATM/Debit Cards. His focus today is to help provide products and services that propel Citizens Bank and Trust and their customers into the future of payments.

Prior to working at Citizens Bank and Trust, Sam helped form a denovo (start-up) bank in Alabama. Mr. Pate attended the University of Alabama with a major in Business Administration. 

Booshan Rengachari founded Finzly in 2012 with a bold vision to transform banking technology and enable banks to offer financial services in the new connected ecosystem. He believes in simplifying banking experience through the First principles of design, and under his tutelage, Finzly has been able to offer award-winning payment and trading solutions to financial institutions.

Prior to Finzly, Booshan managed International Banking at Wells Fargo where he was responsible for sales, trading, and operational solutions. Booshan presented a revolutionary proposal to the Faster Payments Task Force in 2016, which was acclaimed by the industry experts for its innovative approach to providing payment solutions. He has served as a board member on the US Faster Payment Council in the past and advocates the cause of implementing secure and faster payments capability in the US.  Booshan has an Engineering degree in Computer Science, in addition to degrees in Machine Learning from Stanford University and Accounting from Wharton University. 

Rodman K. Reef is a consultant specializing in the global payment business. Recent assignments addressed: payments strategy, reducing card processing expenses, identifying chip (EMV) card benefits, reviewing retail POS systems, and implementing prepaid card programs. Rod is the former Chairman and CEO of Citishare Corporation. During his long tenure, Citishare expanded to 50+ countries, volume increased from $125 million/year to $36 billion/year, unit costs were reduced, and many innovative products were introduced including cross border real-time payments. Prior to his role at Citishare, Rod held several other positions at Citigroup including managing one of its FedWire operations. Rod served on the Fed’s Faster Payments Task Force and several other industry groups. Rod is or has been a board member or advisor to NYCE, The Clearing House, Visa, the EFTA, Cirrus, Maestro and several young payment companies.

Elspeth Bloodgood, AAP, NCP is a senior product manager for Jack Henry’s JHA PayCenter and a subject matter expert in the Zelle, FedNow, and RTP networks. She has been in the payment industry for the better part of 20 years, starting with a stint on the x9B committee that created the IRD standard for Check 21. She has been a frequent work group member for NACHA, the Faster Payments Council and its predecessors, and other cross industry groups. She has experience in online BillPay for the iPay Division of Jack Henry. Prior to that, she was in product management for biller direct and ACH products at multiple companies.

Phillipa Wilson is a Vice President of Faster Payments Strategy and Market Development at Mastercard. In this role, she is responsible for developing strategic partner and product relationships to drive collaboration that enables faster payment growth in the U.S.

Prior to Mastercard, Phillipa held a variety of payments-related roles at J.P. Morgan Chase and American Express where she; developed and enhanced products to help commercial clients and cardholders improve business-to-business and travel expense management while improving savings and service; designed and implemented go-to-market strategies to scale market adoption and business transformation, and created new voice of customer and delivery practices to prioritize investments and inform product development.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Phillipa immigrated to New York and attended New York University to major in Political Science.

Lisa Akahoshi joined Visa in 2022 as a Senior Director in the North America Merchant Organization where she manages client relationships within the Telecommunications vertical. Prior to joining Visa, she spent 2 years at The Clearing House within the RTP Product Management Team. The 16 years prior to that she was at Verizon where her last role was in payment strategy driving their faster payments vision amongst other large scale initiatives. Lisa is based in Orlando but is originally from Southern California where she attained her Masters Degree at the University of California, Irvine.

Phillipa Wilson is a Vice President of Faster Payments Strategy and Market Development at Mastercard. In this role, she is responsible for developing strategic partner and product relationships to drive collaboration that enables faster payment growth in the U.S.

Prior to Mastercard, Phillipa held a variety of payments-related roles at J.P. Morgan Chase and American Express where she; developed and enhanced products to help commercial clients and cardholders improve business-to-business and travel expense management while improving savings and service; designed and implemented go-to-market strategies to scale market adoption and business transformation, and created new voice of customer and delivery practices to prioritize investments and inform product development.

Born in Kampala, Uganda, Phillipa immigrated to New York and attended New York University to major in Political Science.

Hope Hacker currently leads the Treasury Consulting Team at Nationwide Insurance as an AVP, Assistant Treasurer. The Treasury Consulting Team works across all the Nationwide Enterprise business units to recommend and implement bank and fintech tools to meet their money movement needs. She is passionate about supporting the variety of business units at Nationwide with a focus on payments and customer experience.

Her career spans 22 years at Nationwide within the Office of Finance. The majority of her career focused on supporting both the P&C and NF business units within PM&A roles. For the past 7 years, she has been part of the Office of Treasury.

She has a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Ohio University. Her professional designations include CTP, ChFC and CPA (inactive).  In addition, she is continually focused on process improvement, holding a Green Belt Six Sigma certification. Currently, she serves on a merchant advisory council to The Clearing House regarding RTP adoption and is Vice Chair of the Real-Time Recurring Work Group for the Faster Payments Council.

Miriam Sheril is the Head of Product in the US at Form3. She has been in the payments industry for the past 13 years and has a true passion for payments and technology. Miriam’s experience includes supporting and managing programs for Fedwire, as well as being part of the inception and build of the new FedNow service, which is being launched by the Federal Reserve.

Miriam currently leads the product development teams at Form3 who are building the US products including faster payments with RTP, FedNow and other schemes like Fedwire.

Miriam worked primarily for the Federal Reserve Banks, starting out as intern during college and progressed to become the Assistant Vice President (AVP) Core FedNow Product Lead. She spent three years kicking off and leading the product development for the Core FedNow service for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, and eight years managing Fedwire initiatives and wholesale payments for the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Miriam holds a Master of Science in information systems from the University of Phoenix and a Bachelor of Science in computational mathematics from Brooklyn College.

Amanda Compton is the Director of Integrated Account Protection at Arvest Bank and a Certified Fraud Examiner. She has over 15 years of financial fraud experience across all payment channels and is driven by the constant challenge of reducing the success rates of bad actors. Amanda is a huge supporter of creating and exemplifying an anti-fraud culture through fraud awareness and education.

Amanda began her career in fraud detection, specializing in debit and credit card transaction fraud. During her tenure, her purview increased to fraud prevention, detection, and resolution for all payment types. She has stood up new teams, focusing on development and realignment for a future-minded, scalable fraud mitigation strategy. She now oversees the Arvest fraud mitigation division, focusing on a wide array of efforts for all payment channels, including customer and associate fraud and scam support, transaction dispute claims, fraud investigation, and loss avoidance and recovery.