FinTech Forum 2017: The Global Reach of Financial Innovation

Alex Acree is the Managing Director and General Counsel at Fenway Summer Ventures. Mr. Acree brings significant experience advising financial institutions and investment funds as well as senior leadership experience with early-stage companies. Previously, he advised financial institutions in issues ranging from reorganizations, capital markets transactions, Dodd-Frank Act implementation, corporate governance, and compliance issues at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. In addition, he's held financial modeling, budgeting, and business development responsibilities in a series of senior positions at early-stage companies. Mr. Acree received his JD from Yale Law School, his MBA from Yale School of Management, and a BA from Boston College. 

Usman Ahmed is the Head of Global Public Policy at PayPal Inc.  His work covers a variety of global issues including financial services regulation, innovation, international trade, and entrepreneurship.  He has given talks on these subjects at conferences and universities around the world and has published in the World Economic Forum Global Information Technology Report, MIT Press Innovations Journal, and the Boston University International Law Journal.  Ahmed is also an Adjunct Professor of Law at Georgetown University Law School where he teaches a course on Fintech Law and Policy.  Prior to PayPal, Usman worked at a number of policy think tanks in the Washington DC area focusing on good governance issues.  Ahmed earned his JD from University of Michigan, his MA from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, and his BA from University of Maryland. 

Dave Curan is Director of Compliance Solutions with Thomson Reuters and works with major clients to help address and mitigate systemic regulatory, compliance, risk and related challenges.  Dave is a senior executive and lawyer who has deep experience at the intersection of business, law, technology, compliance and risk management, and preparedness.  He has been on all sides of regulatory change—as General Counsel/Chief Compliance Officer, advisor, counselor and technology services provider—and has helped many companies navigate the complex waters of regulatory change through technology-driven process improvements.  Dave was most recently CEO and Founder of Risk Readiness Corporation, a technology company focused on reputational risk, and EVP Business & Legal Affairs at IntraLinks, Inc.  Dave has held senior positions at Integrity Interactive Corporation  as well as senior legal and compliance roles at Campbell Soup Company, Reader’s Digest, and Vertis, Inc.

Kathy Dick is Managing Director at Promontory.  She has 26 years of bank regulatory experience with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. As deputy comptroller for credit and market risk, she was responsible for the development of a comprehensive policy framework with respect to the management of all credit and market risks associated with banking products and services. She chaired the OCC’s National Risk Committee and served as the agency’s representative for the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. Kathy developed the OCC’s Financial Markets Group Division and was responsible for identifying emerging risk issues in the banking system and leading efforts to promptly respond to early warning signals. During the recent financial crisis, she served as co-chair of the agency team established by the comptroller to influence global and domestic regulatory reform efforts. Earlier in her career, Kathy held leadership positions as a national bank examiner, including serving as the examiner-in-charge of the OCC’s London office.

Schan Duff is a Senior Fellow in the Aspen Institute’s Financial Security Program.  At Aspen, Schan serves as principal investigator for the Project on Pragmatic Regulation and Financial Inclusion which explores the implications of regulatory efficiency and coordination for financial innovation and access.

A lawyer by training, Schan practiced law for more than a decade in the banking and financial regulatory departments of the international law firms O’Melveny & Myers and Allen & Overy LLP. While there, Schan represented banks, non-bank lenders, asset managers, insurance companies, mortgage servicers, swap dealers, payments companies and retirement plan fiduciaries in civil litigation and matters involving major federal and state financial regulators, Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, various state attorneys general and Congressional committees.  Schan has a PhD from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where his research focused on issues related to corporate strategy and financial regulation, and a JD with honors from the University of Chicago Law School where he was a John M. Olin Fellow in Law and Economics and elected to the Order of the Coif. 

Amy S. Friend is Senior Deputy Comptroller and Chief Counsel at the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). In this role, Ms. Friend oversees all of the agency’s legal activities, including legal advisory services to banks and examiners, enforcement and compliance activities, litigation, legislative initiatives, and regulation of securities and corporate practices of national banks. Ms. Friend further oversees the agency's licensing and community affairs functions. She is a member of the agency’s Executive Committee and assumed these duties in February 2013. Prior to rejoining the OCC, Ms. Friend served as Managing Director at Promontory Financial Group. From 2008 to 2010, she served as Chief Counsel for the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs where she worked with the Committee to develop and enact legislative responses to the financial crisis, including the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. She is a graduate of the Georgetown University Law Center, cum laude, and the University of Pennsylvania, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

Steve Hufford is a Managing Director at Raymond James & Associates, a growth-focused, middle-market investment bank.  In that capacity, he co-leads the firm’s financial technology and payments investment banking practice.  He has completed over 100 M&A and financing transactions in his career.  Steve has more than two decades of deal-making experience in corporate development, corporate law and investment banking.  He graduated from James Madison University with dual degrees in Political Science and Russian Language, received his JD from the University of Virginia School of Law.  

Jeff Kupfer is a co-founder of Starling, an applied behavioral sciences technology company that uses internal communications data to help organizations more effectively identify areas of risk and opportunity as well as to assess their culture.  The company is increasingly focused on the financial services sector.  Earlier in his career, Jeff served as the Deputy Chief of Staff at the US Treasury Department, responsible for managing the Treasury’s regulatory agenda, and helping formulate numerous post-9/11 supervisory and compliance initiatives in the financial services sector.  These activities included restructuring Treasury to combat terrorist financing, crafting of the Patriot Act and a variety of other anti-money laundering policies and programs, as well as playing a key role in creating the Department of Homeland Security.  Jeff then moved to the White House, where he was a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.  Jeff has also been the Deputy Secretary and Chief Operating Officer at the US Department of Energy, an agency with over 100,000 personnel and an annual budget of over $25 billion.  After leaving government service, Jeff was an executive at Atlas Energy Group and Chevron.  Jeff holds degrees from Yale University and Harvard Law School.   He is also an adjunct professor of policy and management at Carnegie Mellon University’s Heinz College.

Amy Matsuo is the National Leader of KPMG’s Regulatory Risk Practice that advises companies on enterprise-wide compliance, safety and soundness, broker/dealer, asset management, consumer compliance and other regulatory risk management issues. Amy is the recipient of the 2014 Women Leaders in Consulting Award for client service. In addition to being the Regulatory Risk national partner, she leads the firm’s multi-industry compliance transformation solution. She drives the firm’s enterprise-wide compliance, program assessment and transformation services for the financial services industry, including regulatory change, risk and control build and testing, risk governance, monitoring and reporting and third party management oversight and controls. Amy directs a team focused on regulatory and compliance assistance and preparedness. Amy is a frequent national and Board presenter and is both published and quoted on regulatory topics, enterprise-wide compliance programs, and fair banking and conduct risk practices. Amy has substantial experience leading and coordinating regulatory advisory engagements across an array of financial service providers. She leads multi-faceted services in such areas as supervisory and enforcement actions, examinations and investigations. Amy has substantial experience leading and coordinating regulatory advisory engagements across an array of financial service providers, including bank and non-bank.

Alastair is a partner at Bond Dickinson where he specializes in commercial IT and technology related matters. He has particular experience in advising on large-scale technology implementations, licensing, the use of cloud based solutions, outsourcing and development projects frequently in the financial services, insurance and telecoms sectors (where there is often a cross-over between the technology related issues and regulation involved). Alastair also works regularly with a number of retail sector clients on technology and ecommerce related projects.  In parallel, Alastair advises clients on data protection issues most commonly relating to the use and transfer of customer data (particularly in the context of the type of project referred to above) and has experience in the exploitation of intellectual property rights, particularly relating to software development, the use of open source software and websites.  This also involves the support of corporate transactions in these areas, together with advising on linked transitional services arrangements.  

Fredes Montes, a Spanish National, is Senior Financial Specialist at the World Bank. She joined the World Bank in 2007 as a credit reporting systems specialist and since then has supported policy reforms in more than 40 projects worldwide. Currently also serves as Secretariat to the International Committee on Credit Reporting (ICCR) and recently co-authored the book “Responsible Finance and Credit Reporting Systems” which focuses on the links between insolvency and credit information. Ms. Montes centers on credit reporting policy including legal and regulatory framework, consumer protection and oversight.  Previously, she was legal director at Experian Spain, where she was responsible for the consumer protection and compliance unit of the credit bureau and value added services business lines.  Ms. Montes earned her five-year degree in Law at the Universidad Complutense and studied Political Science at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid. Additionally she holds a Masters degree in Data Protection and New Technologies Law.

Blake D. Morant is the Dean of The George Washington University Law School and Robert Kramer Research Professor of Law. He assumed the deanship on September 1, 2014, after having served seven years as Dean of the Wake Forest University School of Law. Dean Morant is one of the nation’s best known and respected legal educators and scholars. He has served as President-elect of the Association of American Law Schools and President in 2015, and he regularly speaks across the country and abroad on legal education, diversity, and topics relating to his scholarly interests.  Among his many professional honors, Dean Morant was named the John R. Kramer Outstanding Law Dean by Equal Justice Works, was twice recognized by National Jurist magazine as one of the most influential people in legal education, and received the Chief Justice John Marshall Lifetime Achievement Award in 2012 from the Judge Advocates Association. Dean Morant earned a BA with high distinction and Phi Beta Kappa honors and a JD, both from the University of Virginia. In addition, he received an honorary Doctor of Laws degree from Pepperdine University in 2010.

Harish Natarajan is Lead Financial Sector Specialist with the Finance and Markets Global Practice at the World Bank. His responsibilities include assisting countries in improving safety, reliability and efficiency of payments, remittances and securities and derivatives settlement systems; participating in country and regional payment systems diagnostic studies; and supporting countries in implementation of payment and settlement systems and national payments system reforms. He is also currently leading the development of approaches to operationalize and integrate FinTech developments in World Bank programs.  Harish represents the World Bank in the retail payments working groups of the Committee on Payment Market Infrastructures (CPMI) at the Bank for International Settlements, FinTech related activities with the CPMI, Financial Stability Board (FSB) and other standard setting bodies and co-manages the CPMI-World Bank Retail Payments Forum.  Prior to joining the World Bank, Harish worked with VISA Inc, in the South Asia region in various senior level positions in business development, operations and risk management. Harish holds an under-graduate degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology-Madras and a Post Graduate Diploma in Management, from Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta, specializing in IT systems and Finance.

Nicholas Neveling is Editor of Real Deals. Nicholas joined Real Deals in April 2008 and has been covering the European private equity market for almost a decade. He was previously a reporter at Accountancy Age and prior to that worked for the South African publications Business Day and The Sunday Times. Nicholas graduated in journalism from Rhodes University in 2002.

Jason Oxman is the CEO of the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA), the global trade association representing more than 500 payments and technology companies. Since joining in 2012, Mr. Oxman has led ETA and its membership through unprecedented technological transformations, and ETA now represents the world’s largest payments and technology companies. ETA also owns and produces TRANSACT, the premier annual event for the payments technology industry, and is the voice of the payments industry on Capitol Hill. Before joining ETA, Mr. Oxman was Senior Vice President of Industry Affairs of the Consumer Electronics Association, prior to which he served as general counsel of a technology industry trade association and vice president of a Silicon Valley-based technology company. He worked at the Federal Communications Commission to develop and implement technology policy. He began his legal career as a law clerk for the Maine Supreme Court, and he is also a former broadcast journalist.  Mr. Oxman received his BA cum laude from Amherst College, and his M.S. and JD from Boston University.

Chung Kun "Kevin" Park is a Junior Fellow at the GW Center for Law, Economics & Finance.  Park is currently a 2L at George Washington University Law School.  He came to law school to learn more about the regulation of banks and other financial institutions. His interest in the subject matter has only grown during his time with C-LEAF, and hopes to continue working on FinTech issues beyond law school. Kevin is also passionate about personal advocacy - both inside and outside the courtroom. 

Kevin Petrasic is a Partner at White & Case. As the head of the firm's Global Financial Institutions Advisory practice, he advises domestic and international financial services firms on a wide array of issues arising under federal and state banking laws, as well as issues within the jurisdiction of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Mr. Petrasic has broad government experience, having served as Special Counsel, Managing Director External Affairs, Director of Congressional Affairs, Legislative Counsel, and Assistant Chief Counsel at the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Thrift Supervision and Counsel to the former U.S. House Banking Committee. He received his JD from Catholic University of America, Columbus School of Law and his BA from the University of Delaware. Mr. Petrasic is also an adjunct professor of Law at George Washington University Law School.  

Neil Ruiz is the Executive Director of the Center for Law, Economics, and Finance at The George Washington University Law School.  Dr. Ruiz is an internationally recognized expert on the political economy of the global race for talent, skills, and labor. He has spent the past decade as a think tank scholar at The Brookings Institution, a migration specialist at The World Bank, a consultant for the Asian Development Bank, and teaching fellow at Harvard University.  His research focuses on policy issues related to entrepreneurship, international migration, innovation, and regional and state economic development. His studies have been widely cited in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, The Economist, Financial Times, and CNN.  He also has experience working in the startup and entrepreneurship sectors.  Dr. Ruiz holds a PhD in political economy from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), an MSc in Economic History from University of Oxford, and a BA in political science with high honors and Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California, Berkeley.

Dean Rutley is a transactional Partner at Womble Carlyle, an internationally-known commercial law firm that annually ranks among the leading law firms in the US by American Lawyer magazine.  He has over 30 years of experience representing emerging and middle market companies, both public and private, in the FinTech, government contracts and technology industries (including completing over 35 FinTech acquisitions for a large, publicly traded payment processing entity).  A two-time BTI recognized Client Service All-Star, Mr. Rutley addresses a variety of domestic and international matters, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate structure, compliance with federal and state securities laws, board of directors duties, negotiated resolution of business disputes, licensing, joint venture agreements, financing, and equity distribution for his clients. Mr. Rutley currently serves as General Counsel to the Association for Corporate Growth, National Capital Chapter and as a Member of the Board of Advisors for the George Washington University Law School Government Contracts Program. 

Benjamin Saul is a partner in the Washington, D.C. office of White & Case, LLP, and a member of its Banking and Financial Institutions Advisory practices. He represents banks and non-banks, including fintech companies, of all sizes in a wide-range of matters, with a focus on those relating to retail bank and consumer financial products and services. Mr. Saul has extensive experience representing clients in matters involving the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), and has been a leader within the private bar on CFPB matters. He has also represented financial services clients in many matters involving the federal and state banking authorities, Congress, Department of Justice, Federal Trade Commission, Department of Housing and Urban Development, Securities and Exchange Commission and state attorneys general. He is a member of the Board of Editorial Advisors for the Review of Banking & Financial Services as well as Banking Law360. Mr. Saul earned a B.A. cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD magna cum laude from the American University Washington College of Law.

Ky Tran-Trong is Senior Regulatory Counsel in the Legal Department for Visa Inc. He works on prepaid, emerging payment, and other payment systems issues at Visa.  Prior to joining Visa in 2011, Tran-Trong was a member of the Regulations section in the Division of Consumer and Community Affairs at the Federal Reserve Board where he was the regulatory team leader on consumer financial deposit and payment systems laws, including the Electronic Fund Transfer Act and the Truth in Savings Act. In that role, he led rulemakings under Regulation E implementing new consumer protections for prepaid cards, including the payroll and gift card rules. He also worked on consumer financial privacy issues and rulemakings under the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Following his time at the Board, Tran-Trong practiced in the Global Banking and Payment Systems group at Paul Hastings LLP, focusing on electronic payments and money transmission issues.  Tran-Trong holds a JD from William and Mary Law School, an LLM from the University of London, and an AB from Duke University.

Gavin is a Partner at White & Case.  He has significant experience in domestic and cross-border mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance, with a particular focus on complex, high-end corporate transactions.  Clients from a range of sectors, including financial institutions, technology and life sciences, value his proven ability to efficiently manage deals from start to finish. A partner in the Firm's global Mergers Acquisitions Practice, he is noted for his skill in navigating the intricacies of complex transactions with an international dimension.  Gavin's extensive track record spans international and domestic mergers and acquisitions, public and private takeovers, auctions, reorganizations, joint ventures, corporate governance, IPOs and other corporate transactions.  Gavin is the co-leader of the EMEA Financial Institutions M&A group.  He holds a BA in Law from Magdalen College, Oxford University and an advanced degree from College of Law, London.  

Helen Wong is Director of Fintech and Payments at Discover Financial Services.  Ms. Wong was previously an attorney at the Federal Trade Commission, with the Division of Financial Practices, Bureau of Consumer Protection. Her work at the FTC focused on consumer protection enforcement actions involving financial technology issues, including mobile payments, emerging payment and commerce platforms, crowd-funding, and cryptocurrencies. She has acted as the lead attorney on a number of cases, including the FTC's first Bitcoin-related case and the first crowdfunding case. In addition, she has litigated numerous other matters involving short-term lending, credit counseling, and debt collection.  Ms. Wong is a frequent speaker on Fintech topics, having addressed numerous conferences including the National Association of Attorney Generals’ Conference, the DC Blockchain Summit, and TEDx Northwestern. Prior to joining the FTC, she was an associate at the law firm of White & Case.  She is a graduate of Northwestern University and Georgetown University Law Center.