Current Speakers Chicago

Lilly Dodd has been with PNC for over 10 years and currently oversees Immediate Payments Product Management. She leads PNC’s strategy and product development for all real-time payment solutions, driving innovation and efficiency in how businesses and consumers move money. With deep expertise in digital payments, bank operations, and customer experience, Lilly brings a pragmatic and forward-looking perspective to the evolving payments landscape. Prior to working in Immediate Payments, she served as a Treasury Management Officer in the Public Finance vertical for PNC working with a wide range of payables and receivables products.
Lilly earned her Bachelor of Science degree in urban planning from Arizona State University. She is active in the community as a member of the Junior League of Phoenix and serves on the Community Council board.

Kelsey Homa is Vice President and Head of Fraud Investigations at City National Bank, where she leads a team responsible for investigating complex fraud across payments, lending, deposits, and new accounts. She brings nearly a decade of investigative experience, including criminal investigations in the government sector, insurance fraud for a private investigative firm, and financial crimes compliance in banking.

At City National, Kelsey oversees high-impact fraud cases investigations while driving operational improvements that strengthen accuracy, efficiency, and regulatory alignment. Her work focuses on preventing, detecting, and responding to fraud in a rapidly evolving risk landscape, with a strong emphasis on process innovation and cross-functional collaboration.  

Gretchen is an Entrepreneurial-minded Product Leader with experience designing and launching global financial and non-financial products in multiple areas including Fintech, e-Commerce, Cybersecurity, Identity & Trust. Her career encompasses product development, business growth, and tech consulting. Passionate about innovative payment solutions, she currently focuses on faster payments, AI, and other related technologies shaping the future of money movement. She is dedicated to delivering seamless and secure payment solutions that benefit both businesses and consumers, consistently pushing the boundaries of innovation in the payments industry.

Management Services, overseeing all Treasury Services products, including Business Online Banking, ACH, Wire, Positive Pay, Lockbox, Remote Deposit, Commercial Card, and Mobile Banking. With 27 years of banking experience, he began his career at Wachovia Bank (Wells Fargo) in 1997, managing Lockbox Operations. He then joined SunTrust Bank (Truist) as a Lockbox Product Developer, holding various roles over 13 years. From 2017 to 2020, he was the Product Manager at Renasant Bank, overseeing Business Digital Banking, Payments, Fraud, and Commercial Card. Howard holds degrees from the University of Georgia and Mercer University. A native of Atlanta, he is a passionate Georgia Bulldogs fan and serves as Chairman of the Make A Difference Foundation, providing scholarships and grants to support education and community programs.

Innovative and knowledgeable financial market professional dedicated to creativity and quality. A key player in the development and delivery of international exchange alliances and market innovation in the Financial Services space. Proponent and believer in educating business and technology teams as a key driver in delivering optimal solutions and examining technology disruptors. Skilled presenter and speaker on Emerging Technology and FinTech experience and applications. Possesses in-depth knowledge of industry offerings, competitive intelligence, and technology capabilities.

Industry experience includes: Financial Service Providers and Banking Institutions, Financial Derivatives Exchanges, Exchange Clearinghouse, Futures and Options Trading, OTC Markets, Equity Markets, Spot and Cash Markets, International Exchange Alliances, Financial Regulatory and Compliance.

Specialties include: Emerging Technologies Advocacy and Applications, Electronic Trading Systems Architecture and Methods, Futures and Options Product Design and Launch, Product Strategy, Industry Education, Enterprise Architecture, Technical Sales Presentation and Analysis, Competitive Intelligence and Analysis, Alliance Leadership.

Sai leads Cross River’s bank payments portfolio – scaling real-time rails, revitalizing legacy ones, and shaping the next chapter of money movement. His work sits at the intersection of payment innovation, rail modernization, and cross-functional execution. He is advancing the bank’s payment stack by growing adoption of next-generation rails – real-time (FedNow & RTP) and global (International Payments) – to bring speed, resilience, and intelligence across use cases in crypto, fintech, lending, and payroll. In parallel, Sai is strengthening the efficiency and reliability of mature rails like ACH and Wires, modernizing decades-old systems without disrupting scale.

Key focus areas:
• Launching and optimizing instant and cross-border payment capabilities
• Engineering multi-rail redundancy to increase reliability
• Streamlining partner onboarding through configurable and scalable payout frameworks

Sai also contributes to national workgroups and task forces at The Clearing House, the Federal Reserve, and the U.S. Faster Payments Council, focusing on instant payment adoption, interoperability standards, and financial access. His involvement helps bridge long-term product strategy with evolving partner needs – supporting the broader future of digital payments.

Matt Horne leads business development efforts for Fidelity’s digital asset division, working closely with investors to integrate digital assets alongside traditional portfolios.
Before this role, he held multiple strategic functions across Fidelity’s asset management and distribution units, including contributing to the launch and growth of Fidelity’s ETF business. 
Earlier in his career, Horne served as a nuclear submarine officer (Lieutenant Commander) in the U.S. Navy.He holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Holy Cross and an MBA from Boston College.  He is also a CFA charterholder and holds FINRA Series 7, 24 & 63 registrations.

Justin Zhao is Vice President and Head of Global Partnerships & Sales for Visa Direct, where he leads Visa’s efforts to build and scale partnerships and drive sales globally for real-time push-payment solutions. With over a decade of experience in financial services and consulting, Justin previously held roles in strategy and planning at Visa and worked in management consulting with Accenture. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics & Political Science from Duke University. Based in San Francisco, he focuses on helping clients and partners harness instant, cross-border, and embedded payment flows.

Experienced and passionate leader with over twenty years of expertise in partnerships, business development, and product development across payments, credit risk, fraud prevention, and compliance. Adept at managing and coaching teams to foster a cohesive organization that drives both short- and long-term growth. Proven track record in developing and executing strategic relationships with organizations of all sizes to expend the ecosystem and grow revenue. Skilled in leading global teams in creating complex products/solutions, driving sales and strategic partnerships with technology providers, data providers, payment processors, card issuers, financial institutions, merchants, and fintechs.

Specialty: Domestic and Cross-Border Money Movement and Payment Processing (Credit, Debit, Prepaid, Account, Wallet, P2P, B2B, RTP, ACH…), Research and Strategic Planning, Data Analytics, Risk Management, Business Systems Development, Product Management, Transaction Processing (Payments, Wire transfers, P2P, B2B…), Compliance (KYC, AML, Patriot Act, OFAC, Basel, Consumer Protection Act, FCRA, GLBA), Thin File/No File Data, Vendor Negotiations.

Dan Pinto is CEO and Co-Founder of Fingerprint, a device intelligence firm that helps companies detect fraud while preserving user privacy. Under his leadership, Fingerprint has raised over $77 million in funding and is trusted by thousands of organizations to block sophisticated fraud attacks. Before Fingerprint, Dan co-founded Machinio, a search engine for used industrial machinery, which was acquired in 2018. Earlier in his career, he experimented with tech entrepreneurship—from software, bots, and SEO—to build his foundational skills. Dan holds a degree from Northwestern University.

Brent Mizzen is the Acting Senior Vice President of Payments & Digital at the Canadian Bankers Association, where he leads strategy, policy development, and advocacy across Canada’s payments and digital banking sector. Before assuming this role, he served as Vice President of Payments Policy at CBA, and held senior policy roles at Finance Canada, Industry Canada, and the Canadian Life & Health Insurance Association. Brent holds a Master’s degree in Economics and is a recognized voice in payments regulation and digital innovation in Canadian finance circles.

Romil Trivedi is a seasoned payments professional with over 19 years of experience spanning product development, management, Pre-sales, and business development. As Director of Solution Consulting for the Americas at Euronet Worldwide, Romil plays a pivotal role in shaping innovative payment strategies and guiding clients across financial institutions, FinTech’s, and enterprises toward scalable and future-ready solutions.

Throughout his career, Romil has worked extensively across global payment ecosystems, helping organizations navigate the complexities of modernization, real-time payments, and cross-border interoperability. At the conference, he will be speaking on the transformative power of instant payments—exploring their growing global footprint, strategic importance, and the critical role they play in enabling businesses to scale efficiently and competitively.

Beyond the world of payments, Romil is an avid outdoors enthusiast and a competitive spirit at heart. He enjoys badminton, table tennis, and chess and is always up for an escape room challenge—especially when it doubles as a team-building exercise with colleagues and co-workers.

Experienced Lead Solutions Consultant with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry. Strong consulting professional lead skilled in Requirements Analysis, Software design in Banking, Pre-sales, Sales Presentations, and Business Analysis.

Gary’s the founder, President & CEO of Payall Payment Systems – the first end-to-end infrastructure provider of technology for cross-border payments through banks, central banks and regulators. The company has developed category defining software for counterparty risk management, multi-jurisdictional compliance, real-time transaction risk management and intervention as well as global payment orchestration that makes cross-border payments through banks safe, efficient (fast, low-cost), transparent and inclusive. Payall’s counterparty risk, transaction monitoring, multi-jurisdictional compliance and payment processing are featured at the U.S. Federal Reserve Marketplace

Gary has also served as an Industry Advisor to the Philadelphia Federal Reserve Bank since 2006 – initially working with the Payment Card Center and now the Consumer Finance Institute.

Gary’s career in banktech, regtech, payments and fintech began in 1996 when he co-founded WildCard Systems – some have called WildCard Systems the “first fintech”. The company pioneered a new payment card – prepaid Visa and Mastercard cards – and built the first-ever Visa & Mastercard prepaid card issuing platform. Seven of the ten largest U.S. banks were customers as well as nearly fifty banks around the world by 2005. In fact, the first Visa-card ever issued in China wasn’t a debit or credit card, but a prepaid Visa TravelMoney card processed by WildCard through five Chinese banks.
Gary’s considered the world’s foremost expert on technology innovations associated with counterparty risk management, complex multi-jurisdictional compliance and multi-channel and form factor global or cross-border payment orchestration.

Allison Baller serves as vice president and head of industry readiness for the FedNow
Service, a near real-time payment and settlement service brought to market by the
Federal Reserve Banks to support instant payments in the United States. Baller is
focused on driving adoption of the new payment rail and fostering innovation through
partnerships and use-cases which will deliver value across the diverse ecosystem of
banks, credit unions, payment service providers fintechs, and end-users.
Prior to joining the Federal Reserve, Baller spent more than two decades at IBM, where
she held various global leadership roles in blockchain, cloud and emerging payments. Her
career has focused on building new business models and accelerating the transformation
from cash to digital payments across Financial Services, Telecommunications and Retail.
Baller holds an M.B.A. from the Goizueta Business School of Emory University, and a
B.A. in Latin American Studies from the University of Virginia. Fluent in Spanish and
conversational in Portuguese, she has a passion for emerging markets, diverse cultures,
and financial inclusion.

I am an attorney at law, member of the Honduran Bar Association, possesing extensive experience in the Financial Crimes Typologies and fraud investigations, offering a diverse well-rounded Law knowledge profile that provides the services, strategy and consultation needed by financial institutions to maintain compliance with government regulations/sanctions.

Elena Casal is Chief Client Officer at The Clearing House, responsible for creating and managing the holistic experience for its customers and partners. This role includes growing the RTP® network across U.S. financial institutions, evolving the customer engagement model for all TCH payments networks and promoting the company’s work to its diverse target segments.

Elena has deep experience with product and customers in the payments industry. Prior to joining The Clearing House, Elena held regional and global product management positions at FIS, Clear2Pay and Fiserv where she was focused on building products and services across the global enterprise payments landscape. These roles included managing R&D across ACH, Wires, Swift, ISO 20022 and real-time payments. She also worked at the Federal Reserve Bank within the Retail Product Office and Monetary Policy Divisions with a focus on cross-border activities and economic policy in Latin America.

Petra Bianca Bellido is Senior Vice President, Payments & Receivables at HSBC, where she oversees the strategy, execution, and management of corporate payments and receivables solutions. She plays a key role in streamlining HSBC’s payment flows, promoting operational efficiency, and enabling seamless financial transactions for large institutional clients. Petra is focused on aligning receivables innovations with risk management, regulatory compliance, and customer experience to support HSBC’s lead in global payments and cash management.

Mihail Duta is responsible for all pre-sales and other payments consulting activities in the US regional space. Prior to this role Mihail was responsible for management of Finastra’s payments products in the Americas, including its payments services hub, and U.S real-time payments initiatives. He has been actively supporting Finastra’s U.S. payments solutions in various capacities since 2000, when he joined Fundtech (which ultimately became Finastra in 2017).

Throughout his tenure working with Finastra’s U.S. payments solutions, Mihail served various business functions in developing strong and enduring client relationships. Today, he is also the liaison between Finastra and Federal Reserve Bank and he interacts directly with customers as the main contact to Finastra’s U.S. payment user board and user group.

David Odigie is a seasoned financial services leader with over two decades of experience
leading transformative programs and overseeing high-impact strategic initiatives. Currently
serving as Director of Payments Strategy, Integration & Delivery at Royal Bank of Canada,
David is the trusted leader spearheading stakeholder engagement, modernization of
payment infrastructure, and enterprise risk strategies across critical portfolios including
Canadian Real-Time Rail where he serves as Product Owner for Real-Time Rail (RTR), a
cornerstone of Canada’s Payments Modernization Program.
David’s tenure at RBC is marked by a series of successes in leading cross-functional teams,
executing enterprise-wide change, and establishing governance practices that align with
both global expectations. He has consistently delivered high-value programs, managed
portfolios exceeding $100M delivering value. He played a critical role in the execution of
mission-critical integration of HSBC Canada into RBC—a $13.5 billion acquisition.
His leadership style is anchored in talent development, performance excellence, and
stakeholder collaboration. David is deeply credentialed, holding certifications in portfolio
and program management, risk and information systems control, business analysis and
product management. He is recognized with RBC’s Global Citizens Award, Convention
Award and Leo Award for his strategic impact and leadership excellence. 

Kristen Hartman is a seasoned treasury management executive with over 20 years of experience in Commercial Payments. With a proven track record in strategic execution, revenue growth, and new market identification, she brings a deep understanding of the evolving payments landscape.
In her current role, Kristen leads initiatives focused on delivering verified and secured B2B and B2C payments through smart payment routing, ensuring best-in-class payout experiences. Her leadership at a Regional Midwestern bank included managing a team of treasury management product specialists and defining and aligning the product vision, strategy, and roadmap with her organization’s broader goals. Kristen excels at identifying
market opportunities and driving innovation across the product portfolio to support revenue growth, enhance customer satisfaction, and ensure competitive differentiation. Kristen also plays an active role in the broader payments community through her involvement in research initiatives with the Datos Corporate Banking Council and payments-focused working groups such as the NACHA Payments Innovation Alliance and the EWS Treasury Advisory Group, helping shape the future of commercial payments through thought leadership and innovation.

Jessika Wood is a fintech and financial services executive with over 15 years of experience driving innovation across digital payments, embedded finance, and platform infrastructure. As SVP and Head of Commercial Payments Products at Fifth Third Bank, she leads strategy and product development for a payments portfolio processing over $16 trillion in annual volume, driving double-digit revenue growth through fintech-enabled modernization, embedded payment innovation, and scalable platform solutions. Jessika’s work centers on fintech-powered transformation, enabling platforms to integrate real-time payments, request-for-payment (RfP), and embedded financial services into their core experiences. She has led initiatives that unlock new monetization models for B2B platforms, marketplaces, and SaaS providers—bridging the gap between product innovation and operational execution. She also leads Fifth Third’s cryptocurrency product strategy, focused on exploring tokenized payments, digital asset infrastructure, and blockchain-based use cases within a regulated banking environment. Her approach balances innovation with risk management, ensuring emerging technologies are evaluated and deployed in alignment with evolving compliance standards. Her leadership in platform enablement includes guiding FinTech’s through the full lifecycle of payment facilitation—from sponsor bank alignment and underwriting to technical integration and go-to-market strategy. She has built proprietary ACH and merchant acquiring capabilities, launched cross-border payment solutions, and scaled infrastructure to support high-growth verticals such as gaming, cannabis, and digital commerce. Jessika is known for her compliance-driven approach to innovation, ensuring that every advancement in product design and infrastructure adheres to federal, state, and international regulatory frameworks. Her ability to navigate complex requirements has enabled platforms to grow responsibly while maintaining trust and transparency. She actively contributes to industry dialogue on payments modernization and interoperability, representing Fifth Third on the NACHA Rules and Operating Committee and the PAY 4 Fourth District Payments Roundtable. Jessika holds an MBA in Finance from Xavier University and a BS in Finance from Weber State University.

Raj is the product head for the Payments and Cards business at First Citizens Bank. He has over two decades of global experience in Treasury Management .He has worked in eight countries with extensive experience in payments, liquidity management, consumer cards and commercial cards. Raj has a bachelor’s in electrical engineering from India and an MBA from the Darden Business School at the University of Virginia.

Katie is the Instant Payments Product Manager at Huntington Bank, where she leads the development and implementation of cutting-edge payment solutions. With a deep understanding of the financial technology landscape and a proven track record of launching new products, Katie has been instrumental in driving the adoption of instant payments at Huntington Bank. Katie holds an undergraduate degree from Penn State University and a master’s in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh.

Kathryn is a senior leader with nearly 30+ years of financial industry experience in Treasury Management and Payments Sales, Product Development and Operations Management. Skilled at developing integrated strategies that generate sales revenue and profitability in highly competitive environments. She has a proven record of creating solutions to maximize financial performance and optimize the client experience for financial industry organizations such as U.S. Bank, Wells Fargo, Regions Bank and BBVA Compass Bank. She is a strong team builder, mentor and motivator known for creating energized and collaborative environments.

Recognition & Awards:
• Denver Business Journal “Outstanding Woman in Business” in Banking
• American Banker “Most Powerful Women in Banking” for six consecutive years
• Commercial Real Estate Women (CREW) “Woman of Influence”

I operate at the junction of global financial‑technology insight and architecture‑led transformation—translating industry shifts into executable roadmaps that move technology, products, and people forward together. If you’re looking for straight‑talk guidance (no buzzword bingo) on any of the topics below, let’s compare notes.

Global payments & fintech trends — what’s hype, what’s regulation‑driven, and where value is actually moving.

Enterprise‑wide capability transformations — linking org design, incentives, and operating models so that technology modernization unlocks real business value.

Strategies that survive first contact with reality — closing the loop between C‑suite vision, change management, and hard‑won lessons from large‑scale execution.

End‑to‑end modernization — infrastructure, cloud, engineering practices, and product architecture working in concert to keep architectures and platforms evolvable as markets change.

Architecture & Developer experience — evolutionary architectures, lean, friction‑free pipelines, and agile practices that let engineers focus on solving business problems—because great products start with well‑understood architectural trade‑offs and happy developers.

Sarah Casey is Managing Principal at SEI Chicago, where she partners with teams serving leading financial institutions to design and implement strategies that strengthen defenses against fraud. She helps guide cross-functional teams to deliver protective measures that reduce risk while maintaining a frictionless customer experience.

Mike Diedrichs is a seasoned financial services executive with over 20 years of experience across traditional capital markets, fintech, and Web3. As Managing Director of BlockVine Advisory Group, he helps firms scale by leveraging blockchain, stablecoins, and next-generation payment technologies, driving strategic growth, partnerships, and go-to-market execution.

He has held senior leadership roles at the intersection of trading infrastructure, payments, and digital assets, where he built and scaled fintech platforms, advanced institutional adoption of stablecoins, and led initiatives in tokenized assets and cross-border payments. Drawing on a deep background in market structure and trading from his early career in traditional finance, Mike provides a unique perspective on bridging legacy systems with emerging digital ecosystems.

At BlockVine, he focuses on guiding clients through regulatory, technological, and market transitions to unlock new opportunities in digital assets, payments, and financial innovation.

Katherine Wong is the Principal Transformation Solutions Director at Paradigm Innovation, a consulting firm renowned for digital optimization in both the private and public sectors. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise consulting, she has worked with top banks such as Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, HSBC, and ABN AMRO, as well as KPMG and PwC’s business and technology strategy practices.

Katherine specializes in helping clients understand and adopt end-to-end solutions that drive meaningful impact while aligning with business values and the latest technical innovations to sustain dynamic ROI growth. With a tech-savvy background in security, risk, and compliance, she enjoys collaborating with everyone from C-suite executives to shop floor employees, helping them deliver on their most strategic initiatives.

Clients seek Paradigm out for projects that require a superior combination of technical and business capabilities, people and management skills, and a collaborative agile mindset. Katherine excels at understanding programs and strategic initiatives and breaking them down into actionable pieces.

Dean Nolan is Managing Director at SRM, leading its Commercial Payments practice. With over 30 years in financial services, Dean has driven over $1B in value helping banks, credit unions, and fintechs modernize their payment products and platforms. His experience includes senior roles at Fifth Third Bank, Wells Fargo, MasterCard, FISERV, and Bank of America, as well as leadership and advisory positions with numerous Paytechs. A recognized industry thought leader, Dean is an active speaker and author. He also serves on the Board Advisory Group for the US Faster Payments Counsil and as Executive Director of PayCLT.

Wayne Brown, launched The Walker Group, a FinTech boutique consulting company, in September 2007. He has led the team to manage over a thousand FinTech partnerships with banks, financial service organizations and other FinTechs. Some of these partnerships include banks moving billions of dollars annually on new and existing rails.

Before launching The Walker Group, his previous role was Vice President North America Receivables Product Manager at Citigroup, where he was responsible for a suite of electronic payment solutions, namely, B2B (EIPP) B2C (Biller Direct) and EDI.Previous roles consisted of product and account management responsibilities at Fidelity Information Services (FIS), Deutsche Bank, MasterCard and Viewpointe LLC. He is also credited with co-authoring several financial services publications including The Walk-in Bill Payment Guidelines, published by NACHA, founder of The Walker Group Events, The Walker Group Podcasts and The Exchange, a peer-to-peer network group composed of senior executives.

A recent focus is helping banks build an Instant Payment Strategy along with the business and use cases to accept new payment methods. This effort includes managing the RFP process with banks and tech providers, collaborating with organizations deeply involved in instant payments and digital transformation and leading industry discussions around payment modernization.
Clients of The Walker Group, whether directly indirectly include large banks, FinTechs, payment gateways and consulting companies.

Peter Tapling is an advisor, board member and investor at the intersection of payments, risk, and emerging technologies. Prior to founding PTap Advisory, LLC, Peter acted as CCO for Spring Labs, CRO for Early Warning Services, and was founding CEO for Authentify. Peter serves as a strategic advisor and board member for several technology companies with businesses in AI, identity, risk management, and payment enablement across instant payments, cards, ACH, digital currencies, wires and cross border. Peter serves as Vice Chair of the Board of Directors for the U.S. Faster Payments Council, on the Board of Regents for The Payments Institute, as a technology advisor to the Board of Directors for ePayResources. He chairs the Operations Committee for the U.S. Faster Payments Council and is the project team leader for the Payments Innovation Alliance Quantum in Payment team. He was a member of the Federal Reserve Scams Information Sharing work group. Peter is a member of the Association for Financial Professionals, an Accredited Payments Risk Professional and an Accredited Faster Payments Professional.