Featured Participants

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

My background is sales and account management. In recent years this has been in the data / analytics space and that led me to join a new team at Wells focused on strengthening its Technology Risk through better dissemination of actionable insights. As we engage with several stakeholders around the org, my client skills served as the bridge between this role and my previous roles.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it? Accessing internally the data that we need to be successful and working cross functionally across areas that traditionally do not work closely together.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Playing a lead role in standing up a new team, comprised over 90% of people new to the bank.

• 1. Learn about new technologies and disruptions.         
  2. Network.         
  3. Shape my own investment strategy.

What are you most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

Anything Crypto, Blockchain, Web 3.0 related. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I head up operational risk management and business continuity management for credit suisse.  Prior to this i was in the equities business at ubs.  “non financial” risk has become increasingly important to the financial sector and our regulators – with a focus on systemic risks beyond the traditional market and credit risks.  A key focus in recent years has increasingly been on technology/cyber risk; risk associated with introduction of innovative/emerging tech (eg dlt, ai etc); 3^rd party / vendor risk; and operational resiliency.  All are relevant in the broader context of “ai and emerging tech for finance”.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

The “non financial” risk space has traditionally been relatively qualitative in its risk assessment, relying more on judgment and not enough on data and measurement in contrast to the more quantitative credit and market risk space.  This is changing given improved data capture and analytical capabilities (including AI and techniques such as nlp) to support our non-financial risk assessment.

Early stage adoption of those data and more sophisticated analytical techniques to support our risk assessment capability in a more evidence based (and ultimately predictive) fashion.

1. Application.  Hearing and generating some new ideas / thinking in this space for future application
2. Risks.  Listening to current and future applications to help assess the associated risks for the future
3. Network.  Connecting with people in this space who might not be directly associated with the usual big banks etc.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I am an Applied Math PhD, turned into Quant and Machine Learning (ML) Practitioner with over 10 years of financial sector experience.  

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

To balance between the extent and complexity of Machine Learning Investment research and business line expectations of simplicity and intuition.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Making successful progress to address the above challenge!  

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Idea exchange related to AI and ML in finance.           
2. Networking with like-minded professionals.           
3. Disseminating latest research findings.      

What are you excited to be covering in your speaking session?

The new advancements in the implementation and interpret ability of machine learning methods in finance.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

The keynotes, practical ML applications in finance.

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

The novelty of ideas and diversity of potentials.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I run a boutique investment bank and we advise companies on M&A and capital raise transactions in the tech / financial service space.  I was hired out of undergrad to work as an analyst in the early 2000s at Merrill Lynch, then transition to a variety of middle market firms, all in corporate finance.  At the end of my journey at larger firms, I saw an opportunity to “peel away” and begin advising firms individually, which was extremely engaging; hence, founding Evolve Capital seven years ago. 

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

I face two constants challenges:

1. Client acquisition of quality firms.
2. Deployment of technology to keep track of opportunities and deal communications. 

We are tackling it by deploying technology, slowly, across the group.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

In 2018, we refined our workflows and internal processes, which allows us to focus on the opportunities at hand, and really dug into a niche that plays nicely with our experiences with tech-enabled firms.  From this refinement, 2019 has been a good year of engaging with high quality firms, that fit our experience and sector expertise; plus, we have started to put a chunk of our workflows into the cloud.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

• 1. Understanding new technologies available in the market to enhance our work.
  2. Meet high quality firms seeking corporate finance transactions (M&A or capital raises).
  3. Further expand our network of investors and strategic buyers.   

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

The development of AI to help make sense of unstructured data in an investment banking environment is of high interest. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

Optima is a research and investment group focused exclusively on hedge funds. I have 20+ years experience in financial systems development. In my current role, I am responsible for developing systems which help to run our entire business. These systems are used for portfolio construction and valuation, due diligence research, reporting, performance calculations, financial risk modeling, and financial products creation and distribution.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

The pace of technological advances in cloud-computing and data analytics (AI, deep-learning, etc.) far outpaces our ability to test and adapt these technologies quickly but, at the same time, avoid disturbing our current technological eco-systems. To adapt these technologies effectively, I seek support from  business teams to make sure we deliver what is needed most and encourage technology training in my group.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Successful launch of long/short equity fund which are based on computational models I’ve developed.

• 1. Get ideas for various financial products. 
  2. Learn about AI in finance.
  3. Speak to some of the leaders and early-adapters in AI and machine-learning.

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

Predictive analytics.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

Progression of roles and positions in different organizations that give me a combination of business and technical background that allows me to be successful.  

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

Keeping up with the pace of change, both external technical changes and internal business changes.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Delivered Embedded Analytic capabilities to key business partners.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

AI, Cloud, Advance Analytics

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

• • 1.     Hear what others are doing.        
  • 2.    Learn about new technologies.       
  • 3.    Get a better picture of the environment with regard to adoption and plans.       

Bob Azman is Founder and CXO of Innovative CX Solutions, LLC.  Innovative CX Solutions, LLC is a Customer Experience Consulting specializing in CX Design and Execution, Sales and Service Experience Design and Talent Development.  He is currently the Chairman of the Board of the Customer Experience Professional Association (CXPA.org). He is the former Vice President, Traveler Experience, Americas and Global responsible for all customer operations in Canada, the United States and Latin America as well as global sites located in Poland, Manila, Bogota and Costa Rica.  In this role, Bob transformed the customer experience for clients and travelers of Carlson Wagonlit Travel.  Prior to joining CWT, Bob was Chief Experience Officer, at Avtex Consulting Solutions, LLC.  In that role, he consulted with companies in a variety of industries on developing and implementing strategies to improve their overall customer experience and service operations.  The last 25 years in business are in service operations leadership roles that have prepared him well for his role at CWT. As a thought leader, practitioner and business partner in customer experience design and execution, he provides a unique perspective on creating companies that are easy to do business with.

Christine is skilled at forming partnerships to lead integrated interdivisional teams in data management. With over 20 years of experience determining technical impacts and potential risks of proposed policy changes and community interventions, Christine will be attending the upcoming CAOI, Spring 2019.

Davis is a commercially aware and operationally focused finance executive with 15+ years of senior management experience in a wide variety of banking and IT roles within five of the world’s largest financial organizations. He is recognized for his expertise in leading major (up to $250M ) projects and shared services implementations. Also a proven relationship builder and natural leader who has successfully led large teams in complex matrix organizations as well as in fast-growing smaller businesses.

Please tell us a little about the topic you will be speaking on at the upcoming event? Start here with edits

• I will be participating on a panel to discuss alternative data in discovering better ways to generate Alpha.
• How to uncover better ways of acquiring alternative data and the efficacy of the data set.
• In addition, how to make sure the data is clean and ready to use in a forecast model.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?
I began my career as a fundamental equity analyst and went back to school to acquire a PhD in finance. I spent 8 years in academics, and with two colleagues from Colorado State University started a quant hedge fund based on our academic research. My research is focused on developing machine learning models to forecast market trends. I have also developed an asset allocation technique using Artificial Intelligence to optimize portfolio selection. Currently, I am developing FinTech product for financial adviser, asset managers and individual investors that will allow them to be more equipped for left-tail market events.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?
Models are only as good as the data and relevancy it produces. Today’s geo-political climate and the market’s dependency on loose monetary policy presents obstacles in forecasting high probability outcomes. As a result, new data sets have to be independent of short-term trends. Moreover, data mining outcomes need to be independent of monetary policy and short-term political influence.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?
We have successfully converted our behavioral risk model into a FinTech product that will be available for public use sometime in early 2020.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

• Making sure our product development is relevant and current.
• Learn about new AI and machine learning applications to improve our product offering.
• Network with like minded industry professional.

Applications of reinforcement learning (semi-supervised, rewards based machine learning) to algorithmic trading and hedging

I spent the first half of my career working for an investment bank as a trading desk quant in derivatives pricing and risk management.

For the second half of my career I have worked in consulting and senior leadership roles for commercial banks in the treasury department, leading statistical, econometric s, and derivatives modelling teams.

The biggest challenge is really execution. We have a lot of interesting projects and great ideas within our team, but delivering quality work that meets and exceeds expectations takes a lot of time, resources, effort, and attention. So that necessarily impacts the volume of work that we can deliver at that high level of quality.

Our team delivered the first suite of integrated CCAR and business use models for our deposit product base. This is a notable achievement towards our larger goal of delivering integrated models for multiple use cases (i.e. regulatory modelling, risk management, pricing, optimization, etc.).

• 1.   Learn more about current and emerging trends in AI & Emerging Tech.
• 2.   Network and make some connections in AI & Emerging Tech in the financial industry.
• 3.   Participate and stay engaged throughout the event.

Deep hedging and similar applications of deep reinforcement learning techniques.

Please tell us a little about the topic you will be speaking on at the upcoming event?

Artificial intelligence ("AI"), Machine Learning ("ML") and Analytics have become a standard stable of tools for organizations that are keen on accelerating their value creation and growth. Many companies have adopted and invested heavily in these capabilities. While some of the early adopters, those with the right culture and data strategy, are reaping wholesome benefits. Conversely, other organizations continue to endure costly resource misalignment's.

During this session, the attendees will get an opportunity to discuss what it takes to build a digital transformation framework and how having a data-centric culture will be a type of panacea to unleash your firm's full productive potential, accelerate innovation, help grow wallet-share and win new markets.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I have 10+ years of experience leading and developing data-driven products powered by AI & machine learning algorithms at fortune 100. I’m currently Director of advanced analytics at Genesis Capital where I’m leading Data Science & Engineering to execute the data strategy and build data products with a rigorous focus on model design and value proposition. Developed Next Best Action Engine for Morgan Stanley, a highly sophisticated digital platform powered by AI models empowering assets Managers and Financial Advisers to manage $2 trillion in assets.

I holds an MS in Econometrics and Quantitative Finance from Montreal University and M.Phil in Economics from Dakar University.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

Resource alignment to focuses on high value projects.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Successfully acquiring and developing the technology platform and data products that will position the firm as leading fintech in Real-Estate Investment.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

• Share ideas and business trends.
• Networking.
• Discuss new ideas and best practices with peers.

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

My background is software engineering, and I worked in various problem domains. Last 14 years were heavily data oriented, so my career naturally progressed to the point. You can read more in my bio snippet.

Talent acquisition and retention, design for change (in fast-changing business landscape).

I stopped worrying and love the bomb. On a serious note, built extremely high-performance team.

1. Trends observation.
2. Ideas exchange with peers and key players in the industry.
3. Shameless self-promotion ;)

All aspects of data science and engineering collaboration, scaling the process and discussing cross-discipline challenges.

Most of the tech-related sessions.

Data monetization and conversion from commodity to currency.

Gary earned a PhD in Sociology from Wayne State University in 1999. Since that time, he has worked as a professor of Sociology at Bentley University, a private business university outside of Boston. There he teaches courses in applying sociology and sociological insights across a variety of topics. He has taught on Employee Experience in the school's flagship MBA program. He currently teaches in the nationally recognized Masters program in Human Factors and User Experience, where he teaches a course on ethnography and experience design. In 2017, he was awarded the status of Certified Clinical Sociologist for his work using sociological insights to develop and design interventions to promote positive change. He has worked with clients in a variety of domains, including software development teams, clinical documentation production and use, interrogation and interview analysis, and cultural training.

Greg was previously a CIO who had a significant focus on analytics and bridging the gap of technology and operations.

The transition into a role with a more distinctive focus on driving data veracity and delivery of enterprise insights has been a natural and fulfilling one for Greg.

Key objectives for attending CDAO, Fall 2019:

• To learn from fellow CDAOs in other industries.
• To hear how they have faced and overcome challenges in their similar roles.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I have spent my entire career in Analytics, helping companies turn data into intelligence across a variety of industries. I have seen first-hand that businesses do not make the best use of their data for a variety of reasons, and I am passionate about helping to build data-driven strategies. My most recent role was leading Analytics and Strategy for an emerging business in the Healthcare / Pharmaceutical space. Through the use of Analytics, my team executed new strategies that led to doubling the company's revenue and positioning it for an exit. Following the sale of the company, I got in contact with Moven. They are at a stage of their growth similar to my last company when I joined and I was brought on to run Analytics and Growth Marketing.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

The biggest challenge I face today is getting executive buy-in for the value of Analytics. We are early in the development stage - just finalizing requirements for our database as we speak. In order for Analytics to be successful, there technical resources needed / tracking requirements, tools to be purchased, processes to create, people to hire, etc. I am fighting the battle of helping them see the long-term vision and how this will allow for continual optimization of our business once we have reached analytical maturity. In addition to getting buy-in from the executives, the other major challenge in parallel is how to help change the culture to prioritize data-driven strategies, testing, etc.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

The biggest success I achieved in 2018 was helping to double my company's revenue based on Analytics and lead to a successful exit.

Specific to my current role at Moven, my biggest success has been starting to build momentum internally for the value of analytics.

Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Learn from other CDO/CAO's in how they have gotten executive buy-in for the value of analytics and helped change the culture of their respective organizations.
2. Connect with Data / Analytics leaders, continue to build my professional network, and gain insights on how to do amazing things with data across industries.
3. Learn more about the new tools and developments in the market and how to best leverage them.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

I am most interested in the sessions around gaining momentum within the organization for the value of analytics. Specifically, those would be 'Moving from Cost Center to Profit Center', 'The Customer's Data is Always Right', and the 'Future of the CDAO Role'

Liliana Petrova, CCXP is a visionary and a proven leader in the field of customer experience and innovation. Ms. Petrova1 pioneered a new customer-centric culture, energizing the more than 15,000 JetBlue employees with her vision. She has been recognized for her JFK Lobby redesign and facial recognition program with awards from Future Travel Experience and Popular Science. Ms. Petrova is committed to creating seamless, successful experiences for customers and delivering greater value for brands. In 2019, she founded an international customer experience consulting firm that helps brands improve their customer experience. To elevate the industry, her firm, The Petrova Experience (www.thepetrovaexperience.com) manages a digital membership for customer experience professionals to grow their CX careers and stay up-to-date with CX news and trends.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I started in the CAO office for COO for all of Operations across every Product at Lehman Brothers, I then moved into the Wealth Space and really got to expand my skill set and abilities at BNY Mellon. I learned Third Party and was fascinated by the fairly new view of Operational Risk Management and how it could help see risk in a new way. I started at Citi about 4.5 almost 5 years ago and have been promoted several times within the role. I am the Coverage Head for Finance across NAM including Treasury (Trading and Liquidity), Tax, Capital Planning, etc.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

Identification of bad data which could be skewing the actuals for liquidity reporting and how to tactically and strategically overcome this challenge. Also to fully understand the liquidity in the marketplace and within products and countries since Citi has Local Country Treasurers in 94 Countries

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Identify the most material risks and determine a path forward for near term and longer term re: tactical and strategic solutions

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Learn more about challenges other leaders in Finance are facing in the political and technology spaces.
2. Speak with counterparts who handle liquidity risk and management for their firms
3. Meet people who are doing interesting things in the emerging technology for Finance space

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

Daily Balance sheet and ability to see T (Zero) View

• Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?
  I have been leading the Client Tools, Data & Analytics Technology organization for our Securities Services business for the last 5 years at JPM. 
  
  
• What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it? Data management and governance, including transitioning from legacy systems to a modernized data-focused architecture revolving around logical data models and inter-system data contracts.
  
  
• Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?
  Launch of a new client platform that has a strategic data layer at its core, with focus on data accuracy, timeliness, and consistency across client channels.
  
  
• What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?
  •  Learn more about the current state of AI and what tools are available in the ecosystem to help with AI/ML models.
  • Network with peers in the same domain and learn more about their journeys and lessons learned.
• Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?
  Word of Caution session, Discussion Group 1B, and the afternoon keynote presentation.
  
  
• What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?
  Impact it can have on both client needs and internal operational processes.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I started in a Risk analytics background, quickly made a lateral move to Data Science, and progressed linearly from there.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?  

Effectively training junior teammates to independently navigate the iterative nature of research and simultaneously bring business partners along with them.

Biggest success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Rolling out an in-house analytics alerting product to our investors

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Identify integration strategies that will aid in rolling out internal solutions to our investment teams
2. Network with other Data Science professionals from the asset management space
3. Study presented use cases of AI in finance and derive inspiration for similar opportunities in our firm.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

I’m very interested in all the sessions addressing integration of AI with existing workflows and processes.

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

Like many, I find a lot of appeal in using new techniques to augment our investors’ decisions to more effectively generate alpha. I think the rise of alternative data source use is good for the democracy of the information market, and creates space for alpha.

I have worked at Mass Mutual for last 10 years in various roles. My work in data management space started in 2010 to enhance the Enterprise DW to our field force (agents / financial advisers) and I have progressively taken on larger roles in this domain since then.  

There are multiple challenges (technical, people, process) in my current role (Data Engineering). However, the most critical one to focus on is scaling the capabilities to the enterprise so that technical & non-technical users can leverage the data assets of the company in a safe, secure and trusted manner without relying heavily on centralized data teams. Our approach for scaling is to build platforms and standards that can be adopted across the organization in a self-service and friction-less manner.

The biggest success is the foundational architecture and hiring of talent that would help build the platform of future.

1. 1. Learn from other experts in the data industry in tackling technical and organizational challenges.
   2. Share ideas and thoughts on key focus areas – data privacy & metadata management.
   3. Networking!

Data privacy & Metadata management.

Please tell us a little about the topic you will be speaking on at the upcoming event?

The title of our panel “Finding alpha by acquiring and using alternative data” by itself emphasizes process over access. I think it accurately reflects how the center of the discussion has shifted from whether or not alternative data is a real deal to “how to make use of alternative data?”. 

I don’t think we need to start panel discussions with the definition anymore, but we will address some of the common misconceptions about the role of alternative data in finding alpha. We’ll also discuss different use cases across strategies, research approaches and investment time horizons.

Perhaps the most interesting and practical part of the conversation is the approach to building the internal buy-side process. We will discuss common issues investment firms face when implementing alternative data within their existing research framework; what is missing from the infrastructure standpoint; and how tech companies can leverage on the opportunity to fill the niche of pre-processing data for investment research.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

I’m a Managing Director at Synthesis, a quantitative investment company, focusing on statistical arbitrage in equity markets. Our team apples machine learning methods to extract insights from a wide range of traditional and alternative data sources. In my role, among other things I oversee alternative data acquisition process. That involves discovering new data sources, working with data vendors and building an efficient internal process of vetting data sets.  

Before joining a quant trading team about five years ago, I spent over ten years working with traditional hedge fund managers and discretionary traders. Having observed changes in the alternative investments industry, I saw the biggest opportunity in data driven strategies powered by emerging technology. And for such strategies the role of data acquisition team is critically important because the quality of data ultimately defines the outcome of the research effort. 

Even though in my data sourcing capacity I’m currently focusing on pure quant use case, my background and formal training in finance gave me a perspective on the fundamental hypothesis driven approach to using data insights. Applications of big data analytics in investment research go far beyond short term quant trading and it is always interesting to discuss a wide range of use cases with industry peers.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

At the beginning alternative data was an access game, data scout’s value was mainly in their list of data vendors’ contacts. Now the goal of data acquisition teams on the buyside is to keep up with the constantly growing supply of new data while maintaining an efficient internal evaluation process. And this is quite a challenge because even at larger companies with internal data teams and considerable budgets, the resources are not unlimited. At Synthesis we are building a data procurement funnel that allows us to collect information on as many potentially valuable data sources as possible while carefully selecting datasets that get to the comprehensive testing stage. 

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Learn from peers, hear new ideas, get feedback on my ideas.         
2. Meet new data vendors.        
3. Communicate my perspective to help data vendors better understand our needs.   

What are you currently most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

It has been fascinating to see the shift in the industry towards quant, big data and emerging tech not only from the business model perspective, but also in the mindset of the investment community. Working in the industry during the period of “technological revolution” is challenging, it requires adaptation and continuous learning to stay relevant. But it is also very inspiring to work with the early adopters of emerging technology who shape the future of the investment management.

Randy is a Chief strategy and operations executive with 25+ years’ experience managing businesses through periods of transformation and hyper growth. Track record building world-class operations, leading teams, driving organic growth and managing business unit investment and divestiture activities.

Over 5 years into their data and analytics strategy implementation, this is Randy's first time attending a Corinium CAOI Event. 

Richard Charette is currently an Associate Vice President for the Wells Fargo Digital Experience Design (DXD) group and leads the Product Design Community of Practice. He was previously the co-leader of Wells Fargo’s Sales Experience Team responsible for the design of Wells Fargo’s public site including the application and fulfillment experiences of Wells Fargo products. With over 25 years of industry experience, he has lead experience design teams for brands like SAP, Cisco, Tesla, and Microsoft. Richard started his career as a software engineer and founded Equisoft, a company specialized in the design and delivery of life insurance and wealth management solutions. After spending several years leading development teams, he focused his career on the delivery of great experiences by joining exceptional digital agencies like Scient and Organic, and being part of the adventure of Microsoft’s Studio 415 in San Francisco. Richard is a passionate agilist and obsessed with high performing teams. Richard is a true citizen of the world as he spent his youth between Canada and Europe, and worked on 5 different continents. Richard is an accomplished Great Highland bagpipe player, an avid Brazilian jiu-jitsu grappler, and has a passion for learning. He is a graduate from the Ecole Polytechnique de Montreal and served as an officer with the Canadian Armed Forces.

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

Career roles centered on process and organizational optimization, strategic change management, within Operational at regulated banking and capital markets businesses, and consulting to same.

Current role result of career evolution from consultant hired by client, subsequent internal role expansion through periods of acquisition, merger, financial crisis and contraction, growth and expansion, facilitated by continual curiosity/learning, proactive collaborative mindset, embracing change and automation, partnering with business and support group partners.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

Balancing rapid industry change, disruptive market entrants/technologies, ever-increasing regulatory burden, process inefficiency, changing workforce and required skills, hiring/training/retaining talent, finite budget,.

Tackling with as much automation as possible, particular focus now and in future on smart automation low-code tools, agile framework to address many small-medium size inefficient/manual task, with small dedicated teams of developers and tech-savvy users.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

Continued high level of client satisfaction, quality service, risk management, regulatory review results while maintaining staff stability, retention, satisfaction, and cost/ budget control.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

1. Solidifying foundational understanding of relevant AI capabilities, use cases across various financial services functions, processes.
2. How /when AI should be integrated to existing IT toolkit and smart automation solutions program and workflow optimization.
3. Familiarity with the most capable, interesting/relevant AI vendors and tools currently in the market.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

Day 1:

• All the open session content is of interest – I am more interested in the topics related to general applications on process optimization, qualitative evaluation/machine learning/interp on data both structured and unstructured for insights, patterns, etc.
• Discussion Group 1A: Strategies for Establishing a Business Case for AI Applications at the Organization Level.
• Discussion Group 2B: Best Practices for Introducing Robotic Process Analytics.

Day 2:

• Open sessions: Evaluating Emerging Tech – Worthwhile v Fad;  Data Governance Challenges.
• Breakout 1B: Developing Talent Increasing Diversity.
• Breakout 2A Explainability and Interpretability in ML.

What are you most inspired about in regards to AI & Emerging Tech for Finance?

Tasha is an experienced senior leader and entrepreneur with 14+ years of strategy and business development experience across software technology, real estate, and healthcare. Her diverse industry experience and end-to-end business management success across a variety of business environments, enables her to be a highly versatile team player while remaining flexible as the business evolves. Tasha demonstrates leadership having grown and led organizations from 1 to 50 and managed budgets and P&L from $120K to 3M+. She has a strong track record of delivering results that move the bottom line, collaborating across disciplines, and working as part of cross-functional teams; creating operational efficiencies both in her teams and across the organization. 

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?

Prior to working at BaneCare Management, I was a Business Analyst and then a Project Manager at a local community hospital for 5 years. While I was a Business Analyst/Project Manager, I worked very closely with the operational and clinical teams and the staff within the IT department. By working with those different groups, I was able to learn about the operations as well as the technical/data detail information. I helped standardize a system wide Readmissions Dashboard to help reduce 30-day hospital readmissions, worked as the project manager for data analytics on the CMS Bundled Payment Program (11 unique bundles) and also partnered with the chief of police from East Bridgewater to improve two different database evaluation programs in the community to help manage the ongoing opioid crisis. After 5 years at the hospital, I was looking to grow in my career and an excellent opportunity came at BaneCare Management. Moving from the hospital industry to the skilled nursing industry was interesting, challenging and there was so much to learn (like drinking from a fire hose). It was a challenge that I wanted to take on and learn everything that I could about the skilled nursing industry. I am now applying my knowledge that I learned at the hospital to the work that I am currently doing within the skilled nursing industry and improving my skills and knowledge along the way.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?

In my world of data and analytics, some of the care coordination challenges that we face are around data integrity. At BaneCare, we work extremely hard to provide accurate data. When we meet with organizations that we work closely with, there are times where our data on patients’ care events doesn’t match up. For example, we once met with a hospital and an ACO who both monitor patient events in their EHR. The hospital and ACO saw that one patient was documented as being discharged home with VNA services when that same patient was actually receiving care at one of our skilled nursing facilities. This fragmented data for the hospital and ACO creates various challenges, especially for the clinical staff who are responsible for following patients during their care journeys. At BaneCare, we are continuously stressing the importance of proper communication and leveraging standardized data files and data sharing. In order to have accurate data, everyone needs to make sure that the data going into their systems is being documented correctly or we all face the challenge with “Crap In, Crap Out”.  

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?

My biggest success that I achieved in 2018/2019 was that I created a standardized data sharing file with one of our ACO’s that we work very closely with. That data sharing file ended up being adopted by the ACO and now all their preferred SNF’s are using the same template for their own data sharing file. This is helping all of us collect the right data in the right way and be able to analyze outcome metrics and processes all in the same exact way (apples to apples). This work is constantly being looked at for improvement opportunities and I am always pushing to make the process more automated and less time spent manually tracking the data.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?

• 1. I want to learn what other organizations are doing to master the basics. I see a lot of organizations jumping to the next flashy thing (AI as an example), but then failing to do the basics better than the rest. How do we all improve the basics, so all levels of staff (especially clinical staff that are now in leadership positions) can utilize data analytics in a simple and easy to use way? I come across a lot of clinical leadership who have never even seen a pivot table before. That is the basics that I am talking about. I am all for the innovative work that is being put into AI development. I just see a real need for the basics to be raised, especially in the healthcare industry.
  2. I would like to hear how other healthcare organizations are utilizing self-service analytics - What barriers have they come across with self-service analytics and what are they doing to address those barriers?
  3. I am looking forward to meeting and networking with others in the analytics market and learn where I can help and where I can learn. I am always looking for opportunities to improve my analytics skillset and share with others what I have learned through my own journey.              

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?

• • Linda Assley’s Presentation: Managing Your Internal Customers - Becoming a Trusted Consultant Within Your Organization
  • Panel: To Hire or Train - How Can We Create Analytic and Data Science Teams that Understand Business and Operational Value?
  • Learning Lab B: Deploying Self-Service Analytics That Work (And Are Actually Used)
  • Presentation: Implementing Data Catalogs for a Complete View of Your Data Assets
  • Salah Zalatimo’s Insider Session: The Customer's Data is Always Right – Building a Customer-Centric Analytics Culture Across the Organization
  • William Chen’s Presentation: Structuring the Data Science and Analytics Division to Scale with The Organization

Vishal Bhalla joined Parkland in August 2016 and soon moved into the role of Vice President and Chief Experience Officer (CXO), focusing on the experience of employees, providers, patients and their families. Transitioning to healthcare a few years ago from a successful career in hospitality, Vishal completed his Master of Business Administration from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) along with a Healthcare Certificate from the joint Harvard-MIT Healthcare Innovation Initiative. Vishal also serves on the Dallas Fort Worth Hospital Council, representing Parkland as the Chair for the Workforce Collaborative and is a member for the Texas Hospital Association (THA) Fellows Program for 2019. Vishal is passionate about leveraging analytics, technology and system sciences, along with his extensive experience in managing large service operations, to add rigor to the art of human interaction; thereby enabling meaningful employee and patient experiences. The Experience Team at Parkland has seen tremendous results, achieving the 90th Percentile rank in the National Press Ganey Database and the 93rd Percentile Rank in the University Health Systems. The strategy and its execution were cited in the 2019 whitepaper on Strategic Initiatives by Press Ganey : Accelerated Transformation – From Strategy to Action.

• Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?
  I am a FCAS, CSPA and have focused on the data analytics since 1998.
  
  
• What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?
  Not enough experienced actuaries to take challenges for our industry.  Continue developing and recruiting actuaries/data scientists.
  
  
• Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?
  Implemented some initiatives and engaged Commissioner actively.
  
  
• What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?
1. Address questions to the practitioners in the industry.
2. Engage communications between industry and regulation.
3. Share best practices.
• Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event? Insurance!

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?
Ph.D. with extensive quantitative model development and deployment experience. My team is focused on developing AI capability and capacity, engaging with cross-function stakeholders to identify business opportunities and drive better business decisions through end-to-end analytical solutions.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?
Data, Infrastructure, people mindset.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?
Provided analytical solutions for business stakeholders.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?
1. Learn about the industry trend and culture evolution    
2. Socialize with industry leaders           
3. Build my team and learn from the case studies, both successes and failures    

Can you tell us a little bit about your background, and how you ended up in your current role?
I started as a Financial Engineer researching innovative risk measurement techniques and building  risk management technology. For most of my career I have been solving data and analytics problems for some of the largest hedge funds, institutional investors and asset managers. To do so, I led teams into using data, technology and research to achieve my goals and help my clients. I am now managing a team comprised of financial quants, technologists, data scientists, digital solutions experts, and consultants to offer outsourced risk management services including structured and unstructured data to deliver portfolio management insights.

What is the biggest challenge you face within your role today, and how are you looking to tackle it?
The biggest challenge for me is really to be able to transform my business for more scalability and growth using new technologies, higher automation levels, and analyze larger sets of data in a timely manner.

Biggest Success you achieved for 2018/ 2019 so far?  
We developed some of the leading market solutions for regulatory reporting in the Asset Management space and were able to handle an AUM increase for risk analysis processing  from  $5T to $20T in less than 2 years.

What are your Key Objectives for attending the upcoming event?
1.            Learning more about how to leverage AI for Market and Credit Risk Management.
2.           Getting to know better what are the emerging Tech providers and their solutions.
3.           Best Practices to complete missing data and clean up data.

Which connections or content sessions, are you looking to engage with most at the event?
Sessions in relation to my objectives above primarily, and the session where one of my team members will be a speaker (Gurraj Singh Sangha).