Michael Gardner is a managing director and head of the Center at the BNY Mellon Innovation Center, Silicon Valley. Mike is responsible for ensuring access to the best and latest Silicon Valley expertise and technology, to supplement other company innovation centers and technologists around the world. Mike has nearly 30 years of experience in software engineering and executive leadership. At Borland, a well-known programming tools provider, he led teams pushing the envelope of databases, compilers, and Java. He co-founded and ran PeachPit Press, an early innovator in the desktop publishing revolution. At Lutris Technologies, he ran a large software engineering consulting practice, and later shipped one of the industry’s first application servers and helped pioneer a commercial business model based on publishing open source software. Mike ran the Search engineering teams at Ebay and ran a very large codebase conversion.
Pemo Theodore
John Stewart, Global Head Scouting & Research RBS #fintechbanking
John Stewart is Global Head of Scouting and Research for the Royal Bank of Scotland. John joined RBS in March 2011 and relocated to San Francisco in March 2014 as Head of Silicon Valley Solutions. His role is to lead the global teams that identify new and innovative technologies that improve the way customers interact with RBS and help to progress them through to being live solutions and services. John has held senior roles in financial services since 1987 at TSB Bank, IBM, Barclays and KPMG where he had a lead role in the UK Government Banking Transformation Programme and helped to resolve some of the financial organisations impacted by the global financial crisis. John lives in Marin County with his wife and is enjoying the California weather and wines.
Jessica Chen Riolfi, Head Asia Wise #fintechbanking
Jessica Chen Riolfi is the Head of Asia at TransferWise, the international money transfer platform. She has spent her career building global products and currently accelerates TransferWise’s mission of money without borders throughout Asia. Previously, she led growth at eBay where she focused on reaching new customers in China, Brazil, and Mexico, including launching the eBay store on WeChat. Jessica holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from Dartmouth College.
CS Lai, HSBC #fintechbanking
CS Lai, HSBC, manages relationships with venture capital firms and connects their portfolio companies to HSBC’s global network, technology investment, and strategic leadership. CS has been working with start-ups for over twelve years. He has a BS in Managerial Economics from UC Davis.