Bala Mukund is a Director of Technology for Charles Schwab with over 15 years of experience in managing, designing, and building enterprise level applications ranging from finance, sales, marketing, and banking systems. In the current role, Bala is the Technology Director and Solutions Architect for the Intelligent Portfolios platform – which provides automated investment advice. Bala worked closely with the IP technology teams to establish best development and quality automation practices leading to improved quality and delivery. Prior to joining Charles Schwab in 2015, Bala was a Technology Director at Morningstar and VP at Nationwide, in Chicago.

Mike Schober is a Managing Director in Technology at Charles Schwab leading the software development and delivery of Schwab Intelligent Portfolios an innovative automated investing platform. Prior to Schwab he worked at large companies and startups with a personal driving force to deliver new and emerging technology solutions, including one of the first internet payment systems, an early one-click shopping experience, a first of its kind internet payment chip enabled credit card, and more. Mike has a passion for leading edge industry changing technology innovations and takes pride in delivering solutions that improve individual’s experiences and lives.

Vasiliy is a Mobile Lead in the UK and has been at Google for over 5 years. Prior to the UK, he worked as a mobile product strategist at Google in Mountain View, California for 3 years. In his current role, he helps large businesses in the UK improve their mobile website performance by focusing on webpage speed, UX, and functionality. Vasiliy specialises in the Finance & Services vertical working with clients that range from banks to insurance companies to aggregators. 

Barb is a Director for Quality Assurance at CME Group acting as last line of defense before software is released to the world’s leading derivatives exchange. Previously teaching 3rd graders how to code, writing user’s guides, finding problems with e911 system, ensuring accurate concrete recipes Barb made a career of making sure software is ready for customer use.  Catch her on LinkedIn or in person but be wary she’s a racewalker and can walk faster than most people can run.

Bio coming soon...

Julie is the Quality Assurance Manager at Chicago Trading Company, a derivatives trading firm that is a leading provider of liquidity and pricing on derivatives exchanges globally.  Julie is responsible for ensuring CTC’s new ideas are delivered with quality in continually reduced cycle times, empowering CTC to make software changes with confidence.  Julie has spent the last 20 years in technology focusing on quality assurance, program management, and consulting.  Prior to CTC, Julie was a Vice President at YJT Solutions delivering complex, business critical projects for trading clients and an Infrastructure Engineering Manager and Consultant with Accenture.

Rizwan is a Managing Director at Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, responsible for strategic planning, leadership, management and oversight of the Performance Engineering and Software Quality Assurance with focus on Metrics, Automation, Agile and DevOps. Rizwan has over 20 years of diverse background with extensive experience in all SDLC phases improving processes, reorganizing teams for efficiency and implementing large system initiatives. With an extensive Automation and Systems Engineering background, Rizwan have implemented DevOps organically while working at NYSE in 2004 when DevOps was not mainstream.

Ingo Philipp is an award-winning Exploratory Testing and Agile thought leader, with a resume of speaking engagements that span the globe. In his role as a Product Manager at Tricentis, his responsibilities range from product development and product marketing to test management, test conception, test design, and test automation. His experiences with software testing embrace the application of agile testing as well as classical testing methodologies in various sectors including financial services, consumer goods, commercial services, healthcare, materials, telecommunications, and energy.

Senior Partner, Head of Strategic Advisory Services – NYC, New York. Gabby brings a wealth of IT experience with her from holding various global positions in telecom, consulting, and financial service organizations. Prior to joining QAC, Gabby Szasz specialized in transforming QA and Development organizations within many of the world’s largest banks. Gabby Szasz recently served as Global CIO of Enterprise Quality Engineering at Wells Fargo Bank.Within Wells Fargo, she championed QA accountability and oversaw the transformation of a 5,000 person QA organization culminating with moving to a de-centralized model. Prior to that, she had similar high-profile QA/Dev position sat BNY Mellon, JP Morgan Chase, and Bank of America.Gabby is a leading voice for Women in Technology. She is acknowledged as a national leader in the drive to attract women into technology fields. She is active with Power to Fly, Anita Borg Institute (ABI), Grace Hopper Celebration (GHC) andWomen in Technology (WIT). She leads conference panels and TED Talks as well as 250+ attendee conferences. She developed the award-winning BNYMellon/WIT High School Internship program and brought the Best Company forWomen Technologists award from ABI to BNY Mellon.

Maged Ebeid is a Senior Technology Officer at BMO Harris Bank, leading the development, delivery and support of all solutions for US Private Bank, BHFA (BMO Harris Financial Advisors) and Stoker Ostler. He has demonstrated experience in managing global diverse technology teams in the Banking and Financial industries. More than 20 years of experience in a variety of technology roles, including senior management, architecture, design and development. Innovative architect, technology visionary and business leader with extensive experience in delivering reliable, scalable, and cost-sensitive business solutions with high quality.

Elena initially joined Exactpro as a QA analyst. Working in this position, she got first-hand experience in software testing, the focus of her work being post-trade systems, market data processing and storage. In parallel with her work on the project, Elena was involved in speaking on behalf of Exactpro at a number of IT and Fintech conferences, including EXTENT-2018 in London (June 2018). Most recently, having joined Business Development, Elena has represented Exactpro at the QA Financial Forum in Chicago (April 2019) and AI Test 2019 in San Francisco (April 2019). As part of the Exactpro Global Business Development team, Elena gets to leverage her experience of presenting at the conferences and continues to be actively engaged in the company’s Research & Development Strategy. Prior to joining Exactpro, Elena held a position of Associate Professor and Head of the Laboratory of Applied Linguistics for several years after obtaining her postgraduate degree. Her responsibilities included project management of scientific work aimed at computer resource design and development.

Iosif is co-founder and co-CEO of Exactpro, a specialist firm focused on functional and non-functional testing for market infrastructures. Founded in 2009 with ten core specialists on board, Exactpro now employs over 550 specialists. In May 2015 - January 2018, Exactpro was part of the Technology Services division of the London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG). In January 2018, the founders of Exactpro completed a management buyout from LSEG. Iosif manages business development and research in the field of high-load trading systems reliability. He is actively involved in delivering strategic software testing initiatives. Iosif has organized several industry conferences, including EXTENT - Software Testing and Trading Technology Trends Conference. He frequently speaks at worldwide FinTech events. Iosif started his professional career in 2000 as a software engineer in a US-based software development company. For seven years, he worked as a Team Lead and a Technology Architect on projects for a number of US companies. In 2006, Iosif joined a company providing QA services in the financial sector. His extensive software development experience helped him to establish a Performance Testing Department specialising in testing high load trading systems. As a Technical Lead, Iosif was responsible for developing testing tools and implementing technical solutions for a number of leading exchanges and global investment banks. Iosif also has experience managing a consulting practice with a focus on advanced execution systems. As VP of Technology, he was responsible for implementing testing solutions on a number of complex projects for customers worldwide.

Bio coming soon.

With over a decade of enterprise IT and security consulting experience, Mr. Alaniz leads the US security architecture team for BBVA. His responsibilities include establishing the enterprise security architecture framework as well as designing and developing processes to ensure that proper security architecture is implemented within projects in the US and abroad. This includes working with many teams to develop security and governance baselines and reviewing and documenting the security architecture of each project.. Additionally, his teams are responsible for the governance and security architecture of cloud services and technologies.

Carlos' professional career has been entirely focused on the Web, starting in 1994 with Argonne National Laboratory and discovering NCSA Mosaic, and connecting things to the Internet such as their Advanced Photon Source electron accelerator before it was even possible to center text on a page. Other notable employers have been Chicago Tribune, PacifiCare Health Systems, Barbeques Galore, Cars.com, and Rand McNally, addressing the nascent topics of Web development, content management, online marketing, and e-commerce. After 20 years, Carlos joined Zurich Insurance and pivoted into Cybersecurity to protect Web sites instead of develop Web sites, because port 80 and 443 are the biggest vulnerabilities ever. He has bachelor's and master's degrees in Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and an M.B.A. from Concordia University. After having co-located his own email, Web, and database servers for many years, Carlos still enjoys crafting code in Python and Google App Engine in his spare time.

Since his first computer, the famous Sinclair 1000, Bernd has been interested in information technology. His path lead from developer over system administrator to QA specialist. Combining his passion for technology and Quality Assurance with his passion for people led him to people management.  During his career Bernd has been involved in transforming multiple organizations through standardization, process evolution and capability enhancement. Bernd lives and breathes Quality Assurance.

Jennifer Henderson attended Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, is a certified agile scrum master and Certified SAFe® 4 Program Consultant. Jen is currently a Senior Manager of retail and direct technology at Capital One. Jen formerly held the position of Director of Technology for POSSIBLE/WPP, one of the world's largest digital marketing agencies, and was the Chief Technical Officer and co-founder of Rovion, Inc. and Valley InfoSystems. Jen is proud to have supported world class organizations such as P&G, the J.M. Smucker Company, Universal Pictures and Toyota with creative technology solutions and consultation.

Avik Ganguly, currently serving as the Director of Quality Engineering at LSEG’s Information Services Division which includes The Yield Book and FTSE Russell. The Yield Book is a market leader in the fixed income analytics and FTSE Russell is a global leader in indexes. Avik’s team is responsible for the Quality Engineering infrastructure of the Yield Book technology products. Prior to joining LSEG; Avik was an Engineering Director at WeWork where he co-founded their Quality Engineering team from ground up. Avik has a proven track record of building world class engineering teams in hyper growth mode and attracting and retaining top talent. Avik’s passion for quality stems from his graduate research work in the field of operations research and stochastic systems leading him to a career in driving operational excellence in the industry. Prior to WeWork, Avik lived and worked in San Francisco for nearly a decade. Avik enjoys traveling and has traveled to 15 countries over last 5 years.

Brian Pohl is the Vice President of Software Release and Delivery Management at SWBC a privately held Financial Services company in San Antonio Texas. Brian is responsible for all Software Quality Assurance, User Acceptance Testing and Business Systems Analysts. Brian has over 25 years of experience leading Global Software Quality Assurance and Development teams across Financial Services, IT, Broadcast Television and Healthcare Domains. He is an advocate for Continuous Testing, DevOps, Test Automation, Robotic Process Automation and Accessibility Testing. He has spoken on Test Automation, Mobile Test Automation and contributed to Forrester and Gartner research on Test Automation and Testing Tools.

At Discover Financial Services, Tessin leads the governance group within Business Technology (BT) Risk. In that role, he is responsible for ensuring policy, standards and procedures align with corporate objectives. He serves as the internal party responsible for regulatory exam management, and is the internal liaison to Corporate Risk Management. In his role at ISACA, Tessin was the project manager for COBIT 5 and led the development of other COBIT 5-related publications, white papers and articles. Tessin also played a central role in the design of COBIT online, ISACA’s latest web site that offers convenient access to the COBIT 5 product family and includes interactive digital tools to assist in the use of COBIT. Prior to joining IASCA, Tessin was a senior manager at an internal audit firm, where he led client engagements and was responsible for IT and financial audit teams. Previously, he worked in various industry roles including staff accountant, application developer, accounting systems consultant and trainer, business analyst, project manager, and auditor. He has worked in many countries outside of his native US including Canada, Mexico, Germany, Italy, France, UK and Australia. With more than 20 years of global business and IT experience, Tessin is able to address topical issues in business leadership.

Sejal is Vice President of Compliance at Synapse and holds professional scrum master PSM I and in Six Sigma certificates. She considers herself a lifelong learner with B.S in Decision Science, M.S in Management Information System and most recently M.S in Law from Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. Sejal has over a decade of experience working within FinTech and Regulatory Compliance; specifically bringing clarity to complex product workflows for State and Federal regulators within the lending space. She began her career as a front-end Java developer and proudly held various roles as Technical Writer, Process Re-engineer, Product Owner, and QA Manager. Although, her most proud accomplishment is completing South Island Te Araroa trail in New Zealand.