The fourth annual QA Financial Forum New York; now established as the leading US conference for software quality assurance leaders working in banking, insurance and asset management.
The QA Financial Forum is a unique conference for Heads of QA, testing, software engineering, DevOps, operational risk, and IT risk management. The Forum discusses the key issues facing banks, trading platforms and insurance companies as they seek to implement new technologies in software automation. A key focus is how financial firms benchmark software quality, especially as regulators increase their scrutiny of IT risk management.
Sri Atluri is a proven C level executive who has diverse experience managing high-performing global financial technology organizations for about 24 years. Sri is a highly creative and collaborative leader and is well known in Wall street. He envision possibilities, ignite performance from diverse teams and produce exceptional results across the organization. His track record includes delivering strategic and practical solutions to complex organizational, technological, process and business challenges. He is known for achieving organizational transformations through encouraging team participation, questioning the status quo and leveraging a balance of consensus building, empowerment and accountability. He was a founder president of a non profit organization called Nyaaya Jyothi that helped thousands of poor and needy in India. Sri is a philanthropist who helped many underprivileged across the world. He acquired LLM (Banking, Finance and Corporate Law) from Fordham Law school in New York. He is known for his exemplary leadership qualities and teamwork. He is a charter member of TIE New York. Many of his teams consider him as a role model since he made a remarkable career strides.
Sameer Bajaj is an accomplished Agile practitioner who has 12 years of experience in Middle Office services for Hedge Fund Administration. Sameer is currently a Director in the Product Management Group at Hedgeserv, a Hedge Fund Administrator. He liaises with business and technology groups to build Middle Office and Valuation solutions. Prior to this role, Sameer was a Managing Director at State Street’s Alternative Investment Solutions division, leading Middle Office and Accounting technology groups. At State Street, Sameer helped build and refine a service-orientated architecture for Middle Office services, beginning primarily as a Business Analyst with a secondary test automation engineer role. Sameer transitioned into a more leadership and business-facing role over the years before moving to Hedgeserv. His expertise extends to Data Import and Transformation, Trade Processing, Pricing, Treasury Function and Market Data Functions. Sameer has a Ph.D. in Information Systems from the Stern School of Business, NYU, and a Bachelor’s in Computer Engineering from Delhi University, India.
Gerold (Gerry) Rajesh is a Senior Vice President and Global Head of Quality and Release Management at Brown Brothers Harriman. Based in New York, Gerry leads a global team responsible for developing and implementing new tools, processes and workflows through a centralized Quality Assurance (QA) center of excellence for the entire firm. Gerry is a career QA professional with over 16 years of experience in various roles, contributing both on leadership and strategic levels. Prior joining BBH, Gerry was the Head of QA (Investment Banking) at Barclays Bank and worked in their Singapore, Tokyo and India offices before relocating to New York. Gerry has a Bachelors degree in Statistics and a Masters degree in Computer Science from Madras University, India.
Devin Hendricks is a Vice President at Lazard in the IT Global Infrastructure group. Devin focuses on bringing DevOps best practices to Lazard with extensive experience building CI/CD pipelines with CloudBees Jenkins, natively with Amazon Web Services (AWS), and has recently begun to use Spinnaker with Jenkins. Prior to his career in finance, he spent over two years as a DevOps Architect at Datapipe (now Rackspace) helping fortune 500 companies with their digital transformation and seven years as an overt contractor in the US Intelligence Community.
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.
Elliot Noma has worked in both finance and data science. He is a consultant on machine learning and natural language processing solutions at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He also runs a proprietary trading company, Garrett Asset Management. Dr. Noma taught machine learning at Columbia University and currently teaches quantitative risk management in the Masters in Mathematical Finance program at Rutgers University. Previously, Dr. Noma was a portfolio manager running a fund of hedge funds and was the Chief Risk Officer at Asset Alliance, a $3 billion seeder of hedge funds. Prior to working at Asset Alliance, Elliot was a risk manager at both Merrill Lynch Investment Advisers and Deutsche Bank, was an analyst at both JP Morgan and Salomon Brother, and was a investment banker at Chase. He has patented a levered ETF structure, has written a book on psychometrics, and has published scholarly articles in behavioral finance, psychology, information science, sociology, math, and finance. His most recent article in 2018 describes a new method of measuring financial risk aversion using hypothetical investment preferences. Dr. Noma has a Ph.D. in the mathematical modeling of psychological processes from the University of Michigan along with an M.A. in Mathematics. He graduated from Dartmouth College with a B.A. in Mathematics.
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.
Alan Hanson is Senior Vice President and Head of CAST Software’s Banking Financial Services and Insurance group in North America. He has more than 25 years of experience working in financial services and serving the industry. Prior to joining CAST, Alan was a Partner at ISG, where he co-founded ISG’s Global BFSI practice and helped clients with more than $3 billion in transformational initiatives, including Merger Integration, IT & Business Process Outsourcing, Robotic Process Automation and Digital transformation. Within industry, Alan has held senior positions at Commodity Exchange, Inc., Alliance Capital, Bankers Trust Company, and TSG Capital, a private equity fund. He also worked with KPMG/Bearing Point and Genpact. Alan has spoken extensively at industry events including American Banker, Shared Assessments, SIG, IAOP and Wall Street Technology. He holds an BS in Banking and Money Management from Adelphi University and an MBA from NYU’s Stern School of Business.
Sumeet is an experienced professional with a career spanning nearly 20 years in quality assurance, test automation, and product and release management with leading companies like UBS, Citibank, and TD Ameritrade. Sumeet currently serves as engineering director at Dow Jones, where he supports faster releases, improves quality, and creates brand value for world-renowned products. In his role, Sumeet built effective and efficient Engineering organizations which focus on product quality and close collaboration between Product, Engineering, and Design teams. He is an avid speaker at multiple conferences and was instrumental in driving a team of engineers to build a Behavior Driven Test Harness using open-source technologies, which helped recognize Dow Jones as a finalist two years in a row at the European Testing Awards in the category of Engineering transformation and Innovation.
Prashanth Batchu is a dynamic leader in Information Technology skilled at developing high performance teams. With a strong background in Software Engineering and Product Development, Prashanth has led multiple high profile projects to completion in the Financial and Health Care industries. He is currently serving as an Associate Director at UBS leading the technology transformation within Wealth Management Americas – QA. He is also an Officer in the U.S Army serving as a Health Services Systems Manager.
Izzy Azeri is the CEO and co-founder of mabl, leading SaaS provider for end-to-end cross-browser test automation. He has held broad ranging responsibilities across Sales, Marketing, Product, and M&A at technology companies including Google, EMC, VMware and Stackdriver. Most recently, he was Senior Product Manager at Google responsible for Google Cloud Platform pricing strategy. Prior to Google, Izzy was co-founder of Stackdriver, an intelligent-infrastructure monitoring company which was successfully acquired by Google in 2014. In addition, Izzy serves on the Board of Directors of CSP, Inc (NASDAQ CSPI), Thurndra.io, as well as board of advisors at Turbonomic and Threatstack.
Over the last two years, Brian has been a Director of Engineering for Digital at Liberty Mutual. He leads software development teams with a focus on Customer Experience across the U.S. market. A passion for security, testing, and observability are at the core of his tenets to run a performant and stable software platform. He believes the future of customer engagement will rely on data-driven services and a deep understanding of what the customer wants and needs. Before Liberty, Brian managed a seed-stage engineering team at a Cybersecurity startup, built a world-class IoT platform - Xively by LogMeIn (acquired by Google Cloud), and created a complex geospatial digital asset management system in VRML/X3D for the Department of Defense (NMCI). Brian is deeply involved in the Boston Technology community, organizing the Boston Node.JS Meetup, which connects developers in the Boston-area across the stack.
Billy Flannery is a Director of IT Analysis for a Fortune 100 Company. He has a proven track record of delivering high-quality applications and solutions, building high-caliber and engaged teams, serving as a role model for technology leadership, and driving unprecedented efficiencies and effectiveness. Billy has 16+ years of experience leading software development initiatives, high-profile enterprise-wide projects, and the delivery of world-class solutions—leveraging Agile, Iterative, and Waterfall—in a Fortune 100 environment. In addition, he has built, trained, and lead high-impact teams, thriving in settings allowing for significant coaching, mentorship, and development of associates and managers. Currently he leads 350+ IT professionals—including up to 9 IT managers—located in multiple sites that oversee software quality assurance, requirements, and testing to ensure product and process quality.
Justin Hunter, CEO and Founder of Hexawise, is recognized as one of the world's leading experts in the field of optimized test design. Prior to founding Hexawise, Justin earned an Accenture Global Innovation award for introducing methods of improving the efficiency and effectiveness of software testing. Justin has taught thousands of testers and business analysts on six continents how to implement more efficient and effective testing methods, and is dedicated to furthering the spread of better software test design practices to firms around the world.
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.
Murali Nandigama, is a Director and head of the engineering function for the Run the Bank in Barclays USA Cards and Payments. Prior to joining Barclays, Murali has spent two decades working in various senior leadership roles in Goldman Sachs, PayPal, Yahoo!, Mozilla, Oracle and Sun Microsystems and contributed to both open source projects as well as popular technology platforms like Firefox Browser, Oracle Fusion Middleware and Java software Standard Edition. Murali holds a Ph.D., in Physics and has filed and received patents in software engineering, published in peer reviewed journals and presented in multiple industry conferences.
Maya Ber Lerner joined Quali in 2007 and serves as Vice-President of Product Management. Prior to this role, Maya served in a variety of key management roles including systems engineering and sales. In her sales management roles, Maya was VP of International Sales, Director of Channel Development as well as Director of Asia-Pacific Sales. Prior to Quali, Maya held technical roles at Amdocs. She holds a Bachelor’s degree with honors in Biomedical engineering from Tel Aviv University.
Ruoh-Yann Huang is the Network Services Architecture Executive for Technology Infrastructure & Production Services at Bank of America. Her team is responsible for designing, engineering and infrastructure standards creation for essential Network Services, Network Management, Telemetry and Data Analytics, and Lab-as-a-Service. Ruoh-Yann provides the technical vision and direction to the team in delivering business value through transformation and automation, as well as creating new capabilities to support IP communications and innovation while maximize protection to the Bank’s Systems and Data. Prior to joining Bank of America, Ruoh-Yann served as the Global Head of Security Engineering for TD Bank, where she was responsible for overseeing strategy and direction for Cyber Security and Identity Access Management engineering. She joined TD Bank from Goldman Sachs, where she held various Infrastructure leadership roles and was instrumental in innovation and created the firm’s first business partner connectivity portal and Internet client portal servicing business partners. While in Goldman Sachs, she was named Tech Fellow, one of the first two women Tech Fellow in the firm. Ruoh-Yann has over 30 years of experience working in the IT industry, and holds one US patent in Synthetic Cyber-Risk Model for Vulnerability Determination.
Matthew Luken is a fervent user experience and service designer, digital strategist, and critical thinker. He excels at digital strategy, product management, process engineering / service design, user-centered interface design, accessibility (A11Y) strategy and agile / lean UX. He currently works at U.S. Bank as Director of UX for platforms and A11Y, which represents his 275th brand. Luken has worked UX in every vertical specializing in loyalty, finance, transportation, eCommerce, education, and automotive. He ran his own award-winning web firm for six years where their apprenticeship program graduated more than sixty-five students and continues to mentor students in UX and digital design. Luken has taught web, UX, and design classes at a college level for over thirteen years, currently at Minneapolis College of Art and Design. He holds Masters of Aeronautical Science Operations and Technical Management and a BS in Comp Sci from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University.
Michele Kryger is a Senior Compliance Officer of the AIG Life & Retirement (AIG L&R) Network Compliance team. She oversees a multi-disciplined team responsible for various functions including the senior investor protection unit as well as risk management/assessment, Compliance policy administration, Compliance training and records management oversight. Most recently, Michele has been leading an initiative to build and sustain an ADA program at AIG. She currently leads the newly created AIG L&R Accessibility Unit and is working with development and design teams, call centers, marketing teams and operations units to ensure accessibility, usability and equal access to information and services are being considered in all methods of communication and information sharing with our clients and the public.
Bio coming soon.
Preety is the CEO of Deque Systems and founded Deque in 1999 with the vision of unifying Web access, both from the user and the technology perspective. Under Preety’s leadership, Deque has grown to be a market leader in the field of information accessibility, serving corporate and government clients with the highest standards in information technology such as Veteran Affairs, Department of Education, Humana, Intuit, HSBC, Target, and others. She collaborated with the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative and is a nominated member of the Accessibility Forum’s Strategic Management Council: a GSA sponsored group with representatives from the IT industry, academia, Government Agencies, and disabled user groups that foster information accessibility through mutual cooperation.
Bio coming soon.
Elliot looks at how regulators financial firms can apply artificial intelligence technologies to compliance reporting processes and the supervisory standards they are likely to apply.
How to ensure that an AI-powered system is up to its task? And what would that mean from the software testing perspective?
Over the past two years Brian has transformed QA across Liberty Mutual's product portfolio and mabl has been an instrumental tool for Brian's teams in this transformation.
Based on original QA VectorⓇ research, this session will identify the best practices for proving the value of QA to the business.
This session will explain how other firms can scale Agile methodologies to different programmes, and how Agile can enhance technical test frameworks to ensure quality execution.
John Yopp explores the roots of an engineering excellence culture, which aspects of Agile and DevOps they enable and what specific behaviors teams and leaders can leverage.