If you’re driving the charge for Open Banking in Canada this is your must-attend event.

Sue is President of Equifax Canada where she leads a team of over 500 employees primarily in Toronto and Montreal office locations. Sue has over 25 years of experience in commercial and retail banking and digital payment technology.

Prior to joining Equifax in late November 2020, Sue served as Senior Vice President, Core, Digital and New Payments at Mastercard Canada; Chief Commercial Officer at Payments Canada; Canada Country Manager and Group Head at D+H (now Finastra) and held Senior Vice President roles at HSBC and Bank of America, including in Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Commercial Banking and Global Transaction Banking.

Sue is currently a board member of Home Capital Group and sits as an Advisory Board Member for Women in Payments. Her previous Board experience includes Canada Payments Association (now Payments Canada), BC Women’s Hospital Foundation and Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Sue is an award recipient of the ‘Top 100: Canada’s Most Powerful Women’. She has an MBA in Finance and International Business from the Schulich School of Business and is also an Institute Certified Director (ICD.D) of the Institute of Corporate Directors. Sue lives in Toronto.

As the leader of Gowling WLG’s Fintech Group, Parna Sabet-Stephenson is a longtime legal advisor to players in the financial services and technology industries. She has over two decades of experience in assisting clients with a wide variety of commercial and technology law matters.

Widely recognized nationally and internationally for her expertise in technology law and fintech, Parna was named “Lawyer of the Year” for the Fintech Practice by The Best Lawyers in Canada 2023 guide.

An engaged practitioner, she serves as a Canadian delegate for e-commerce law to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, as well as a member of FSRA’s technical advisory committee for digital transformation and data governance. A passionate advocate for women’s advancement, Parna has led and supported a number of initiatives aimed to provide leadership and career opportunities for women. She is the co-founder of Yara Leadership Society.

Abraham Tachjian is Canada’s open banking lead, named by the Honourable Randy Boissonnault, Associate Minister of Finance, in March 2022. Mr. Tachjian has extensive experience related to open banking in Canada and internationally. He was a Director in the Financial Services practice at PwC Canada. He helped found Mox Bank, a new digital bank in Hong Kong, and was Director of Digital Banking of Standard Chartered Bank in Singapore where he was responsible for the implementation of emerging technologies.

Mr. Tachjian earned a B.A. from Concordia University, an LL.B in civil law from Université de Montréal, a J.D. in common law from University of Ottawa and a certificate in Chinese Law from China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. He is a member of the Law Society of Ontario and the Barreau du Québec.

Roy possesses over 20 years of experience in various leadership roles in Fintech, managing consultancy, and other entrepreneurial pursuits around the world.

Prior to joining MaRS, Roy was the founding Chief Technology Officer at Lendified, a respected small business lending Fintech company, and was a co-founder of Alpha Insights, a data and analytics strategy consultancy for the Financial Services industry. Previously, Roy was CEO of Bentley & Co. Limited in New York and Shanghai, and has held management and consulting positions at companies including BCE Emergis, CA Technologies, and Accenture.

Roy is a native Mandarin Chinese and English speaker, and graduated with an honours degree in computer science and economics from the University of Toronto.

Chris Sweetland is CIBC’s SVP of Payments, Strategy & Transformation and resides in the Personal & Business Bank (PBB) arm of the Canadian retail bank. Chris is responsible for our Payment Strategy, our exploration of new products, services, platforms and partnerships related to PBB commerce and payments, and advises the broader organization on investments, priorities and roadmaps in support of all retail lines of business.

Before CIBC, Chris led Square’s Industry Relations and Payments Operations & Partnerships teams. Chris represented the interests of the small business and microseller community against an increasingly complex backdrop of payments and commerce The Operations & Partnerships function under Square’s Payments organization where Chris looked after Square’s Seller communities in North America, Europe, Australia and Japan. Before joining Square in 2017, Chris led a Business Development and Commerce Partnerships team at Google focused on mobile, online and in-app payments that solicited card network, financial institution, card issuer, and digital payments participation in Google Pay (previously, Android Pay).

Prior to Google, Chris was Vice President of Corporate Initiatives at Visa Inc., and led the business development and product partnerships engagement of the major US financial institutions and their participation in the launch of the Visa Token Service in support of the introduction of Apple Pay.

In nine years between Visa U.S.A. and Visa Inc., Chris led a team based in Singapore focused on Emerging Payments Partnerships and Industry Programs across Asia Pacific, Easter Europe, Middle East, and Africa. He participated in Visa’s 2008 IPO, while managing a team of corporate strategy professionals who oversaw the financial restructuring and network pricing overhaul in the transition of the network association to a for profit, public company. Prior to his work tied to the IPO, Chris managed numerous pilot programs for Visa U.S.A. as a Product Innovation manager focused on mobile and contactless initiatives between 2006 and 2008. Before 2006, Chris consulted various companies including Visa in the payments, financial services and technology industries at Accenture. He spent four years between Accenture
and Economists, Inc. advising businesses and law firms in areas including marketing, technology, antitrust, competition, and litigation.

Chris holds a B.A. in Economics from Colgate University. He’s a former chapter President of the Omecron Delta Epsilon academic honor society. In 2001, Chris was named to the College Sports Information Directors of America (CoSIDA) Academic All America team for his participation in the Colgate University cross country and track and field teams

Hugh McKee is Head of BMO Partners, BMO’s Enterprise partnership team accountable for using strategic partnerships and investments to help accelerate innovation and growth across BMO. He is accountable for developing partnerships with Fintechs, Bigtechs, financial services consortia and innovation accelerators. Prior to his current role, Hugh was the Vice President of Enterprise Strategy in the Office of Strategic Management where he led Enterprise strategic initiatives.

Hugh has also held a number of operating roles within BMO including President and CEO of BMO Mutual Funds and Vice President of Customer Segment Management. Before joining BMO in 2007, he was a Global Account Manager for Monitor Group, a management consulting firm, where he was a leader in the financial services practice. Hugh holds an Honours BA in Economics from Queen’s University and an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario.

As the Senior Vice-President & Group Head of Personal Banking at Equitable Bank, Mahima leads EQ Bank, Canada’s leading digital bank, the Single-Family mortgage businesses, the decumulation lines of business in Reverse Mortgages and CSV Lending, Marketing, and the distribution of deposit products through the Financial Planning channel. Mahima joined Equitable in 2016 to lead the Corporate Development team, grew her mandate to include digital banking and marketing in 2019, and eventually to lead the Personal Banking division in 2020. Under her leadership, Equitable has acquired both Bennington Financial and the Maple Bank portfolio and introduced the decumulation lines of business; while EQ Bank surpassed $7 billion in total deposits, and successfully introduced a suite of new products and features.

Sue is President of Equifax Canada where she leads a team of over 500 employees primarily in Toronto and Montreal office locations. Sue has over 25 years of experience in commercial and retail banking and digital payment technology.

Prior to joining Equifax in late November 2020, Sue served as Senior Vice President, Core, Digital and New Payments at Mastercard Canada; Chief Commercial Officer at Payments Canada; Canada Country Manager and Group Head at D+H (now Finastra) and held Senior Vice President roles at HSBC and Bank of America, including in Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Commercial Banking and Global Transaction Banking.

Sue is currently a board member of Home Capital Group and sits as an Advisory Board Member for Women in Payments. Her previous Board experience includes Canada Payments Association (now Payments Canada), BC Women’s Hospital Foundation and Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Sue is an award recipient of the ‘Top 100: Canada’s Most Powerful Women’. She has an MBA in Finance and International Business from the Schulich School of Business and is also an Institute Certified Director (ICD.D) of the Institute of Corporate Directors. Sue lives in Toronto.

Recognized as a 2021 Black Engineer of the Year Awards Modern Day Technology Leader and shortlisted as the 2020 Security Champion of the Year by Women in Technology, Octavia is an experienced technical leader who specializes in Networks, Cyber Security, and building operationally excellent, motivated cross-functional, multi-cultural teams. She is focused on career growth and helping everyone she encounters reach their career goals. Octavia prides herself on understanding, solving problems, and discovering secure solutions for her business partners. She currently serves as a Chief Information Security Officer for Equifax Canada. She is also the Founder and CEO of Augustus Redefined, an organization focused on the advancement of Black Women in Cyber. Octavia believes that a security leader should mentor, motivate trust, and lead their teams to act with integrity and openness. She often says, “A team is only as strong as their leaders and each leader casts a shadow that they will be held accountable for.” Octavia genuinely believes that we are placed on this earth to help each other achieve greatness (whatever that may be). ` Octavia received a Bachelor of Science Degree inComputer Science and Mathematics from Spelman College and holds CISSP, GISP, GCWN andGSLC GIAC certifications. She is a member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, the Infomation Technology Senior Management Forum (ITSMF), Women in Technology (WiT), Women in Cybersecurity (WiCys), the International Consortium for Minorities and CyberProfessionals (ICMCP), the International Information Systems Security Consortium (ISC2), the Infomation Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA), the Information Systems SecurityAssociation (ISSA), and serves as a mentor to several participants within Year-Up GreaterAtlanta. In her spare time, Octavia enjoys travelling, spending time with her family, and mentoring. She genuinely believes that we are placed on this earth to help each other achievegreatness (whatever that may be).

Barry co-founded Raidiam in 2016, a company specialising in creating the world’s smartest data sharing ecosystems.

Barry has over 20 years’ of international experience delivering ecosystems to unlock the value of data across financial, government, healthcare and telecoms sectors. He has held lead architect and senior consultant roles to support digital change initiatives; in particular playing a key part in the delivery of world -leading Open Banking initiatives globally, shaping policies and standards and inputting on their architecture and design.

He has also worked with numerous domestic and global retail, corporate and private banks helping them successfully achieve regulatory compliance and maximise commercial opportunities within the context of GDPR and PSD2.

Barry is a technical specialist combining commercial insight with an understanding of modern InfoSec threats, and risk and compliance best practices across complex fintech and retail banking.

As COO and practice lead at Raidiam, he manages a diverse team of professionals focused on maximising customer success, ensuring that Raidiam‘s reputation for excellence and its award winning Raidiam Connect PaaS ecosystem-in- a box technology is maintained.

Barry holds a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Dublin City University and a number of industry accreditations including AWS cloud, TOGAF and CISSP.

Kristy Duncan is the founder and CEO of Women in Payments. This growing professional network unites women in payments from around the globe with a shared vision of gender parity. Women in Payments supports women’s career development through conferences, award and mentorship programs, and by hosting a growing online community.

Kristy is an avid supporter of her fellow female trailblazers, as investor and advisor to three women-led fintechs. As a respected leader in the field, she’s judged several accelerators, fintech contests, and global awards programs.

Before founding Women in Payments, Kristy was a leading payments consultant to global financial institutions, payment networks, fintechs, regulators, and other industry leaders. Prior to that, she held leadership positions at a tier one Canadian bank.

Bringing over 20 years over product development, data-driven marketing, relationship and P&L management, Dina Vardouniotis founded her consultancy practice, Payments and Partnerships to create value by enabling collaboration in the payments ecosystem. With deep experience in financial services, Dina led retail and small business lending product and marketing at CIBC, credit card partnerships at Citi and JPMorgan Chase, as well as product, marketing and communications at Alterna Savings and Bank. She currently works with financial institutions, merchants, fin/paytechs to develop payments strategies and program development for consumers, small business and commercial segments.

John Landry is the Head of Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) business in Canada. He is responsible for Citi’s team of professionals across Toronto, Montreal and Calgary and their delivery of class-leading Cash Management, Commercial Card and Trade Finance & Services. John has served on Payments Canada’s Board of Directors, Payments Canada’s Member Advisory Council and on The Canadian Banker’s Association Payments Committee amongst others.

Citi’s Canadian business was established in Canada more than 100 years ago and offers multinational corporations, financial institutions and public sector organizations the full suite of traditional transaction banking capabilities. More importantly, TTS in Canada leverages
innovations across Citi’s global network of more than 100 countries to bring creative and industrial-strength solutions to Canadian clients. Transaction Services brings innovation to Canada, and brings our Canadian clients to
the world.

John came to head TTS Canada in March 2010 after having spent the previous 5 years as TTS Product Head for Citi in Australia and New Zealand. During that period John lead the team in re-establishing itself as a leader in Cash and Trade services with particular success in the Global Subsidiary Group, Public, Banking and Local Corporate sectors. Simultaneously reinforcing Citi’s core capabilities while also launching innovative, market-shifting solutions drove a doubling of revenues and tripling of net income during his tenure.

John has also served at Citi as Global Worldlink Product Development Head, Co-CTO for CitiCapital, and a Product Manager for mobile payment initiatives.

John graduated from University of Richmond’s Robins School of Business prior to joining Signet Bank. He held a series of roles in Consumer Finance and Marketing with First Union and Wachovia following successive mergers. In 1998 he joined GE Capital in a leadership role in Card Services. John serves on the Board of Directors for Citibank Canada Investment Funds Limited, and DAREarts.

Robyn King is the Director for Industry Relations at Payments Canada, where she oversees a portfolio of relationships with member financial institutions, broader stakeholder groups and industry governance. She has more than 15 years of experience in transactional banking, card payments and payments modernization in both the Southern African and Canadian markets.

Prior to joining Payments Canada, Robyn was on the modernization team at CIBC and worked at South Africa’s FirstRand Bank, holding roles in branch banking, innovation, payments, and merchant acquiring.

Robyn graduated with a B.Sc. from the University of Johannesburg and an MBA from the Henley Business School. Robyn became a Certified Treasury Professional in 2020 and is due to complete a certification in strategy with Harvard Business School this year.

Ram V is VP and Chief Technology Officer for TCS’s Banking, Financial Services, and Insurance (BFSI) business unit worldwide. He is the custodian of the TCS’s BFSI Innovation Lab and works with TCS labs and customers worldwide to incubate innovation ideas from inception to execution.

During the course of his 30+ years with TCS, He has led several large mission-critical transformation implementations for TCS‘s BFSI clients across the globe. Two of the TCS implementations that he has led have won “Banker Technology Awards” from the prestigious UK based Financial Times Group – Banker Magazine highlighting the complexity & business value delivered to the clients.

Rebecca Oakes is the AVP of Advanced Analytics at Equifax Canada. She is a seasoned analytics professional with over 15 years’ experience in building and leading high performing analytical teams. Prior to joining Equifax Canada, Rebecca held several senior leadership positions in the UK. Rebecca has a wealth of experience in driving business value from data and analytics across multiple industries including Financial Services, Utilities & Retail.

As Vice President in Digital, Franklin leads developments aiming to transform how the bank interacts with its employees and customers on a North American basis. He promotes the effort to “mobilize” TD Bank colleagues; untethering and empowering employees. As part of his mandate, Franklin leads the Digital Identity agenda for the enterprise, building and delivering a platform that will transform how Canadians assert their identity in the digital world; in addition to serving on the DIACC board. He also leads TD’s involvement and efforts around Open Banking, covering both regulatory and market developments, he represents TD on the Financial Data Exchange (FDX) board.

Franklin is a graduate of the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University with a Masters of Business Administration. He also holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from Ecole Superieure D’Electricite.

Responsible for the development, planning and execution of a comprehensive Open Banking strategy to position Axway as the leading solution provider in the space. Coordinates efforts across teams within the organisation, from marketing to sales to product, in order to ensure common strategic alignment and complementary messaging. A member of the Catalyst team at Axway, dedicated to providing global thought leadership in the realm of APIs, integration technologies and digital transformation.

Jason Chomik, a seasoned Canadian technology executive who has been active in the payments and digital transformation space for over 25 years. Jason is the Director of the FDX Canada working group to cultivate a culture of collaboration, communication, and technical inclusiveness within FDX between different market segments of the Canadian financial services ecosystem. Jason also serves as the primary FDX resource to FDX Canada members to make the FDX workflow more digestible, and to ensure that all FDX Canada members, regardless of firm size or resources, have the ability to meaningfully participate in FDX technical standards development.

Sabena Sandhu is the Manager of Policy at the Canadian Credit Union Association. In this role, she leads the association’s policy leader on payments modernization, digital ID, privacy, cyber-security and open banking. Prior to joining CCUA in 2020, Sabena worked in an advisory capacity at a municipal association. Originally from Kingston Ontario, Sabena is a graduate of Queen’s University and the University of Edinburgh.

Glenn leads the Banking & Capital Markets Sector for Canada, and is a Partner in Consulting. He has 20 years of consulting experience, primarily in financial services where he leads strategic growth mandates as well as large transformation programs with clients in Personal banking, Commercial & Small business banking as well as in Wealth & Asset Management.

Glenn is a graduate of Systems Design Engineering at the University of Waterloo and holds an MBA from Harvard University.

Charlie is an investor at OMERS Ventures, a global early-stage venture platform, and is actively leading Seed-Series C technology investments in NA and in the EU. Recent investments include Moves Financial, ClearEstate, Qui Identity, OneVest and Manifest Climate.

Elena Litani is a Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Pillar, a Canadian neobank for small business owners, empowering entrepreneurs to do what they love.

Prior to Pillar, Elena helped to launch credit building and early payroll at KOHO, defined and commercialized the liquidity management product at nanopay, led a blockchain team at TD Bank and drove IT strategy for global IBM clients. Elena has actively participated in numerous Open Banking consultations; was an elected member of the Stakeholder Advisory Committee (SAC) for Payments Canada and FinTech Advisory Committee for OSC LaunchPad. Elena is also a recipient of the Innovation Award from Women in Payments in (2019) and 1 of 35 women selected globally out of 500+ applicants to Money20/20’s first inaugural Rise Up program (2018).

Sue is President of Equifax Canada where she leads a team of over 500 employees primarily in Toronto and Montreal office locations. Sue has over 25 years of experience in commercial and retail banking and digital payment technology.

Prior to joining Equifax in late November 2020, Sue served as Senior Vice President, Core, Digital and New Payments at Mastercard Canada; Chief Commercial Officer at Payments Canada; Canada Country Manager and Group Head at D+H (now Finastra) and held Senior Vice President roles at HSBC and Bank of America, including in Retail Banking and Wealth Management, Commercial Banking and Global Transaction Banking.

Sue is currently a board member of Home Capital Group and sits as an Advisory Board Member for Women in Payments. Her previous Board experience includes Canada Payments Association (now Payments Canada), BC Women’s Hospital Foundation and Nature Conservancy of Canada.

Sue is an award recipient of the ‘Top 100: Canada’s Most Powerful Women’. She has an MBA in Finance and International Business from the Schulich School of Business and is also an Institute Certified Director (ICD.D) of the Institute of Corporate Directors. Sue lives in Toronto.

As the leader of Gowling WLG’s Fintech Group, Parna Sabet-Stephenson is a longtime legal advisor to players in the financial services and technology industries. She has over two decades of experience in assisting clients with a wide variety of commercial and technology law matters.

Widely recognized nationally and internationally for her expertise in technology law and fintech, Parna was named “Lawyer of the Year” for the Fintech Practice by The Best Lawyers in Canada 2023 guide.

An engaged practitioner, she serves as a Canadian delegate for e-commerce law to the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law, as well as a member of FSRA’s technical advisory committee for digital transformation and data governance. A passionate advocate for women’s advancement, Parna has led and supported a number of initiatives aimed to provide leadership and career opportunities for women. She is the co-founder of Yara Leadership Society.