Open Banking Expo Canada Speakers

Ben is a Partner and the Head of Partnerships and Policy at Portage Ventures. Prior to joining Portage in 2018, he spent more than 15 years at Canada Life in senior level strategy, product development and marketing roles across the organization, including the Head of Innovation for Canada.

As Head of Partnerships, Ben’s team works with those investors to help them execute on their strategic objectives through a combination of commercial partnerships with the fund’s portfolio companies and relevant and differentiated insights into the trends shaping the fintech sector.

Ben also leads Portage’s government affairs mandate and has helped to position the organization as a leading voice for pro competition and innovation policy developments. He sits on the board of the Paytechs of Canada and is a member of the Digital Identity Laboratories advisory panel.

Ben is a graduate of the Business Administration program (BBA) from Wilfrid Laurier University.

Chantal Bernier leads Dentons’ Canadian Privacy and Cybersecurity practice group. She is also a member of the Firm’s Government Affairs and Public Policy group. With Chantal on board, Dentons is proud to be the only law firm in Canada with a former privacy regulator as a practicing lawyer. During her nearly six years at the helm of the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada (OPC), Chantal led national and international privacy investigations in the public and private sectors, as well privacy audits, privacy impact assessment reviews, technological analysis, and privacy policy development and research.

In her Government Affairs and Public Policy practice, Chantal leverages her many years in high-ranking positions at the Government of Canada to provide her clients with strategic counsel. Her experience as a senior executive also uniquely positions her to understand corporate management challenges in both the public and private sectors to find solutions that serve corporate interests and comply with the law. She serves clients in French, English, Italian and Spanish, and is very active at the international level.

Thought Leadership Specialties:
Canadian Prepaid Market
Rewards & Incentives

Chris is a B2B industry veteran and a respected expert in Canadian incentives—particularly as they relate to digital rewards. He advises businesses on how to leverage prepaid card options to develop meaningful relationships with shoppers, employees, business partners, and other key audiences. His expertise is relied upon by organizations looking to connect Canadians to the digital economy and tap into the growing popularity of prepaid cards as versatile payment, reward and incentives tools.

With more than 20 years of experience—more than 15 spent with Blackhawk Network—Chris has accumulated a deep understanding for how prepaid cards can drive desired behaviors, streamline business processes, connect consumers digitally and fuel sales.

Corinne Pohlmann is Senior Vice President, National Affairs and Partnerships for the Canadian Federation of Independent Business (CFIB), a not-for-profit organization representing 95,000 small and medium-sized businesses across Canada. Corinne is based in Ottawa and is responsible for developing CFIB’s strategy on federal legislative issues, as well as overseeing CFIB’s Partnerships division, and Atlantic Canada legislative team.

Since joining the Federation in 1998, Corinne first worked in research, where she authored several research reports on a variety of public policy and economic issues. In 2000, Corinne became CFIB’s Director of Provincial Affairs based in Edmonton where she represented the interests of Alberta and NWT members to all levels of government and in 2006 she relocated to Ottawa to take on the responsibility of National Affairs.

Throughout her career, Corinne participated in numerous national consultations and committees on a wide variety of small business issues, including the Ministerial Advisory Committee on the Underground Economy, the Advisory Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, as well as the Deputy Minister Advisory Committee on Citizenship and Immigration.

Corinne was born and raised in Montreal where she attended McGill University – graduating with both a Bachelor and a Masters Degree in Geography.

Dianne leads Portfolio+ including all aspects of strategy, vision, go-to-market and growth initiatives. Her rich knowledge in the banking/financial services industry provides focus on creating value for customers, employees, and partners through open communication and collaboration across all teams.

Don Cardinal is Managing Director of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX). Cardinal leads FDX by engaging with FDX members across the financial services and fintech ecosystem in the US and Canada to develop and implement the FDX API technical standard and to promote FDX’s five principles for permissioned data sharing: Control, Access, Transparency, Traceability & Security. Since its launch in October 2018 with 21 founding members, Cardinal has grown the nonprofit standards body to over 185 member organizations and 16 million consumer accounts have been migrated to the FDX API in North America.

Don comes to FDX after more than 20 years with Bank of America, where he served in key leadership roles as the Privacy Officer of their Military Bank, the Digital Banking VP for Military Bank, VP in Digital Banking, and most recently as a Senior VP in Global Information Security, where he orchestrated the bank’s DMARC email security implementation. From 2016 to 2018, Don also served as co-chair of the Financial Services Information Sharing and Analysis Center’s (FS-ISAC) Aggregation Working Group. Prior to his banking career, Don worked for a fintech, writing tax preparation software.

Elena is a senior product and technology executive in the financial industry with experience of launching new products, defining and executing technical strategy, pioneering use of emerging technologies, championing innovation, and scaling teams in fast-growing startups, banking, IT.  Today Elena is a Chief Product Officer in a stealth startup building upon her previous experience as a technology executive at KOHO, Canada’s challenger bank. Elena has actively participated in numerous Open Banking consultations and events; was an elected member of Stakeholder Advisory Committee for Payments Canada;  elected member at FinTech Advisory Committee, OSC LaunchPad; served on a board of TMAC Toronto. Elena is a  recipient of Innovation Award from Women in Payments and one of 35 women selected out of 500+ applicants to Money20/20’s inaugural Rise Up program, accelerating leadership through networking, mentorship and executive training.

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.

Gilles Ubaghs is a Strategic Advisor with Aite-Novarica Group’s Commercial Banking practice where he is focused on business to business and commercial payments and the role that digital transformation is having across the enterprise and broader financial services sector. This includes a range of horizontal industry wide topic areas, such as the role of shifting payment regulations, fintech’s and artificial intelligence, as well as more tactical granular topics such as commercial cards, and payment clearing and settlement systems.

Gilles brings over 15 years of experience in the analysis and financial services space creating a range of syndicated off the shelf, and bespoke consulting projects for a wide array of clients at the enterprise, vendor, investor and regulator level internationally. Gilles has direct professional experience in European, Asia Pacific and North American markets and always aims to bring local context into global payments issues.

Prior to joining Aite Gilles was a Principal Analyst with Ovum where he helped to build up its retail payments practice across a range of key topics. Originally from Belgium but raised in the US, Gilles is fully fluent in French and English. Gilles holds a bachelors’ degree in Social Anthropology from the London School of Economics and is currently based in beautiful Toronto, Canada.

Hanna is a compliance and risk strategist that has worked for a wide range of financial institutions from big banks to early stage startups. Hanna has successfully led global regulatory change projects on Open Banking, AML and more for the Big 5 banks in Canada on regulations that impact operations in APAC, UK, EU and the US.

Hanna has also advised fintechs on go to market strategies such as designing compliant business models and products. Hanna is currently at Wealthsimple and leads the launch of new products such as Wealthsimple Cash, a hybrid high interest saving and spending account and Wealthsimple Crypto, the first registered dealer in North America approved to buy/sell and hold crypto for clients.

Hanna is also a board member at Open Banking Initiative Canada (OBIC) and represents the fintech voice in advocating for an Open Banking Framework in Canada.

Jennifer Reynolds is the President & CEO of Toronto Finance International (TFI), a public-private partnership whose mission is to promote and develop Toronto’s financial services sector, and to establish its prominence as a leading global financial centre.

Jennifer’s 20-year career in the financial services industry has included senior roles in investment banking, venture capital, and global risk management. Prior to joining TFI, Jennifer was the President & CEO of Women in Capital Markets (WCM), Canada’s largest industry association and advocacy group for women in the financial sector.

Jennifer is a Director on the Board of Citibank Canada, Director on the Board of the Canada Development Investment Corporation (“CDEV”), Director on the Board of Women’s College Hospital Foundation, and Director on the Board of Tourism Toronto. She is also a former Member of the Ontario Venture Capital Fund Advisory Committee, former Chair of the Board of Advisors of the Microskills Business Incubator, and former Director on the Board of Studio 180, an independent, Toronto-based theatre company. In 2015 and 2017, she was named a Women’s Executive Network (WXN) Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner.

Jennifer is a graduate of the Harvard Business School Women’s Leadership program, and she received her MBA from McGill University, as well as a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Economics and Political Science from McGill University. Jennifer also holds the Institute of Corporate Directors Designation, ICD.D.

John MacKinlay is a senior executive in the financial services  arena. He focuses on Fintech, Payments and Innovative Lending products’ space. John has 25 years of experience in the IT and Financial Services industries as an entrepreneur, executive, investor, senior advisor and board member.

John led the Financial Services platform for OMERS Growth Equity undertaking investments in technology enabled Financial Services firms and developing the thesis and strategy around growth. John previously led PwC Canada’s Financial Services Consulting Practice, corporate development for global banks and the FS Strategy Practice for IBM Canada.

Karen Budahazy is an experienced Senior Executive in the financial services industry. She has held leadership roles at Givex and InComm prior to joining the payments team at Peoples Group as Vice President, Digital Enablement and Issuing. She currently serves as the Chair for the Canadian Prepaid Providers Organization.

Matt MacNeil is the Director of Standards and Technology at the CIO Strategy council and has over 20 years’ experience in the standards, certification and management consulting.  The bulk of his career has been with the British Standards Institution (BSI) where his focus was Information Security, IT and Risk standards.

Mayank Mishra is the Global Head of Online Banking and Connectivity Services, at Citi’s Treasury and Trade Solutions (TTS) business. Mayank Mishra is responsible for leading Digitization, Client Experience and Productivity initiatives for online payments and other Treasury and Trade Solutions across the global footprint of 95+ countries through the use of Industry leading Digital platforms. In this role Mayank Mishra and his team works with the clients to drive Strategy, Execution and commercialization of CitiDirect BE, Citi’s award winning Online Banking platform. This platform CitiDirect BE provides a wide range of services across Payments, Receivables, Liquidity, Trade and Supplier Finance supporting all the Citi Treasury and Trade Solutions markets globally. Mayank Mishra is also responsible for Streamlining Corporate to Bank payment and information flows through integration with clients’ systems such as Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Treasury Management solutions. Mayank Mishra’s priorities include enhanced overall experience through creation of industry leading Online Banking and Connectivity capabilities. Mayank Mishra has over 25 years of industry experience, with over 12 years in leading Digital Services in Online Payments space. Mayank Mishra holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science and currently resides in New York City. He is an avid golfer and a tennis enthusiast.

Michelle is the CEO & founder of FINAVATOR an award winning FinTech and Payments Consultancy. She is also a strategic advisor, a Money 20/20 Rise Up alumni, a Women in Payments Global Council Member, the Membership Chair at CPPO (Canadian Prepaid Providers Organization), a Payment Advisor at NCFA (National Crowdfunding and FinTech Association of Canada), and a Board Member at OBIC (Open Banking Initiative of Canada).

Mitch Koczerginski is a Canadian lawyer with a practice focused on advising clients on all aspects of privacy law. Mitch advises and represents clients in connection with privacy and data breaches involving payment card information, personal information, health information and sensitive business information. Mitch routinely drafts and reviews privacy policies, conducts privacy impact assessments and responds to access to information requests. Mitch also handles submissions to provincial privacy regulators as well as the Privacy Commissioner of Canada on a variety of matters, including breach reporting and access to information appeals.

Paul Franklin is Executive General Manager, Consumer Data Right at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).  He joined the ACCC in January 2020 to lead the implementation of Australia’s Consumer Data Right, which for the banking sector is known as ‘Open Banking’.

Prior to joining the ACCC Paul spent more than twenty years working in payments and financial services, including innovation in domestic and international payments.  He worked on the design and development of Australia’s New Payments Platform, and is a former Non-Executive Director and Deputy Chair of the Australian Payments Network (AusPayNet).

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.

Saba Shariff is an acknowledged leader at Symcor Inc., a leading provider of business processing and data management services, supporting major banks, insurance, retail, and telecommunications companies in Canada. As Head of New Product Development and Innovation, Saba leads a passionate team of professionals in designing new and exciting ways to solve real customer problems and leverage data to both improve today’s services and discover new ones. With over 20 years of experience in IT and Product, Saba is a frequent public speaker in the private and public sector on topics such as Collaborations or Partnerships in Canada, and Breaking Stereotypes in Business Technology Management. In her spare time, Saba enjoys being active while managing the joys and tribulations of raising a teenage son.

Scott Farrell is a senior partner of King & Wood Mallesons with more than 20 years’ experience in financial markets, financial systems and financial technology law, advising startups, market participants, financial system operators, regulators and governments in Australia and the Indo-Pacific.  Scott has given many years of service to the public and private sector in advising on, and guiding, regulatory and legal change in the financial market and system landscape, including in connection with financial technology. Scott has chaired the Australian Government’s FinTech Advisory Group and is on the Australian Government’s advisory board for innovation, research and science matters.  Scott led the two inquiries for the Australian Government which designed, and developed, the framework for open banking and Australia’s Consumer Data Right and recently chaired the review into the regulatory architecture of Australia’s payments system.

With over 25 years of experience in digital strategy and transformation, Stéphane has made a name for himself as a key player in the evolution of Canada’s digital landscape.

Prior to working at National Bank of Canada, Stephane was active in the media industry where he led numerous digital transformation programs for the Sun Media Corporation, the National Film Board of Canada and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Stephane holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in Communications and Digital Media from the University of Quebec in Montréal (UQAM).

Vass Bednar is the Executive Director of McMaster University’s new Master of Public Policy Program and a Public Policy Forum Fellow. She also writes the newsletter “regs to riches,” about start-ups and public policy in Canada.

Yassir leads Equifax Canada’s digital innovation practice, enabling customers to bring consumer-centric solutions to market leveraging Equifax data and capabilities, and is credited with introducing Equifax’s mortgage prequalification service in Canada. Prior to joining Equifax, Yassir worked across 3 of Canada’s largest banks for 17 years, where most of his experience was in Retail Deposits where he led and worked on consumer-centric programs including streamlined account onboarding, simplified product suite and behaviour linked rewards. Yassir is a strong believer in the enhanced value and choice that deposit account insights enable for consumers, and he views Open Banking as a practical and secure framework through which this value and choice can be best realized.