Speakers

Allan Rayson has over 24 years of experience in banking and fintech, and is the founder and CEO of Finov8r Consulting, a boutique management consulting firm that provides solutions to banks, fintech and venture capital firms.

Allan has received multiple awards and recognition for his work, including the 2022 American Banker Digital Banker of the Year, the 2023 Lightico Banking Innovators Award, and the 2022 Gonzo Banker Awards. He is also a frequent speaker and writer on fintech topics, appearing in major industry publications and events such as The Financial Brand, American Banker, Financial Times, BAI, S&P Global, and Bank Director.

April Dunford spent the first 25 years of her career as a startup executive, running marketing, product, and sales teams. She led teams at seven successful B2B technology startups. Most of those startups were acquired (DataMirror to IBM, Janna Systems to Siebel Systems, then SAP, Watcom to Sybase via Powersoft, to name a few), and she ran big teams at IBM, Siebel, Sybase, and others. The total of those acquisitions is more than two billion dollars. Across that journey, April positioned, re-positioned, and launched 16 products, and created dozens of sales pitches.

April has a deep curiosity about what makes the difference between a winning product and a loser. Developing a systematic way of positioning technology products and companies has become her life's work. As a consultant, she has had the privilege of working with more than 200 companies, allowing her to go even deeper and broaden her positioning expertise. The bulk of her work is with growth-stage startups and larger technology companies. Companies where the stakes are high - and weak positioning can mean the difference between success or failure.

April's first book, Obviously Awesome, captures her ideas about positioning and a methodology for doing it that any startup can follow. It's become a best-seller and popular among entrepreneurs, product, and marketing folk. Her second book, Sales Pitch, was designed to teach a step-by-step way of building a sales pitch that reflects that positioning, and helps make a clear compelling case for why prospects should pick you over the competition.

April studied Engineering at the University of Waterloo. She lives in Toronto, Canada. She has kids, a small dog, and a cabin in the woods. 

Chris Aliotta is the cofounder of Quantalytix. Chris serves as the CEO and focuses primarily on product development and building solutions for our customers. Chris has worked for super large regional banks, including M&T Bank and Regions Financial, where he was responsible for loan valuation, interest rate risk, and balance sheet management for over $135B+ in Assets and Liabilities. He brings over 25+ years of programming experience combined with over 16+ years of banking and risk management experience. 

Dan Holt has a passion for making the world a better place through amazing teams and awesome products. He previously worked for or launched and scaled start-ups to publicly-traded companies, including bank technology company HEIT (now CSI). Dan cultivated his leadership experience while serving in the U.S. Air Force and working for several software application companies- all of which lend well to his capabilities to deliver the country’s #1 bill pay solution.

John Augustine has spent over 30 years as an investment manager, investment strategist and economic strategist for various financial institutions. He joined Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington Bank in May 2014 as Chief Investment Officer for the Huntington Private Bank®. In this role, he oversees more than $24 billion in assets under management.

Prior to joining Huntington, John was with Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati for 16 years in many roles, including senior portfolio manager, mutual fund manager, equity team leader, investment strategist and economic strategist. He also has worked at Star Banc in Ohio, Heritage Trust and Asset Management in Colorado, and IDS Financial Services in Colorado.

John is a former president and board member for the Dayton Society of Financial Analysts and was a long-time adjunct professor in the graduate school at the University of Dayton. He was also a part of the Global Asset Management Education forum offered through Quinnipiac University every spring in New York City to 1400 college students from throughout the U.S. and overseas.

John holds the professional designation of Chartered Financial Analyst and a bachelor’s degree from the Ohio State University. He also is a graduate of the Midwest Bankers Association Trust School. He frequently shares his insights with the national media, including the Wall Street Journal, CNN, Reuters, Fox News, CNBC and Bloomberg, among others.

Mike Alles is passionate about leadership and loves being a leader, coaching others, and studying the principles of effective leadership.

Mike believes that leaders are far more influential than they often realize, and that investing in their leadership skills can yield tremendous benefits—not just for themselves, but also for the people they lead and their organizations.

In sixth grade, a teacher once told him that he was a leader, emphasizing that he could either uplift or undermine those around him. His goal is to uplift others and help them become leaders who do the same.

Throughout his career, he has held leadership roles in various settings, including non-profits, small companies, and global Fortune 500 organizations. Mike has successfully navigated disruptive change, consistently exceeded targets, inspired multiple generations in the workplace, fostered healthy workplace cultures, created happy employees, and coached others to become effective leaders.

He views leadership as a privilege—challenging yet immensely rewarding. Like any talent, it requires practice and dedication to improve.

Priya Parker is helping us take a deeper look at how anyone can create collective meaning in modern life, one gathering at a time. She is a facilitator, strategic advisor, acclaimed author of The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why it Matters, the executive producer and host  of the New York Times podcast, Together Apart, and the host of The Art of Gathering Digital Course. Parker has spent 20 years helping  leaders and communities have complicated conversations about community and identity and vision at moments of transition. Trained in the field of conflict resolution, Parker has worked on race relations on American college campuses and on peace processes in the Arab world, southern Africa, and India.

Parker is a founding member of the Sustained Dialogue Campus Network. She studied organizational design at M.I.T., public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, and political and social thought at the University of Virginia.

Parker’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters (Riverhead, 2018) has been named a Best Business Book of the year by Amazon, Esquire Magazine, NPR, the Financial Times, 1-800-CEO-READS and Bloomberg. She has spoken on the TED Main Stage, and her TEDx talk on purpose has been viewed over 3 million times. Parker’s  work has been featured in numerous outlets including the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, NPR, TED.com, Forbes.com, Real Simple Magazine, Oprah.com, Bloomberg, Glamour, the Today Show and Morning Joe. She lives in Brooklyn, NY with her husband, Anand Giridharadas, and their two children.

Rachel Taylor, an expert in AI-enabled fintech, leads Customer Success at SAVVI AI. She holds an MS in Cybersecurity and previously worked with XPRIZE and Synchrony. 

Tara Brown is Senior Director of Corporate Responsibility at Jack Henry. She leads the strategy and execution of the organization's corporate sustainability efforts, including corporate ethics, the transition to a low carbon future, philanthropy and sustainability related reporting. Prior to focusing on advancing Jack Henry's sustainability efforts, Tara launched Jack Henry's diversity, equity, and inclusion strategy, created an internal mobility program, led the learning and development team, revamped the performance management program, and developed Jack Henry's talent analytics approach.