Michael J. Hsu served as Acting Comptroller of the Currency from May 2021 to February 2025, supervising over 1,000 banks with $16 trillion in assets. Mr. Hsu delivered over 40 speeches, sharing bold ideas and engaging stakeholders on financial stability, artificial intelligence, fairness, financial health, mergers, bank-fintech partnerships, operational resilience, and trust in banking. He is currently a member of the Bretton Woods Committee.
Prior to leading the OCC, Mr. Hsu worked at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for over ten years. He has also worked at the Treasury Department, the International Monetary Fund, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Mr. Hsu holds a bachelor of arts from Brown University, a master of science in finance from George Washington University, and a juris doctor from New York University School of Law.
Raj Date is the Managing Partner of Fenway Summer LLC, a Washington DC-based venture investment firm focused on the financial
services sector. He is also the co-founder of FS Vector, an advisory firm that counsels financial services companies on regulatory strategy,
compliance, and public policy.
Raj was the first-ever Deputy Director of the U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). As the Bureau’s second-ranking official, he
helped steward the CFPB’s strategy, its operations, and its policy agenda. He also served on the senior staff committee of the Financial
Stability Oversight Council, and as a statutory deputy to the FDIC Board. Before being appointed Deputy Director, Raj acted as the interim
leader of the new agency, serving as the Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury. He led the CFPB for most of the first six months
after its launch.
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Susan joined Core VC in June 2022 following a 25+ year career in lending, banking and payments across fintech, financial services and retail. She has a proven record of scaling growth and improving profitability through product innovation and digital business transformation at Earnest, Simple, Amazon, Lending Club and H&R Block. She currently serves as a Director and member of the Audit Committee of Finwise Bancorp (FINW) and a Director of Arrived Homes. Ms. Ehrlich has also served on the Board of Directors for the Boeing Employees Credit Union (BECU), and Petal Card, a startup fintech which recently sold to Empower. She was the Board Chair of the Financial Health Network (formerly CFSI) and was a member of the Consumer Advisory Council of the Federal Reserve in Washington. Ms. Ehrlich holds a B. A. with honors from Brown University and an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School.
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With nearly two decades of experience at the intersection of the public and private sectors, Phil Goldfeder currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the American Fintech Council (AFC), a leading industry association representing responsible financial technology (fintech) companies creating critical access to safe and affordable financial services. AFC, comprised of the nation’s largest fintech companies, fosters innovative, transparent, and responsible products that promote competition, consumer protection, and financial health, inclusion, and equity. AFC is committed to robust industry standards, with a focus on consumer protection and regulatory compliance, in addition to advocating for and embracing appropriate government regulation.
Before joining AFC, Goldfeder served as Senior Vice President of Global Public Affairs at Cross River, a financial institution and technology infrastructure provider that offers embedded financial solutions. In this role, Goldfeder founded the Online Lending Policy Institute (OLPI) and has been a leader in shaping the new financial services landscape since early 2015. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the passage of the CARES Act in March 2020, Goldfeder helped lead the Cross River team to mobilize internally and offer a streamlined and automated system to provide more than $12 billion in PPP funding to the most vulnerable small businesses in every state, as well as additional short-term relief efforts to communities in the company’s footprint and beyond.
He previously served as an elected member of the New York State Assembly representing diverse neighborhoods of Queens, N.Y. After most of his district was devastated during Superstorm Sandy, Goldfeder lead recovery efforts with a specific focus on partnering with the banking and insurance industry to help rebuild his community and reform outdated policies. He was the author of transformative banking and insurance modernization legislation and was also a key legislative leader on a diverse array of issues. Prior to his election, he served as a senior advisor to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Phil’s career in public service and expertise in leadership, crisis management, as well as his ability to enact positive change and develop deep relationships with diverse leaders on both the local and national levels, has put him at the forefront of innovation across banking and technology industries. He is an active industry leader as he engages policy makers and regulators, provides thought-leadership, and is frequently invited to speak on panels, roundtables, and conferences globally on banking, technology, financial literacy, and the new financial services landscape.
As Upstart’s Chief Risk Officer, Annie has built a data-driven, technology-based compliance program with particular focus on understanding and managing regulatory risks associated with the use of non-traditional credit modeling techniques and underwriting variables. Throughout her career in mortgage and consumer lending, she has managed and scaled teams spanning multiple functions including Compliance, Operations, and Software Applications. She has designed and implemented automated solutions to regulatory change such as leading the implementation of the TILA-RESPA Integrated Disclosure Rule during her time at Opes Advisors. Annie has a Bachelor’s Degree from Santa Clara University.
Kareem Saleh is the founder and CEO of FairPlay, the world's first Fairness-as-a-Service company. Financial Institutions use FairPlay’s APIs to embed fairness considerations into their marketing, underwriting, pricing, and collections algorithms as well as to automate their fair lending compliance. Previously Kareem served as Executive Vice President at Zest.ai, where he led business development for the company’s machine learning-powered credit underwriting platform. Prior to Zest.ai, Kareem served as an executive at SoftCard, a mobile payments startup that was acquired by Google. Kareem also served in the Obama Administration, first as Chief of Staff to the State Department’s Special Envoy for Climate Change, where he helped manage the 50-person team that negotiated the Paris Climate Agreement, then as Senior Advisor to the CEO of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) where he helped direct the U.S. Government’s $30B portfolio of emerging market investments with responsibility for transaction teams in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East. Kareem is a Forbes contributor and a frequent speaker on the application of AI to financial services. He is a graduate of Georgetown University Law Center and an honors graduate of the University of Chicago.
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Nik spent 10 years leading strategy and partnerships at fintech companies before pivoting to investing. He began as the first hire at Funding Circle, one of the earliest fintechs, which went public in 2018. He joined the early team at Petal to bring their flagship card to market (over 400k users) and raise $264M+ in venture funding. He led partnerships for Google Pay in the US before moving full-time into investing for The Fintech Fund. Alongside his operational experience, he founded This Week in Fintech, a media business with over 200k+ weekly readers, 75k event attendees, and 10k+ online community members.
Ryan Christiansen is Executive Director of the Stena Center for Financial Technology at the University of Utah, overseeing research labs, a venture fund, a startup incubator, and experiential student programs that accelerate fintech innovation and workforce development.
Before academia, Ryan served as Senior Vice President of Data Access Partnerships at Mastercard following the company’s $985 million acquisition of Finicity. As a member of Finicity’s senior leadership team, he helped transform the startup into a market leading data access platform and continued to guide global open banking strategy at Mastercard—negotiating landmark agreements with major financial institutions and advancing tokenized, consumer permissioned data exchange.
Ryan is a founding architect of the Financial Data Exchange (FDX), where he co chairs the Certification Working Group and helps define the international standards that underpin open banking services adopted by more than 100 million consumers. He also co chairs the Utah Governor’s Fintech Council, advising state leaders on policy that fosters responsible innovation.
Prior to joining Finicity, Ryan spent 20+ years as senior executive at national banks, giving him a unique perspective that bridges traditional finance, fintech disruption, and public policy.
Peter leads strategy, growth and product design at Castellum.AI , working closely with clients to achieve risk-aligned coverage for all of their compliance needs. Prior to co-founding Castellum.AI, Peter served at the US Treasury Department in multiple roles, including Senior Policy Advisor advising the President, Treasury Secretary and other principals on sanctions, AML and terrorist financing related to Iran, Lebanon and Israel/Palestine.
Kalyani is the founder and CEO of Kobalt Labs, a regtech platform strengthening and streamlining regulatory compliance in financial services with AI. Prior to Kobalt, Kalyani was an AI researcher at Stanford, a member of Apple Pay's fraud team working on sanctions screening, and AI lead at Zenysis.
Peter Renton is the CEO of Renton & Co, LLC, a consulting firm specializing in fintech
media, events and thought leadership. He was formerly the co-founder and
chairman of Fintech Nexus, a fintech media and events company that produced 31
large-scale events worldwide. The events business was sold to Fintech Meetup in
2023 and the media business was sold to COMMAND, a PR firm, in 2024.
Peter has been writing about fintech since 2010, with over 2,500 articles published.
He is the author and creator of the Fintech One-on-One Podcast, the first and
longest-running fintech interview series, recently crossing 500 episodes. Over the
last decade, Peter has conducted over 750 interviews and panel discussions and
produced over 1,800 fintech newsletters.
Laurel Loomis Rimon is a former federal prosecutor with deep experience in the financial regulatory and enforcement sector. An unrelenting and pragmatic problem solver, Laurel offers clients practical advice when facing compliance or enforcement challenges involving anti-money laundering, consumer protection, federal or state oversight, fintech, and payments. Laurel is also a leading practitioner and thought leader in the emerging blockchain ecosystem. She serves as a Co-Chair of the firm’s Fintech and Crypto Assets Practice.
Consistently recognized as a Chambers-ranked Leading Individual each year since 2022, Laurel’s ""communication style is very direct and she is an excellent writer,"" clients say. And, ""[i]n addition to her deep substantive knowledge, she is able to draw on her extensive government experience to provide nuanced risk assessments and, when necessary, to be a highly credible and effective advocate for us with regulators at both the leadership and staff levels.""
A veteran investigator and trial lawyer, Laurel brings an efficiency in gathering facts and delivering strong responses to government enforcement agencies, correcting the record where necessary, and obtaining favorable resolutions. Through years of front-line experience, she is uniquely positioned to provide clients with a realistic and common-sense approach to regulatory risks and to help them design compliance plans aimed at avoiding and reducing the risk of an enforcement action. Laurel is highly effective at navigating difficult conversations with the government, witnesses, and client teams when necessary.
Megan "Meg" Nicholls is a partner at Hudson Cook's Fort Worth, Texas office. She advises businesses on compliance with the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the Gramm-Leach Bliley Act and various other consumer financial laws. Meg helps her clients improve their compliance management systems by conducting thorough regulatory assessments and strategizing about practical compliance approaches. She also helps clients respond to security incidents and update information security programs to meet current Safeguards Rule requirements. As a former chief compliance officer for a consumer reporting agency that specialized in helping companies fight fraud, she has a unique grasp of how fraud affects the consumer financial industry and values the opportunity to help her clients address trending fraud and identity theft issues.
Elizabeth O’Connor External BIO
Senior Vice President, Operations | Self Financial Services
A transformative operations executive with over 20 years of leadership experience across the financial services industry, Elizabeth O’Connor is known for driving scalable growth, operational efficiency, and exceptional customer outcomes. As SVP of Operations at Self Financial Services, she leads end-to-end operational functions, including high risk account servicing, customer service, fraud, disputes, operational readiness, and back office operations.
Since joining Self in 2021, Elizabeth has led a broad operational transformation: reducing average handle time by 50%, slashing abandonment rates by 60%, and cutting customer wait times by 20 minutes. Under her leadership, CSAT and NPS have more than doubled, and the team has recovered millions in potential fraud losses. Her influence extends beyond performance metrics: she has scaled operations through automation and efficiency strategies, strengthened KPI accountability, vendor engagement, and built a high-performing, data-driven culture.
Prior to Self, Elizabeth served as Head of Operations Strategic Planning & Analytics at Mercury Financial, where she implemented cost-saving initiatives that saved over $1 million annually. Elizabeth also drove a 45% year-over-year reduction in consumer complaints, while overseeing digital first strategies that helped to launch the company’s first-ever ""Disputes Online"" platform.
Her earlier tenure at Barclaycard US spanned 14 years across multiple global leadership roles. As VP of Fraud Operations, she more than doubled recovery rates, contributing $35 million back to the business. As Product Owner for Dispute Case Management, she successfully implemented global tools that significantly reduced processing time, increased automation, and improved customer outcomes.
Elizabeth brings deep expertise in global operations, risk management, and Six Sigma methodologies. She is passionate about building high-impact teams, optimizing resource models, and executing operational strategies that align cost discipline with customer experience.
Carey Ransom is the Managing Director of BankTech Ventures, a strategic investment fund and market intelligence firm focused on transformative solutions to make community banks better. They currently work with over 100 banks in nearly every US state. He's a serial tech entrepreneur and investor who also founded Operate to invest in data-centric software companies. Prior roles include COO at Aspiration, CEO of RealPractice, and CMO at Happy Money. His career also spans product, marketing, and business development leadership roles. Carey is active in SoCal's startup scene and as an angel investor. He also hosts the Operate Podcast to highlight founders, funders and industry luminaries. His belief in purpose, culture, and teamwork stems from growing up in his family’s 100 year-old retail business.
Ryan Wiggins is VP of Product at Mercury, where he leads the Growth, Analytics, and Core Products teams. He is responsible for building the journey for ambitious companies / people discovering Mercury into using it to scale every day. His work has been central to Mercury’s growth and to developing products and features that customers love. Before joining Mercury, Ryan held product leadership roles at WhatsApp and Facebook, where he built and scaled high-performance teams. He is also an active angel investor, providing financial backing and strategic guidance to early-stage startups.
Kevin is the co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer at Spring Labs. He brings +15 years of leadership experience and success in enterprise sales and business development in the fintech industry. He most recently served as the EVP, Chief Growth Officer at Amount where he helped incubate the vision for the business, drove revenue from zero to +$40MM ARR, and was integral in helping raise $300M in equity capital. Prior to that Kevin was the SVP, Sales and Business Development at Avant, a leading fintech lending platform based in Chicago.
