12. José “Pepe” Olalla,  Head of Business Development, BBVA Compass

José “Pepe” Olalla heads the business development department at BBVA Compass, the U.S. subsidiary of major Spanish bank BBVA. His title might be head of business development, but BBVA Compass’s Olalla also serves -unofficially- as an innovation leader. He oversees the banks mobile app and also is responsible for marketing and sales across digital channels at the bank. Part of his job is acting as the liaison between the BBVA’s digital business in California and the parent company of BBVA in Spain. Olalla has spent over 15 years at BBVA, prior to being the head of business development, he served as the bank’s chief information officer of digital banking as well as the global head of omnichannel distribution and customer journey.

13. Dean Athanasia, President of Consumer & Small Business, Bank of America

Dean Athanasia has a lofty title – president of preferred and small business and co-head of consumer at Bank of America. He is also a member of the company’s executive management team. Besides innovation for SMBs and consumers, Athanasia directs BofA’s network of approximately 4,400 financial centers, 16,000 ATMs, and its award-winning digital banking platform with approximately 36 million active users, including 25 million mobile users. He is also responsible for Merrill Edge’s innovation strategy. Prior to this, Athanasia was the head of Global Wealth and Investment Management (GWIM) Banking and Merrill Edge for Bank of America. He currently serves as chairman of the board of Cradles to Crayons, a nonprofit organization providing essential items for children living in homeless or low-income situations.

14. Shivani Siroya, CEO, Tala

Since founding Tala in 2012 Shivani Siroya has been opening up a world of financial services and credit to underserved markets through a  smartphone app. The app works by utilizing more than 10,000 data points on consumers phone, including geolocation data and transactions. Loans for as little as $10 can be secured. Most of the people who use Tala are underbanked small business owners.  Before founding Tala, Siroya served as a youth global leader for World Economic Forum. Her years of experience as a financial analyst for Citigroup, United Nations Population Fund, and even served as a financial consultant on M&A strategy for insuretech company Health Net have informed her work to reach and serve the underbanked. This year Tala has raised $50 million in Series C funding.

15. Nathan Lustig, Co-founder, and Managing Director, Magma Partners

If you’re a fintech, Latin America is a great market for you: bubbling possibility, a scarcity of digital payments and alternative lending, and a sizable population that has smartphones. Precisely to take advantage of this condition is Nathan Lustig, a managing partner at fintech VC firm Magma Partners. With government-backed initiatives and a finite business of copper export, Lustig saw huge potential in the Chilean fintech market. Only 30% of Chileans have credit cards, while only 50% have bank accounts, “and that’s the more advanced population,” he had told Bank Innovation. Additionally, the consumer experience is “pretty horrible for about 80% of this population,” he said. “You see a huge amount of potential to promote innovations to have better financial inclusion in Chile,” Lustig told Bank Innovation. “Areas like P2P lending and payment infrastructure also have a lot of potential,” he said, (a single payment platform like Stripe is not available throughout the region). For Magma Partners, a privately-owned VC focused on fintech, the decision to set up shop in Chile was a no-brainer for Lustig, who before Magma ran a tech company in the country That company was backed by Chilean government initiative Startup Chile.

16. Ollie Purdue, CEO, Loot

Challenger banks are big in Europe, with a mobile-first approach these fintechs are big on innovation. One, particularly innovative neobank is Loot. Based in the U.K, Loot is a current accounts app focused on students. At the helm of the bank is its 24-year-old CEO Ollie Purdue. Purdue started Loot when he was still in college studying law at the University of the West of England in Bristol, U.K. He launched Loot in 2014 when he raised £15K ($21K) in seed funding. Loot’s first product was launched in 2015, but that didn’t pan out as expected. By end of 2017, Purdue went on to raise £2.2 million ($2.9 million) in Series A funding round, which was led by Portag3 Ventures and Austrian VC Speedinvest. By then, Loot had also partnered with Mastercard to issue its debit cards. Today, Loot employees, 45 people. It has over 100,000 signups and is experiencing a 12% YOY growth rate.

17. Secil Tabli Watson, Executive Vice President and Head of Digital Solutions for Business, Wells Fargo

Secil Watson has been with Wells Fargo for 16 years and in that time she has played a dynamic role and has been an integral part of advancing the country’s 3rd largest bank in its digital strategy. Watson has amassed numerous awards and accolades in her tenure and was named “Digital Banker of the Year” by American Banker in 2016. Secil, and her team work on creating new digital experiences and innovative solutions for the Wells customer. The basis of these solutions, according to Secil, is that it should provide convenient and secure banking access to satisfy customer needs, deepen relationships, and drive revenue growth. Under her leadership, her team launched the bank’s first biometric authentication pilot for mobile, a mobile imaging services and a new analytics platform and toolset, among other things. Besides this role, she also finds time for extracurricular activities such as co-chairing the board for the Oakland Zoo, one of the most recognized zoos in the U.S. for animal care and conservation.

18. Jon Stein, Founder and CEO, Betterment

Jon Stein founded robo-advisory firm Betterment eight years ago. Of the New York. – based Betterment, Stein told Bank Innovation, was the first robo-advisory firm at the time. Prior to Betterment, Stein was a consultant at First Manhattan Consulting Group where he focused on product development, risk management, and investment portfolio policy. Stein is a CFO charter holder. A graduate from Harvard University and Columbia Business School, Stein came up with the idea of automated investing on a digital platform as a freshman in college. He demoed the company at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 and won. Since then, the company has grown tremendously. It currently has 340K customers and $13.5 billion dollars under management. Stein believes “Auto-investing is for everyone,” and he told Bank Innovation that he hopes to grow the company, not just in new markets, but also in its product and service offerings.

19. Dominic Venturo, Chief Innovation Officer, U.S. Bank

As the Chief Innovation Officer at U.S. Bank, Dominic Venturo studies emerging technologies and business models that he and his team can use to fit the bank’s customer needs. At U.S. Bank Venturo works with his team on developing new products, setting the bank’s strategy for emerging innovations in payments and banking. More recently, at Deutsche Bank Global Financial Services Conference earlier this month, Venturo said the bank is focused on three major areas: consumer payments, omnichannel experiences, and B2B payments. Under payments, Venturo includes e-commerce, merchant acquisition, and P2P payments. By omnichannel, Venturo means the entirety of the customer journey and experience, from customer acquisition to their experience on the mobile app. Venturo approaches the bank’s innovation plan by looking for “interesting problems to solve, as opposed to generating the next new idea that may or may not ultimately be profitable,” he said. He’s been at US Bank for 20 years, serving first as senior vice president and working on the cards business. Prior to that, he was at Bank of America, where he worked on credit products for the bank’s small business customers.

20. Jamie Dimon, CEO, JP Morgan Chase

For more than a decade, Jamie Dimon has been at the helm of JP Morgan Chase. Dimon began his finance career in 1982 at credit card company American Express. Even with the advent of challenger banks and the plethora of current account fintechs, Chase has maintained a foothold throughout the world with Dimon at the bank’s center. Chase still has the most mobile users among the largest banks, and its credit card rewards program makes it a popular choice for many people. Dimon started at Chase in 2004 and in just two years the Harvard alum was appointed CEO and Chairman of the Board, a role he has served in since 2006. That same year Dimon had the foresight to sell  $12 billion in subprime mortgages, a move that buoyed the bank through the 2008 financial crisis. Running the country’s largest bank, with $2.3 trillion in assets certainly can’t be an easy task. Outspoken and bold, Dimon runs has seen the bank through the financial crisis to cryptocurrency boom, and has lead the bank to an adaptive and innovative strategy.

21. Ken Dodelin, VP Conversational Products, Capital One

Virtual assistants are having a moment. Running Capital One’s virtual assistant Eno is Ken Dodelin. At Capital One, Dodelin leads the bank’s artificial intelligence-powered virtual assistant, chatbot products, digital messaging products (email, SMS and push notifications), and content management. With his team, he is responsible for designing and building innovative products for the department.  In 2016, he and his team launched the first Amazon Alexa skill to provide customers with financial account access for Capital One. In 2017, he launched the first natural language SMS chatbot from a U.S. bank. This year, Dodelin is paying close attention to developments in AI and its implications to improve the existing features of Eno and other products at Capital One. Although Dodelin could not reveal specific features and services, he told Bank Innovation that there are some in the pipeline scheduled to be unveiled later this year. Prior to Capital One, he taught Mobile Strategies, Products and Business Models” at Georgetown University’s MBA program, McDonough School of Business.”

22. Zach Townsend, Co-founder and General Partner, Deciens Capital

Zach Townsend has occupied just about every important role in fintech in a short period — startup founder, banker, VC, with, somehow, other roles in between such as, you know, chief data officer for the state of California. Townsend now operates Deciens Capital, along with longtime associate Daniel Kimerling. The company is currently raising funds to make investments in fintech beyond its current two. Townsend was a visionary in the use of financial APIs, and his company Standard Treasury was quickly snapped up by Silicon Valley Bank in 2015. APIs are becoming more accepted at banks with mature and growing portfolios. Standard Treasury was several years in advance of this trend. Currently, Townsend is also finding time to do research at Stanford.

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