Dr Kay Swinburne
Baroness
House of Lords
Prior to her current legislative, advisory and FS consulting roles, Kay has had a successful career in financial services pre and post being elected to the European Parliament (2009-2019), As a leading EU legislator serving as Vice Chair of the Economics and Monetary Affairs Committee, she shaped EU and global financial services legislation.
On leaving elected office, Kay became Vice Chair of KPMG UK’s Financial Services practice and Chair of the EMA Risk & Regulatory Insight Centre. She is an active voice in the financial markets (former Chair IRSG) and has led special projects on financial regulation – including Fintech (Kalifa Review), UK competitiveness (CMIT) and capital market infrastructure (FCA advisory committee) as well as ESG issues.
Baroness Swinburne entered the House of Lords as a Peer and Government Whip (Baroness in Waiting) in June 2023 and served as a Government Minister in DLUHC. She continues to participate in legislation in the Lords with a particular interest in FS, fintech, AI and all things science.
Mark Aruliah
Head of EMEA Policy and Regulatory Affairs
Elliptic
Mark is Head of EMEA Policy & Regulatory Affairs at Elliptic. Before this, he worked at the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA), as a Technical Specialist in the Capital Markets Policy Dept.
He has primarily worked in regulatory policy areas, both retail and capital markets but also worked in the FCA’s Financial Crime Advisory Team, where he was responsible for delivering the cryptoasset amendments to the UK’s anti-money laundering regulations (MLRs). He worked with FCA Authorisation and Supervision to act as policy support and to provide internal training. Before leaving the FCA, he was briefly engaged with HM Treasury and the Bank of England on the financial markets infrastructure (FMI) cryptoassets sandbox.
He has also been seconded to the FCO and HM Treasury, spending time in Brussels as financial attaché in the UK’s Representation to the EU, negotiating a variety of dossiers, including payment services,e-money and UCITs legislation, and at HM Treasury negotiating AIFMD and developing EU-exit financial services policy & dispute resolution within the development of the EU Trade and Cooperation Agreement.
Deepa Raja Carbon
Managing Director & Vice-Chair
Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA)
Deepa Raja Carbon is the Managing Director and Vice Chairperson of the Dubai Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority (VARA), her mandate covers creation, enablement and scale-up of the first-of-its-kind global Virtual Asset ecosystem, as an ‘interoperable’ standard for a future ‘autonomous and decentralised’ economy, assuring strong investor and market risk guard-rails for cross-border transposability.
In tandem, Deepa holds the position of EVP Corporate Office at the Dubai World Trade Centre (DWTC), managing Corporate Strategy and Real Estate Commercial.
Ms. Raja Carbon’s functional responsibilities across the portfolio span [i] economic policy and sector-specific strategy; [ii] investment and commercial value enablement; [iii] regulatory policy and legal governance - economic and market risk assurance; [iv] corporate business/ sector-specific performance management; and [v] brand and reputation management - driving mandated GDP targets.
Stefano Dallavalle
Head of Product, Digital Assets
R3
Marjan Delatinne
SVP Business Development
Digital Asset
Marjan is a seasoned executive with over two decades of experience in the financial industry and market infrastructures worldwide. She is deeply committed to driving business growth, profitability, and innovation, particularly through strategic investments in human capital and technology. Marjan has a rich international background in finance and emerging technologies.
Her leadership philosophy revolves around empowering diverse teams, prioritizing client needs, and embracing change as a catalyst for growth. Over the past six years, she has focused extensively on decentralized space. With her experience in regulated environments like Euroclear and SWIFT, she is aiming to drive blockchain and decentralized agendas on a global scale. Currently, at Digital Asset, Marjan is focused on developing and scaling the Canton Network to the next level, in collaboration with market participants across the capital market and payments value chains.
Adam Dossa
CTO
Polymesh
Adam Dossa graduated from Oxford University in 2001 and began his career building out trading, risk, and regulatory infrastructure for Morgan Stanley. In 2012, Adam took a sabbatical to study for a Masters in Machine Learning at Columbia, focused on statistical learning models and computational learning theory.
Whilst building out machine learning technology for a London based Venture Capital firm, Adam became fascinated with innovative and cutting edge public blockchains and where the technology meets traditional financial infrastructure and products.
Adam joined Polymath in 2018 to help bring blockchain based financial technology to the market and solve some of the fundamental issues in today’s financial infrastructure. Adam Dossa transitioned from CTO at Polymath to the Polymesh Association in 2022, where he is Head of Blockchain and helps drive forward the Association’s technical agenda and mission.
Adam was the lead author of ERC-1400, a collaborative standard for tokenised assets on Ethereum, as well as an active participant in the broader blockchain development ecosystem.
James Harris
Chief Commercial Officer
Zodia Custody
James Harris, Zodia Custody's Chief Commercial Officer, brings over 20 years of financial markets expertise, with the last seven specifically focused on the digital asset sector. His depth of knowledge and strategic vision have been pivotal in driving growth and innovation in this rapidly evolving industry. James’s journey in digital assets began with co-founding Altairian Capital, a digital asset manager and custodian, leading it to a successful acquisition by Diginex. Prior to his ventures in the digital asset space, he held significant roles in esteemed financial institutions such as Citi and Standard Chartered Bank, gaining a wealth of experience that he now leverages at Zodia Custody. In his current role, James is responsible for the client-facing segments of the business, including Product, Marketing, Operations, and Partnerships.
Thomas Hawkins
Senior Manager
Accenture
Peter Kerstens
Advisor
European Commission
Peter Kerstens currently advises on Technological Innovation, Digital Transformation and Cybersecurity policy and law at the European Commission’s financial services department. He leads work on the European Commission’s Fintech Action Plan and Digital Finance Strategy and co-chairs the European Commission’s Fintech Taskforce.
Kerstens has extensive experience and expertise in EU policy and regulation in a wide variety of fields, including single market, financial services, digitalisation, security, foreign policy sanctions, consumer protection as well as health and food safety. Earlier in his career, Peter was Finance Counsellor at the EU Embassy in Washington DC. He has also been a member of the private offices of the commissioner for the internal market and services and the commissioner for health and consumer protection. Kerstens is a consummate public speaker on EU policy in his fields of expertise and has been guest lecturer at the European University Institute in Florence, the European Law Academy in Trier and Georgetown Law. He is also Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt Law School.
Jennifer Lassiter
Executive Director
The Digital Dollar Project
Jennifer is an entrepreneur, business leader, and advisor to policymakers, leaders, and financial organizations across the world. She is recognized for her unique ability to bring together diverse stakeholders to identify and achieve shared outcomes addressing complex regulatory and technology challenges. In addition to her current role as Executive Director of The Digital Dollar Project (DDP), Jennifer serves on the World Economic Forum’s Digital Currency Governance Consortium and the Progressive Policy Institute’s Mosaic Economic Project.
As Executive Director of DDP, Jennifer convenes private sector thought leaders to explore the future of money and advance the exploration of a U.S. central bank digital currency through a deliberative process including pilots, stakeholder meetings, roundtables, and discussion forums.
Prior to joining DDP, Jennifer served as a founding member of the Innovation Lab at the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and was a senior leader in the Innovation and Technology Offices at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Paul Mortby
Head of EMEA Policy
Block
Paul Mortby is the Head of Policy in Europe, the Middle East and Africa for Block, Inc (NYSE: SQ), leading Block’s policy and Government Relations efforts in the region for all of Block’s business units (Square, Cash App, Spiral, TIDAL and TBD). Paul is also the Chair of the European Fintech Association’s Digital Asset Working Group.
Paul has a breadth and depth of experience in fintech regulation including in payments and e-money, digital assets, and digital identity.
Before joining Block, Paul worked in the FInancial Conduct Authority’s Banking and Payments Policy and Innovation teams where he engaged with innovative payments and digital asset based solutions and supervised a range of FCA Sandbox tests.
Ali Moussavi
Head of the Payment Strategy Unit
Bank of England
Ali Moussavi is Head of the Bank of England’s Payments Strategy Unit. The Unit reports to the Bank’s Governors and is tasked with coordination of cross-cutting and strategic issues relating to the Bank's work on innovation in money, payments and settlement
Prior to that, Ali worked in the Governor’s Office in the Bank, covering a range of policy and strategy issues, including financial stability, the Bank’s international work, and the regulation and supervision of the banking system.
Katey Neate
Chief Operating Officer
BNY
Katey Neate is the Chief Operating Officer for the Digital Asset Business, leading a global team in the establishment and efficient operation of this pioneering group. Katey’s role encompasses business management, regulatory engagement, communications, strategy and R&D and risk management.
Prior to her current role, Katey was the Chief Risk Officer for Securities Services & Digital at BNY Mellon. In this capacity, Katey was responsible for second line oversight of all risk management across this diverse set of businesses. Katey was directly responsible for the establishment of the risk management practice and team for digital asset products at the firm, drawing on her extensive and diverse experience in the financial services industry.
Katey joined BNY Mellon in 2003 and has served in a variety of positions, including varying senior management roles within the Operations and Risk organizations. Katey served as the Chief Risk Officer of Asset Servicing & Digital and the Risk Officer of BNY Mellon UK Legal Entities.
As a leader in Risk Management and Digital Assets, Katey is engaged in driving diversity, equity, and inclusion, particularly in the Digital Assets space. She is actively involved in advising leadership of digital asset startups on business and risk management strategy, which includes representing BNY Mellon on the board of Coin Metrics.
Jannah Patchay
Founder and Director
Markets Evolution
Jannah Patchay, director and founder of Markets Evolution, is a consultant with over 15 years’ experience in the Financial Services sector, providing advisory, consulting and project delivery services to a range of market participants including exchanges, tier-1 investment banks and start-up businesses. Her primary interest lies in the intersection of law and business, particularly in financial markets, and in assisting clients in implementing their strategies and conducting business in a highly regulated environment, and in adapting to regulatory change.
Jannah has worked on a range of engagements for clients, including assisting in the launch of new businesses, products and services, interpreting and implementing new regulations, and advising on business, operational and technology strategy. She also has a strong understanding of technology, and the associated considerations, constraints, challenges and limitations as they relate to delivery of a project or programme.
Jannah’s subject matter expertise lies in financial market structures and applicable regulations, including Dodd-Frank, the Volcker Rule, EMiR, MAR and MiFID II / MiFIR. She has provided consultancy and advisory services on the set-up of a number of new trading venues, from product and trading model development, and identification of appropriate market participants, through to applications for regulatory authorisation, operational readiness and launch.
Jon Relleen
Director of Infrastructure & Exchanges, Supervision, Policy & Competition - Markets
Financial Conduct Authority (FCA)
As Director of Infrastructure and Exchanges at the Financial Conduct Authority Jon cover's significant aspects of the UK’s financial markets. This includes supervision, policy and competition issues with respect to trading venues and the functioning of wholesale capital markets. To support the supervision and policy work, Jon conducts market analysis and research, including via use of regulatory data. In addition, Jon is part of the FCA’s senior leadership team; helping to set strategy, deliver outcomes and convey the work they are doing externally.
Before joining the FCA in December 2022, Jon spent 24 years at the Bank of England. His career at the Bank spanned monetary policy, financial stability and market operations. Jon worked across a wide range of different topics, but a common thread was economic and regulatory policy work related to financial markets. Jon's expertise straddles macroeconomics and finance as well as practical knowledge of capital markets, investment institutions and central bank operations.
Sandra Ro
Chief Executive Officer
GBBC
Sandra is a proponent for ‘human-centric tech’. From investment banking and currency markets to blockchain technology, she is an early angel investor and advocate of cryptocurrencies and digital assets. She currently serves as the CEO of Global Blockchain Business Council (GBBC), the world’s largest leading Swiss-based non-for-profit association with more than 500 institutional members, 231 ambassadors, across 109 jurisdictions and disciplines.
In 2023, she was appointed onto the CFTC Commissioner Caroline Pham’s Global Markets Advisory Committee (GMAC), Digital Asset Market Subcommittee (DAMS) and cochairs the Taxonomy and Tokenization Infrastructure workstreams within the subcommittee. She was previously appointed as the Senate representative of the New York State Digital Currency Task Force, and serves on the AIFC Fintech Council (Kazakhstan), World Economic Forum’s Digital Currencies Governance Consortium, International Securities Services Association’s DLT & ISO Standards, GI Trust FATF Travel Rule Standards Task Force (South Korea), GBBC’s Global Standards Mapping Initiative, Blockchain for Climate (BxC) Board, Salesforce’s AI Advisory Board, Filecoin Foundation Advisory Board, United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) Innovation Accelerator Advisory Council, and several government Convergence AI working groups and councils as well as Board director of several fintech start-ups.
Whilst at CME Group, she headed FX & Metals Research & Product Development and founded a new business unit, Digitization. Sandra and her team created the CME CF Bitcoin pricing index and reference rate, CME Bitcoin Futures, and post trade, clearing and settlement solutions.
Previously, she was a London-based derivatives banker at Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank in the foreign exchange and interest rate markets.
Nikhil Sharma
Executive Director, Head of Growth
JP Morgan
Nikhil heads growth for Onyx Digital Assets, J.P. Morgan's digital assets platform enabling clients to develop innovative solutions using tokenized traditional assets. In his immediate prior stint as a Senior Product Manager, Nikhil led development of two such solutions on ODA taking them from idea to market. Nikhil joined J.P. Morgan in 2019 as part of the pioneering blockchain product and strategy team that later launched Onyx by J.P.Morgan, the firm's dedicated blockchain business unit. Prior to J.P. Morgan, Nikhil was with SinoPac Securities Asia Ltd. structuring lifecycle solutions for alternative investment funds (i.e. from fund structuring to fundraising to operations). Nikhil brings over a decade of expertise in traditional finance solutions together over half a decade of applying blockchain innovations to re-envision traditional models. An Electronics and Telecommunications engineer by training, he also holds an MBA degree from the University of Hong Kong and London Business School.
Lex Sokolin
Managing Partner & Co-Founder
Generative Ventures
Lex is a builder and investor working on the next generation of socio-economics and financial services. He is the Managing Partner and co-Founder of Generative Ventures, an engaged venture capital fund investing in the Machine Economy powered by Fintech, accelerated by AI, and settled on Web3.
Previously, Lex held the roles of Chief Economist, Chief Marketing Officer, and Global Fintech Co-Head at Consensys, a leading Web3 blockchain software company, where he focused on protocol cryptoeconomics, digital assets, public and private blockchains, decentralized finance, and DAOs. Prior, he was the Global Director of Fintech Strategy at Autonomous Research, an equity research firm serving institutional investors, where he covered artificial intelligence, blockchain, neobanks, digital lenders, roboadvisors, payments, insurtech, and mixed reality. Before Autonomous, Lex was Chief Operating Officer at AdvisorEngine, a digital wealthtech platform, and CEO of NestEgg Wealth, a roboadvisor that partnered with financial advisors. Lex started his career in investment management and banking at Barclays, Lehman Brothers, and Deutsche Bank.
Lex has contributed thought leadership to the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, Bloomberg, FT, Reuters, Coindesk, American Banker, ThinkAdvisor, Investment News, among others. His industry newsletter, the Fintech Blueprint, reaches over 180,000 subscribers.
Breige Tinnelly
Head of Market Development
Archax
Breige has over 20 years in the debt capital markets and financial services industry with global coverage in Legal, Financial Technology, Blockchain and Regulatory Technology sectors. Breige has worked across global corporates and ambitious start-ups as founder and director. She was Chief Strategy Officer for Tutum Capital and has held senior roles as Head of Europe for Securitize, Senior Vice President EMEA, Head of Business Development, Sales, Marketing & Strategy for US Bank and BNY Mellon. Breige brings expertise in fundraising, building high performance teams, implementing product and scaling businesses into new markets. Breige is also a Solicitor of England and Wales, with an LL.M. in International and Commercial Law starting her early career with Cleary Gottlieb Steen and Hamilton.
George Tucker
EVP Communications & Government Relations and General Manager U.K.,
Crypto.com
Marianne Webber
Head Digital Asset Market and Regulatory Strategy
Standard Chartered Bank
Kikun Alo
Senior Associate
Clifford Chance
Kikun specialises in advising financial institutions and other market participants on a wide range of matters, including those related to securities and markets regulation, banking services, fintech and payment services, asset and private wealth management and mergers and acquisitions in the financial sector and ESG related legislative measures. Kikun was included in the Black Women in Asset Management (BWAM) inaugural global 40 under 40 list in 2022.
Diego Ballon Ossio
Partner
Clifford Chance
Diego Ballon Ossio is one of the partners spearheading our Fintech offering out of London. His broad regulatory practice spans across the entire spectrum of non-contentious financial services regulation covering trading, custody and settlement of traditional investments and digital assets as well as strategic advice to regulatory authorities on the design and development of new regulatory frameworks.
Laia Bertran Manye
Senior Associate
Clifford Chance
Laia is a Senior Associate in Clifford Chance’s Tech//Digital practice, specialising in legal advice on data protection and the use of new technologies such as AI, and the cross-over with developing digital legislation. She has experience advising large multinationals from different industry sectors, such as technology and financial services, on a variety of data protection issues including international transfers of personal data, data subject requests, marketing and AdTech, children's personal data rights, as well as on emerging digital regulation.
Boika Deleva
Counsel
Clifford Chance
Boika is a Counsel and a member of Clifford Chance’s Global Financial Markets and Tech groups. Boika specialises in banking and financial services regulation as well as derivatives, finance, securities, insolvency and general banking law matters. As part of Clifford Chance’s Tech group, Boika assists both incumbents and start-ups in the financial markets space to meet their tech challenges. Boika advises financial institutions on the legal and regulatory framework applicable to digital assets, including crypto-assets and DLT platforms, as well as issuers on digital bonds issuances.
Paul Landless
Partner
Clifford Chance
Paul Landless specialises in structured finance, derivatives and financial markets products, including securitisations, repackagings, structured notes, securities lending and repo. He is co-head of Clifford Chance's global Fintech practice after establishing our Tech Group in 2017 as global co-head. His focus is on financial markets technology, algorithmic trading, crypto markets, artificial intelligence, smart contracts and DLT uses in financial markets trading, risk management, treasury, and payments.
Jesse Overall
Associate
Clifford Chance
Jesse Overall's practice focuses on fintech and complex financial transactions. His experience in the digital asset space includes advising on pioneering security token offerings and real estate tokenization transactions, product structuring and regulation for a broad range of token types, blockchain M&A deals, crypto lending, virtual currency derivatives, custody, technology licensing and service agreements, membership in open-source protocol consortia, and other emerging areas in the digital asset space. He also advises on the regulation of e-commerce marketplace platforms and videogames.
Marian Scheele
Senior Counsel
Clifford Chance
Marian Scheele specialises in the financial regulatory and legal aspects of financial institutions, with a focus on Fintechs (incl. banks, EMIs, PSPs, platforms, crypto and blockchain companies). She leads the Fintech Team and co-leads the Tech Team of Clifford Chance Amsterdam. Her expertise includes advising on licensing and registration, governance, structure and organisation and other ongoing license requirements. She is frequently involved in corporate restructurings and M&A transactions including IPOs. She contributes to the implementation of EU financial regulatory law in Dutch national law.