Nirup Krishnamurthy
Chief Technology Officer and Executive Vice President
The Northern Trust Company

As Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Nirup is responsible for leading Worldwide Technology (WWT) to ensure that it provides agile, cost-effective and highly available solutions to external and internal clients.  In this role, Nirup and his organization are focused on leveraging technology to its competitive advantage, increasing productivity and gaining greater operational efficiency.

Trent Gavazzi
Managing Director, Head of Business Solutions and Trading Services
BMO Capital Markets

Trent Gavazzi is currently the Managing Director and Head of Business Solutions for BMO Capital Markets, based in New York. Trent is responsible for delivering a business-focused, technology solutions to the BMO Capital Markets area and aligning the technology groups to deliver cost effective, integrated services and solutions.  Trent was also the Head of Technology for HarrisDirect and was part of the executive team that was instrumental in the successful sale and conversion to E*Trade.

Jason Waxman
GM High Density Computing, Server Platforms Marketing Group
Intel Corporation

Jason Waxman is the General Manager in Intel’s Server Platforms Group responsible for High Density Servers.  His role includes a focus on blade servers, internet datacenters and technology for future dense data center architecture.  He has previously served as the director for Intel’s Xeon(TM) processor and chipset product lines and the related platform enabling and customer relationships.  Jason has spent the last 9 years of his Intel career in Enterprise computing focused on server products and technologies involved in the introduction of over 12 new platforms.  Previous Intel managerial roles have included enterprise performance, platform marketing and end user marketing.  Prior to Intel, Jason worked in strategic planning for industrial components company and as a management consultant.  He holds Bachelor and Masters Degrees in engineering and a Masters of Business Administration from Cornell University.

Carl Freeman
Director US Campus Service Delivery
Merrill Lynch

Carl has been working in the Financial Services Industry for 15 years, 10 of which have been with Merrill Lynch in various global technology roles. Much of his work has centered around engineering and implementing technologies for internal clients that are aimed at radically changing how service delivery methods are implemented. More recently he has been focusing on how to apply virtualization into the client base to take advantage of how new focuses in these areas can provide massive shifts in how we apply technology solutions to internal and external Merrill Lynch clients.

David Kelly
Chief Technology Officer
SAC Capital

David Kelly is the Chief Technology Officer for S.A.C. Capital Advisors, LLC, a multi-strategy, private asset management firm with over $14 billion in assets under management.  Joining the firm in March of 2001, he is responsible for SAC and SAC affiliate technology platforms. His responsibilities include the establishment of technical strategies as well as the daily operation of all technologies used within SAC's back, middle and front offices. Prior to SAC, David was the Head of Technology - Americas, for Barclays Capital in New York. 

George Vega
Managing Director, Capital Markets and Investment Bank Technology
Wachovia

George is the head of Capital Markets Technology at Wachovia. He is currently responsible for Sales, Trading, Research and Client Reference data in its Corporate Investment Banking and Technology division.  He has been at Wachovia since 2004 and has over 20 years of experience in the financial industry. Prior to Wachovia, George spent five years at the Global Connectivity and Desktop strategies applications and infrastructure department at Goldman Sachs. George has worked in Merill Lynch, Lehman Brothers and Citibank where he gained extensive experience in Fixed Income and Equities.

Greg Wood
Vice President, Client Trading Technology
Credit Suisse

Greg Wood is a Vice President at Credit Suisse and Head of Professional Services for Fixed Income.  Greg has been working within the financial sector for 10 years on both the buy-side and sell-side and has specialized in FIX connectivity for futures, options and FX for the last 4 years.  Before moving to New York in 2006, Greg worked in London and Sydney supporting electronic trading on European, Asian and North American derivatives exchanges."

Joseph Kerner
Senior IT Project Manager – Asset Management IT
TIAA-CREF

Joseph is a Senior IT Project Manager at TIAA-CREF.  He has Eighteen years of professional experience delivering front and middle office automation solutions to leading financial institutions. He is currently responsible for implementing a leading order management and compliance system to support TIAA-CREF’s trading, trade processing and compliance requirements. During his tenure TIAA-CREF’s systems have progressed from DOS based monochrome screens to million dollar servers with terabyte disk arrays.  

Brian R. Lara
Director / CTO
Five Mile Capital

Mr. Lara is the Chief Technology Officer at Five Mile Capital Partners, an alternative investment and asset management company specializing in investment opportunities in asset-based lending, real estate, debt products, structured finance and financial services private equity. Prior to joining Five Mile in early 2004, Mr. Lara was with AIG Trading Group from 2002 to 2004 where he was responsible for quantitative development of front office risk analysis and pricing systems. Prior to AIG, Mr. Lara was a Vice President with Merrill Lynch where he developed software for the Global Risk Management Systems Group from 1996 to 2002. Mr. Lara began his professional career in 1994 at Financial Sciences.

Larry Tabb
Founder and CEO
TABB Group

Larry is the Founder and CEO of The TABB Group, an advisory firm focused on helping financial services firms, vendors, and technology integrators better understand, create and execute their technology visions. The TABB Group has worked on helping both large global investment banks and new technology start-ups etter plan, articulate, and hone their technology and business strategies. Larry is also a contributing editor for Wall Street and Technology where his monthly Perspectives column discusses technology issues germane to the global securities industry and a frequent contributor to FinExtra.com an industry website dedicated to informing the global financial services industry key breaking issues where his Tabb on Technology column discusses issues of the day.

Mike Stolz
Vice President, Architecture and Strategy for Financial Services
GemStone

As Vice President of Architecture and Strategy for Financial Services, Mike is responsible for targeting, developing and delivering innovative technology solutions to expand GemStones’ global financial services offering and cultivate its growing capital markets division. A prominent member of the financial services technology community for over 15 years, Mike served during the last 9 years as director and chief architect of Merrill Lynch’s global markets and investment banking debt division where he was instrumental in the design and development of trading systems and trading support systems for interest rate, credit and asset backed derivatives, as well as FX and repos and fixed income products.

Richard K. Ronan,
Director, Investment Technology
BlackRock

Rich Ronan joined BlackRock in 2006 as part of the BlackRock/Merrill Lynch Investment Manager merger.  He has over 20 years of information technology management experience, with a heavy focus in providing technology solutions for securities and investment management businesses.  Application areas have included research & investment decision support, portfolio management, trading, trade operations, compliance, performance measurement, market data services, recordkeeping/accounting and sales/marketing support.  

Scott Atwell
Manager
FIX Trading & Connectivity
American Century Investments

Scott Atwell is the Manager of FIX Trading and Connectivity for American Century Investments, a leading investment manager with nearly fifty years of experience helping investors achieve their financial goals. Mr. Atwell developed American Century’s FIX system providing FIX connectivity to virtually all of the brokers used for their equity trading worldwide.  He currently serves as Co-chairperson of the Global Steering Committee for FIX Protocol Limited (FPL), the non-profit organization which manages the FIX Protocol.

Stephen Santini
Chief Technology Officer
Banc of America Securities

Stephen Santini’s career in investment banking technology spans 22 years, starting with Salomon Bros in 1984. His career continues to flourish until now, as he is currently the Chief Technology Officer, Global Trading Infrastructure (GTI) at Bank of America.  The GTI organization provides infrastructural support to the GCIB and GWIM trading organizations of Bank of America, including data center facilities, hardware management, vendor relationships and ITIL process management.

Thomas Chippas
Head of Autobahn Equity Americas
Deutsche Bank

Thomas Chippas is Head of Autobahn Equity, Americas, for Deutsche Bank. Autobahn Equity is Deutsche Bank’s equity electronic trading platform encompassing direct market access and algorithmic trading.  Prior to joining Deutsche Bank, Tom was Head of Sales for electronic trading at Banc of America Securities and Global Head of Sales for Macgregor. Prior to those roles he lived in London where he was Head of Europe for Financial Technologies International.

Peter Serenita
Chief Data Officer
JPMorgan Worldwide Securities Services

Peter Serenita is Chief Data Officer for JPMorgan Worldwide Security Services. In this position, he is responsible for the development of information and technology practices that fully integrate data across the Worldwide Securities businesses and within the firm. Some of his focus areas include security reference data, security pricing, and account and client reference data. Mr. Serenita is a 25-year veteran of JPMorgan Chase having held several key positions in business and information technology. 

John Peter Lee
Chief Technology Officer
AM Investment Partners

John Peter Lee is the Head of Software Development and Technology Infrastructure Design at AM Investment Partners, LLC. Prior to this experience, he worked as the Senior Director of Technology at Monster Worldwide, the Chief Technology Officer and original member of IN2, Inc, as well as the proud founder of Firewall Media, Inc., a database integration company.

Ric Elvir
Director
UBS

Dale Sang
Director, Investment Technology
Lord, Abbett & Co. LLC

Mark Luppi
Chief Technology Officer, Corporate Systems
Credit Suisse

Prem Tadipatri,
Director, Corporate Systems, CTO Group
Credit Suisse

Randy Kelley
Director of Technology
Russell Investment Group

Randy Kelley is the Director of Application Architecture within Russell’s Information Technology group. In this capacity, he assists the business in planning strategic applications that fit their business strategy, and leads the enterprise application strategy for Russell’s global business. Randy joined Russell in 1997 as a publishing technology specialist and was later promoted to manager of application infrastructure and integration leading the charge to improve Russell’s application infrastructure and processes. Randy created the vision and helped lead the development, rollout, and support of FundSite, a web-based database publishing capability that integrates with both print and web media and has become a platform and information source that is instrumental in supporting many key aspects of Russell’s fund reporting needs globally.

Mike Mettke
Partner and Senior Database Administrator
Merlin Securities

Bernard Donefer
Associate Director
Subotnick Financial Services Center, Baruch-CUNY

Prof. Donefer enjoyed a 35-year career in the international financial services industry, working with banks, securities firms and exchanges in the US, Europe and Asia. He is Adjunct Associate Professor at the NYU Stern Business School and Fellow of their Center for Digital Economy Research. He is also Associate Director of the Subotnick Financial Services Center at Baruch College, CUNY and teaches at Baruch's and Fordham’s graduate business schools. Prof. Donefer's teaching and research focuses on the use of technology in capital markets and risk management. He is principal of Conatum Consulting LLC and teaches the popular “Capital Markets Bootcamp” and “Risk Management for Non-Quants” at public seminars and for corporate clients. He works with Sponsors for Economic Opportunity (SEO) and speaks and writes widely on industry issues.

Previously, as SVP and Head of Capital Markets Systems for Fidelity Investments, he was responsible for their equity, fixed-income, forex, market making, algorithmic trading, mid-office, connectivity and risk management systems. Prior to that, as U.S. CIO of DKB (now Mizuho Bank), he engineered its recovery after the first WTC attack. He also served as President of two international capital markets software businesses and has consulted to the New York and Milan Stock Exchanges, Lehman Brothers, Citigroup, among others.

Shawn McAllister
Vice President, Architecture
Solace Systems

Mr. McAllister is responsible for all aspects of Solace Systems' product design and architecture as well as analysis of customer technical requirements. Mr. McAllister has been a visible leader in Ottawa, Canada's thriving technology sector for more than 15 years. Prior to Solace, he led engineering teams in the development of ATM switches, metro Ethernet switches, and IP routers at Newbridge Networks and Alcatel.

Vern J. Bownell
Founder and Chief Strategy Officer
Egenera

Vern Brownell founded Egenera in March 2000 based on his experiences as the chief technology officer at Goldman Sachs. Convinced that nothing short of a totally new approach to computing could solve the full range of problems he repeatedly encountered, Brownell devised the Egenera BladeFrame® system and its Processing Area Network (PAN) architecture, and formed Egenera to transform his concepts into reality. Today, as Chief Strategy Officer, Brownell remains the visionary behind the business value that Egenera brings to customers through its breakthrough technology. He drives Egenera's strategic technology direction and counsels customers.

Jeffrey Wallis
Managing Partner
SunGard Consulting Services

Jeffrey Wallis is the managing partner of SunGard Consulting Services’ Charlotte office. Mr. Wallis focuses on solutions for the financial services industry and has a particular interest in the formulation of business and technology strategies that address the challenges of the competitive equity trading marketplace. He has led multiple broker-dealers through significant market structure changes including Limit Order Display, electronic connectivity, SuperSOES, decimalization, automated trading strategies, and most recently Regulation NMS. In addition, Mr. Wallis has made significant contributions to SunGard’s service-oriented architecture (SOA) initiative called Common Services Architecture (CSA). His organizational and consulting projects cover business strategy development, planning, and implementation; business process transformation; SOA governance; and custom development initiatives. Prior to focusing on the financial services sector, Mr. Wallis led global projects in the manufacturing, retail, and energy sectors.

Jeffrey Drew
Founder and CEP
Trading Metrics

Jeffrey Drew is founder and CEO of Trading Metrics. Trading Metrics is a venture backed company providing innovations in Trade Flow tracking and Market Data latency measurements. Previously, he founded NetGain, a software and consulting company which was sold to Greenwich Technology Partners. Jeff has become a thought leader in the area of trade and market data performance tracking. He has lead consulting engagements for latency measurements with a number of firms including JP Morgan, Bear Stearns, Fidelity, Discover Credit Card, and ITG. Early in his career he worked with a boutique consulting and McKinsey and Company. Jeff began his career developing network protocols for the Internet and has a B.S. in Computer Science from Tufts University.

Gil Tene
Vice President of Technology,
C TO, Co-Founder
Azul Systems

With almost two decades of technology engineering successes, Gil guides Azul Systems architectural vision and product design to align with business and market opportunity strategies. Prior to co-founding Azul Systems, Gil was Director of Technology at Nortel Networks, having joined Nortel through the acquisition of Shasta Networks. Gil architected Shasta’s Broadband IP Services Platform and Service Creation System.Before joining Nortel, Gil was Director of Technology at Check Point Software Technologies where he delivered several industry-leading traffic management solutions, including the industry's first Firewall-1 based security appliance in partnership with Nokia.Prior to Check Point, Gil held numerous management and design engineering positions at industry-leading companies including Stratus and Qualix Communications. Prior to working for commercial companies, Gil served in the Israeli Navy Computer R&D Unit. Gil also holds a BSEE from Technion, Israel Institute of Technology. He is a member of numerous technology advisory boards and has been granted three patents in computer technology.