Advisory Board - Australia

Bianca joined J.P Morgan in 2013 and has recently moved back to Sydney after being based in Hong Kong for five years.

In January 2021, Bianca assumed the role of Head of Wholesale Payments, Australia and New Zealand. The Wholesale Payments business encompasses payments, receivables, liquidity, FX, account services, channels, escrow, trade and merchant acquiring.

As Head of Wholesale Payments for Australia & New Zealand, Bianca is responsible for driving business strategy and growth. In the rapidly evolving payments landscape, she oversees new product development and innovation, business P&L, client acquisition and retention, client experience, market positioning and overall business governance. She manages a team across Sales, Product, Client Service and Implementations and key partners including Operations and Technology.

Prior to her current role, Bianca was APAC Head of Business Transformation for Wholesale Payments. Delivering regional strategic initiatives including digitalization and client experience, the integration of Treasury Services, Trade and Merchant Acquiring into Wholesale Payments, billing and pricing transformation and overseeing the culture and people agenda for the APAC Wholesale Payments business. Bianca has also held roles running the APAC escrow business and in-business controls teams.

Bianca and has over 20 years of corporate and investment banking experience and holds a Bachelor of Economics from Macquarie University, Bachelor of Law from the University of New South Wales. She is married with 2 daughters. 

Vanessa is an experienced Non-Executive Director and ‘C suite’ executive with 25 years’ experience in government, large corporations and the not for profit sector, with specific expertise in finance, strategy and transformational change. Excelling in roles spanning general management, change management, innovation, strategy and organisational development, Vanessa has outstanding leadership and business turnaround abilities and builds high level strategic and stakeholder relationships.

Vanessa is currently the Chief Operating Officer of the Australian Banking Association responsible for the development of the strategic direction of the association and optimising the business operations including governance, finance, HR, risk and technology. Vanessa joined the ABA following 3 years leading the YWCA NSW, one of Australia’s oldest charities. Vanessa led a team of 300, through a merger of 10 small entities, from a federated structure to become a national organisation.

Prior to the YWCA, Vanessa spent 16 years with the Commonwealth Bank in several executive roles spanning Strategy, Property, HR, Finance and IT. Responsible for developing a number of business strategies and leading complex change and cultural transformations including the Branch Refurbishment Strategy (2003), the Sydney Metro Corporate Accommodation Strategy (2005), the relocation of 4500 employees to Sydney Olympic Park (2006/8), the relocation and adoption of activity based working by 6200 employees(2010/11), the development of an innovation strategy including new capabilities (Design Thinking, Experimentation, Agile, Data Analytics and Lean Productivity) and creating the Wired for Wonder conference, Unleashing Innovation Fund and Innovation Lab (2012/14).

Vanessa’s last role with CommBank was General Manager, Organisational Development - responsible for developing and implementing culture, diversity, talent, leadership and capability strategies, aligned to the people strategies of the Technology, Finance and Bankwest lines of business, ~14,000 employees.

Vanessa is currently a Non Executive Director of Variety the Childrens Charity and Driveabout World (an Edutech start up) and serves as a Judge of the Eureka Prize.

Felicity Blake is the Country Manager for FIS New Zealand. Felicity brings more than 20 years’ experience in the payments industry to the role, where she is based in Auckland, New Zealand. Her key focus is developing relationships to build strategic partnerships in the complex environment of payments technology. Felicity is well connected with the payments industry, both in New Zealand and internationally. Felicity is a leader in driving thought leadership, and as an active member of Payments New Zealand, she brings her global knowledge and expertise to the local conversation on payments innovation in the region.

Felicity is a passionate advocate of diversity & inclusion and regularly contributes to programs in this area

In her 25 plus years in the banking and finance industry, Julie Bolan has worked as a banking professional, head of risk, regulatory and financial crime programs and payments domain expert across domestic, international, transaction and wholesale banking.

In her current role as Head of Payments APAC, Go To Market Julie leads the payments business in the APAC region driving the adoption and usage of  strategic services to enable frictionless payments across the SWIFT community. This includes gpi services such as SWIFT Go, Pre-Validation and gCase in addition to supporting payments infrastructure transformation programs such as the ISO 20022 program and Transaction Manager.

Previously, Julie spent 25 years at Westpac, where she held senior leadership positions including Head of Receivables Products, Head of GTS Product Delivery Asia, Director Payments (including NPP), and Head of Risk, Regulatory and Financial Crime Programs and Transformation.

Emily is a technology leader with extensive experience across fintech, consumer technology and professional services. She has over 15 years’ experience in leadership, strategy, marketing, communications, brand and operations roles within the technology and FMCG industries. 

Throughout her career she has worked with a range of brands and organisations here in Australia and overseas including PayPal, eBay, Microsoft, Vodafone, Blackberry, Lexmark, Carlton United Breweries, Atturra and LG Electronics. She was at PayPal Australia for seven years and held multiple roles during that time including Head of Communications, Strategy & Planning lead for the marketing team, and leading key strategic partnership marketing relationships with eBay and Uber.  

Her current role is to build the Zepto brand and create opportunities within the Enterprise and Government verticals. She leads the enterprise sales team and is responsible for establishing and building strategic relationships with key industry partners and Government stakeholders core to Zepto’s business including the Reserve Bank of Australia, NPP, AustPayNet and the Tech Council of Australia.  

Founded in Byron Bay in 2017, the Zepto business has scaled extraordinarily since then and is now on-track to process over $50 billion in payments this year. Zepto successfully raised $25M in their Series A funding round earlier this year from AirTree Ventures and Decade Partners to fuel the next wave of innovation transforming the payments landscape, accelerate company headcount growth and drive Zepto’s international expansion. 

Throughout her career Emily has been a passionate advocate for the local Tech community with a particular focus on supporting women to pursue a career in tech and encouraging businesses to help foster digital skills locally. She is an active participant in the Women in Payments, Tech Council of Australia, Australian Information Industry Association (AIIA), Women Rising, and Women in ITC (WIC) communities. 

Nish Dharmaratne is the Global Head of Product for Global Transaction Banking business at Westpac Institutional Bank based in Australia. In her current role she covers Core Payments, New Payment Solutions, Cross Currency Payments, Domestic & International receivables, Corporate Commercial Cards, Merchant Acquiring , Liquidity solutions and Balance Sheet Management.

Prior to Westpac, Nish has over 23 years of experience in banking across Australia and Asia. She led GTS business in Singapore for Citibank in her most recent role. She has held various roles with Citi leading regional businesses in Liquidity, Payments, Investments, Client Solutions and Relationship Management.

She has a Bachelor of Banking & Finance from Monash University, Australia, Postgraduate from Chartered Institute of Marketing , UK & Master of Business Administration from University of SriJay, Colombo.

She has also completed the High Potential Leadership program at Harvard University & Women In Leadership program at UCLA, USA.

Jackie is the Head of Payments Industry within Institutional Digital Banking at ANZ. Commencing her career in consulting, Jackie spent 4 years with TP3 (formerly Tactics) consulting to ANZ for a range of projects, including ANZ’s Institutional cash management platform transformation from 2007-2010. Jackie joined ANZ in 2010, and has worked in several roles across Product, Innovation and Industry. Within these roles, Jackie has managed payment product portfolios, and supported the development and management of ANZ’s strategy, standards, and thought leadership in the Industry. Jackie’s strengths include a depth of payments knowledge and experience, combined with a collaborative, and strong customer centric approach.

Monique offers 30 years’ experience in Banking and Finance in Australia. She commenced her career with Citibank, before moving into search in 1992.

To further broaden her experience, Monique spent 12 months in-house with a Big 4 trading bank driving growth within a key business division.

Monique joined Amrop Carmichael Fisher in 2003, as a Founding Partner and is Head of Practice for Banking, Payments and FinTech in Australia. She has been instrumental with the company’s growth and presence in Financial Services and has successfully completed over 350 Executive and Senior Management mandates with a comprehensive network of contacts.

Deeply entrenched in Banking, Payments and FinTech, Monique offers deep market insights in a period of scale and transformation within the Australasian Payments landscape.

Enthusiastic about helping her clients achieve their strategic goals, her focus is creating and building teams to lead, transform and evolve.

Jennifer Turner, BA, LLA, is a highly credentialed banker with over 25 years financial experience working with the Public Sector, Multinational and Australian Corporates in the area of Cash Management, Working Capital Trade Finance and Structured Finance. 

Jennifer was appointed Head of Large Markets & Supplier Payments with American Express in Global Commercial Services in January 2020. She manages the B2B payments performance for SME and Large customers collaborating with both Merchant and Issuer to drive customer outcomes in a competitive payments landscape. 

Jennifer has held positions of Managing Director of Global Transactional Banking, Global Head of Trade Finance Sales with both International and Domestic banks.  

Jennifer graduated from the University of Sydney and the University of New England and holds degrees in Laws and Arts respectively, majoring in Contract Law. 

Jennifer continues to hold positions on Executive Councils for Diversity and Inclusion and is an advocate for equal opportunity

Dewi is the Head of Domestic Payables and Receivables Product for Australia and New Zealand within the Treasury and Trade Solutions at Citi Institutional Bank. In her current role, Dewi is responsible for driving the strategy and product roadmap, as well as overseeing the day-to-day product management for core products such as business P&L, client experience, and client communication strategies as well as new product development and innovation for the Australia and New Zealand market. Dewi leads the business strategy, design, development and commercialization of NPP/ instant payments initiatives for Citi Institutional customers in Australia. Dewi started her career in banking with Citi Indonesia as Head of Customer Experience and Consumer Insights for the Retail Banking Business and was selected to do secondments in Hong Kong and Australia under Citi’s Asia Pacific Fast Trax Program, a high potential development program targeted at high performers that cuts across all of Citi’s businesses and geographies. Dewi is now based in Sydney.