Advisory Board - USA

Sarah T. Billings is senior vice president and group manager leading PNC’s Payment Product, Operations and Strategy group. Billings is responsible for managing the product management and operations functions for payments, including wires, ACH, real-time payments and international payments. In her role, she leads a multi-disciplinary team, comprised of Product, Technology and Operations, committed to transforming PNC’s core payments platforms. She is responsible for leading strategic planning and the execution of a multi-year roadmap that enables PNC clients to take advantage of the latest innovations in payments and data to improve their businesses.

Prior to joining PNC, Billings was the managing director and head of global payments and deposits platforms at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Billings serves on the Women in Payments Advisory Board and the Global Client Advisory Board for Finastra and will begin her term serving on the NACHA Board of Directors on January 1, 2021. Billings graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Kari Browne is a Senior Client Partner in Korn Ferry International’s New York office and co-head of the firm’s Fintech practice in the Global Technology Services Market.

With over fifteen years of experience, Ms. Browne has partnered with prominent public and private technology companies and with leading associations in the recruitment, development and assessment of senior executive talent. She has conducted searches across all functions, primarily focusing on CEOs, sales and marketing, business development, and product management. Ms. Browne’s industry specialty is FinTech – software, payments, core processing, and platform companies that serve financial services organizations.

Before joining Korn Ferry in 1998, Ms. Browne was an associate with another executive search firm working on senior-level searches for the information technology and industrial practices.

Prior to this, Ms. Browne spent almost a decade in a management position with Mitsubishi International Corporation, one of the leading Japanese trading firms, working in the areas of defense, space and telecommunications.

Ms. Browne is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in international relations. She is currently on the Advisory Board for the organization Women in Payments.

Cheryl Guerin is Executive Vice President, North America Marketing & Communications where she is responsible for driving brand preference and consumer affection for Mastercard across U.S. and Canada. Ms. Guerin’s team develops and implements coordinated communications and marketing strategies reinforcing the value of our brand, products and services to drive revenue growth and market share for the region. Her responsibilities include directing the brand’s award-winning Priceless campaign, communications, sponsorships, digital, B2B and partner marketing activity to drive greater connection with consumers and businesses. Prior to this Cheryl led Mastercard Credit Products with responsibility for all aspects of product strategy and development globally. In addition, she also held a general management role, overseeing all Products and Solutions for North America. She also previously ran US Marketing where she launched successful marketing platforms such as Priceless Cities, Priceless Surprises and the Priceless Causes Stand Up To Cancer platform. Ms. Guerin joined Mastercard in 2000 and has also run several key Marketing functions including, Global Digital Marketing and Global Integrated Promotions. Key achievements include building organizations around these disciplines globally, as well as continued industry accolades. Prior to Mastercard, Ms. Guerin held several account services positions at advertising agencies such as Bates Worldwide, managing campaigns and product launches for clients such as Avis, American Home Products, Best Foods, NatWest Bank and Samsung. Ms. Guerin is on the Board of Directors for The Advertising Club of New York and is an Advisory Board member for Women in Payments. Cheryl was named to Brand Innovators 2013 Top 50 Women in Brand Marketing, was a 2011 and 2019 CEO Award Winner and most recently was named to the Moves Power Women list 2019, as well as received the Women in Payments Change Agent Award in 2020. Ms. Guerin holds a Bachelor of Business Administration from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business and lives in Westchester, NY with her husband and two sons.

Ms. Homberger is executive vice president, chief risk officer. In this role, she drives ACI’s risk management vision and strategy, including acquisition integration. Her current focus is on continuing to advance and evolve ACI’s risk management and information security functions to develop a risk management organization that is best in class in the payments industry.

Prior to becoming chief risk officer, Ms. Homberger held a number of senior and operational leadership positions at ACI, including leading global sales, ACI On Demand (the company’s SaaS and Platform business) and customer management and maintenance.

Prior to joining ACI Worldwide in 2006, Ms. Homberger worked at GE Healthcare, where she held finance leadership roles and completed the Financial Management Program (FMP). Ms. Homberger is a board member of the American Transaction Processors Coalition (ATPC) and Women in Payments. She is also very active in her local community. She is Six Sigma Green Belt Certified and holds her MBA from Fordham University and a Bachelor of Science from Miami University.

Nacha President and CEO Jane Larimer sets the vision and strategy for the organization to continually advance the ubiquitous ACH Network so that it remains one of the largest, safest and most reliable payment systems in the world. Ms. Larimer also works to advance Nacha’s role in creating and furthering broadly adopted payment and financial messaging rules and standards to enable interoperability and reduce friction for providers and users.

Ms. Larimer brings three decades of experience in financial services and payments, with more than two decades of service in various roles at Nacha, including Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice President, ACH Network Administration and General Counsel. Prior to joining Nacha, Ms. Larimer practiced law with the Lending, Banking and Public Finance Group of Bryan Cave LLP, formerly Powell, Goldstein, Frazer & Murphy, and worked at NationsBank, now known as Bank of America.

Laura Miller leads the J.P. Morgan segment of Merchant Services, the global payment acceptance and merchant acquiring business of JPMorgan Chase and a leading provider of payment, fraud management and data security solutions. As J.P. Morgan Merchant Services President, Laura oversees merchant acquiring and payment processing for U.S.-based companies with annual revenue between $20 million and $2 billion, and global corporations with annual revenue above $2 billion.

She has more than 20 years of financial services experience, joining JPMorgan Chase in 2009. Most recently, Laura served as President of the U.S. Commercial Bank segment of Merchant Services. She also previously led the Small Business Segment of Merchant Services, leading a team that worked directly with business owners as well as through 5,300 Chase branches.

Before coming to Merchant Services, Laura was President of Chase Ink, the firm’s small business credit card, and she has held progressively responsible positions in the J.P. Morgan Global Commercial Card business.

Laura is also co-chairwoman for the Northeast Region of JPMC’s Market Leadership Team, which is dedicated to delivering the firm to clients on a local level and being leaders in their communities. She is a well-known advocate for Diversity & Inclusion at JPMC and a strong supporter of business owners and the entrepreneur community.

Laura earned a bachelor’s degree in Marketing from the University of Arizona, serves on the board of directors for Accion East, and resides in New York with her family.

Marie Mui is currently Senior Vice President and Head of Account Management for Wells Fargo Merchant Services. She is an accomplished payments professional with over 20 years of experience in developing high-performing teams and managing complex relationships with an emphasis in the startup, technology and Fintech sectors.

Marie joined Wells Fargo Merchant Services in 2001 where she has successfully designed and architected multi-channel payment environments and negotiated complex business partnerships. Before her current role, Marie was responsible for growing business and leading the both the Service Provider and Technology, Media, and Telecommunications sales teams for Merchant Services. Prior to Wells Fargo, Marie was an early adopter of the ecommerce ecosystem having worked at both CyberSource and Escalate Retail during their early start-up days.

Marie has a Bachelor of Arts in Mass Communication from the California State University, East Bay and is a Certified Payments Professional. In addition to Women in Payments, Marie sits on the Award and Nominations Committee for the Electronic Transaction Association and is active with the Association for Financial Professionals. When not thinking about payments, Marie enjoys traveling, cooking and spending time with her family and friends.

Rossana Thomas leads the Product Management organization for Enterprise Payments Platform at Fiserv, and has over 30 years of strategy, product development and executive leadership experience within the Financial Services industry. Prior to joining Fiserv, Rossana worked for KPMG and supported several U.S. financial institutions with their Real-Time Payments implementations. Rossana provided strategic direction to The Clearing House’s ACH, wire and check image exchange solutions during her career at the TCH. Rossana is an Accredited ACH Professional (AAP), an established payments industry leader and a member of multiple industry initiatives including NACHA. Rossana is the winner of the 2020 PayTech Leadership Award.

Elena Whisler is Senior Vice President of Sales and Relationship Management at The Clearing House. Elena is currently responsible for overseeing the customer relationship, sales and marketing teams to manage and expand its client base across The Clearing House’s core payments products (RTP® network, CHIPS, ACH and check image exchange). Current priorities include growing the RTP network across the US financial system participants and evolving the customer engagement model for all TCH Products.
Prior to joining The Clearing House, she held regional and global product management positions at FIS, Clear2Pay and Fiserv as well as working at the Federal Reserve Bank within the Retail Product Office and Monetary Policy Divisions working on cross-border activities and economic policy in Latin America.
Elena has served on multiple industry councils such as the Board of Directors for BAFT (Banking Association for Finance and Trade) and the NACHA Alliance. She also currently acts as a mentor for the RiseUp Program for Money 2020.