Awards Committee - Australia

Anna Brownlee is a Director in Client Relationship Management for ANZ with Visa, focusing on business owners.

Anna has a background in professional services at PwC and Deloitte, working with large multinationals across a broad range of industries to deliver projects across compliance, strategy and operations.

Prior to joining Visa Anna worked in a dedicated payments practice helping a broad range of players across the industry from the Big 4 banks, neobanks and smaller fintechs. She has assisted financial institutions in meeting their commitments and obligations based on legislation and applying these to complex legacy payment flows as well as optimizing their processes and technology to better meet their business and customer needs.

Anna holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Melbourne and is a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants.

As General Manager Payments and Financial Services at Australia Post, Deanne Keetelaar is responsible for a broad range of products and services for consumer, business and government customers.

Previously, Deanne was General Manager Payments at NAB, where her portfolio included domestic and international payments, and commercialisation of the New Payments Platform.

With more than 15 years’ experience in Financial Services, Deanne brings a passion for delivering great customer experiences through innovative solutions. Her skill in creating high performing businesses and teams draws upon her experiences across multiple industry verticals in product management, business development, quality improvement and risk management.

Debra Taylor is Co-founder and COO of Fintech scale-up’s OpenSparkz and PAX Technology. She is a board member of Stone & Chalk and serial entrepreneur with over 25 years of experience within the industry. She has received multiple awards including in 2020, the Women in Payments - Distinguished Payments Professional, a lifetime achievement award

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

Emily Roberts is Vice President & General Manager, Consumer Card Services for Australia & New Zealand. As such, she is responsible for developing and executing the strategy for the Consumer business to drive profitable growth, deliver compelling products and increase customer engagement. She is also the relationship lead for American Express’ strategic partnerships across the airline and retail sectors. Emily is a member of the Australia Country Leadership Team and a Director on the board of Centurion Finance Limited.

Emily joined American Express in Sydney in 2004 and has worked in Strategy, Marketing, Sales and General Management roles across the Consumer, SME and Merchant businesses. Prior to her current role she was the General Manager, Merchant Services for Australia and New Zealand, where she was responsible for significantly expanding merchant acceptance and improving merchant satisfaction, whilst growing revenues across both markets.

Having begun her career working in consumer insights and marketing strategy, Emily utilises customer-driven strategies to identify and exceed customer needs and deliver business growth. She has extensive experience developing and implementing strategic plans at an account, segment and market level across both B2C and B2B businesses.

Emily is a champion for Inclusion & Diversity and is an Executive Sponsor for both our Community Partnerships and the newly-established Disabilities Awareness Network. She also plays an active role in the Families@Amex network and as a PRIDE ally.

Outside work, Emily is married to Tony and has 3 children (Maddie, Sophie and Tom) as well as a new puppy, Max.

Sonja is responsible for leading Colonial First State’s Wrap Operations business in Australia. The role involves driving operations excellence in the fund administration and custody of platform assets, business support and servicing to support a leading Wrap platform for members and advisors.

Sonja joined Colonial First State (CFS) in March 2019.  CFS forms part of the Wealth Management division of CBA, bringing together the Group’s funds management and distribution capability.

Sonja is an experienced financial services executive with deep Payments expertise.  Prior to Colonial First State, Sonja served as Head of Payments & Cash Operations Australia at ANZ Bank for 7 years.  During her career Sonja has driven large payments and operations transformations.  Sonja has also worked at NAB, Citibank, KPMG, State Street and Arab Bank (Austria). 

With a degree in Arts and post graduate qualifications in Banking & Finance and eCommerce from Monash University, Sonja has more than 20 years’ experience in financial services and payments.

Lisa Vasic has had a career in banking and finance spanning over 20 years. The early part of her career was spent in Retail and Wealth followed by a move to the Institutional Bank in the mid 90’s.
Lisa’s responsibilities have included Relationship Banking roles across diversified portfolios to Telecommunications and Media companies.
In the last 15 years, she has focused on specialisation in Transaction Banking with management roles spanning emerging businesses, Business Development, Corporate and Institutional Banking.
In 2015, Lisa’s role of managing the Non-Bank Financial Institutions was expanded to encompass Banks with responsibilities across eight geographies, three discreet product lines (Cash, Trade and Clearing) and four sub segments.

Lisa is degree qualified holding a BA from the University of Sydney with majors in Economics and Economic History and has recently completed a Digital Transformation program at MIT, Cambridge.

Anita is responsible for leading Mastercard’s Prepaid Program Management business across Asia Pacific. The role involves driving the company’s end-to-end prepaid management division and product value proposition to support best in class consumer & corporate prepaid payments products for issuers, merchants and consumers.

Anita has worked for Mastercard for six years, previously leading the prepaid finance team in Asia pacific. A specialist in the financial services and payments industry, Anita has developed strong qualifications in business collaboration, commercial acumen, and performance driven leadership. In her current business role, Anita focuses on the development and execution of prepaid program optimisation strategies and the enhancement of program management servicing capabilities to drive long-term volume and revenue growth. Anita has worked with issuer and merchant partners to develop best in class prepaid payments programs across key strategic markets including, Australia, New Zealand, Japan and India. As part of her role, Anita sits on the Australian and New Zealand boards for the Prepaid Management Services businesses and is part of the Australasia Mastercard leadership team.

Prior to Mastercard, Anita worked across different industries including financial services, telecommunications and FMCG. With a degree in Commerce from the Australian National University, Anita has more than 15 years’ experience in finance and business leadership across Asia Pacific.