Past Winners - 2021

Kelly Buchanan is a Senior Vice President, M&A Integration Executive at Mastercard responsible for orchestrating the development and execution of acquisitions to meet strategic and financial objectives. Within her time at Mastercard, she has held several positions across Operations & Technology, Customer Delivery and Mergers & Acquisitions within the US, UK and AP. With a passion for tackling complex programs of work and leading from strategy to execution, she has a wide breath of business experience coupled with strong leadership capabilities building, driving and motivating teams. As a WEF Young Global Leader, she is passionate about how technology can be used as a force for good. With an emphasis on early STEM education, her passion projects focus on ensuring young girls get exposure to technology and we cultivate their passion for it and the opportunities it creates. She is a Trustee and Board member for iamtheCODE with a goal to enable 1 million girls to code by 2030.

Chryssi’s mission is to help create a financially inclusive, resilient and sustainable financial system. She covers a breadth of professional experience ranging from regulation, risk management, treasury, and payments. Chryssi implemented treasury and risk analytics systems for blue-chip companies across EMEA. She is a thought leader in the payment sector and Founder of StarLiX, an innovative compliance tokenised payment system for PIs to enable cross-border payments to developing countries. She is also the COO of Kalgera, a FinTech early-stage company (top 30 tech firms in UK TechRound 2020) focusing on financial vulnerability. Chryssi holds an honours BEng in Civil Engineering, two MSc in Financial Mathematics (University of Warwick) and Tech Entrepreneurship (UCL). She has undertaken qualifications in Investment Advice (FCA), Risk Management (PRMIA), ML (Mindstream AI), Blockchain (UCL CBT), and Entrepreneurship (MIT). She is an Industry Associate at UCL CBT, and a Lecturer at LIBF.

Victoria Cleland is the Executive Director for Banking, Payments and Innovation. She leads the teams responsible for: • the operation and strategic development of the Bank’s payment system services, (which settles around £685 billion of sterling payments and securities transactions each day) • the Bank’s wholesale and retail banking operations, including the provision of emergency liquidity assistance • the Bank’s Fintech Hub Victoria is the chair of the CPMI Task Force on Cross Border Payments. Victoria has held several senior positions in a range of areas at the Bank of England. Most recently, as Chief Cashier, she was responsible for banknotes (from design to distribution) and led our work on digital currencies. Her previous roles also included overseeing payment and settlement systems. Victoria is the executive sponsor of our staff disAbility Network and Bicycle Users Group and is a Board Member of the Business Disability Forum.

Vivi is the VP General Manager Global Network Partnerships EMEA. Joined AXP in 2005. Worked in sales enablement and business development at 4 management levels and 2 Business Units. She is a graduate of the Leadership Program of United Technologies – Pratt & Whitney, where she worked in the USA/France, selling jet engines and services.Vivi’s Ambition is having options, exceling in what she decides to do and having fun while doing it. While her professional ambition has evolved, core to Vivi has always remained making an impact on family, friends, team, and community.Vivi earned: • MSc in Finance from London Business School • MBA from Purdue University, USA • MSc in Information Systems from London School of Economics and is an Electronics Engineer. She is a Member of 2 AXP Boards, sits on the Executive Women EMEA Committee, speaks Greek, English, French, and basic German and Spanish. Lives with husband and 17-yr old son. Vivi loves deciphering language structures, tennis and dining.

Being an immigrant into the UK from Romania at the age of 10, Ioana is the first generation in her family to attend university, a decision which was met with disagreement due to the pressure to start earning as soon as she finished school. Overcoming this with the help of a scholarship and financial support, she finished university with a First Class degree in International Relations from the Top 10 UK university, Loughborough University. On top of this, while at university, she completed a year in industry, with 12 months in Brussels in a Junior Policy Adviser role for the Confederation of British Industry, CBI. Following her studies, she secured a role on the American Express Strategy Graduate Scheme, in which she excelled and was among the few to be promoted, and onto a selective internal client-facing consulting team. As you will know by now, Ioana doesn’t like standing still and is always looking for ways to develop and is excited to see what lies ahead in her career in payments!

Originally from Mumbai (India), Karishma came to the UK in September 2011 to pursue her MSc in Strategic Marketing at Cranfield University. She returned to India in 2012 to kickstart her payments career with the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) followed by KPMG India (from January 2014) working on payments projects in Asia and the Middle East. She relocated back to the UK in September 2015 as an Advisor in Strategy & Effectiveness within CIO advisory practice at KPMG UK. Karishma joined PwC UK in June 2018 and is one of the key Payments specialists in our FS Consulting Practice. Breadth of her work includes leading engagements on Payments Innovation, Product Strategy, Business Transformation and Cost Optimisation. She is passionate about creating innovative methodologies and business models to reduce operating costs and identify new revenue streams to reinvest the savings. She has co-authored payments Thought Leadership focussing on the UK and global markets (see LinkedIn)