Past Winners - 2022

Mary Ann Reilly is Senior VP, Head of North America Marketing at Visa. She is responsible for driving all aspects of Visa’s consumer and client marketing in the US and Canada, including building brand preference, performance marketing, digital marketing, sponsorship activations, client marketing and consumer-driven efforts.

Reilly joined Visa from American Express, where she most recently served as the Senior VP, Global Brand, Integration and Insights. Reilly worked at AMEX for more than 25 years, during that time she oversaw key marketing priorities including customer acquisition, business alliances, co-brand partnerships and membership rewards. Reilly was also instrumental in driving the business development and marketing for AMEX’s small business brand, OPEN, establishing Small Business Saturday as a national movement that supports local small businesses.

Tammy Camp is the CEO and co-founder of Stronghold, a financial infrastructure company that provides fast, secure, and accessible financial services through a simple API. Stronghold works with businesses such as IBM to make payments quicker and easier while maintaining regulatory compliance and interoperability between payment systems.

Tammy founded Stronghold in 2017 to bring better financial services to companies and retailers. Before founding Stronghold, she was a Partner for the VC firm 500 Startups. Tammy was also the first Head of Growth for Stellar, the open-source payments platform for fiat and digital currencies. She serves as an advisor to numerous companies, including Walmart, Hotwire.com, and eBay. Tammy has been an avid technologist since she wrote her first code at age six. She is a graduate of the 2 Global Startup Program at Singularity University at NASA Ames. Tammy holds a world record in kiteboarding for the most consecutive backloops in one minute.

Melissa Tuozzolo is the head of Payments Financial Market Infrastructures and Industry Initiatives in Citi’s Treasury and Trade Services organization. In this role, Melissa manages a global team focused on advocacy and execution of strategic transformation across payments networks and key industry initiatives. She is a member of the Payments Market Practice Group (PMPG) and the SWIFT US National Group. She and her team are also members of multiple industry working groups, committees and forums focused on the driving the future Payments capabilities, messaging, and operations. Prior to her current role, Melissa led Market Management for Citi’s FI Payments business globally. In this role she was responsible for the strategic messaging and client engagement approach for the FI segment focused on the Global Clearing product. Melissa has fifteen years’ experience in the Transaction Banking industry.  

Salah is an expert specializing in harnessing digital solutions for social impact. She leads North America-based programs focused on financial inclusion, racial equity, and small business growth forMastercard.

She previously worked at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation focused on financial inclusion through innovative business models for mobile-enabled financial products; at Sanabel Micro finance Network of Arab Countries in Cairo, Egypt as a financial analyst; and at Soros Open Society Foundation based in Dakar, Senegal leading the establishment of the West Africa Regional Office.

In 2007, Salah was recognized as a National Security and Education Program David L. Boren Fellow; in2016 Salah she became a Fellow of the Finance Leaders Fellowship and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network; in 2019, Salah was awarded the Outstanding Corporate Social Intrapreneur of the Year by the World Economic Forum and Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship.

Gonca Latif-Schmitt is Global Head of Citi’s Commercial Card Business and has been with the bank for 27 years. During her time at Citi, she has held increasingly important sales leadership positions across all institutional client segments before attaining business head roles. After ten years of transaction banking sales covering Corporate and Financial Institution clients, Citi asked her to create a global Public Sector sales effort. Her promotion to Managing Director in January 2007 as Public Sector, Product Sales Head was in recognition of her overall achievement in growing this portfolio. Prior to her current role, she was tapped to build a regional Commercial Card business in North America – which she grew into a large and diversified business over a five-year period with a 9% CAGR revenue growth. As lead for Citi’s Global Commercial Cards business, she is responsible for the profitability, operational oversight and strategic direction of the business globally.  

Catherine leads Visa’s Global CBDC program, building digital payment solutions with central banks, financial partners and global infrastructure technology companies. Prior to Visa, Catherine worked at J.P. Morgan and Man Group in quantitative finance. She spent 2 years on stablecoin research while at Stanford University with Prof. Dan Boneh. She also worked at 2 crypto startups: Anchorage and Gauntlet. Catherine graduated with M.S. in Management Science & Engineering from Stanford University, and First Class B.A. and M.Phil in Economics from University of Cambridge.  

Outside of work, she is Advisor to Union Finance, a decentralized finance protocol to democratize credit lending. She contributes to Inspirit AI, an educational startup for high-school students. During COVID-19, she ran a podcast program, Pandemic Pulse, producing ten episodes discussing public health, & social-economic issues. She’s co-founded Quantess London, a non-profit organization for professional female quants. 

Sue Kelsey is executive vice president, Global Consumer Products and is responsible for accelerating inclusive and sustainable digital economies. Sue drives Mastercard’s Financial Inclusion commitment and accelerates Mastercard’s Priceless Planet coalition, which builds sustainability solutions to serve consumers in financial services.  Sue joined Mastercard in 2015 as SVP, Prepaid Product Management, where she led the revitalization of the global product solutions through a consumer orientated Product Line Strategy, including the identification of several new business verticals. She created an engagement plan with private sector entities to start penetrating the 230 million unbanked consumers paid in cash.Sue brings 20 years of experience from the Consumer-Packaged Goods industry to Mastercard. There she developed her skill set in generating consumer insight, product positioning and award winning in market execution. Sue holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Leeds. 

Sharon Sharples has worked in Financial Services industry for 25 years and is a change and strategy specialist. Her broad programme management experience has covered channels, products and people including regulatory, technology implementations and target operating model changes. She is also a skilled risk and governance expert with a detailed understanding of frameworks including creation and implementation to achieve visibility, compliance and resilience in an exceedingly regulated environment. This has enabled her to work successfully across collective teams, with regulators and suppliers to problem solve and achieve common goals.

A passionate and experienced leader who utilises a wide range of skills to inspire, empower and create high performing teams and individuals. She is known for developing and implementing business plans to achieve strategic goals, optimise performance and growth. She develops wide ranges of relationships and long term alliances rapidly, through a highly collaborative approach. In particular, she empowers others through coaching, motivation and recognition; drives high performance and increases capabilities of individuals and teams.

After dropping out of University not knowing what to do, Sharon started her career at Barclays temping in 1997, which lead her to a permanent role at Nationwide Building Society where she spent 22 years of her career. Over those years she progressed from being an advisor on the phones to a senior exec who drove the strategies and change agenda for Operations teams. Her proudest work accomplishment at Nationwide was the iRM Global Risk Team of the Year award in 2016 – recognised for leading on both culture and business partnering.

After being made redundant, Sharon re-joined Barclays in 2019 and spent her first 2 years working in Fraud Technology, Strategy & Operations where she was instrumental in fraud loss and cost reductions in the cards and scams. It was noted by the MD of Barclays UK Fraud that she had a galvanising impact on the leadership team in 2020 and that Sharon has a very calm demeanour which combined with her energy is very reassuring when times are tough. In 2021 she was promoted to Director and she is now responsible for the Barclays Group Annual Plan for Operational Risk, working collaboratively across the 2nd line function and key stakeholders in Barclays to provide structure, governance and consistency. In her new role the feedback continues to be glowing and her impact significant as she is visible, enthusiastic and hard-working.

Sharon is a keen Diversity & Inclusion and Citizenship advocate, she is the current co-chair of Win Northampton and Chair of Women in the Community for the UK. She led the creation of the Charity Mentoring scheme in Northampton in 2020, and continues to run this in collaboration with Win UK.

She was a Chair of Governors for a local Primary School for 7 years helping develop a vision and strategy, improvement plans, budget management, staffing and raising attainment. She successfully moved school from Requires Improvement to Good Ofsted rating over a 2-year period.

Sharon, being one for continuous improvement, also focuses on her own personal development and achieved a distinction in her MBA in 2019, whilst being in full-time employment and mother to two teenage children.

She was a Chair of Governors for a local Primary School for 7 years helping develop a vision and strategy, improvement plans, budget management, staffing and raising attainment.

Sharon, being one for continuous improvement, also focused on her own personal development and achieved a distinction in her MBA in 2019, whilst being in full-time employment and mother to two teenage children.

Funmi is a Nigerian and British citizen, currently living in the UK. She is qualified to practice law in Nigeria and in England & Wales and is also Chartered Secretary and/or Chartered Governance Professional. She has a strong academic foundation with a Bachelor of Laws from University of Lagos, Nigeria and a Master of Laws with Distinction in International Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation from University of Warwick, United Kingdom.

Together with family, Funmi co-founded and co-run a faith-based charitable organisation called Redeemed Camp, which is focused on supporting individuals facing life’s social challenges by offering resources that make a difference in the local community and society at large. As a lover of books and a believer in the power of learning, she championed the start of a digital library of eBooks within the charity. The library houses collections around literature, business, and faith, and is freely available to users around the world - with a particular focus on the African continent.

On a personal level, Funmi grew up in a highly competitive environment in Nigeria where she learnt about the need to be resilient and mentally strong. This strength served her well as she encountered several setbacks in her career and battled with stage 4 endometriosis. She believes a large part of her success and resilience lies in the power of people and the network of support they bring. She is inspired by the strength and creativity of the human spirit, the power of collaboration and believes that when people come together with a shared vision and purpose, anything is possible.

Funmi enjoys baking, traveling, writing, drawing, and reading.

She is passionate about promoting reading and literacy, particularly on the African continent.

She believes in the power of mentorship, and actively mentors several young professional women looking to build a career in Law, GRC, Financial Services or Fintech.

Candice Pressinger is Director of Customer Data Security at Elavon Merchant Services, one of the world’s largest payments companies. Candice leads Elavon’s data security products, services and consulting solutions helping protect businesses from payments fraud, data breaches and other security threats. Most recently, she launched a Transaction Risk Analysis service to help merchants process payments without friction and maintain low rates of fraud, in line with the Second Payments Services Directive (PSD2). She works closely with some of Europe’s largest retailers including: Inditex, Primark and BP. Prior to Elavon, Candice spent over a decade at British Telecom, serving as Head of Group PCI-DSS Compliance, and leading a team of 100 professionals to implement PCI Data Security globally for 27 platforms, 80 third-party suppliers and 80m transactions per year. As a recognised industry awards winner, Candice balances the world of payments and data security with being a mum of three and likes cycling, travelling and theatre.

Duygu is the VP, Global Head of Product and Marketing for the American Express Network business. She started her career with American Express in New York and during her 17-years with the Company, she held positions across multiple business units and staff functions, including Strategic Planning Group, Corporate Development, Global Consumer and Global Merchant & Network Services. Prior to moving to London in 2014, she had served as Chief of Staff to the President of American Express. Before joining American Express, she worked for McKinsey & Co, and Exxon Mobil.

Duygu earned:

MBA from Darden Business School, University of Virginia (full scholarship from the Turkish Government)

BS of Industrial Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (2nd in her class)

She was a founding member of Endometriosis Foundation of America and is currently in process of founding Abdominal Aorta Aneurysm UK in collaboration with NHS clinical stakeholders.

Duygu speaks Turkish and English. Lives with her husband and 14-yr old son. Duygu loves traveling to experience new cuisines and cultures and is passionate about fitness and wellness.

Palwasha serves as the Director, Chief of Staff within the Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion and Talent team at American Express. In this role, Palwasha leads global DE&I and Talent Development strategies to build and promote an inclusive culture throughout the colleague experience at American Express.

She joined American Express in 2011 and has since held various marketing roles across the business in New York and London offices. She holds a degree in Business Administration from Bucknell University, and Executive MBA from Fordham, and a coaching certification from Animas.

Outside of AmEx, she volunteers with Business Council for Peace, empowering women business leaders in post conflict countries. She also enjoys immersing herself in psychology and personal development books and podcasts.

Natasha Condon is the Global Head of Core Trade within Wholesale Payments at JPMorgan Chase. She has 17 years of experience across trade finance and working capital solutions for both corporate and financial institutions. She has extensive experience with providing strategic working capital advisory, risk mitigation, sales growth, and digital efficiencies for the top multinationals in the world. 

Natasha comes to the firm from Citi, where she was the Global Trade Sales Head. While there, she led five regional teams around the world and provided personal leadership on large strategic deals. 

During her time at Citi, Natasha was a member of Citi UK Pride Committee, an active member of Citi Women and Citi Parents affinity organizations and a member of the Global Trade Management Committee. 

Natasha has a Master of Arts from Oxford University where she studied Philosophy, Politics & Economics (PPE).