Past Winners - USA 2021

Terra Wallace is the Vice President of Sales Education & Engagement for U.S. Bank/Elavon. In thi sFortune 500 Company, she executes strategic learning and culture initiatives that help drive company revenue. She also serves as the President of the Atlanta Chapter African American Business Resource Group. In this role, Terra focuses her leadership efforts on driving programs that amplify black voices by creating targeted initiatives to support black employees, black communities and black businesses.

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. She has more than 20 years of nancial services experience and previously led the Small Business Segment of Merchant Services, leading at eam 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 rm’s small business credit card.Laura is also co-chairwoman for the Northeast Region of JP MC’s Market Leadership Team and is a well-known advocate for Diversity & Inclusion at JPMC and a strong supporter of business owners and the entrepreneur community.

As the Head of Global Client Engagement for J.P. Morgan's Liink team, Angelica brings 11 years of experience across business development, strategy and sales. The team is responsible for building and launching the rm’s rst live Blockchain service, Liink by J.P. Morgan, formerly the Interbank Information Network. She previously worked as a North America Product Sales Consultant specializing in cross-border payments at Citigroup. Prior to Citigroup, she spent over 5 years working across strategy, business development, and digital marketing, sales and distribution across Viacom’s largest brands: MTV, VH1, CMT, and Logo. Angelica is an active nonprot leader, volunteer and motivator -dedicated to developing young people and fostering gender equality, diversity, equity and inclusion. She earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics from the University of California - Riverside and a Master of Business Administration from the University of Virginia – Darden School of Business.

Melissa attended the University of North Florida and graduated with a BBA in Management and received an MBA with a concentration in Human Resource Management from Keller Graduate School of Management. She has been happily married for 24 years and has two children, Andrew and Ainsley. Melissa is also an active volunteer at her local high school where she has volunteered her time with theatre program and provides assistance with the DECA program in ‘judging’ DECA regional events as well as assists the Career, Technical, and agriculture education (CTAE) program with cover letter,resume and interview skills annually. In addition, she volunteers for the Associate of Graduates organization to assist in supporting parents of Cadet Candidates at the US Air Force Academy Preparatory School. Over the past 6 months she has been an integral part of the school’s ability to adjust to COVID restrictions while managing the wellbeing of the both the staff, leadership and the Cadet Candidates.

Lynne J. Baldwin is President and co-founder of BHMI. She has been in the payments industry for over40 years. Before starting the company, she was VP, Chief Product Manager and a board member at Applied Communications, Inc. (now ACI Worldwide).Her earliest efforts were in creating software for finnancial banking systems as well as engineering and managing large financial software development projects. She has been instrumental in the creation of innovative payment applications, including the Concourse Financial Software Suite. Lynne is a previous member of the computer science faculties at the University of Nebraska at Omahaand the University of Texas at Austin where she received a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and a Ph.D.in Computer Sciences, respectively. She has served on the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s Information Science & Technology Advisory Committee for over 20 years, and is currently Vice President of the board of directors for Nebraska Wildlife Rehab, Inc. 

Michelle Conklin joined J.P. Morgan in 2004 and is now a Managing Director, serving as the Head of Receivables Operations, which offers core cash receivables services to corporate and commercial clients, as well as select processing services for the US Federal Government.In her current role, Michelle is responsible for over 4,000 employees operating in 16 locations around the world who process 160M items and deposit $800B annually. In addition, Michelle is a member of the JPMorgan Chase Chicago Executive Committee, the executive sponsor for the Illinois chapter of the Sage Administrative Professionals BRG and is passionate about driving inclusive hiring efforts through active engagement with programs such as 2nd chances, Autism @ Work and BeST.Michelle has a bachelor’s degree in Consumer and Textile Marketing from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana.

Mary Kay currently is SVP, Global Product at Visa’s leading strategy for buyer and seller products and
solutions, driving the design, development, and delivery of new services and solutions to accelerate
2 growth as the checkout experience and point of sale shifts from traditional payment products to
digital, omnichannel payment experiences. She joined Visa from Square, where she was the general
manager and Head of Payments, overseeing engineering, product management and marketing, design, and industry relations teams. Before Square, she spent more than 11 yrs at Amazon, elevating the company’s global credit, debit, prepaid, and cash payment acceptance, issuance, and gift card programs from back-office operations into simple strategic businesses that fueled innovation across the company. Before Amazon, she led global payments for Digital River, and supported enterprise software and data processing solutions. She holds a BA and Art from Saint Mary’s University of Minnesota degree.