#OfficeHours: Level39’s dream team mentor Boston’s best
30th September 2014

Level39’s Office Hours mentoring has gone on the road again, this time in partnership with Innotribe, to SIBOS 2014 in Boston.
The programme is designed to give finalists of the Innotribe StartUp Challenge, and other early stage entrepreneurs attending the conference, the opportunity to receive coaching from elite technology entrepreneurs, investors and advisors.
You can keep up with everything going on in Boston on the #OfficeHours hashtag, as Team39er Adizah Tejani is tweeting live from Boston on the @Level39CW feed.
A selection of Level39 & Innotribe’s dream team are listed below:
Fabian Vandenreydt, Head of Markets Management, Innotribe and the SWIFT Institute –@FVandenreydt
Fabian Vandenreydt is a Director at SWIFT with more than 15 years’ experience in the financial services industry. His team manages traffic development of the core messaging businesses while bringing together Securities, Banking & Treasury Market Management under a single umbrella. His role is to develop and maintain a consistent value proposition for SWIFT’s major customer segments across businesses. He is also responsible for thought-leadership in SWIFT’s strategic markets, including the management of the SWIFT Institute. He is also in charge of Innotribe, SWIFT’s innovation initiative, that bridges the gap between the innovation ecosystem, including the fintech startups, and the financial community.
Matteo Rizzi,General Partner, SBT Venture Capital- @matteorizzi
Matteo is an Entrepreneur in the 2.0 space, He founded the biggest expat Italian social network in 2003 and co-founded Innotribe in 2009; the Innovation shared utility for SWIFT. In 2007 Matteo created www.swiftcommunity.net, the collaborative platform for the SWIFT eco-system.
Gautam Jain, Managing Director and Global head of Client Access, Standard Chartered Bank – @gautamthejain
Mr. Gautam Jain has been Global Head of Client Access for Transaction Banking at Standard Chartered PLC since September 2011. Mr. Jain is responsible for driving Standard Chartered Bank’s client access strategy. He also leads the Channel Management and Network Management teams and works with the Transaction Banking services and solution delivery teams. He has held various leadership positions with HSBC and Citibank. He has over 17 years of experience in managing technology, business and audit functions including product and programme management as well as large multi-cultural teams and end users.
Nicholas Brewer, Director, Product Strategy – Banking, Misys – @nickb101
Nicholas is responsible for the medium and long term direction for Misys’s portfolio of banking products. He is mainly focused on understanding how banks’ commercial and technology related needs are evolving, and in developing plans for Misys to continue to serve these changing requirements. He covers Transaction Banking, Retail and Core Banking and Corporate Lending. Nicholas joined Misys in May 2013, having previously worked at Aite Group as an analyst covering Banking and Technology. Prior to working in the technology sector, Nicholas worked primarily for banks and financial firms for approximately 10 years in a variety of financial and control roles in London and the Middle East.
Adam Shapiro, Director, Promontory Financial Group LLC
Adam helps banks, money-services businesses, and financial technology companies with compliance, risk management, regulatory, and governance issues. He is Promontory’s West Coast anti-money-laundering lead and an expert on payments innovation. He draws on more than seven years of experience with Promontory, as well as on deep regulatory understanding from a variety of roles at the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority.
Nektarios Liolios, Managing Director, Startupbootcamp Fintech – @nekliolios
Startupbootcamp Fintech, is a leading innovation program in the financial industry. Nektarios provides funding, mentorship and office space in the heart of London and access to a global network of investors and VC’s, for up to 10 selected Fintech startups. Nektarios is motivated by entrepreneurship, collaboration and the desire to change financial industry.
Kevin Pleiter, Vice President, Financial and Business Services, Dassault Systemes- @Kpleiter3DS
Kevin is a proven leader with extensive global experience who excels in creating and energizing the growth of financial services businesses. Kevin has a strong track record of achievement across the globe spanning London, Toronto, Boston, Sydney, Tokyo, New York and currently Paris. Over his career Kevin has evolved into a fintech entrepreneur delivering success by creating and nurturing amazing teams and simplifying what is required to create or turn around, but ultimately build a profitable business. At the core of this success is the imagination and courage to take calculated risks on both people and ideas to achieve businesses results that exceed expectations.
Adam Moulson, Key Client Director, SWIFT – @ADMOU
A senior sales and marketing professional with 17-years’ experience in financial services and software. His strong communication skills drive to succeed make Adam one of the most prominent figures for the Fintech revolution. His special interest includes youth development and age diversity across businesses, connecting people across generations, collaborating, sharing and learning from each other’s experiences.
Dr Mircea Mihaescu, General Partner, SBT Venture Capital Meet – @MirceaMihaescu
Dr. Mihaescu manages a $100m fintech venture investment fund, investing world-wide in the most promising start-ups of the financial industry. Previously, he was a Director of IT Strategy and Director of the Technology Research Center at Sberbank; responsible for the bank’s long term IT roadmap and technology innovation pilots. Before joining Sberbank he was Director, CIO Lab Enterprise Agility at IBM, where he led internal innovation projects in social computing, cyber security and business process management.
Dave Birch, Director, Consult Hyperion – @dgwbirch
Dave is an internationally-recognised thought leader in digital money and digital identity. One of the 2014 “Power 50” in European digital financial services and a NextBank Fintech “titan”. Furthermore in 2013 he was named one of WIRED magazine’s global top 15 favourite sources of news from the world of business and finance and was ranked the no.1 influencer in European emerging payments by Total Payments magazine. Dave is a Director of Consult Hyperion, the technical and strategic consultancy that specialises in electronic transactions.
Claire Cockerton, CEO & Founding Director, Innovate Finance – @clairecockerton
Claire Cockerton is a serial entrepreneur; currently CEO of ‘Pivotal Innovations’ and also consulting to the Canary Wharf Group as Head of Innovation Programmes at ‘Level39’, Europe’s largest technology accelerator for financial, retail & future cities technology businesses. An Imperial College MBA alumni, specialising in Innovation, Entrepreneurship and Design, Claire designed the business incubation strategy for Richard Branson’s ‘Centre for Entrepreneurship’, and has also generated business innovation models, advised on commercial agility in digital media and created go-to-market plans for high-tech engineering laboratories.
John Mitchell, CEO, Sell IT Better – @sellITbetter
John Mitchell left RBS to create Sell IT Better having recognised a huge need for IT software & services companies to significantly improve the way in which they communicate to their potential customers. Prior to Sell IT Better, John has been a buyer, and accumulated decades of experience in IT and Financial Services.
Dušan Stojanovic, Founder, True Global Ventures – @stojanovicdusan
Dušan was recognised as Business Angel of the Year in Europe in 2013 by EBAN (European Business Angel Network). He was also nominated as one of four Business Angels of the Year in Europe 2009 by EBAN. He has worked for more than 20 years within Business Development primarily in e-payments, e-commerce and financial services. Half of the time he has spent at GE Capital and Monabanq.com and the rest with his own ventures and investments. Dušan has a strong international network based primarily in Stockholm, Paris, Berlin, New York, Silicon Valley, Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Has learnt 6 languages and as many cultures and working habits. He has a portfolio of a total of 25 investments.
Markus Melching, Head of Banking Operations, Swisscom
Dr. Markus Melching is responsible for operations in the management of Swisscom ITS Banking Services and as chief executive of Swisscom IT Services Sourcing he is responsible for the all of the operations of the company. Operations includes payment transactions, securities operations, securities master data management, records management and the business excellence unit, which are all processed in the Avaloq and Finnova systems. Prior to joining Swisscom he set up a company in the United Emirates and held various management positions in the private banks.