In|Vest 2018 Direct

Sara Perez is Executive Vice President at EIS. With over 25 years of B2B technology experience, Sara has a distinguished track record of driving growth and innovation through strategic marketing. Her career encompasses diverse roles in both regional and global capacities, working with companies in both SaaS and traditional technology, ranging from agile start-ups to multibillion-dollar enterprises.

Before joining EIS, Sara held senior leadership roles at Business Objects (SAP), Genesys, VMware, and Schneider Electric, consistently combining strategic vision with operational execution to deliver measurable business impact.

Emily Wilson is a Director at Alpha FMC, a leading global consultancy to the asset and wealth management industry. She advises leading asset and wealth management firms on investment strategy, portfolio construction, and operational transformation. Prior to joining Alpha, Emily spent over 16 years at Wellington Management, where she served as Managing Director overseeing investment platform technology, data strategy, and business management across more than $1 trillion in assets. 

U.S. banks must navigate conflicting signals as Iran's crypto toll demands and rising pig butchering scams exploit the same stablecoin and correspondent banking rails.

The RTP rail joins FedNow and digital asset firms in the quest to add speed for cross-border settlement.

Slash Financial, a fintech originally founded for sneaker resellers, closed a Series C funding round and launched an AI assistant for digital-native business customers.

Mitch Cohen is the founder of ClearLine, an AI-powered crisis communications platform for mid-market organizations.

The challenge for banks is not whether to adopt AI but how to do so with discipline, judgment and a clear understanding of its limits. The history of technology firms overpromising is extensive in the banking industry.

Sean Woodward is a managing director at VRC specializing in business enterprise valuations, purchase price allocations (ASC 805), impairment analyses (ASC 350), intellectual property valuations, contingent consideration valuations, and the valuation of equity (IRC 409A and ASC 718) for financial and tax reporting purposes.

Ed Hamilton, CFA, is a managing director at VRC specializing in the valuation of businesses and assets and liabilities for financial reporting purposes — in particular, the valuation of intellectual property/intangible assets such as trademarks, technology, software, customer relationships and IPR&D.

The government's real-time rail, which had a banner year in 2025, has proposed a way for its members to access settlements for payments that include a party that's outside of the U.S. Payment experts say it removes some of the mud from cross-border real-time payments, but lingering hurdles remain.