Jennifer Upshaw is chief administrative officer for Pinnacle Financial Partners. She leads the firm’s human resources, marketing and communications teams. She also serves as the executive sponsor for the Integration Management Office, directing all integration efforts for the merger of Pinnacle and Synovus.
Prior to her current role, Upshaw served as the chief enablement officer at Synovus since 2024. She was appointed to chief of staff in May 2021.
Upshaw joined Synovus in 2003 as a management associate and served in branch banking leadership roles, leading key strategic initiatives, such as consumer lending centralization, execution of retail strategy and consolidation of 30 separate bank charters into a unified branding conversion. She was named chief retail banking officer in 2019, managing consumer and small business client segments, the branch network and product development. Upshaw was named group executive for marketing in 2017.
Upshaw is on the advisory boards of the Muscogee County Library Foundation, the National Infantry Museum and the Board of Water Commissions (Columbus, Georgia). She sits on the Piedmont Columbus Regional Hospital Board of Directors. Upshaw was an honoree of American Banker’s Most Powerful Women in Banking: NEXT for 2019 and participated in Leadership Georgia, class of 2020-2021.
Upshaw earned a Bachelor of Arts in finance from the University of Georgia.
Vivian Yeung is Executive Vice President and Chief Digital & Technology Officer at Fremont Bank, where she leads the bank’s digital, technology, information security, artificial intelligence, and enterprise transformation strategy. A member of the executive leadership team, she serves as a strategic advisor to the board of directors on innovation, emerging technologies, cybersecurity, and the future of financial services.
With more than 25 years of experience spanning banking, digital transformation, payments, and technology leadership, Yeung has held senior leadership roles at leading financial institutions, including Bank of the West and Wells Fargo. Throughout her career, she has led large-scale modernization initiatives that transformed customer experiences, advanced digital capabilities, strengthened security programs, and established scalable technology foundations to support long-term growth.
Yeung served on the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) Technology Modernization Subcommittee, advising on opportunities to modernize regulatory supervision and examination practices. In 2022, she was named one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times. She is also the executive sponsor of Fremont Bank’s Women’s Leadership Forum and has been a longstanding advocate for leadership development, mentorship, and the advancement of women in financial services.
Yeung holds a bachelor of science in Management Information Systems from the University of Southern California.
Michelle Moore is head of Digital, Data & Artificial Intelligence for Wells Fargo Consumer Banking and Lending.
In her role, Michelle leads the strategy, customer experience, and delivery of digital, data, analytics, and artificial intelligence capabilities for Consumer Banking and Lending and Wealth & Investment Management clients. Her team helps drive responsible growth and engagement by bringing together customer-centered digital experiences, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, data products, and governance to make banking simpler, smarter, and more intuitive for customers.
Michelle is a senior banking executive with more than 25 years of broad experience across major financial institutions and advisory organizations. Her experience spans digital banking, physical channels, contact center and ATM operations, fraud operations, product management, finance, and enterprise strategy, giving her a practical, end-to-end perspective on how banks operate, serve customers, and evolve through change.
Her work has earned industry recognition, including being named the 2017 Digital Banker of the Year by American Banker and one of the 2017 Innovators to Watch by BankInnovation.
A graduate of Cornell University, where she earned a Bachelor of Science in economics, Michelle also holds a Master of Business Administration in finance from the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business. She serves on the Board of Trustees at Davidson Day School, is an active volunteer with Young Men’s Service League, and is a nine-time marathon finisher.
L. Allison Dukes has served as Senior Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of Invesco Ltd (NYSE: IVZ) since 2020. In this role, she leads all global corporate finance functions, including strategic and financial planning, investor relations, corporate development, accounting, corporate tax, treasury, procurement, corporate services and global public policy.
Prior to joining Invesco, Ms. Dukes served as Chief Financial Officer of SunTrust Banks (now Truist Financial Corporation). Prior to becoming Chief Financial Officer, Ms. Dukes served in a series of leadership roles throughout her 20 years of service with SunTrust, including Head of Commercial & Business Banking, which included delivery of SunTrust’s investment banking and capital markets capabilities, President and Chief Executive Officer of the Atlanta Division of SunTrust, Co-Head of Private Wealth Management, and Head of Syndicated Finance Originations for SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
Ms. Dukes currently serves on the board of Haverty Furniture Companies, Inc. (NYSE: HVT) where she chairs the nominating, compensation and governance committee. Ms. Dukes also serves on the Board of Trustees for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, where she chairs the finance committee, the Board of Trustees for Emory University, the board of Junior Achievement of Georgia where she previously served as Board Chair from 2019 to 2021, and as a trustee for the John and Mary Franklin Foundation. Prior civic board service includes the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce Executive Board, the Atlanta History Center, the Alliance Theater at the Woodruff Arts Center, trustee of the Camp-Younts Foundation, trustee of the Pitts Foundation, and Chair of the SunTrust Trusteed Foundations.
Ms. Dukes earned a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Vanderbilt University and a Master of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Allison and her husband, Billy, are natives of Atlanta and have two sons.
Stephanie Richard is the chief risk officer of Ally Financial Inc. Appointed to the role in November 2024, Richard is responsible for overseeing the identification, assessment and management of risks across the organization and ensuring the company’s risk strategy supports business goals and objectives. She works closely with senior leadership to develop policies and frameworks to safeguard the company’s financial stability and reputation. Richard reports to the risk committee of the board of directors and to Ally’s CEO.
Since joining Ally in 1997, Richard has had a long and respected reputation with key stakeholders and helped design the company’s initial risk appetite framework and stress testing process. She has served in numerous roles with increasing levels of responsibility across finance, treasury and risk management. Since Ally became a bank holding company in 2008, she has played an integral part in many of the company’s transformation initiatives. Prior to her current role, Richard served as Ally’s chief audit executive where she led the internal audit function and had administrative oversight for the company’s loan review function. During that time, she established a strategic focus on the transformation of the internal audit function, with efforts on cultivating innovation and expanding the use of technology and data analytics.
Richard serves as a board member and treasurer for Dress for Success’s Charlotte chapter and as treasurer for Project Scientist, a leading STEAM education nonprofit organization. She is also a member of the advisory board for the Wake Forest University School of Professional Studies’ enterprise risk management program. Additionally, she previously served as president of Women Executives for Community Service (WECS), a non-profit organization whose mission is to provide support to women pursuing a degree through the Women Initiating and Nurturing Growth through Scholarships (WINGS) program.
In 2022, Richard was an honoree for Charlotte Business Journal’s Women in Business Achievement Awards. She holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Michigan State University and an MBA from Wayne State University.
Sandy Kaul is the Head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton. Her team focuses on how disruptive technologies and innovation are reshaping the trajectory of asset and wealth management and how Franklin Templeton, our clients and our partners evolve their offerings to realize the benefits of new capabilities. Efforts span the enhancement of existing products and services, the creation of new offerings, and the deployment of emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and digital assets.
Sandy and the team draw on a combination of proprietary industry surveys, a network of fintech investors and vendors, leading industry experts and regulators, and world-class technologists to create and deliver their industry views, advice and expertise. Her work covers the breadth of how investment portfolios, products, investment strategies, services, and customer engagement are evolving. Sandy is the co-chair of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission’s Digital Asset Subcommittee and is on the World Economic Forum Digital Assets Advisory Board and the DTCC’s Digital Asset Advisory Board. She is a frequent speaker at industry conferences, events, podcasts, and webinars and is a sought-after source of information and advice for senior industry leaders.
Prior to joining Franklin Templeton, Sandy had created and built out the Business Advisory Services team over a 12-year period with Citi Global Markets and within Citi Wealth Management. Earlier in her career, Sandy worked on the sell-side as a futures research analyst at Shearson Lehman Brothers, on the buy-side as a portfolio manager at Commodities Corporation/Goldman Sachs Asset Management and as a program manager at J.P. Morgan Private Bank. Sandy additionally has a background in consulting, leading the introduction of web-based capabilities into the institutional financial services space via her work with the innovative technology start-up firm Scient during the Dot.Com era and then with capital markets niche specialty consulting firm m.a.partners in the mid-2000s.
Sandy graduated with a major in History and a minor in Political Science from Colgate University. She actively supports the STEM-focused Young Women’s Leadership School in the Bronx, NY that seeks to improve educational opportunities for women in underserved communities.
Markie Wagner is the founder and CEO of Poetic, an AI system that learns and executes complex processes with over 99% accuracy while using 10x fewer tokens than traditional agents. Poetic runs high-stakes processes for top-10 banks, insurance companies, and pharmaceutical firms.
Prior to Poetic, Markie dropped out of Standford to run Delphi Labs, an applied AI research and consulting firm. Previously, she was a researcher and engineer at Google, Waymo, and Standford. She is a Thiel Fellow and attended Stanford University.
Shellie Creson is Executive Vice President and Chief Risk Officer of Pinnacle Financial Partners, having joined the firm in conjunction with the recent merger of Pinnacle and Synovus Financial Corp, which was completed in early 2026. This merger formed the preeminent, Southeast growth champion bank, with $115 billion in assets.
In this role, Shellie oversees the firm’s enterprise risk management and all corporate risk functions. She leads corporate risk management strategy, continuing to transform, strengthen, and sustain the company’s risk culture. She is the executive sponsor and responsible for the firm’s Large Bank Advancement program, insuring compliance with regulatory capital and liquidity standards of a Category IV bank which are new to the firm. She provides overall leadership, vision, and direction for enterprise risk management, including credit, compliance, market and liquidity, third-party risk, operational, credit review and model risk management.
Shellie is the executive sponsor and dean of Pinnacle’s Connect Leadership Program, the ultimate leadership development tool for next generation c-suite development. A believer that a strong, diverse workforce makes the firm even stronger, she also serves as executives sponsor for Pinnacle’s enterprise resource group, PRISM.
Shellie joined Synovus in 2022. She was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Audit Executive at Fifth Third Bank, which she joined in 2017. Prior to joining Fifth Third, Creson was with Regions Financial for 10 years where she served in leadership positions in strategic and corporate planning, audit, and finance.
Beth Mikes is Head of Debt Capital Markets at KeyBanc Capital Markets, where she leads six divisions responsible for originating, structuring, underwriting, pricing, and managing debt solutions across the credit spectrum. Her teams deliver syndicated loans, private placements, investment‑grade and high‑yield bonds, and Unitranche financing, supporting Key’s Institutional Bank, Middle Market franchise, and Real Estate Capital business. The groups she oversees include Syndicated and Leveraged Finance, Real Estate Syndications, Loan Syndicate & Sales, High Grade/High Yield Capital Markets, Banking Group Portfolio Management, and the Unitranche joint venture.
Beth began her career at Key in 1996 in Corporate Banking Finance and joined Syndicated Finance in 1998, where she structured and originated debt transactions across the Energy (utilities, renewables, oil and gas), Consumer, and Industrial sectors. She has also covered Middle Market and Native American Financial Services and has experience in commercial real estate loan structuring and distribution. During six years in Seattle, she built the syndication platform for Technology, Diversified, and Middle Market clients before returning to Cleveland in 2006. Her leadership roles have included ABL Originations and integrating Corporate Syndication and Leveraged Finance into an industry-aligned model. She was named Head of Debt Capital Markets in 2023.
Beth serves on KeyCorp’s Executive Council and multiple risk and credit committees, including chairing the Debt Capital Markets Distribution Risk Committee. She is also a Director of the Miami University Foundation, serving on the Investment Committee and chairing the Audit and Finance Committee. Beth holds a BA from Miami University, an MBA from Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, and FINRA Series 24, 7, and 63 licenses.