Margaret Isa Butler leads BakerHostetler’s Financial Services Industry Team, with a practice at the intersection of traditional finance and fintech.

Margaret has been counseling senior leaders in the banking and technology sectors and driving deals for more than two decades, as a partner at an Am Law 100 law firm and as an investment banker. Her focus is on transformational transactions, including M&A, joint ventures, and alternative investments. She also co-founded a blockchain business with a mission to empower consumers by giving them easy access to decentralized finance.

BakerHostetler’s Financial Services Industry Team also advises clients on litigation and enforcement proceedings and assists with compliance, licensing, and the design and rollout of financial products.
Margaret has an MBA from Columbia Business School, a JD from Columbia Law School, and an AB from Harvard University. She is an appointed member of the M&A Committee of the New York City Bar Association. Her writing has been published in The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

Lauren Sullivan Bowes is Head of Sales for Banking and Wealth at Plaid, where she leads go-to-market strategy and partnerships with banks, credit unions, and wealth firms across the U.S. and Canada. Before joining Plaid, she held sales and business development leadership roles at Box and Oracle, supporting digital transformation initiatives in financial services. Lauren brings a practical, front-line perspective on how financial institutions are leveraging technology to strengthen fraud defenses and improve customer experience. 

Amanda has spent nearly 20 years at PwC, where she currently serves as leader of the firm’s Financial Services Risk and Regulatory team and, a Lead Client Partner on a global Financial Services client, and a member of the PwC US Board of Partners and Principals. She has spent her career serving the Financial Services industry on regulatory risk and compliance matters, including serving as a Bank Examiner at the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. In her free time, Amanda enjoys exercising, spending time with her family and investing in real estate.

Carolyn Weinberg is the Chief Product & Innovation Officer at BNY and a member of the company’s Executive Committee.

Prior to joining BNY, Carolyn served as Chief Product Innovation Officer of BlackRock, where she was responsible for driving the product innovation, development, and commercialization of products globally for the world’s largest asset manager. Carolyn and her teams mobilized the firm to build new product lines, forge strategic partnerships, and create thought leadership in support of BlackRock’s growth priorities such as digital assets, fixed income, transition finance and private markets.

Earlier in her career at BlackRock, Carolyn was Global Head of Product, iShares and Index Investments and drove the product strategy, development, and commercialization globally. In this role, she was instrumental in driving BlackRock’s growth in fixed income ETFs and sustainable indexing. She also grew strategic long-term partnerships, envisioned and created a sustainable index research team, and conceived and built new data and trading ventures.

She has four times been included on Barron’s list of “100 Most Influential Women in U.S. Finance.”
Before joining BlackRock in 2018, Carolyn created structured derivatives solutions for corporations at Citibank, where she was Head of the North America Corporate Solutions Group. Previously, she was Deutsche Bank’s Head of Risk Solutions Structuring, a member of Morgan Stanley’s Corporate Derivatives Group, and a consultant at McKinsey & Company.

Carolyn graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in applied mathematics and earned an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Carolyn lives in New York City with her family and dog Gus, a Lagotto Romagnolo. She is an Executive Fellow at Harvard Business School. Carolyn also serves on the Board of The Allen-Stevenson School, on the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Harvard Radcliffe Institute, and as an Ambassador of the Board of the US Ski and Snowboard Foundation.

Daniel Wolfe is director of data services at Arizent, which publishes American Banker. In this role he manages the company’s editorial use of automation and AI, with the mission of expanding quality data journalism and products across all brands.

Previously Daniel headed American Banker’s payments and credit union coverage, and before that he was editor-in-chief of PaymentsSource, a sister publication that combined with American Banker in 2021. Prior to that, Daniel held roles at American Banker including tech and risk management editor; technology, cards and payments editor; and technology reporter. Throughout his career, Daniel has taken a central role in hosting leading industry conferences including Payments Forum, Card Forum and PayThink. He has appeared on Yahoo! Finance and received the American Society of Business Publication Editors’ national silver award for sustainability reporting in 2024 for his coverage of the credit card industry’s environmental impact.

He has a master’s degree in print journalism from Boston University’s College of Communication and a bachelor’s degree in English from SUNY Binghamton.

As a Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer of Unique, I lead our vision to redefine financial services through advanced generative AI solutions. I bring extensive experience in building and scaling digital products that anticipate market needs and prioritize user impact. My role focuses on steering product development, from in-depth market analysis to driving adoption across our financial service clients.

With a track record in successful partnerships and user-centric strategy, I’m committed to shaping the future of financial technology by making AI accessible and transformative for our clients. If you’re interested in AI in finance, innovative partnerships, or exploring synergies, let’s connect!

Pooja Daswani is a seasoned financial services executive with over 20 years of experience
driving operational excellence and digital transformation across banking and wealth
management. She is currently a General Partner at Edward Jones, where she leads Branch
Operations and is a member of the firm’s Operating Committee. In this role, Pooja oversees
the firm’s real estate network of 16,000+ branches, virtual advisor channel, remote staffing
solutions, retirement and asset transition programs, and the evolution of the firm’s teaming
strategies. Pooja also serves on the Advisory Board of the Wharton School’s AI and
Analytics Initiative at the University of Pennsylvania.

Prior to Edward Jones, Pooja held senior leadership roles at Citigroup for over a decade. As
Chief Operating Officer of the U.S. Consumer Bank, a ~$18 billion business with more than
40,000 employees, she led operations across Retail, Wealth, and Cards, delivering cost
efficiencies and spearheading critical regulatory and digital initiatives. Her earlier roles at Citi
included leading Client Experience for global institutional businesses and serving in the
Productivity Office, where she advised the executive team on strategy and performance
improvement. In recognition of her impact, she was named to the Institute of International
Finance’s Future Leaders Class of 2018.

Pooja began her career at Deloitte, consulting global financial institutions on infrastructure and
technology modernization, and later led consulting teams at Google, specializing in display
advertising operations. She holds an MBA in Finance from the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania and an MS in Information Technology from Rensselaer
Polytechnic Institute.

Ladan Stewart is the Global Head of Fintech and a Partner in the Firm’s Global White Collar / Investigations Practice, where she focuses on SEC and other regulatory enforcement matters, white collar investigations, civil litigation, and trials. Ladan regularly advises financial institutions, asset managers, fintechs, crypto projects, and others on a range of regulatory and compliance issues. She represents companies and individuals in connection with enforcement matters before various regulatory bodies, including the SEC, CFTC, DOJ, and FINRA, as well as in internal investigations and securities and other civil litigation.

Before joining White & Case, Ladan served for over 8 years in the Division of Enforcement of the SEC, most recently as Assistant Director and Regional Trial Counsel heading the SEC’s crypto and cyber litigation team. Ladan litigated the SEC’s most complex and programmatically important crypto enforcement matters, including against Ripple and Coinbase. She also investigated and litigated a broad range of potential securities law violations, including insider trading and disclosure violations.
Ladan is committed to pro bono work and community service, and sits on the Board of Directors of Sanctuary for Families. Ladan earned her bachelor’s degree from the University of Toronto and her J.D. from Columbia Law School.