Banking on Data: Great Possibilities, Great Responsibilities

Sultan Meghji was named Chief Innovation Officer of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) in February 2021. Prior to joining the FDIC, Mr. Meghji co-founded a financial technology firm providing secure, cloud-native, artificial intelligence-based software for community banks and credit unions. In addition, he worked on an aid mission to help implement digital banking in Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda, and worked with fintechs and central banks to create peer-to-peer banking solutions for hundreds of thousands of people in underserved areas of Africa and Central Asia. Mr. Meghji is a nonresident scholar in the Cyber Policy Initiative at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. His research focuses on the architecture of the global financial system, cyber and critical infrastructure security, and the impact of artificial intelligence and quantum computing. He is also an adjunct professor at Washington University’s Olin Business School, and a distinguished member of the Bretton Woods Committee and the Missouri Advisory Committee for the U.S. Global Leadership Coalition. Mr. Meghji has served as an advisor to the U.S. Treasury, the Group of Seven (G7), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the areas of cybersecurity, quantum computing, and artificial intelligence.

Jo Ann Barefoot is CEO & Cofounder of the Alliance for Innovative Regulation, host of the global podcast show Barefoot Innovation, and Senior Fellow Emerita at the Harvard University Kennedy School Center for Business & Government. She has been Deputy Comptroller of the Currency, partner at KPMG, Co-Chairman of Treliant Risk Advisors, and a staff member at the U.S. Senate Banking Committee. She serves on the board of Oportun; on the fintech advisory committee of FINRA; on the California Blockchain Working Group Advisory Board; and on the Milken Institute U.S. FinTech Advisory Committee. She is Cofounder of Hummingbird RegTech.

Previously, Jo Ann served on the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board and chaired the board of the Financial Health Network. She now serves on the boards of FinRegLab and the National Foundation for Credit Counseling. She has published nearly 200 articles and is a popular keynote speaker, addressing thousands of people annually throughout the world.

Jo Ann was named Fintech Woman of the Year in 2021 by Finovate and selected to the Forbes list of 50 Over 50. The prior year she was inducted into the Fintech Hall of Fame by CB Insights. In 2021, AIR was honored in Fast Company's World-Changing Ideas awards.

Cary Coglianese specializes in the study of administrative law and regulatory processes, with an emphasis on the empirical evaluation of alternative processes and strategies and the role of public participation, technology, and business-government relations in policy-making.

His books include Achieving Regulatory Excellence (Brookings Institution Press, 2016); Does Regulation Kill Jobs? (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014); Regulatory Breakdown: The Crisis of Confidence of US Regulation (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012); Import Safety: Regulatory Governance in the Global Economy (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009); Regulation and Regulatory Processes (Ashgate, 2007); and Leveraging the Private Sector: Management-Based Strategies for Improving Environmental Performance (Routledge, 2006).

He has also recently written on climate change policy, public participation and transparency in federal rulemaking, the use of artificial intelligence by government agencies, and voluntary environmental programs. Coglianese was a founding editor of the peer-reviewed journal Regulation & Governance, and he founded and continues to serve as advisor to The Regulatory Review.

Matt Homer is currently Executive in Residence at Nyca where he is helping them develop their investment strategy for the cryptoeconomy. Prior to joining Nyca, Matt was the first-ever Executive Deputy Superintendent for Research & Innovation at the New York Department of Financial Services. There he oversaw the Department's licensing and supervision of crypto currency companies as well as strategic efforts related to fintech, insurtech, and regtech more broadly. He previously worked for Plaid and Quovo and has served as an advisor on fintech and financial inclusion for USAID, the World Bank, the United Nations, Aspen Institute, and the Cambridge Center for Alternative Finance. Matt received his bachelor's degree in economics from the University of Utah and an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School.