Enabling Business Transformation Via AI

As Managing Director in the Integration Management Office at Charles Schwab, James is responsible for leading the conversion of TD Ameritrade accounts to Schwab.  In the Integration Management Office, James partners across all corporate areas, business lines and support functions to deliver the necessary projects, processes, and platforms in support of the Integration of the two firms. Previously, Kostulias was the Head of Retail Experience at TD Ameritrade, where he was responsible for the execution of the firm’s Retail Strategy, Client Experience, Digital Platforms, Learning and Development, Client Segmentation and LEAN Strategy. Prior to that, he served as Head of eCommerce, leading the digital strategy for web, mobile, social media, market data, and research, after holding TD Ameritrade’s Chief Information Officer position overseeing technology relationship management and project delivery for all business units.

Kostulias has more than 25 years of experience in the financial services industry and has spent more than 19 of those years with TD Ameritrade/Charles Schwab across their Retail, Technology, and Active Trader businesses. He’s held a variety of leadership roles within the organization, including leading the TD Ameritrade and Scottrade Integration where he was responsible for all aspects of integration planning, strategy and execution, balancing four million client accounts to the penny.  Prior to joining TD Ameritrade, Kostulias was with Datek Online where he held a variety of Operational Management Positions and with Moody’s Investor Services, where he designed and implemented a Global Senior Credit Analyst Professional Development Training Program.

Kostulias was the President of the Wall Street Technology Association from 2016-2022, previously sat on the FINRA Technology Advisory Committee, and is a graduate of the SIFMA Securities Institute Program at Wharton. Kostulias holds a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from Rutgers University and Series 4, 7, 24 and 63, licenses.

John Burke is CTO with Nemertes Research. He conducts and analyzes primary research in, and advises key enterprise and vendor clients on, hybrid cloud, software-defined networking including SD-WAN, automation, and DevOps. As a research analyst and consultant, he draws on his 30 years of experience as a practitioner and leader in IT to better understand the needs of IT executives and the challenges facing vendors trying to sell to them. His experience has given him broad and deep knowledge in computing, communications, and IT management. Mr. Burke holds an MA in the history of science and a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, both from The Johns Hopkins University. His interests include baking, birding, and beer.

Many businesses struggle and fail to adequately prepare themselves for production use of LLMs. They have minimal policy around it, and for most, what policy they have is either unenforced or unenforceable. They have also failed to adequately adapt their existing processes in areas like data management and communications logging to the use of the AI tools, in a global environment in which the legal framework around AI gets more complex every few months, thanks to everything from the Biden executive orders on AI to the EU AI Act. As a result, they leave themselves open to greater risks of compliance failures, data breaches, and other actionable failures or mistakes.

Join Nemertes’ John Burke as he explores both the kinds of policies and processes financial services firms should have in place around AI use to maximize utility at acceptable risk levels, and the kinds of tooling they should be exploring to make those policies not just enforceable but enforced and auditable.

Lou Bachenheimer, PhD is the CTO of Americas at SS&C Blue Prism, where automation and transformation has become a passion. Before joining Blue Prism, Lou was a Senior Client Technical Specialist for IBM Watson and Cloud Platform where he was distinguished as an IBM Recognized Speaker. Lou earned his PhD in computational nanotechnology from the University of Connecticut and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in robotics and mechanical engineering. Outside of work, he enjoys playing Warhammer 40k and reading Brandon Sanderson. Dr. Lou Bachenheimer lives in Connecticut with his wife Kelley and their two children..

Rob is a seasoned Pre-Sales Archite specializing in Business Process Management (BPM), DevOps, RPA, and IDP platforms. With 15+ years of experience at firms like IBM, Kofax, Ayasdi, and CognitiveScale, he is a trusted advisor known for driving business value and achieving client goals. At SS&C Blue Prism, Rob pioneered industry-focused frameworks for insurance investment accounting and loan management, showcasing his innovative approach. Rob now leads the strategic industry and x-sell team at SS&C Blue Prism.

During this presentation, we will share our philosophy for how to pair the strategic use of AI with Agentic Automation, practical advice for how to deploy these technologies at scale, and examples from our own internal transformation journey.

Heath Newburn is PagerDuty’s Global Field CTO. He works with clients on integrating their strategic capabilities with PagerDuty’s solutions to create new business outcomes. Heath has a long history in technology, coming from the labs at IBM and has been in software development, QA, product management, support, and operations. He was a technical lead in operations on the Iridium satellite program at Motorola. Heath was the product manager for IBM Tivoli Monitoring, ran the Netcool product management, and was the NA Sales CTO for IBM’s Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure. Heath has four adult sons and lives in Georgetown, TX with his wife and spends his time outside of tech making and finding great BBQ.

In an era where AI dominates discussions, organizations continue to face challenges in delivering world-class IT services. The rapidly evolving technical landscape, heightened customer expectations, and recent global outages have left IT teams on the back foot. This session will explore how to establish an operational platform that optimizes both current strategic and legacy assets, enabling organizations to leverage people, processes, AI, and automation effectively. By focusing on enhancing existing systems, IT Ops can drive efficiency and innovation, ultimately delivering exceptional services to employees, customers, and stakeholders. 

Tom Batchelor is a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years of experience in the IT and software industries. Currently leading strategic initiatives at Observe Inc., Tom focuses on empowering businesses through AI-driven observability solutions that drive innovation and efficiency. With a deep understanding of enterprise challenges, he has been instrumental in helping organizations optimize operations and embrace digital transformation. Tom’s extensive expertise in AI, observability, and IT operations has positioned him as a thought leader, dedicated to guiding financial services firms in leveraging cutting-edge technologies to navigate today’s complex business landscape.

In “AI-Driven Incident Resolution: Practical Approaches for Faster MTTR,” discover how AI can streamline operations by automating investigations and minimizing downtime. This session will highlight real-world examples, showing how AI tools can boost system reliability and improve customer satisfaction. Attendees will gain actionable insights on troubleshooting applications and infrastructure more effectively, accelerating incident resolution.

Dr. Kjell Carlsson is the head of data science strategy and evangelism at Domino Data Lab where he advises organizations on how to drive business outcomes with artificial intelligence (AI) and data science. Previously, he covered AI, ML, and data science as a Principal Analyst at Forrester Research where he wrote reports on topics ranging from computer vision, MLOps, AutoML, and conversation intelligence to augmented intelligence, next-generation AI technologies, and data science best practices. He has spoken in countless keynotes, panels, and webinars, and is frequently quoted in the media. Carlsson received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from the Harvard Business School.

Effective AI governance remains one of the biggest hurdles to realizing the full potential of ML and Generative AI, and it is particularly urgent thanks to increasing regulatory activity at the state and federal level. While governance frameworks exist, they fail to connect high-level principles with the practical actions needed to manage risk effectively across the AI lifecycle. The result is increased risks, stalled projects, and missed opportunities for impact. In this session Dr. Kjell Carlsson will discuss how firms can bridge the governance gap, assess their governance maturity, and build scalable capabilities that ensure trust, legal compliance, and accelerate AI adoption.

Gary Smith is an Executive Managing Director of
KnowledgeLake, where he leads the company’s efforts in providing innovative AI automation and Synthetic Labor™ solutions. With over three decades of experience in full-scale enterprise automation, Gary is committed to driving business efficiency and growth through cutting-edge technology. Gary has worked with dozens of companies to solve high-volume operational challenges and increase productivity. 

Join Gary Smith, Executive Managing Director of Sales at KnowledgeLake, for an in-depth webinar that delves into the rapidly evolving landscape of financial services. While most financial institutions have mastered the technological side, they now face an urgent labor problem that affects their core operations, from efficiency ratios to share prices and lending capabilities.

In this webinar, Gary will discuss how labor shortages are impacting banks’ abilities to borrow and lend at preferred rates and how the rise of FinTechs is creating fierce competition by targeting traditional banks from the bottom up. He will also explore how improving customer experience and operational efficiency with the use of Synthetic Labor can help banks remain competitive in this new era of financial services.

Learn how AI-powered solutions can solve labor challenges, enhance your customer experience, and position your organization to thrive in a highly competitive landscape.

Don’t miss this opportunity to gain critical insights into the future of financial services!

This panel of industry all-stars shares their insight and wisdom on strategies and tactics that actually work when it comes to AI implementation, management, value realization, and governance.

John Burke is CTO with Nemertes Research. He conducts and analyzes primary research in, and advises key enterprise and vendor clients on, hybrid cloud, software-defined networking including SD-WAN, automation, and DevOps. As a research analyst and consultant, he draws on his 30 years of experience as a practitioner and leader in IT to better understand the needs of IT executives and the challenges facing vendors trying to sell to them. His experience has given him broad and deep knowledge in computing, communications, and IT management. Mr. Burke holds an MA in the history of science and a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, both from The Johns Hopkins University. His interests include baking, birding, and beer.

Joe is the Chief Data & Analytics Officer for Wealth Management Americas. In this capacity, he is responsible creating business value from our data and analytics assets which includes responsibility for our data platforms, data management office, regulatory reporting, MIS, and advanced analytics / STAAT.

He joined UBS Global Research in 2014 as the Head of Client Analytics & CRM before becoming CTO of UBS Evidence Lab.

Joe earned his Computer Science degree from NYU Tandon School of Engineering and holds an MBA from NYU Stern. Prior to joining UBS, Joe led Analytics and CRM related technology areas at Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch.

John has extensive experience as a consultant, developer, and designer at the intersection of financial services, technology, and analytics. They joined Dataiku as Global Director of Solutions for Financial Services and Insurance to ensure the firm offers powerful solutions and deep empathy to all our clients, allowing us to operate as thought partners.

Steve Ross is a director of cybersecurity and the Head of Business Development for S-RM, a global cybersecurity and corporate intelligence consultancy. Steve started in special operations signals intelligence with the United States Marine Corps before transitioning to private sector cybersecurity and data privacy consulting. Steve specializes in enterprise cyber incident response and governance, risk, and compliance (GRC), and has served in such roles with PwC and Verizon before moving to S-RM. Steve is based in Southern California.

Prashant Shah is head of Architecture, Engineering & Modernization for J.P. Morgan Wealth Management and a member of J.P. Morgan Wealth Management Technology’s leadership team. In addition to his architectural and engineering oversight, Prashant manages teams driving the organization’s shift-left initiatives, modernization office, release engineering and cloud nerve center. As a high performing leader, architect and strategist, he leads product, technology and architecture groups to deliver large scale programs in support of consumer and client-facing wealth management digital solutions. Prashant has spent his career designing large scale distributed platforms within organizational boundaries and culture, and has worked for companies including Deloitte Digital, Credit Suisse, Prudential Financial and UBS.