Keynote Speaker

James Akin, NCCO, APRP / Head of Regulatory Advocacy, America’s Credit Union

James Akin oversees America’s Credit Unions’ advocacy on regulatory developments from federal agencies, including the National Credit Union Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and the Small Business Administration. Akin is the association’s primary subject matter expert on consumer protection issues and supports the association with expert legal guidance on topics like fees, payday, student, and auto lending, the FCRA, UDAAP, and more. Akin leads a team responding on behalf of the credit union industry to proposed regulations and information-gathering notices, advising on legislative changes, and serving as a liaisons between the industry and the executive agencies. Akin previously served in policy and engagement roles in the Federal Government including the White House and Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Sohini Chowdhury, PhD, FRM / Senior Director, Moody’s Analytics

Sohini Chowdhury is a Senior Director with Moody’s Analytics. She specializes in applying macroeconomic forecasts, scenarios, and models in different industries such as banking, insurance, government, and asset management. These applications include stress testing such as CCAR/DFAST and ORSA, impairment accounting such as CECL/IFRS9, and asset allocation. She also works on incorporating climate scenarios and ESG metrics in underwriting and portfolio management. Previously, she led the global team responsible for the Moody’s Analytics market risk forecasts and modeling services while managing custom scenarios projects for major financial institutions worldwide.

An experienced speaker, Sohini often presents at global industry conferences, roundtables and client meetings on topics such as the global and regional macroeconomic outlook and risks, and industry best practices for managing credit and market risks, portfolio modeling and meeting regulatory mandates. Sohini holds a PhD and a master’s degree in economics from Purdue University, and a master’s degree in applied statistics from West Chester University in Pennsylvania. She is a GARP® certified Financial Risk Manager (FRM) and has been working at Moody’s Analytics since 2011.

Peter Duffy Nationally Recognized Industry Analysts and Advisor To Credit Unions and Their Boards.

Peter Duffy works with senior management and boards of credit unions to understand key consumer, industry and regulatory trends and assist in developing plans for growth and strategic alliances. Advisory includes helping boards and their senior leaders in their preparation for the change needed to sustain top performance for members.

Previously, Duffy was a managing director at both PiperSandler and Sandler O’Neill + Partners, L.P. He joined the firm in 2004 as an associate director and moved to the managing director position in 2006.

Duffy is a 1977 graduate of Texas Christian University with a bachelor’s degree in business management

Art Sookazian / President of National Credit Union Collections Alliance (NCUCA)

Art Sookazian serves as the Vice President of Special Services and Risk Management for Los Angeles Federal Credit Union (LAFCU). In addition, he is the President of the National Credit Union Collections Alliance (NCUCA). The NCUCA is a nationwide collections organization for credit unions providing networking, best practices, and educational services. He oversees collections, recoveries, litigation, repossessions, and remarketing at LAFCU. Additionally Art oversees the Risk Management program at Los Angeles Federal Credit Union finding ways to fight fraudsters and mitigate and prevent losses related to identity fraud, account takeover, plastic card fraud, dealership car fraud, and loan fraud. He has twenty years of experience in collections at both captive finance and credit union industries. Art has worked at some of the leading captive finance companies including Toyota Financial Services, Lexus Financial Services, and Isuzu Motors Acceptance Corp. Prior to his time at Los Angeles Federal Credit Union, Art served as the Vice President of Collections at Xceed Financial Credit Union. Art has a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from The University of Virginia. In 2016, Art was awarded the CU Times Trailblazer 40 Below award for his success overseeing collections programs at credit unions while forming the NCUCA.

Ashish Garg / Founder & CEO, Eltropy

After earning an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Ashish spent his early career in high-tech. As a Product Manager defining and evangelizing new products, Ashish saw firsthand the changes that the latest technologies, such as Messaging, were bringing to the enterprise. He founded Eltropy with the vision of applying machine learning/AI techniques to enterprise processes to dramatically improve efficiency and customer engagement.

Greg Pesci / President & CEO of Spera, Inc. (dba MessagePay)

Greg Pesci is the founder, President, and CEO of Spera, Inc. (dba MessagePay). MessagePay is a fintech company that embeds payments into communication software to serve the needs of financial institutions.

Greg served at ProPay, Inc. for nearly ten years. His roles included General Counsel, and then President and COO. He was instrumental in leading the sale of ProPay to Total Systems (“TSYS”). Prior to joining ProPay, Greg served as SVP at Merrick Bank, where he was Associate General Counsel, and led Business Development for more than 6 years.

He holds a Master of Organizational Behavior from the Marriott School of Business, and a Juris Doctor degree, with honors, from the J. Rueben Clark Law School at Brigham Young University. He is a named inventor on a patent addressing encryption and secure payment transactions.

Ian Frame / Director, CARFAX Auto Finance division

Ian Frame is a licensed attorney with 15+ years of experience in the automotive industry. Ian currently serves as Director of CARFAX’s Auto Finance division, overseeing the strategic execution of the vertical while launching projects designed to pierce the Auto Finance industry landscape. In a recent collaboration with major lenders and insurance companies, Ian utilized machine learning to help develop fraud indicators that integrate with loan origination platforms and feed directly into lender scorecards. Ian, a 2021 Auto Remarketing 40 Under 40 honoree, retains an impressive cache of knowledge on key topics in the auto lending space, including: machine learning, collateral fraud, big data and more.

Karan Kashyap / Co-Founder and CEO, Posh

Karan Kashyap is Posh’s Chief Executive Officer and co-founder. Prior to founding Posh in 2018, Karan earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from MIT, focusing on computer science and artificial intelligence. For his research, he was named a Siebel Scholar. As CEO, he has helped lead Posh to 100+ credit union and bank clients nationwide. He has an employee count of over 70 team members, over $45M in investments raised to date, and industry coverage by brands such as Gartner, Forbes, and VentureBeat. Karan was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list for 2023 and the Forbes Technology Council.

Kathy Sianis / VP of Strategic Relationships, Posh

Kathy Sianis is Vice President of FI Strategy/Advisory and Partnerships at Posh AI. Kathy has been in the Financial Industry for over 20 years, serving in senior roles, including CXO. She has vast experience in retail, contact center, lending, digital services, and operations. She is CX Certified and deeply passionate about empowering financial institutions to enhance customer experiences and achieve operational efficiencies that fuel organic growth. Kathy carries both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in business. She thrives in helping strategize how to leverage technology best to solve industry-focused pain points, key objectives, and future opportunities.

Chris Howell / VP – Business Solutions Group, Temenos

Chris Howell is a Vice President of Business Solutions Group in Temenos; with over 20 years of experience in technology focused on consumer engagement, Chris specializes in onboarding and origination at Temenos and helps banks and credit unions grow through customer acquisition. Chris has worked with several startups – QLink Technologies (acquired by Adobe Systems), a company focused on intelligent forms powered by workflow, and Avoka Technologies, a customer experience platform acquired by Temenos that helps FIs create differentiated onboarding journeys. Chris has expanded his mandate to include Loan and Account origination and leads a team of experts that evangelize the need for banks to innovate their channel solutions.

Jasna Hadzi-Tosev / Senior Business Solutions Consultant, Temenos

Jasna Hadzi-Tosev is a Senior Business Solutions Consultant in the Business Solutions Group at Temenos. With over 20 years of experience in technology, Jasna specializes in Collection and Recovery products at Temenos and helps credit unions and banks increase collection income and improve efficiency of all aspects of their collections activities, reduce charge off process through automation and exceed charge off and delinquency goals. Jasna has also managed technology implementation projects and testing of Temenos Wealth and Digital products , with a strong focus on project governance and management skills in accordance with best practices.

Jasna has expanded her specialty to also provide support in evangelizing Temenos Loan and Account origination products , helping credit unions and banks grow through customer acquisition.

Tyler Gray / Director of Sales, Lender Compliance Technologies

Tyler is the Director of Sales for Lender Compliance Technologies, a SaaS company focused on helping lenders maintain compliance for Voluntary Protection Product cancellations and refunds.

With experience in dealership operations, loan originations and loan servicing platforms, Tyler is focused on delivering solutions that address the immediate needs of lenders while also helping achieve their organizational & technological goals. At LCT, Tyler assists lenders in navigating the complexities of VPP cancellations and refunds in a highly scrutinized regulatory environment.

Ron Brown / President & CEO, CSI Group

Ron L. Brown is the President and CEO of CSI Group in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, one of the oldest and largest Asset Recovery Investigation Agencies in the Central Plains Region.

A state licensed Private Investigator and member of the National Association of Fraud Investigators, he has over 45 years of experience in the field of locating and recovering lost and missing people and assets and has assisted many law enforcement agencies including the U.S. Marshall’s Service, Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Texas Rangers.

He is internationally recognized as one of the leaders in the Tracing and Recovery Industry and spends much of his time acting as an instructor for various credit and collection entities. Having received the ACA International “Fred Kirschner Instructor Achievement Award” for instructing 250 ACA Seminars, he was also three times selected by ACA International as the “ACA Certified Instructor of the Year”. Ron also instructs for the Oklahoma Council on Law Enforcement Education and Training and travels across the United States presenting his critically acclaimed “MANHUNT” and “CYBERTRACKING” Seminars.

Nationally recognized as one of the key instructors of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, the Fair Credit Reporting Act, Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and HIPAA, Ron has written many published articles on these ever-changing federal laws and continues to conduct seminars related to these statutes. Testifying as an “Expert Witness” in numerous wrongful repossession litigations Ron recognized the need for an affordable field agent compliance training program and in collaboration with the members of Eagle Group XX he has developed the asset recovery industry accepted compliance training seminars which include the Field Agent Compliance Training (FACT), the Support Employee Compliance Training (SECT) and most recently the highly praised (SACAT) Situational Awareness and Confrontational Avoidance Techniques.

Ron continues to author numerous industry publication articles on the application of psychology and neuro-linguistics related to tracing, interrogation techniques and consumer motivation in the collection and asset recovery industry as well as co-authoring the best seller, “MANHUNT, The Book”.

Currently active in all phases of the Asset Recovery and Collection Industry he continues to personally, handle investigations ranging from Internal Fraud to Homicide and is well known in Debt Collection, Law Enforcement and Asset Recovery circles.

Kevin Barth / VP Sales, AKUVO

Kevin Barth is a highly motivated and results-driven executive with over 25 years of experience in sales and strategic business development in the financial services industry. Kevin has played a pivotal role in training and mentoring sales management and overseeing efficient operations at financial intuitions. His expertise and passion lie in establishing win-win relationships and demonstrating a critical understanding of customer business needs and opportunities. At AKUVO, Kevin is recognized as a hands-on VP of Sales for his ability to employ innovative approaches in business development, fostering team unity, and delivering solutions to customers.

Lee Silber / Award-Winning Author and Speaker

Lee Silber is lifelong member who claims he owes everything to his credit union… his home, his car, and his boat. In truth, his credit union helped him start and build his first business (a chain of retail stores) and guided him when he switched careers and became a best selling author, popular podcaster, and an award-winning speaker. Silber is currently collecting stories for his 26th book, “The Credit Union Way” (it’s like “Chicken Soup for the Soul” for credit unions). Lee lives in San Diego, California.

Ann Johnson, PHR, SHRM-CP / SVP/Chief Administrative Officer, Silver State Schools Credit Union

Ann Johnson, PHR, SHRM-CP, SVP/Chief Administrative Officer for Silver State Schools Credit Union, is an accomplished HR professional with over 30 years of experience in the private sector. Ann has been with Silver State Schools Credit Union for the past 26 years. She is responsible for implementing human resource management strategies that enable Silver State Schools Credit Union to recruit, train, and retain a high performing and motivated workforce. Her broad experience includes recruiting, training, performance management, career development, diversity program development, employee relations, benefits, compensation, payroll, safety, and compliance issues. 

Prior to joining Silver State Schools Credit Union, Ann held positions in the retail industry as a Human Resources Manager and a Training Manager. Ann took a brief reprieve from the ever changing HR world to work in the gaming industry when first moving to Las Vegas.

Ann holds a BS in Marketing from Kelley School of Business, Indiana University and a minor in Psychology. She is certified through the Human Resource Certification Institute as a Human Resource Professional (PHR), and the Society for Human Resource Management as a Human Resource Certified Professional (SHRM-CP). Ann also holds a Master Trainer certification from Langevin.

Michael Pupil / VP, Collections, Eltropy

Michael Pupil is guided by the belief that “Only a life lived in the service of others is worth living.” With nearly two decades of experience, he has dedicated his career to serving the industry, strengthening organizations, and empowering his teams and colleagues.

Michael’s legacy lies in fostering growth: driving the industry in the right direction, fortifying organizations, and helping teammates and colleagues develop and excel.

He is deeply passionate about the science and art of sales, as well as the growth and success of the teams he works with and supports.

Saahil Kamath / Head of Product, AI, Eltropy

Saahil Kamath serves as the Head of AI at Eltropy, recognized as Silicon Valley’s fastest-growing private company. With over nine years of experience in AI, Saahil is on a mission to transform the Community Financial Institution (CFI) space by leading the development of transformative and safe AI solutions that empower CFIs to leverage cutting-edge technologies.

Before joining Eltropy, Saahil founded Marsview.ai, an AI startup acquired by Eltropy in 2022. Under his leadership, Marsview was named one of “The 10 Hottest SaaS Startups” in 2020 and won “Best Use of AI in Fintech” in 2021. Earlier in his career, he launched Visio.ai, an AI-powered video surveillance platform designed for smart cities, schools, and hospitals, which was recognized as one of India’s “Top 10 AI Solution Providers” in 2018.

Saahil’s journey began with research in AI and Deep Learning at IISc-Bangalore in collaboration with Boeing, where his team earned multiple patents in the field.

At Eltropy, Saahil drives AI product strategy, identifies emerging market opportunities, and oversees the development of the AI product roadmap. He also shares his expertise as an advisor and mentor to early-stage startups, guiding them in product strategy, go-to-market planning, and scaling their businesses.

Bob Child / Chief Operating Officer, Origence

Bob Child, the chief operating officer at Origence, oversees the company’s finance, implementations, training, IT Infrastructure, legal, compliance and ERM functions. He is also a member of the organization’s strategic planning team. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the financial services industry, with expertise in developing and executing new best practice strategy functions and establishing program management offices. Prior to joining Origence in 2010, Child held a number of executive positions, including: – Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Aviva – Chief of Staff, Allstate Insurance and Allstate Bank. Child holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting and a Master of Business Administration in Finance from St. Xavier University.

Nichole Glowin / Managing Partner of Client Relations and Bankruptcy at ZBS Law, LLP

Nichole Glowin is the Managing Partner of Client Relations and Bankruptcy at ZBS Law, LLP, wherein she provides clients with a direct resource for legal solutions and oversees the firm’s bankruptcy practice.
Mrs. Glowin has over 14 years of extensive experience representing clients in all bankruptcy related matters. She specializes in complex contested matters relating to all Chapter 7, Chapter 13 and Chapter 11 proceedings, including confirmation of reorganization plans, motions for relief, claim defense, lien avoidance actions, preference avoidance actions, adversary proceedings and bankruptcy appeals. Ms. Glowin has trained several large financial institutions on various bankruptcy, foreclosure and compliance matters, has written several relevant articles to industry periodicals for publication and regularly participates in industry conferences.

Ms. Glowin graduated from Chapman University School of Law in 2008. Prior to joining ZBS Law, LLP, Ms. Glowin served as general counsel for a high-volume foreclosure trustee wherein she assisted financial institutions with implementing compliant policy and procedure, default litigation management and the resolution of contested foreclosure matters.  

Ms. Glowin is admitted to practice in the State of California, the State of Nevada the U.S. District Court for the State of California in the Northern, Central, Southern and Eastern Districts and the U.S. District Court for the State of Nevada. Mrs. Glowin enjoys discussing all aspects of foreclosure, bankruptcy and litigation process.

Kris Zilberstein / Managing Bankruptcy Attorney at ZBS Law, LLP

Ms. Zilberstein has 15 years of experience in the default industry more specifically within the Bankruptcy Court representing mortgage servicers, commercial lenders, and auto lenders.  She has specialized in the litigation side of the Bankruptcy Court including but not limited to Adversaries, Motions for Relief, Objections to Claim, Appeals, and Chapter 11 cases.  In addition, Ms. Zilberstein has written several articles and participated in numerous webinars and seminars.  Ms. Zilberstein participates in industry conferences on a regular basis. Prior to entering the default industry, Ms. Zilberstein began her 26-year career in general liability insurance defense more specifically personal injury and construction defect gaining her extensive litigation experience.

Ms. Zilberstein received her Bachelor of Arts from the University of California San Diego in Economics with an emphasis in business and an emphasis in the environment in 1995. Ms. Zilberstein received her Juris Doctorate from California Western School of Law in 1998.

Ms. Zilberstein is licensed to practice in all state and federal courts in California, Washington, Texas, and Colorado, the District Court of Nebraska, as well as the 9th Circuit BAP and 9th Circuit. Currently, admission is pending in Arizona. Ms. Zilberstein has been a member of the ALFN Bankruptcy Practice Group since 2014 where she is currently the Secretary.  In August 2016, Ms. Zilberstein was awarded a Martindale-Hubbell Rating of Preeminent.  Later that same year, Ms. Zilberstein was identified by Angle Magazine as one of “16 Women Who Rocked 2016.”  In January 2021, Ms. Zilberstein was one of DS News’ Top 25 Women of Law, and in February 2021 DS News included Ms. Zilberstein in the Honoring Excellence Among Female Legal Minds edition.