Awards Event

Paddy Christie is a Governance, Risk and Control subject matter expert and leads Lloyds Banking Group’s Non-Financial Risk Technology strategy. Paddy has 12 years financial services experience leading teams across Business Transformation, Conduct Risk, Operations, and Investment Management. He has a proven track record of delivering complex risk management programmes and recently led the implementation of the company’s operational risk system. Paddy is driven to simplify and modernise non-financial risk by championing the use of data and technology. In his spare time, he enjoys outdoor pursuits and is an accomplished musician.  

Eric Hirschhorn is the Chief Data Officer (CDO) of BNY Mellon. He is part of the Global Operations and Technology Executive Committee and reports to the firms CIO, Bridget Engle. As CDO, Eric is focused on digital transformation, operational efficiency, artificial intelligence/machine learning, regulation and helping the firm evolve to become data driven by design.

Before joining BNY Mellon, Eric was the Chief Information Officer for Cantor Fitzgerald and BGC Partners. Prior to Cantor, he spent several years in various senior roles on Wall Street, most recently as Managing Director of Global Fixed Income eTrading & Rates Technology at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

Prior to Bank of America, Eric was at Morgan Stanley serving as CTO of Fixed Income, at Citi where he ran Global FX technology, at Lehman where he was responsible for Global Fixed Income eTrading, and at JPMorgan Chase where he ran International Treasury technology. His professional life has taken him around the world including several years living in London. Eric is an authority on how technology drives transformation in financial markets. He has been involved in various industry working groups.

Eric graduated Cooper Union in 1989. He holds a Bachelor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering and current serves as Vice Chair of the Board Trustees at the Cooper Union. Eric lives in New Jersey with his wife, Hillary, and their two children.

Olga Baldwin is a VP, Vendor Management at Axiom Bank with over 13 years of experience in third party risk management. Currently she is responsible for the third-party risk management program development, improvements, and implementation to ensure a proper oversight of the bank third parties is conducted in accordance with regulatory requirements including selection, risk assessment, due diligence, ongoing monitoring, and terminations. Prior to this role, Olga held a position of a Director, Vendor Risk Management at Sterling National Bank overseeing Vendor Risk Management Program.

Olga holds an MBA in Finance and International Business Development from Zicklin School of Business as well as BA in Economics from CUNY, Hunter College

Jeff Simmons joined MUFG Bank in June 2014 as the Head of Enterprise Risk, tasked with creating the function. He has been involved intensively with the enhancement of the Risk Management framework in MUFG Bank (Europe). This has involved him in the formation of an Enterprise Risk function in Amsterdam tasked with delivering the full range of regulatory submissions.  In April 2018 he transitioned to MUFG Securities to become involved in the Brexit project. In this capacity he is the CRO for MUFG Securities (Europe) N.V. the Dutch subsidiary of MUFG Securities (EMEA).

Prior to joining the bank, he spent some 20 years specializing in best practice Risk Management including Market Risk, Credit Risk, Risk Model Validation and Regulatory Risk consulting. As well as having line management responsibilities in various institutions he has also gained extensive experience in implementing Risk Management frameworks from both a technical and operating model-based perspective.

Maninder is a Chief Control Officer and Non-Financial Risk & Compliance Expert, leading the creation and implementation of commercially-aligned risk frameworks and associated systems and controls in global Financial Services.

Most recently she has been Chief Control Officer at Barclays UK. Her earlier career includes Finance Chief Control Officer at HSBC UK; and roles at Standard Chartered in Singapore as Executive Director – Operational Risk, Corporate Function and Head of Operational Risk Governance, Framework & Regulation.

Leveraging her deep enterprise risk leadership experience, she designs and innovates solutions to risk & compliance issues, including on conduct, climate risk and risk & control remediation. This includes leading the remediation of SOX related deficiencies at HSBC, identifying several duplicate and missing controls to create a sustainable, commercial control framework.

Maninder has a strong track record in distilling complex risk frameworks and regulations into easily accessible visuals to enhance stakeholder communications while nurturing credible relationships up to Board-level to build the bridge between risk / compliance and the wider organisation.

Additionally, she connects and clearly communicates the relationship between disparate risk, compliance and control data to drive compelling dialogue with Boards, NEDs and Heads of Business.

Over 20 years of banking experience focused on managing credit and other banking risks in challenging markets.

Joined Banque BEMO in 1999, Lebanon’s most reputed corporate and private bank with a presence in Lebanon, Cyprus, Luxembourg, and Paris. Was a member of the group in charge of establishing the first private bank in Syria in a joint venture between Banque BEMO and Banque Saudi Fransi which is affiliated with Crédit Agricole. Nominated in 2006 as Chief Credit and Risk Officer for the new Syrian bank which expanded quickly to become Syria’s largest private bank. Managed successfully credit and all banking risks in times of expansion and during the crisis.

Joined the Lebanese Cedrus Banking Group in 2015 as Group Chief Credit and Risk Officer and helped in the consolidation and enhancement of credit and risk management activities of 2 banks, Cedrus Bank (commercial and retail banking) and Cedrus Invest Bank (private and investment banking) while escorting the expansion of the Group inside Lebanon in a challenging environment.

Recently, joined Afghanistan International Bank.

Julia Bardmesser is a technology, architecture, and data strategy executive with expertise in the financial services industry.

Most recently, at Voya Financial Julia served as Senior Vice President, Head of Data, Architecture and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Technology. In her role Julia led Voya’s data, cloud, and analytics transformation by leveraging enterprise data and technology capabilities. These capabilities enabled innovation, agility, and speed to market by reducing friction and delivering key insights from proprietary data.

Julia has more than twenty years of experience in cross-platform solution delivery in the financial industry, architecture, data management, and data governance. Prior to joining Voya Julia was a Global Head of Data Integration at Deutsche Bank, where she led the implementation of global metadata management platform that enabled data lineage and robust front to back data quality measurement. She also held various leadership positions at Citi, FINRA, Freddie Mac, Thomson Financial Services, Bear Stearns, and Bloomberg L.P.

Julia sits on the Board of Directors for two technology startups, The Medici Project and Polymer and is also a founding member of Women Leaders in Data and Artificial Intelligence (WLDA). 

She is a sought-after speaker and mentor, and she has received industry recognition for expertise in her field. Julia has received 2022 Changemaker in AI award from Women Leaders in Data and AI; she been named to CDO Magazine’s List of Global Data Power Women for three-consecutive years (2020-2022); named to the Top 150 Business Transformation Leaders by Constellation Research in 2019; and was recognized as the Best Data Management Practitioner by A-Team Data Management Insight in 2017.

Julia holds a Master of Arts in Economics from the New York University.