RealTalk 2026: Speaker Bios

Usha is a transformational financial services executive who has led enterprise-wide strategies and transformations across digital, product, marketing and client experience in consumer banking and wealth management. She is passionate about bringing technology, data and human-centered thinking together to simplify complex challenges, create better client experiences and drive meaningful growth.

Beyond her corporate leadership, Usha is a passionate advocate for community, culture and the performing arts. She serves on the Board of the MetroWest YMCA, is a four-time Boston Marathon finisher and performs classical Indian dance with the NATyA Dance Collective.

With more than 20 years of experience across community banking, human resources, legal affairs and governance, Victoria brings a perspective that spans both the strategic and operational sides of banking. She provides executive oversight for human resources, residential lending and consumer lending across Dedham Savings, South Shore Bank and Charlesbridge affiliates, connecting organizational strategy with the experiences of clients and employees.

Previously, Victoria held senior leadership positions at BankFive and Boston Private Bank & Trust after beginning her career as in-house counsel. Her work has maintained a strong focus on the relationships between people, organizational performance and the communities financial institutions serve.

A serial entrepreneur, educator and researcher, Shari works with startups and Fortune 500 companies on business strategy, commercialization and marketing. At Suffolk, she teaches entrepreneurship and innovation, supports emerging businesses and leads initiatives connecting entrepreneurs with resources to grow.

Her research explores entrepreneurial decision-making, business model innovation and founder identity. She also serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Engineering Management Review and holds a PhD from Worcester Polytechnic Institute and an MBA from Babson College.

Rob brings four decades of experience across financial services, technology and education, including 23 years at Fidelity Investments in executive technology leadership roles. He later helped advance WPI’s interdisciplinary FinTech programs across undergraduate, master’s and PhD education.

Today, he continues to teach, mentor emerging talent and connect academia with the broader fintech ecosystem, drawing on his experience as an executive, educator and angel investor to help develop the next generation of fintech leaders.

An organizational psychologist and executive advisor with global experience, Yaro works with leaders and organizations to advance gender equity and build inclusive workplace cultures. She brings an intersectional perspective shaped by her Afro-Caribbean and Chinese heritage, lived experience and decades of leadership consulting.

Her work combines neuroscience, organizational psychology and mindfulness to explore how leadership, culture and belonging influence business performance. Yaro holds a doctorate in Organizational Leadership Psychology from William James College and challenges the notion that investing in people and achieving business results are competing priorities.

A former military special operator, CIA officer and technology entrepreneur, Nic brings an unusual combination of experience to the intersection of intelligence, data and applied AI. Through DeliverFund, he equips law enforcement with technology to combat human trafficking, while Ten Point Data helps businesses make more informed decisions through data and AI.

A Harvard graduate, Nic has completed 30 combat deployments, testified before the U.S. Congressional Helsinki Commission and helped raise and deploy more than $33 million for counter-human trafficking initiatives. Above all, Nic considers his most important roles to be those of a Christian, husband and father.

With more than 15 years of experience across the public and private sectors, Sunindiya leads programs serving young mothers across Eastern and Western Massachusetts and Hartford, Connecticut, as well as Roca’s parenting and fatherhood work.

Her experience spans early childhood and two-generation program development, strategy and collective impact. She also contributes to Roca’s government affairs, revenue generation and national work focused on young women and young parents. Sunindiya holds a BA in Child Development and a Master’s in Public Health from Tufts University and an MBA in Nonprofit Management from Brandeis University’s Heller School.

Tracey helps successful individuals and families turn financial success into freedom, giving her clients the option to turn off their Monday morning alarm. That might mean continuing to work, changing careers, taking a well-earned break or retiring on their own terms.

Together, Tracey and her clients build practical, values-driven plans designed to create clarity, confidence and more choices. Because wealth is not just about what you have. It is about what it allows you to do.

Carolyn helps clients make confident financial decisions by bringing clarity to the numbers behind their goals. She believes financial planning should be practical, understandable and centered around what matters most to each client.

She enjoys making complex financial topics easier to understand, helping clients see the bigger picture and creating plans that can evolve as their goals and lives change.

With more than 30 years of experience in the auditing profession, Amy works extensively with financial reporting executives, audit committees, board members and professional organizations focused on audit quality and sound governance practices.

She directs BDO’s Center for Corporate Governance and leads firmwide thought leadership and education through webinars, podcasts, board forums, external speaking engagements and publications covering a broad range of corporate governance and reporting topics.

A TEDx speaker and longtime advocate for women’s visibility, Bobbie helps professionals use public speaking to build their careers, businesses and influence. Through Innovation Nights, she has helped launch more than 1,500 startup products for companies that have raised more than $4 billion in funding.

She has spoken at the United Nations and major conferences for technical and professional women and has been featured by CBS News, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe and USA Today. She describes Carlton PR & Marketing, Innovation Nights and Innovation Women as her day job, night job and dream job.

Sowmya is an experienced engineering leader with a blend of strong operational, technical architecture and business strategy skills. Able to balance technical development needs with business considerations of stakeholders. Skilled at identifying talent, building, inspiring and driving execution by focused, collaborative teams from concept to delivery and evolution. Experience in successfully conceiving and transforming traditional engineering processes to more modern and relevant approaches that fit critical business needs.

Shuchi has years of experience in spearheading the design and delivery of complex, highly scalable, secure, and transactional solutions utilizing cutting-edge technologies and Agile methodologies. She possesses the ability to assemble and motivate top-tier development and technology teams, across geographically dispersed organizations. Her passion lies in cultivating diverse and inclusive technology groups, nurturing and guiding engineering teams to their fullest potential.

With more than three decades of leadership experience across financial services, Lauren has held senior roles at State Street and BNY Mellon spanning client experience, technology, operations, governance and transformation.

She is known for stepping into complex environments where alignment and change are needed, connecting perspectives across organizations and translating complexity into shared understanding. Throughout her work, she keeps the experiences of clients and employees at the center of how businesses evolve.

Bob brings more than three decades of experience helping organizations navigate change at the intersection of strategy, technology and customer experience. His career includes leadership roles at American Express, Vanguard and Dawn Foods spanning digital transformation, organizational strategy and emerging technology.

Active with the Private Directors Association, he also brings a board-level perspective to questions of technology, governance and innovation. His recent work explores AI, agentic technology and how leaders can balance technological capability with human judgment, accountability and the experiences of the people their decisions affect.

With experience across private equity, investment banking and investment management, Martin brings a strong foundation in finance to his work as an entrepreneur. LendPilot is focused on helping small and midsize businesses build credit history and strengthen their financial footing.

Martin graduated summa cum laude from Babson College, where he was captain of the men’s varsity tennis team, and now applies his finance and entrepreneurial experience to building solutions that help small businesses access new opportunities.

With experience in investment management, financial consulting and international marketing analytics, Yi is applying her financial and analytical background to improving efficiency and investor access in the municipal bond market.

A FinTech graduate student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute who has completed the CFA Level III exam, she is expanding her expertise in quantitative finance, blockchain, decentralized finance and data analytics while developing Bondera.

A patented inventor and self-taught technical developer, Jennifer built Valusync’s SOC 2-certified platform to help wealth advisory firms and community financial institutions connect with emerging wealth, simplify client acquisition and deliver more personalized advisory experiences.

Recognized by MassChallenge Fintech, Robin Hood Blue Ridge Labs and the Center for Accelerating Financial Equity, Jennifer draws on her own lived experience with systemic financial gaps to expand access to wealth-building opportunities and support generational financial mobility.

Chelsie is the Co-Founder and CEO of FinSight Intelligence, an AI-powered platform built to solve the “too many tabs” problem by consolidating real-time market data, AI-driven news intelligence, and portfolio analytics into one intuitive dashboard. Offering Bloomberg-level insight for $120 a year instead of $24,000, she’s redefining who gets access to sophisticated financial analysis. A Business Analytics & AI student at the University of Rhode Island and a RIHub Ideation Studio alum, Chelsie supports 50+ beta users while tutoring fellow students in programming. She’s passionate about making financial intelligence accessible to everyone.