Kristina Church joined BNYM IM as global head of responsible strategy in 2021. She is responsible for developing and leading the execution of BNYMIM’s Responsible Investment (RI) Program, leveraging the combined expertise of 8 specialist investment firms, each with their unique approach to RI. She collaborates with the ESG leaders across the wider BNY Mellon enterprise and co-chairs the bank’s ESG Advisory Council. Previously, Kristina was head of sustainable solutions, and senior investment strategist, at Lombard Odier Investment Managers. Her research has spanned topics including climate change, decarbonisation of hard-to-abate industries, biodiversity, the circular economy, sustainable mobility, smart cities, sustainable finance regulation and stewardship.
Kristina spent a decade at Barclays Capital, latterly leading the Industrial sustainable and thematic research team and formerly as head of European Automotive equity research. She began her career as a chartered accountant at Deloitte and later an automotive equity analyst at Citigroup.
Kristina has an MA in Classical Languages and Literature from Oxford University,
Keith Wade is Chief Economist at Schroders, based in London. He is responsible for the economics team and the house view of the world economy. Keith reports to CIO and is a Member of the Group Asset Allocation Committee. His investment career commenced when he joined Schroders in 1988 as UK economist and in 1992 he became Schroders’ senior economist responsible for international economic forecasting. Prior to joining Schroders he was a researcher at the London Business School’s Centre for Economic Forecasting.
Keith is a member of the UK Society of Investment Professionals (UKSIP) and the Society of Business Economists. He holds an Investment Management Certificate (IMC) and is a trustee and member of the investment committee for Addenbrookes hospital Trust in Cambridge. Keith is a regular contributor to the press and has co-authored a book on macro-economics for MBA students. He has an MSc and BSc in Economics from the London School of Economics.
Per Wimmer is a global financier, entrepreneur, adventurer, pioneer, philanthropist and author.
Per owns and runs his own investment bank, Wimmer Financial, which he founded on the 50th anniversary of Sputnik day, October 4th, 2007. He is also the Founder of WimmerSpace, through which he has three planned missions to space on three different rockets. One of these trips will be with Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, of which Per is a Founding Astronaut.
Prior to founding his own investment bank, Per was advising on equities at the MAN Group/Man Securities.
Shamik Dhar, Chief Economist, BNY Mellon Investment Management Shamik Dhar has 33 years’ experience as an economist. Starting in H.M. Treasury as an economic assistant in the mid-1980’s, he moved to Oxford Economic Forecasting and then spent most of the 90’s as a senior economist in the Bank of England, where he worked on the UK economic forecast in the early days of inflation targeting and on monetary policy analysis in the early days of the Monetary Policy Committee. Shamik moved to Aviva Investors (formerly Morley Fund Management) in 2000 and spent the next 14 years in the City of London, ending up as a Head of Investment Strategy.In 2014,he became Chief Economist at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in a period of rapid geopolitical and economic change, advising ministers and senior officials on the economics of Brexit. Shamik joined BNY Mellon as Global Chief Economist in October 2018. Shamik has a degree in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and a Masters in Economics from Queen Mary College, University of London. He also spent a year as a visiting scholar at the University of Pennsylvania in the mid-1990’s
Jonathan Meyer is a Senior Solutions Engineer for HawkSearch by Bridgeline. He has been working in the search, navigation, and recommendations world for nearly a decade, with a focus on solving enterprise level problems in this space.
Winnie Palmer is the EMEA Head of Marketing at Seismic, the number 1 global sales enablement leader. An innovator and strategic marketer known for achieving exceptional business results, Winnie has led and transformed go-to-market functions across a number of the industry’s most prominent technology brands.
Nicola is a business leader with experience across multiple sectors and supporting innovation,
people development, building strategy, change management, understanding risk and financial
services regulation.
She has considerable experience in financial services and prior to joining FinTech Scotland
was a senior leader at the FCA, where she worked as part of the Retail Banking Supervision
senior leadership team.
In this role she contributed to the development of solutions needed to address complex
industry issues following the financial crisis. She has engaged with Boards and Executives at
different retail banks on a number of significant business transformational changes and
operational risk issues, often working in collaboration with other UK regulatory bodies.
Last year, Nicola co-authored the Research and Innovation (R&I) Roadmap – the first of its
kind in the UK and in collaboration with fintech entrepreneurs, the financial services sector,
academia, regulators, Government bodies and consumer groups – with the he objective of
boosting economic recovery, driving growth and creating jobs over the next ten years in
Scotland.
As a leader Nicola prefers to empower colleagues and coach to support professional
development. This approach has helped her in the variety of change management and change
projects roles she’s experienced throughout her career, including her role in delivering
elements of the operational programme needed to implement the FCA’s sectoral approach to
Supervision.
Nicola is a champion for consumers, people and inclusion. She has been instrumental in
developing lasting relationships between FinTech Scotland and a broad range of consumer
and citizen advocate groups such as Money Advice Scotland, Advice Direct Scotland, Age
Scotland and Mental Health and Money Advice. This work created the first fintech consumer
panel in Europe and has enabled cross sector collaboration in building fintech propositions
focused on citizen prioritised needs.
Beyond work Nicola is a business mentor in the homeless charity sector, working to support
the charities operational resilience planning and enable strategies to manage longer term
funding risks through funding diversification.
Bimpe Nkontchou is a dually qualified lawyer, with over 30 years’ collective experience in England and in Nigeria. Bimpe is founder and Managing Principal at W8 Advisory LLP (www.w8advisory.com) a wealth advisory practice and multi-family office (based in London) which is focused on African entrepreneurs and their families. She also owns a sister company W8 Wealth Limited (authorised & regulated by the FCA) which provides regulated financial and investment advisory services to African business families.
W8 Advisory has been recognized in Spears 2022 & 2023 Wealth Management Index as a ‘Top Recommended’ Family Office Service provider and Bimpe has also been ranked by Spears as one of the best wealth managers in the UK.
Bimpe has recently launched a digital wealth and investment platform called ‘Wealth8’, using technology to bring access to investing in a portfolio of global financial products and also to provide financial education and the language of investment, to a traditionally underserved ‘mass affluent’ audience within the black & multi-ethic community in the UK and on the African continent. (www.wealth-8.com).
As Product Manager at TSS, Hanna Söderström is driving the strategic development of the clinical trials software platform, which is used by leading pharmaceutical companies in delivering life-saving medicine to patients faster. In productive partnerships with big pharma, Hanna has been driving change in the clinical supply chain by delivering automation and digitalization. Hanna’s mission is to deliver a product shortening clinical study timelines, increasing patient safety and serving TSS clients to become sponsors of choice.
