“Marketing Transformative Fintech”

Christina Smedley is Chief Marketing and Communications Officer at Robinhood, a fast-growing brokerage giving millions of people access to our financial system. She is responsible for telling Robinhood’s story across all brand, marketing and communication channels. Before joining Robinhood Christina was a Vice President at Facebook where she worked with the teams at Messenger, Libra the crypto-currency and Novi the digital wallet. Christina joined Facebook from PayPal where she was Vice President of Brand and Communications. In past roles she has led Edelman’s global consumer practice and Amazon.com’s worldwide communications team. She graduated from the University of Kent, Canterbury, UK.

Jarad Fisher is the Chief Commercial Officer at Dave.  Jarad drives the strategy behind expanding Dave’s product suite and partnerships to benefit the company’s eight million current customers and establish Dave as a global leader in financial services. He also has responsibility for all of Dave’s core business operations and performance, including Dave Banking.  While at Apple, Jarad conceived of and designed the Apple Card, including creating the go-to-market strategy and managing the business through its first full year. The program has been widely recognized as the “most successful credit card launch ever.”  Prior to Apple, Jarad was the Director of the SkyMiles program at Delta Air Lines where he co-led the airline’s relationship with American Express and repositioned the credit card to materially improve benefits and experience for millions of cardholders. He also spent 10+ years at McKinsey & Company as an Associate Partner in the Financial Services Practice based in the Firm’s New York Office.

Jeanette Volpi is a corporate communications executive with over 20 years of experience promoting and protecting market-leading technology, financial and media brands in New York, San Francisco, and London.   She is currently Senior Vice President, Head of Global Corporate and North America Communications at Visa. In this capacity, she is responsible for driving Visa’s business objectives and corporate reputation by conceiving and executing strategic, impactful and measurable external, internal and client communications programs on a Corporate level and across North America, Visa’s largest region. These programs span paid, earned and owned media, executive visibility, crisis communications, client thought leadership and employee engagement. Jeanette is a member of both the U.S. and Global Communications Leadership teams.   Prior to joining Visa in 2017, Jeanette was Head of External Communications at Guardian since 2013. During her time at Guardian, she launched the company’s enterprise social media presence on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube and created the company’s first crisis communications plan in addition to recruiting and building the external communications team from the ground up.   Previously, she was on the leadership team of Articulate Communications, an independent marketing and communications agency specializing in financial services and technology, in addition to serving as a Director of Public Relations at Thomson Reuters from 2010-2012. Jeanette also spent ten years at Citi where she held a variety of communications roles across the corporate, investment banking and consumer businesses in New York and London.   Jeanette received a Bachelor of Science in Communications from Boston University. She is also a certified Ayurveda Health Counselor and mediation teacher.

Melissa Alvarado is chief marketing officer of Chime, overseeing analytics, brand and growth marketing. Prior to joining Chime, Melissa held senior-level roles at mobile banking app PageOnce (now part of Intuit), and advertising technology firm Adchemy. Melissa began her career at Capital One as an analyst for the risk group. A native of Honduras, Melissa earned a BS in industrial engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. She is an accomplished triathlete and has completed five full Ironman triathlons.