Our Team

Finastra Representative

Andrew Bateman

EVP Lending

Andrew is responsible for the leadership and growth of Finastra’s Lending Business Unit.

With almost 30 years in financial services, he guides global teams in modernizing technologies through technical agility, supporting customers’ growth agendas. In addition, he is committed to promoting inclusion, diversity and sustainability within the industry, and strongly advocates for workplace wellbeing and open communication.

Previously Andrew has held positions across the globe with FIS and SunGard (later acquired by FIS). Most recently he was Head of Sales for Corporates and International Banking at FIS in London. In this role he oversaw the transformation of the sales organization, driving the growth of banking, payment and treasury solutions to banks, non-financial institutions and corporations. Prior to this he led the transformation of the Capital Markets division through the creation of a centralized Technology and Services function. He also served on the boards of Virtus Partners Fund Services in Ireland and Luxembourg; a credit-based alternatives fund solution provider acquired by FIS in 2020.

Andrew has also led several key businesses for FIS including the Capital Markets buy-side division, responsible for solutions advancing FIS’s asset management, alternatives, credit, insurance and corporate customers. While living in the US, he was President, Corporate Liquidity and Bank Treasury and prior to this was President of SunGard’s Energy business.

His career in financial technology began at Rolls-Royce plc, where the implementation of a new treasury system led to a role at GIS / KPMG Information Solutions (later acquired by SunGard). Andrew’s path has seen him live and work in Asia, South America, the US, and the UK.

Andrew holds a Bachelor’s degree in Physics from the University of Nottingham and also has qualifications from the Association of Corporate Treasurers. He lives with his wife and daughter and, in his spare time, enjoys watching sports, classic cars, and traveling with family and friends.

Joseph Bellafatto

Senior Sales Executive – Financial Messaging

Joe is a seasoned Sales Executive with extensive experience in the Financial Services sector. He possesses deep knowledge of systems, processes, and Financial Messaging standards. With his deep domain expertise, Joe is a Trusted Advisor to his clients, assuring them effective results in the implementation of business-critical solutions.

Melanie Carucci

CRO Lending

Melanie Carucci is Chief Revenue Officer for the Lending business at Finastra, where she leads the global commercial organization responsible for driving revenue growth, strengthening client relationships, and defining go-to-market strategy.

With more than 25 years of leadership experience across financial technology and market infrastructure, Melanie has built and transformed high-performing commercial organizations, managed diversified businesses and enterprise client portfolios, and led large-scale, global teams of sales, account management and strategy professionals. Prior to joining Finastra, she held senior leadership roles at Capitolis, FIS, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG), Refinitiv, Thomson Reuters, and Thomson Financial.

A passionate advocate for developing future leaders, Melanie serves on the Board of the Forte Foundation and previously served on the Boards of the Women's Bond Club and the Arts and Business Council of New York. She holds an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business and a BS in Computer Information Systems from Clemson University.

Melanie lives in New York with her husband and three children.

Lisa Farmer

Sales Director - Global Strategic Partnerships for Financial Messaging

Lisa Farmer is Sales Director Global Strategic Partnerships for Financial Messaging at Finastra. She leads the company's partnership strategy, focusing on growing strategic alliances that support innovation and growth across the global financial services industry. Lisa brings extensive experience in sales, partnerships, and business development and is excited to engage with customers, partners, and industry peers at Money20/20.

Jennifer Flug

Senior Director, Cross-sell

I build and scale growth engines inside complex organizations—turning strategy into measurable revenue outcomes.

Over 14+ years at Finastra, I’ve led multiple enterprise transformations across Sales, Solution Consulting, and now Global Growth Strategy. My focus today is simple: unlock revenue from our installed base and partner ecosystem.

As Senior Director, Global Cross-Sell Strategy, I’ve built and operationalized Finastra’s enterprise-wide cross-sell program—uniting business units under the “OneFinastra” vision and driving measurable pipeline across Payments and Lending. This includes designing repeatable go-to-market motions, scaling outbound demand generation, and enabling sales teams with the structure, tools, and insights to execute consistently.

My work sits at the intersection of strategy, execution, and alignment:

Building scalable cross-sell and expansion models across global teams
Driving pipeline creation through structured outbound and partner-led motions
Aligning Sales, Product, and Marketing around unified growth priorities
Activating partner ecosystems (SI, cloud, LOS platforms) to expand deal access and accelerate revenue

I’m particularly focused on the next phase of growth: partner-led expansion, SI-driven deal acceleration, and scaling “OneFinastra” into a repeatable global growth engine.

What energizes me most is turning vision into action—creating clarity, momentum, and measurable impact across teams.

Rick Foresta

Chief Product Officer, Lending

Rick Foresta is Chief Product Officer for the Lending business at Finastra, responsible for delivering high-quality solutions for customers, and driving strategic initiatives from the product organization, including technology modernization and accelerating product capabilities to open new markets.

Based in North Carolina, Rick brings nearly 30 years of experience in product and technology leadership. Most recently, he led the next-generation Modern Banking Platform at FIS, driving core platform transformation. Rick was also the lead client executive, overseeing commercial negotiations, product delivery, and client satisfaction for large-scale financial institutions.

Prior to FIS, Rick served as a Partner/Principal at Ernst & Young, where he led CIO/CTO consulting services for financial services clients, driving sustained practice growth. He managed multiple technology transformation initiatives across the US consumer banking and lending sector, and built strong alliances with leading technology vendors.

Rick began his career in systems development at Wachovia Bank, progressing through technology and operations leadership roles. He is known for organizational and team development, P&L ownership, and leading strategic transformation programs that delivered significant operational efficiencies and business value.

Rick holds an M.S. in Information Technology Management and a B.A. in Chemistry from North Carolina State University.

Vinay Mendonca

VP Product Management, Trade & Supply Chain Finance

Vinay is responsible for setting and executing Finastra’s strategy for Trade and Supply Chain Finance and Corporate Channels.

In a rapidly evolving environment, he is responsible for designing, developing and commercialising solutions for Banking clients, working with partners, to drive digitisation and enable profitable growth with robust risk management.

Vinay joined from HSBC, where he undertook several roles across trade and payments including leadership roles as the Chief Product Officer, Chief Growth Officer and leading Trade Transformation for their global trade business.

He was on the Board of R3 and has participated in trade sessions across the World Economic Forum, Bloomberg New Economy Forum, World Trade Organisation, ICC, BAFT, SIBOS, etc. and he was listed on the Forbes Blockchain 50 2021.

Vinay has worked closely with Banks and the wider trade ecosystem to digitise trade, make it a more investible asset class and drive embedded finance to improve access to trade working capital.

He has worked in the UK, HK, India and The Netherlands and with Reliance Industries Limited, BNP Paribas and Infosys Technologies Limited.

Mitchell Miller

Sales Executive

Mitchell Miller partners with financial institutions to transform legacy technology, optimize operations, and create new revenue opportunities. As a Sales Executive at Finastra, he works with banks across the Americas to deliver modernization strategies that enhance customer experiences, increase efficiency, and support long-term growth.

Barry Rodrigues

Executive Vice President, Payments

Barry is responsible for Finastra’s payments organization.

An experienced senior leader, he has a compelling track record of working in both early stage and growth businesses, spanning digital banking, credit cards, buy now pay later, merchant acquiring, corporate/virtual cards and networks.

Barry has built his 35-year career in financial services around the world in leading companies. Most recently he was a Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group. Prior to that, he was Chief Executive Officer at Barclays Cards and Payments where he oversaw the digital banks and credit card divisions in the US and Germany, as well as merchant acquiring, corporate card and point of sale businesses in the UK. He brings deep payments knowledge and strong leadership expertise to his role at Finastra.

Previously, Barry oversaw all payments products for Citibank on the consumer side of the business, where he and his team enabled first of its kind digital payment solutions. He also spent 25 years in payments-focused leadership roles at American Express. These include EVP and GM of American Express Bank UK (corporate banking, treasury, private banking and correspondent banking), GM of the Merchant Acquiring business in Asia, and President of Amex Global Network Services.

Barry holds a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from London Guildhall University, as well as an MBA from George Washington University.

Sunil G Shenoy

Managing Director, Global Partner Organization

Seasoned IT Professional with 20+ years experience
Strong executive leadership, communication and management skills to drive revenue growth
Well rounded and diverse in all areas of sales from Establishing Executive Relationships, Strategic Alliances, Business Development, Product Management and Product Marketing, Sales Evangelism and Channel Management.
Passionate about creating and executing initiatives into action whether it be technical, business, enablement (training), marketing, or establishing and building business and professional relationships.
Global Account Management for Pre-Sales, Post-Sales and Support activities
Diverse experience in the areas of security, cloud, information management, analytics, and data protection including different Applications (Custom and Packaged)

My strongest asset is my communication skills, which enables me to work with all levels of management and project team members, stakeholders and users. This combined with the adeptness in functional analysis and technical skills enables me to resolve business issues by providing the most manageable, efficient and business smart solutions. I have done numerous key presentations on different business and technical topics at several user groups and conferences.

Madhav Soundalgekar

Principal Solutions Consultant, Lending

A banking technology domain specialist with more than 25 years of industry experience across retail and corporate banking. A passionate fintech advocate, I have been responsible for leading product and services sales, delivering innovative solutions through System Integrators and banking software providers for different kind of financial institutions - from Tier-1 global banks, Fintech providers to niche SME lenders in the UK. Previously having led global sales & delivery teams delivering transformational solutions, today as a Principal Solution Consultant and technology evangelist for Finastra, I focus on leading client propositions addressing complex business challenges using a combination of specialist solutions (Finastra platforms) and fintech partners of Finastra.

Mike Stawchansky

Chief Technology Officer

Mike is responsible for Finastra’s technology strategy and vision, ensuring a resilient and secure approach to the company’s technology stack, as well as driving innovation through new technologies including AI. Mike leads the Product Development, Security, Infrastructure, Data Office, and Enterprise IT areas.

He has over 25 years of experience in building modern technology stacks and cloud transformation. In particular, he is passionate about Gen AI and the innovative potential it holds for the financial services industry. At Finastra he is building on the success of the company’s comprehensive internal learning program to bring external, customer-facing solutions to market which encapsulate Gen AI benefits.

Mike previously worked at Collibra, a privately held Data Intelligence platform, where he was SVP of Platform and Production Engineering. Prior to Collibra he spent nearly eight years at Salesforce where he held various roles facilitating Public Cloud transformations for Pardot, Sales Cloud, and finally at MuleSoft as VP of Systems Engineering. Before his time at Salesforce, Mike managed multiple datacenter migrations and virtualization efforts at WebMD.

Mike has a B.S. in Information Technology, Magna Cum Laude, from Southern Polytechnic State University, Marietta GA.

An avid sci-fi reader, he lives with his wife and their two cats, and together they enjoy road-tripping, theme parks and movies.

Chad Stephens

Senior Partner Account Manager, Americas

Chad Stephens is a sales and partnerships leader with more than 10 years of experience across banking, payments, FinTech, and SaaS. As a Senior Partner Account Manager at Finastra, Chad works with strategic partners to develop go-to-market strategies, create pipeline, and drive revenue growth across the financial services ecosystem. Throughout his career, Chad has focused on building strong relationships, developing high-performing teams and partnerships, and helping financial institutions connect technology with meaningful business outcomes.

Radha Suvarna

Chief Product Officer, Payments

A Product and Business leader with over 27 years of diversified experience across Payments, Cards, and Consumer Lending for Consumer and Commercial client segments. Built and transformed various functions and businesses across multiple geographies including U.S. and Asia.

Currently the Head and Chief Product Officer responsible for end-to-end build-out of the BaaS/Embedded Finance business and Payments value-added-services (VAS) at Finastra with primary focus around payments and lending, with overall responsibility for Go-to-market, Product, and Engineering teams.

Prior to this, Radha was the EVP/Head of Enterprise Payments for Citizens bank, with responsibility for Enterprise Payment platforms, Consumer payment products, Treasury payments strategy, and Payments innovation. During this time, Radha was the Chair of Secure Token Exchange board at The Clearing House (TCH). Before joining Citizens, Radha spent over 20 years at Citi. He was the Head of Digital Payments & Lending for US Consumer bank at Citigroup, with responsibilities for end-to-end mobile/ web products for money movement, digital commerce, unsecured loans, and associated industry partnerships with big-tech and fintechs.

Radha held number of diversified roles prior to that, including P&L ownership for Credit Cards/Loans/Merchant Acquiring portfolio for Citibank Singapore, Citi Asia Network relationship lead with Visa/ MC, and Credit Risk Manager at Citibank US.

Arvind Vairavan

Director, Head of GSC, Corporate Lending

Arvind Vairavan leads the Global Solution Consulting team for Corporate Lending at Finastra, where he is responsible for delivering high-value solutions to clients, prospects, and partners through innovative, scalable, and industrialized consulting approaches. He works closely with financial institutions worldwide to help them navigate transformation initiatives and achieve business outcomes across the lending lifecycle.

With more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, Arvind is recognized for his ability to bring together cross-functional teams to deliver complex and transformational programs. He is a subject matter expert in corporate lending and a cross-product specialist across the end-to-end loan lifecycle, including origination, credit decisioning, servicing, syndication, secondary loan trading, and emerging AI-driven lending solutions.

Prior to joining Finastra, Arvind held a variety of leadership, lending, and business transformation roles within global financial institutions, including Deutsche Bank and Credit Suisse. Throughout his career, he has focused on helping organizations modernize operations, streamline processes, and drive innovation in lending businesses.

Arvind holds an MBA from Rutgers University and a Bachelor's degree with dual majors in Finance and Management Information Systems (MIS) from the State University of New York (SUNY). He is also an active member of both the Loan Market Association (LMA) and the Asia Pacific Loan Market Association (APLMA).

Orlando Vanin

Senior MD Sales Americas, Payments

Orlando Vanin is a seasoned sales and technology executive with over three decades of experience in the financial services industry. He has led transformative initiatives across North America, Latin America, and the Caribbean. His deep expertise across ACH, Wires, Immediate Payments, as well as Cash Management and Treasury systems, along with a leadership defined by authenticity, innovation, empathy, and commitment to excellence, make him a trusted advisor in complex financial technology environments.

His career includes pivotal roles at CGI, FIS and Fundtech Corporation, where he managed geographically dispersed teams and delivered innovative solutions to major institutions such as the Federal Reserve Bank, Wells Fargo, and Comerica. Earlier in his career, Orlando worked at EDS Japan managing the relationship and the delivery of then Fundtech’s cash management solutions between Fundtech and four of the major Japanese financial institutions. Prior to that, while at NTT International in Tokyo, Orlando played a key role in designing Thailand’s BAHTNET RTGS system, collaborating with the Central Bank of Thailand to modernize the country’s payment infrastructure.

Chris Walters

Chief Executive Officer

Chris Walters is Chief Executive Officer of Finastra, leading the company’s strategy, growth, and transformation.

He is focused on strengthening Finastra's role as a mission-critical partner to financial institutions worldwide, helping them modernize core systems, drive innovation, and compete with confidence in a rapidly evolving market.
A growth-oriented leader with deep expertise across technology, data, and financial services, Chris has built his career scaling businesses, sharpening customer focus, and delivering durable financial performance. He is known for aligning clear strategy with disciplined execution, bringing together product innovation, operational rigor, and commercial focus to create lasting impact. His leadership emphasizes customer centricity, accountability, strong culture, and building organizations designed to adapt and win over time.

Chris brings extensive experience leading both public and private equity-backed companies through periods of transformation and growth. Prior to joining Finastra, Chris served as CEO of Pluralsight, a leading workforce development platform. He was also CEO of Avantax, where he led a period of strategic and financial transformation, culminating in its acquisition by Cetera Financial Group. During his tenure, Avantax was recognized as a Great Place to Work in 2023.

Earlier in his career, Chris held senior leadership roles including Chief Operating Officer of Bloomberg’s Industry Verticals Group, Chief Operating Officer of The Weather Company, and CEO of Encompass Digital Media. He began his career in consulting, serving as a Partner at McKinsey & Company and later as a Senior Partner at Activate Consulting, advising technology, data, and investment firms on growth strategy and M&A.

Chris holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a Bachelor of Science in Business from the University of Vermont.

Chris and wife, Kati, have two children. Outside of work, he enjoys travel, live music, and sports - especially Boston teams.ading the company’s strategy, growth, and transformation.

Press, Analyst Relations and Communications

Michael Doheny

Director, Analyst Relations

As Director, Analyst Relations for Corporate Marketing, Michael is responsible for the company’s industry analyst relations strategy and program partnering with analyst firms such as Gartner, IDC, Celent, Datos, and others.

Michael holds a bachelor’s degree in business/economics - and European history from Oneonta University, and a master’s degree in marketing management from DePaul University. Michael has spent more than 20 years managing analyst relations programs at companies such as Motorola, Yahoo, and Salesforce.

James McKenna

Senior PR Manager, Americas & Europe

James McKenna is Senior PR Manager at Finastra, where he oversees public relations strategy and execution for the Americas and Europe regions. By positioning the company as a global thought leader in financial technology innovation and modernization, he helps connect complex technology stories to real-world outcomes, translating financial software concepts into narratives that resonate with media, customers, and stakeholders.

With more than 15 years of experience, James previously led PR and communications for Tompkins Community Bank in New York and held various marketing and communications roles at national foodservice and travel companies. He is also an adjunct professor at Marist University and SUNY New Paltz, teaching various courses in communications, PR, and marketing. James holds a Bachelor's Degree from SUNY Plattsburgh and a Master's Degree in integrated marketing communication from Marist University.

Shirley Powell

Head of Strategic Communications

Shirley Powell is a dynamic communications strategist and trusted advisor with deep experience in corporate communications, executive advisory and business transformation. As part of the Office of the CEO at Finastra, she works closely with the CEO and executive team to drive effective internal and external communications to ensure clear and connected strategic messaging for all Finastra stakeholders.

Over the course of her career, Shirley has led communications for some of the biggest names in media and tech, including Cox Automotive, The Weather Company, Turner Broadcasting, NBC Entertainment, and the Disney Channel. She's managed high-stakes issues, guided companies through major transformations, developed trusted communications strategies for senior leaders, and helped shape internal cultures for teams to thrive. Before joining Finastra, she ran her own consulting practice, advising companies during times of transition and growth.

An engaged community leader, Shirley serves on the boards of Temple University’s Klein College, Introships, and Open Hand Atlanta, where she is past board president. A proud Temple grad, she’s been honored for her work in media and leadership.

She lives in Atlanta with her husband and two kids, loves the theater, and always has a book nearby.

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