Jo Ann Barefoot

Keynote Speaker

Jo Ann Barefoot's Biography

Jo Ann Barefoot is CEO of Barefoot Innovation Group, Cofounder of Hummingbird Regtech, Senior Advisor to the Omidyar Network, and host of the podcast show Barefoot Innovation. 

The first woman Deputy Comptroller of the Currency,
Jo Ann led the OCC’s original consumer protection and community reinvestment unit; served on the staff of the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs; was Co-chair of Treliant Risk Advisors; was a Partner and Managing Director at KPMG; and founded Barefoot Marrinan, Inc. 

She serves on the fintech advisory committee for FINRA, is an Executive Board Member of the International RegTech Association (IRTA), and a member of the Milken Institute U.S. FinTech Advisory Committee.

Jo Ann chairs the boards of the Center for Financial Services  Innovation and FinRegLab and previously served on the CFPB’s Consumer Advisory Board. 

She’s an angel investor, serves on the board of Oportun, and advises financial companies and governments worldwide. 

She is a Senior Fellow Emerita at Harvard University’s Center for Business & Government in the John F. Kennedy School of Government, working on a book and series of papers on financial innovation and regulation. 

Jo Ann has authored four manuals on bank regulatory matters and published numerous articles for publications ranging from Forbes to American Banker. 

Other volunteer activities include serving on the National Advisory Board of the National Museum of Women in the Arts and previously chairing the global Trustee Council of the Nature Conservancy and the board of Hiram College, as well as serving on the board of the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Partnership and the national advisory board of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges. Jo Ann was an International Visitor to the European Community and spends time in rural India to work with micro-finance and education in leprosy-affected communities. 

As a Cofounder of Hummingbird Regtech, Jo Ann works with anti-money laundering technology to combat the funding of terrorism and trafficking in human beings, weapons, drugs and endangered animals. The UN estimates that current systems catch less than one percent of the nearly $2 trillion in annual laundering. 

KEYNOTE TITLES IN DETAIL

REGTECH REVOLUTION: A NEW ERA OF DIGITALLY-NATIVE REGULATION 

Who says regulation has to be old, slow and wasteful? Regulation is digitizing too, getting better, faster and cheaper. Today’s new regtech tools never lived on paper – they’re built from scratch with powerful data and analytics. Machines can read and even execute rules. Reporting can move to real time. Low-cost AI can catch financial crime. Improvement can be continuous. This presentation reveals how innovators and visionary regulators are moving us to a digitally-native world.

CAN WE TRUST THE MACHINES?

USING DATA AND AI TO BUILD A NEW FINANCIAL INDUSTRY

Technology is transforming everything, bringing us drones and clones and genetic design and driverless cars and, yes, driverless finance. This explosion of change is fueled by the simultaneous arrival of massive volumes of data and powerful new ways to leverage it through artificial intelligence. But how will financial companies know what technologies are safe to use? How do you solve AI’s “black box” problem? How can you protect privacy? Is cloud computing really secure? What do regulators expect? This talk explains how to thrive on AI.

TEES AND TIES

THE SECRETS OF HOW TECH FIRMS INNOVATE

Most financial companies today want to “innovate.” With millennials becoming the largest generation in world history (poised to inherit $30 trillion), financial providers of all sizes are scrambling to offer the same great technology that people now expect from everything they touch. Projects are proliferating to “digitize,” become “mobile-first,” create great customer experience (CX), and try something on the blockchain. But tech innovation isn’t about products and processes. You can’t get it by having employees switch from suits and ties to tee shirts and jeans. Innovation is about how the company thinks. This talk helps analog-era companies understand the advantages of their born-digital competitors in areas like agile design, design thinking, A/B testing, feature flags, forward/backward dynamics, stand-ups, open sourcing and much more – and how to bring these shifts safely into your organization 

 TESTIMONIALS

"NO ONE HAS MORE EXPERIENCE IN REGULATORY INNOVATION THAN JO ANN BAREFOOT AND WE ALWAYS SEEK HER OUT AS A

SPEAKER ON THIS TOPIC AT OUR EVENTS. SHE ASKS INSIGHTFUL AND PROBING QUESTIONS THAT HELPS THE AUDIENCE GET TO THE MEAT OF A SUBJECT. SHE ALSO HAS THE UNIQUE ABILITY TO DISTILL COMPLEX TOPICS INTO CONCEPTS THAT CAN BE EASILY UNDERSTOOD BY A BROADER AUDIENCE" 

Peter Renton 

Lend Academy Founder 

"JO ANN’S DEEP EXPERTISE IN THE REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT HAS BEEN INVALUABLE TO THE COMPLY CONFERENCE AUDIENCE. JO ANN IS ALWAYS INSIGHTFUL, FORWARD-THINKING AND GENUINELY HONEST IN HER APPROACH TO THE COMPLIANCE, REGTECH AND REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT." 

Alex Baydin 

CEO, PerformLine and COMPLY Conferences 

"AS THOUGHT LEADERS IN REGULATORY REPORTING, VERMEG HAS BENEFITED GREATLY
FROM JO ANN’S INPUT TO OUR OWN THINKING. HER HIGHLY RELEVANT EXPERIENCE AND INSIGHT INTO THE NATURE AND PACE OF CHANGE AROUND REGULATION HAS BEEN VALUABLE. SPECIFICALLY, WE REALLY APPRECIATE HER PARTICIPATION IN VERMEG’S CUSTOMER EVENTS, AND HER EFFECTIVENESS IN PINPOINTING CONTACTS AND IN LINKING UP THE INFLUENCERS WE NEED AS WE PROGRESS OUR DIGITAL REGULATORY REPORTING STRATEGY." 

James Phillips 

Head of Regulatory Reporting Strategy, VERMEG