Wharton FinTech Podcast

Wharton Alternative Investments Initiative and the Penn Blockchain Club hosted a fireside chat with Michael Sonnenshein, Managing Director at Grayscale Investments. With $3bn AUM, Grayscale Investments is the sponsor of the Bitcoin Investment Trust, the Ethereum Classic Investment Trust, and the Zcash Investment Trust. Sarah Hammer, Senior Director of the Wharton Alternative Investments Initiative, speaks with Michael about the basics of blockchain, the growth of cryptocurrencies, and the dynamics of and changing regulatory environment for digital investing. Michael Sonnenshein joined Grayscale Investments in January 2014. As Managing Director, he is responsible for overseeing the daily operations and growth of the Grayscale business, spanning sales, operations, product development, and investor relations. With $2+ Billion in assets under management, Michael is responsible for maintaining many of the firms’ key client relationships including family offices, hedge funds, and other institutions as well as forming strategic partnerships and evaluating service providers. Prior to joining Grayscale, Michael was a financial advisor at JP Morgan Securities, covering HNW individuals and institutions. He also worked in a similar capacity at Barclays Wealth, providing coverage to middle‐market hedge funds and institutions. Mr. Sonnenshein earned his Bachelors of Business Administration from the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and an MBA from the Leonard N. Stern School of Business at New York University. He holds his Series 7 and 66 licenses.

Vivek Chauhan (Wharton MBA ’19) chats with Joel Frisch, Head of Americas at Prodigy Finance. Prodigy Finance is a peer-to-peer platform offering loans to international post graduate students using an innovative credit model. In this engaging podcast, Joel talks about his own trajectory from banking into fintech, Prodigy’s unique approach to credit modeling, impact investing, and opportunities and challenges in the P2P space. Educated in Philadelphia and London, Joel had a successful career on Wall Street and co-founded a software startup in the employee management industry prior to joining Prodigy Finance. As the first US-based employee at Prodigy Finance, Joel has helped build both the team and the market while balancing the complexities of a fast scaling company in a highly regulated space across the UK & US.

Caroline Kremer (WG '19) speaks with Colleen Briggs, Executive Director of Community Innovation at JP Morgan Chase & Co, about JP Morgan's approach to incubating and growing new financial technology companies. In this podcast, Colleen discusses the business opportunities for fintech companies focused on serving the underbanked, as well as her work with the Financial Solutions Lab and the Catalyst Fund. Colleen is responsible for helping establish and execute JP Morgan Chase & Co's global philanthropic strategies on financial health and community development, including two signature initiatives – the Financial Solutions Lab and PRO Neighborhoods competition. The Lab is a $30 million, five-year initiative that convenes leading experts in technology and design to improve consumer financial health for underserved populations. PRO Neighborhoods is a five-year, $125 million program that works to increase the availability and accessibility of vital economic opportunities in distressed neighborhoods. Colleen also manages numerous programs across both topics designed to surface new approaches to community challenges, as well as explore global cross-cutting themes across the Foundation’s work, such as women’s empowerment, peer learning, evaluation, and attracting additional investment in JP Morgan's projects. Colleen is a member of the Asset Funders Network Steering Committee and the Innovations for Poverty Action Policy Advisory Group. She earned an MBA from the Yale School of Management and a B.A. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dipika Sen (Wharton MBA '19) chats with Jungwon Byun, Head of the Growth Team at Upstart, the first lending platform to leverage artificial intelligence and machine learning to price credit and automate the borrowing process. In this engaging podcast, Jungwon talks about her own trajectory from consulting into FinTech, discusses her initiative to foster the professional development of women at Upstart, and shares her insights on the importance of diversity in the industry. Jungwon oversees all of Upstart’s user acquisition strategies across digital, offline, and lifecycle channels. She was previously a management consultant at Oliver Wyman, where she assessed the risk exposure of international banks’ capital markets businesses for regulatory stress testing. She brings experience from her time as the CEO and co-Executive Director of a domestic microfinance non-profit. Jungwon graduated cum laude from Yale University, with a B.A. in Economics.

Justina Gallegos (WG '19) speaks with Marc Andrews, Vice President of IBM Watson Financial Services Solutions. Marc has led the creation of a new organization within IBM to build industry specific solutions for the financial services industry. He is driving the design, development and delivery of offerings that apply analytic and cognitive technologies to streamline regulatory compliance, combat fraud and financial crime, and generate increased customer insights. Marc meets with business and technology leaders from financial services organizations across the globe to share best practices and help them identify how they can apply cognitive capabilities to drive new business value. Marc is a fellow Wharton alum - we are always happy to host Wharton alums in fintech on our podcast.

Kylie Francis(Wharton MBA'18) chats with Andrew Robinson, Executive in Residence at Oak HC/FT, a premier venture growth equity firm investing in healthcare and financial service technology, where his focus is on Insurtech. In this insightful podcast, Andrew talks about his foray into the insurance industry and shares his perspectives on the most interesting activity in the insurance space today, and where this is scope for further disruption.

Fei Ye (WG '19) speaks with Julien Courbe, Partner and Head of PwC's U.S. Financial Services Advisory practice. Fei and Julien discuss PwC's top 8 digital predictions in financial services for 2018. PwC's trends cover a range of topics including digital banking, insurtech and blockchain. Check out the Wharton FinTech Medium for more details on PwC's report. Julien leads PwC’s US Financial Services Advisory practice, covering banking, capital markets, insurance and asset & wealth management companies. He advises C-suite executives at major financial services institutions on how to address issues related to growth and performance improvement, digital transformation, FinTech, financial crime and regulatory compliance, as well as technology and operations effectiveness.

Brian Shah (WG '18) speaks with Dan Aisen, Co-Founder and Head of Quantitative Strategy at IEX. Dan discusses the founding of IEX and the future of high frequency trading. IEX is the subject of Michael Lewis' bestselling book Flash Boys. As part of the founding team, Dan was responsible for building out the core functionality of IEX as a trading venue. As the company grows and evolves, he continues to develop new products and tactics that IEX can use to protect investors from predatory strategies and build a more sustainable and equitable market. Prior to IEX, Dan worked at RBC Capital Markets.

John Pennington (WG '19) speaks with Jani Valjavec, co-founder and CTO (Trading) of ICONOMI, the world’s first blockchain-based digital asset management platform for the decentralized economy. A well-known member of the blockchain community, Jani is a crypto and app token expert and was an early blockchain enthusiast. In 2013, he co-founded Cashila, the first registered Bitcoin company in Europe to acquire a license for the execution of banking transactions via bitcoin. In 2016 Jani co-founded ICONOMI, the world’s first digital assets management platform, in order to provide access to a variety of digital assets and the ability to combine and trade them. Jani also serves as Chairman of Columbus Capital, ICONOMI’s first partner to serve as a dedicated Digital Asset Array manager.

Elena Gerasimova (Wharton 2018) and Nipun Jasuja (Wharton 2018) chat with Catherine Flax, CEO of Pefin, the world’s AI financial advisor. Established in 2011, Pefin is a fintech company based in New York City. Pefin, which stands for PErsonal Financial INtelligence, uses Artificial Intelligence (AI) to provide fiduciary financial advice at the fraction of a cost of a traditional financial advisor. On the day this podcast was recorded (November 30, 2011), Pefin went live to end consumers! And we couldn’t be more thrilled about that. Tune in to learn how Pefin is different from traditional roboadvisors that we’ve come to know, what really is the “AI” behind Pefin and why it took six years until product launch, and some invaluable nuggets of professional wisdom from Catherine.