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Steve Koinm

CISO, Co-Founder & VP Professional Services – CISSP, CCSK

Pure IT Credit Union Services

Steve both serves as Pure IT’s internal CISO and as a virtual CISO or CIO to many clients. He leads our Professional Services group and is active in providing assessments and roadmaps for our clients in People, Process, Technology, and Business Management. He holds CISSP, CCSK, and several other certifications. He is an invaluable resource to credit unions because of his extensive knowledge of the industry, Business Operations, IT and Security. He serves as an advisor to credit union Boards who need to provide a credible challenge to their technology teams and a regular speaker at security and credit union industry conferences throughout the country.

Steve came to the Credit Union industry after working as an Enterprise Architect designing and guiding IT Architecture for large systems in Finance, Telecom, Healthcare, and Oil and Gas companies. He moved into the Executive Ranks and was able to raise $20MM in VC funding to create a successful Managed Services and Hosting company that was acquired by Sungard. That lit his entrepreneurial fires, and he went on to start other businesses doing Consulting, Enterprise Architecture, and Systems Integration before helping Sungard buildout the reference architecture for the business he had built. He then worked for Oracle where he taught companies how to tap into the potential of Big Data and Business Intelligence. He then discovered what made the CU industry so great and dropped everything and dove in and co-foundedPure IT Credit Union Services, a CUSO that provides strategic consulting for the credit union industry.

Jami Jennings

VP Product Marketing Strategy

VisiFI

Jami Jennings is the Director of Digital Channels at VisiFI, an industry-leading software solutions and services provider. Originally from Birmingham, Alabama, Jami completed many study abroad programs in England and Costa Rica before moving back to the States, where subsequently she obtained degrees in business and marketing from Samford University. Upon graduation, she began her career as an adjunct professor before moving into the financial services industry as an advisor for Wells Fargo Financial. In 2009, she joined EPL as a Business Analyst and focused her expertise on building credit and debit card solutions for EPL’s core system, i-POWER®. From there, she moved into a management role, assembling, and leading a team who developed and implemented EPL’s business intelligence (BI) application within EPL’s core and later led a team to design and develop their award-winning Digital Banking application. She is a keynote speaker and a regular contributor to credit union industry publications for digital banking, including Credit Union Times, CUToday.info and Banking.com.

Ryan Howard

Financial Institutions Partnerships

Upgrade

Based in Wichita Falls, Texas, Ryan Howard, Director, Mid-West Partnerships, is responsible for Upgrade’s financial institution partnerships in the midwestern US. Ryan is a seasoned FinTech executive with over a decade of experience in developing asset partnerships. Ryan previously was at Bankjoy and prior to that built partnerships as a VP and Regional Director at Kasasa.

Starla Honea

Senior Vice President of Solutions

CU*South

Starla is an experienced leader in the credit union technology and consulting industry.  Over the past 15 years, she has worked very closely with credit union staff from several perspectives.  Those credit union perspectives include managing software support, guiding credit unions through the conversion process, and consulting with credit union executives and their board on their core technology due diligence.   In the ever so evolving credit union landscape our technology is essential to growing and competing in the industry, please join an expert in learning how to navigate your due diligence cycle.

James Gukeisen

Senior Manager of Advocacy and Outreach

Trellance, Inc.

James Gukeisen has been part of the credit union movement for over 21 years. He is the Senior Manager of Advocacy and Outreach for Trellance, Inc.  

James has extensive experience with debit, credit and general-purpose reloadable card programs, issuer and merchant funded rewards, vendor management and client management.  

Over the last several years James has worked with product teams nationally and across the globe developing credit union specific use cases for the industry’s emerging talent and technology solutions.  

James is a Credit Union Development Educator, Certified Credit Union Executive, Certified Financial Services Professional and Certified Financial Management Specialist.  

Ashish Garg

Founder and CEO

Eltropy

Ashish Garg is the Co-founder and CEO of Eltropy. An MBA graduate from the Wharton School and an engineer by training from BITS Pilani, Ashish spent his early career in high-tech, as a Product Manager working closely with customers from around the world. Ashish saw, first-hand, the changes in customer buying behavior - and the challenges that these changes have brought to traditional marketing, sales and service techniques. That is when the idea of Eltropy was born.

Ashish founded Eltropy with the vision of simplifying the buying experience for customers - and the engagement experience for businesses. What started as an idea, is now a revolution in the making - with customers around 23 countries leveraging Eltropy every day to make better buying decisions by leveraging the power of smartphones, text messaging and curated content.