Future of Payments

As the CEO of Vast Bank, Brad Scrivner is responsible for running all facets of the organization. He has a proven executive management track record with more than 25 years of experience driving growth for companies in a variety of industries. Before joining Vast Bank, Mr. Scrivner served as market president (Tulsa) for Kansas City-based UMB Bank. His pathway into financial services, however, is anything but normal.

Mr. Scrivner began his career as a system and design engineer at the Callaway Nuclear Plant in Callaway County, MO, and eventually transitioned into consultative sales with XEROX then Merrill Lynch. This unique background has him well positioned to lead Vast Bank in a time where the banking industry is experiencing massive changes in the way of digital transformation. Mr. Scrivner holds an MBA from William Woods University and received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering at the University of Missouri. He has been happily married for 30 years and has two grown kids.

Liyan Yang is a professor of finance and the Peter L. Mitchelson/SIT Investment Associates Foundation Chair in Investment Strategy at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. In 2010, he received his Ph.D. in economics from Cornell University. Professor Yang’s research interests focus mainly on financial markets, asset pricing, and behavioral finance. He is currently serving as an associate editor at Journal of Finance, Journal of Economic Theory, Management Science, Journal of Financial Markets, and Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control. Professor Yang is a fellow of the Accounting and Economics Society, a fellow of Cornell Fintech Initiative, and a fellow of Luohan Academy. His research has been published in Journal of Economic Theory, Journal of Financial Economics, Journal of Finance, and Review of Financial Studies. He has received the 2016 JFQA William F. Sharpe Award for Scholarship in Financial Research, the 2016 Bank of Canada’s Governor’s Award, and the 2015 Roger Martin Award for Excellence in Research, among others.

Michelle Gitlitz joined Flexa as a general counsel in October 2021. She brings over 20 years of experience and has been actively working on matters driving the digital assets industry since 2018. In this role, Ms. Gitlitz is responsible for advising Flexa on legal, regulatory, and risk management matters surrounding payments, digital assets, and blockchain technology, and helping the company continue its rapid growth trajectory. She is a sought-after leader, speaker, and writer who frequently collaborates with federal and state regulators and legislators on blockchain and digital asset issues.

Previously, Ms. Gitlitz served as the global head of Crowell & Moring’s Blockchain and Digital Assets practice and co-led Crowell & Moring’s Financial Services practice. In this role, she regularly advised emerging and established companies on how to best bring blockchain technology applications to market, raise capital, list tokens on digital currency exchanges and platforms, establish new blockchains and nodes, and navigate state and federal money transmission and payments laws. Ms. Gitlitz brings extensive experience with virtual currency money transmission to Flexa and most recently authored “An Introduction to Virtual Currency Money Transmission Regulation” in Global Legal Insight’s Blockchain & Cryptocurrency Regulation treatise.

Ms. Gitlitz is a board member of the MIT Computation Law Report and a member of and contributor to the Wall Street Blockchain Alliance and the Digital Chamber of Commerce. She also founded and serves as president and director of Diversity in Blockchain Inc., a nonprofit organization committed to creating equal, open, and inclusive opportunities in the blockchain industry, as well as the Art & Antiquities Blockchain Consortium (AABC), a nonprofit committed to reimagining cultural heritage solutions through the use of blockchain technology and its guiding principles. In recognition of her leadership, the National Law Journal and New York Law Journal have named Ms. Gitlitz a Trailblazer, and Crain’s New York Business has recognized her as a Notable Woman in Law.

Sunil Sachdev is a global fintech executive with a significant breadth of experience in banking and payments at companies such as American Express, Meed, and Pershing. He has worked at Fiserv for nearly a decade in various roles and geographies. Before his role was expanded, Mr. Sachdev was initially tasked with setting up the Fiserv sales office in India to extend the Fiserv payments business into international markets. In recent years, he led the community bank segment for Fiserv, a position that helped him gain a deeper appreciation for the power of fintech partnerships to help community banks deliver differentiating experiences, support new revenue streams, and improve speed to market.

In 2021, Fiserv launched an official Fintech segment of the business, with Mr. Sachdev leading a team that has greatly accelerated the planning, execution, and delivery of new fintech capabilities across the enterprise. He has established key partnerships with a number of fintechs, bringing their innovative services to the expansive network of financial institutions and merchants Fiserv serves. In addition, Mr. Sachdev and his team continue to make it faster and easier for fintechs to work with Fiserv to embed a range of banking and payment services into their digital experience.

Uday Rajan is the David B. Hermelin Professor of Business Administration and a Professor of Finance at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Professor Rajan’s research focuses on informational frictions such as adverse selection and moral hazard and their effect on market transactions, with recent work on the role of credit ratings in the financial markets and on fintech competition in banking. He was a Vice President of Fixed Income Research at Drexel Burnham Lambert in the late 1980s and received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University in 1995. Professor Rajan has received the GSAM award for the best paper in the Review of Finance and the NYSE award for the best paper on equity trading at the Western Finance Association meetings. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Finance and has been an editor of the Review of Corporate Finance Studies, an associate editor of Management Science, and an editorial review board member of Marketing Science. Professor Rajan is a former president of the Finance Theory Group and is currently a director of the Financial Intermediation Research Society and the Western Finance Association. He has received MBA teaching awards at the Ross School and at Carnegie Mellon, along with a Ph.D. teaching award at the Ross School.