25 People You Need to Meet at Money 20/20 in Las Vegas

Your bags are packed, tickets booked, and you’re ready to jet off to Vegas for this year’s Money 20/20, the premier financial services conference.

With over 10,000 professionals in attendance representing more than 3,000 companies and 75 countries – including 1,000 CEOs – Money 20/20 is a veritable who’s who of the financial services industry.

This year’s conference focuses on the disruptive financial technologies and business models that are changing how consumers and businesses spend and borrow money. Many of these innovative payment systems make the latest switch to credit card chips seem downright archaic!

Related Article: Finance Jargon: Learn to Talk the Talk

Since Money 20/20 is only four days, you need a smart, strategic approach to networking that maximizes your time. Don’t miss connecting with these big names:

1. Dan Schulman, President and CEO of PayPal, joined the company in 2014 to take it into the next stages of growth as it separates from eBay. His experience involves payments and mobile technology through his role as Group President of Enterprise Growth at American Express, President of the Prepaid Group at Sprint Nextel Corporation, and President and CEO of Priceline Group, Inc.
   
   
2. Deb Liu, Head of Payments and Commerce for Facebook, leads product management and engineering for a wide range of the company’s products and initiatives to further monetize their apps and sites, including building the games business and payments platform. Her experience also includes Director of Product for the End-to-End Buyer Experience at eBay as well as involvement in the eBay and PayPal integration.
   
   
3. Patrick Collison, CEO and Co-Founder of Stripe, created this business with his brother after realizing that there was no developer-friendly way to accept payments online. Before co-founding Stripe, Collison co-founded Auctomatic, an auction and marketplace management system used by sellers on eBay and Amazon.
   
   
4. Osama Bedier, CEO of Poynt, started the company with the idea that there has to be a better way to exchange money for goods and services that are transparent for merchants and customers. Bedier drew on his time as Vice President of Payments at Google and head of Google Wallet as well as leadership roles at eBay, Gateway Computers, and AT&T Wireless, to build Poynt.
   
   
5. Paul Galant, CEO of Verifone, has extensive mobile payment, commercial, and financial experience that he has poured into this company, including serving as the CEO of Citigroup Inc.’s Enterprise Payments business, CEO of Citi Cards, and CEO of Citi Transaction Services among other roles during his extensive career.
   
   
6. Michael Gokturk, CEO and Co-Founder of Payfirma, is a serial entrepreneur who took one company public while launching another three days later. (Yes, he’s a bit of a legend for doing that.) Gokturk then founded Payfirma as a streamlined solution for integrating online, in-store, and mobile payments. He’s also an active angel investor and mentor in the Canadian startup community.
   
   
7. Dan Adamson, CEO of OutsideIQ, heads a risk analytics company for the financial services industry. OutsideIQ is built using Adamson’s search algorithm expertise he honed while working on Microsoft Bing.
   
   
8. Sheri Atwood, Founder and CEO of SupportPay by Ittavi, is an innovative solution for child support communication and automated child support payments, leveraging her own experience in this area to create a beneficial solution for many divorced parents. Prior to this entrepreneurial success, she held numerous technology leadership roles in Silicon Valley.
   
   
9. Rodger Desai, CEO of Payfone, has led many innovative companies prior to Payfone, including Rave Wireless, a location-based safety service, as well as Vetrro Corp., which focused on mobile banking and brokerage. Prior to these entrepreneurial roles, he worked for Accenture, ExxonMobil, and GE.
   
   
10. Alex Broeker, CEO of TabbedOut, worked in many roles within the company prior to taking over leadership in 2013. His background includes venture capital for companies directed at payment technologies, including advising over 30 companies. Previously, his experience includes technology practice of Ernst & Young.
    
    
11. Mike Cagney, CEO and Co-Founder of SoFi, is also the co-founder and managing partner of Cabezon Investment Group, a global macro hedge fund. Prior, he served as CEO, Vice Chairman, and Chief Architect of Finaplex, a wealth management software company sold to Broadridge.
    
    
12. Jimmy Chen, CEO of Propel, has looked for a social need and found it in the country’s food stamp program. His solution is helping low-income families gain food-buying power by improving this social welfare system. Prior to this innovative idea, he was a Product Manager at Facebook where he oversaw the Facebook Groups team and grew it by more than 200 million users.
    
    
13. Tracy DiNunzio, Founder and CEO of Tradesy.com, is an innovative fashion and accessories resale site that is capitalizing on the sharing economy with a way to buy and sell items that is quickly gaining popularity with over three million customers.
    
    
14. Tom Green, VP Small Business Acquisition of LendingClub, is charged with leading all new business initiatives at this well-known peer lending platform. He experience includes Bain Consulting, advising a variety of technology companies, and various roles at Capital One UK that involved prime and subprime credit, marketing, and product design.
    
    
15. Shasha Guan, CEO, of Ping Mobile 2 Credit, has extensive experience in financial statement and SOX internal control assurance services while also leveraging expertise in telecommunication, utilities, entertainment, manufacturing and real estate related to risk, innovative solutions, controls, fraud, and security. Her own experience with identity theft led her to start Ping Mobile 2 Credit.
    
    
16. Corey Gross, Founder and CEO of Sensibill, has gained a reputation as a successful entrepreneur and thought leader in the areas of digital banking and receipts as well as emerging payments. Beyond founding this digital receipts company, he has advised numerous technology startups through Canada’s largest incubator, Digital Media Zone.
    
    
17. Brew Johnson, CEO and Co-Founder of PeerStreet, has combined his diverse background of technology, real estate, and law to create a marketplace for real estate backed loan investing. His previous experience includes serving a general counsel at VirtualTourist where he oversaw the company’s sale to Expedia/TripAdvisor as well as a real estate attorney at Allen Matkins Leck Gamble & Mallory and as a technology attorney at Brobeck Phleger & Harrison.
    
    
18. Michael Kent, CEO and Founder of Azimo, is a serial entrepreneur who has created numerous businesses in the consumer financial services industry. Besides Azimo, this includes Small World Financial Services Group, CorporatePay, Curve, YoYo Wallet and ClarityFX.
    
    
19. Lily Liu, CFO of 21.co, draws on her dual American and Chinese backgrounds and extensive experience in healthcare and management consulting. At 21.co, Liu brings her global expertise to the development of the first computer designed for Bitcoin protocol.
    
    
20. Rebecca Lynn, General Partner for Canvas Ventures, has been ranked #23 out of 100 top tech investors on Forbes’s 2015 Midas List. Her focus is on early-stage venture investments that are geared toward financial services, digital health, SaaS and mobile. This has included Lending Club, which was the largest US technology IPO of 2014. Other investments include Check (acquired by Intuit), RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Doximity, Practice Fusion and Convo.
    
    
21. Peggy Mangot, Co-Founder and CEO of SparkGift, is a micro-investing platform that allows others to gift investments like a person would give someone a gift card to a retailer. These gifts include small dollar amounts or fractional shares in anything from Apple to a mutual fund. She built this great idea from her experience as a leader in companies, such as Google, Visa, Allianz, and Accenture, as well as her time as a lawyer and licensed investment advisor.
    
    
22. Michael Morris, Co-Founder and CEO of Slide, has worked to revolutionize how gift cards are purchased and used, offering convenience for consumers and a way for merchants to engage with their customers and audience. This business visionary has previously served as a director within the digital partnerships group at American Express, leading integrations with companies like Apple, Samsung, Foursquare, Microsoft and TripAdvisor.
    
    
23. Jerry Nemorin, Founder and CEO of LendStreet, is leveraging what he learned at Bank of America Merrill Lynch in its Global Corporate & Investing Banking division, to help consumers that are in financial distress to manage their debt and rebuild credit. He recently served as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Darden School of Business Incubator.
    
    
24. Georgina Nelson, Founder and CEO of truRating, began her career as a finance lawyer before joining Europe’s largest consumer association to advice on the use of technology to drive a reliable consumer rating system.
    
    
25. Stephen Ufford, Founder and CEO of Trulioo, is no stranger to consumer data startups over the last decade, including Trulioo, which is a global identity verification company. His other startups have included iQuiri.com, which was one of the first that offered online consumer credit reports and scores; NDS, which became the marketing division of Canada’s first credit bureau; and Pharos Global, a consumer identity management, and restoration company.

Related Article: The Top 4 Financial Mistakes Your Small Business is Making

Who is on your must-meet list at Money 20/20? I plan on introducing myself to as many of these great minds as I can and you should, too. See you in Vegas!