GARP 2025 Financial Risk Symposium

Ashwani Aggarwal is the Chief Risk Officer of Santander US and Santander Bank, N.A., leading the oversight across both the financial and non-financial risks, including credit, market, operational, compliance, model, liquidity, technology, capital, and reputation since August 2021. He serves on the Board of Directors of Banco Santander International.

Aggarwal began working at Santander US in June 2019 as Head of Risk Analytics and Chief Model Risk Officer. In this role, he was responsible for Data Management Framework for all Santander US entities.

Prior to joining Santander US, Aggarwal held various leadership roles at JPMorgan Chase from 2007 to 2018, including Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Model Risk Governance & Review. He also held a variety of risk positions at GE Capital, Standard & Poor’s, and GMAC Rescap.

Aggarwal is the Executive Sponsor of the Santander US Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Business Resource Group, which provides development opportunities for colleagues and extends outreach to the external community and more.

Aggarwal earned a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the National Institute of Technology Rourkela, an M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Lamar University, and an M.B.A. from the University of Michigan Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

George Smirnoff is Managing Director, Global Information Security, Compliance and Operational Risk Executive for Bank of America, overseeing cybersecurity risk and compliance globally. George is a leader with expertise across cybersecurity, technology, data, and operational risk with a record of embedding transformational change, delivering a forward view of managing the interconnect of complex risks across business, technology, functions, and legal entities. 

Previously for Barclays, George built out a global integrated risk program for cybersecurity, technology, data, resilience, and change and was promoted to lead the entire global Operational Risk function. Further, he served as the Executive Sponsor for the Employee Multicultural and Faith Resource Group.

George has been CISO at Comerica and Synchrony, a global executive in security and data at Morgan Stanley and EY, and served in multiple board/advisory roles with The Clearing House, Financial Services Sector Coordinating Council, and the Department of Homeland Security.

Notably, he is an original architect of the Cyber Risk Profile and is a recognized thought leader in cyber frameworks, regulatory harmonization, and privacy. George has extensive Board and Regulatory experience and holds a JD, MBA, and CISSP.

Kaizad Cama is a Managing Director at BlackRock and the Head of Risk for Global Private Credit and Private Equity. In this capacity, he is responsible for the investment risk management of BlackRock’s private credit and private equity businesses.

Outside of BlackRock, Kaizad serves on the investment committee for MCE Social Capital's MESA fund. MCE a non-profit impact investment manager investing in small-scale sustainable agriculture and financial service providers (e.g., microfinance organizations) in frontier markets. 

Prior to joining BlackRock, Kaizad led a risk advisory practice at FIS (formerly SunGard), which advised banks on credit risk management, capital management and business strategy. He was responsible for creating risk solutions for regional and community banks within their middle market lending, CRE lending and retail lending businesses. Kaizad began his career at ERisk, a spin-off of the management consulting firm Oliver Wyman.  

Kaizad earned his BA and an MS from Stanford University. He also received an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Courtney Garcia is Managing Director and Head of Market Risk at Apollo. Courtney sits on several committees, including the Firm’s Global Risk Committee, Valuation Committees, Investment Practices, and various other Investment Committees. 

Tod Trabocco is a Managing Director on the Client Solutions and Business Development Team at Marathon Asset Management. Based in New York, he joined the firm in 2024. Tod has a M.A.L.D. from the Fletcher School of Diplomacy at Tufts University and a M.B.A. from Columbia Business School. He previously worked at Aksia, ITE Management, Cambridge Associates, Kayne Anderson, CIFC, Moody's Investors' Service and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Saad P Aslam is the Executive Vice President and Head of Credit Review at Citizens Bank. In this capacity he leads the bank’s Credit Review function and a team responsible for management of enterprise-wide credit risk. The Credit Review team is also responsible for ensuring the identification and mitigation of all credit risk concerns for commercial, consumer and wealth management business, as well as surveillance of the bank’s loan portfolios on behalf of the bank’s Board Audit Committee.

Colin Lovemason is currently Head of Model Risk at SMBC, Risk Management Americas Division. Previously, he held positions in the Risk Division of Credit Suisse from 2005 to 2023 in roles covering model development and model validation. Colin holds a PhD in Mathematics from King’s College London and a BSc in Mathematics from the University of Edinburgh.  

Jason Wu is the Assistant Director of the Global Markets Analysis division at the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In this capacity, he directs the IMF’s work on financial market surveillance and leads the flagship Global Financial Stability Report.

Before joining the IMF, Jason served as an Associate Director in the Division of International Finance at the Federal Reserve Board, where he oversaw the Global Financial Flows, Global Financial Institutions, and International Financial Stability groups. From 2018 to 2021, he was the Head of Economic Research and later the Head of Credit Risk and Banking Statistics at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority.

Between 2007 and 2018, Jason held positions in the divisions of Monetary Affairs and Supervision and Regulation at the Federal Reserve Board, focusing on FOMC communications, the transmission of monetary policy, and the operations of financial intermediaries.

Jason holds a PhD in economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and has published research on monetary policy transmission, banking, capital flows, and econometrics in leading academic journals.

Joseph is the Head of US Regulatory Policy, responsible for interpretation and advocacy related to the Basel

Committee's and the Federal Reserve's regulatory capital frameworks applicable to the Bank Holding Company and to Goldman Sachs Bank USA. He serves as co-chair of the Finance, Risk and Services Asian

Professional Network. Previously, Joseph helped create the Regulatory Policy team in 2010. Prior to that, he built the GS Bank USA Regulatory Reporting team in 2008. Joseph joined Goldman Sachs as an analyst in 2005 and was named managing director in 2017. Joseph earned a BBA in Accounting from Baruch College in 2005 and an MBA in Finance from New York University Stern School of Business in 2011.

Jorge R. Sobehart is a Managing Director, Head of Credit, Climate and Obligor Risk Analytics at Citi, where he manages analytics for credit risk ratings, wholesale climate risk, credit stress testing, CCAR, ICAAP, IFRS9 and CECL reserves, and loss likelihood and loss severity approaches for regulatory capital. Previously he also developed wholesale frameworks for credit risk capital and various credit risk approaches. Dr. Sobehart has over 35 years of professional experience in research and development for government and industry, risk analysis, quantification of uncertainty, probabilistic risk assessment and mathematical modeling. During his career, he has worked for several prestigious institutions making contributions in multiple fields, publishing articles in risk management, finance, theoretical and applied physics, computation, and mathematical modeling, and acting as a reviewer for several professional journals and book editors. He authored the recent book Advanced Analytical Methods for Climate Risk and ESG Risk Management. Dr. Sobehart has advanced degrees in physics and postdoctoral experience at the US-Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Peter Cai is EVP, Chief Market Risk Officer at KeyBank, where he oversees corporate treasury risk and trading-related risk management activities. Peter has more than 25 years of enterprise risk oversight and recently served as Global Head of Risk Data, Analytics, Reporting, and Tech for Citigroup across all risk stripes and products. In this role, he led a global team covering modeling and analytics for enterprise-level risk aggregation and stress testing. 

Previously, Peter served as the Global Head of Asset Liability and Investment Risk for Barclays, Chief Risk Officer for Global Atlantic (formerly Goldman Sachs Reinsurance), and Managing Director, Firmwide Portfolio Risk Management for Morgan Stanley. Peter has taught at master’s level financial mathematics programs at Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University and New York University.

Peter holds a Ph.D. in Materials Science from Pennsylvania State University and a B.S. in Mathematics and Applied Mechanics from Fudan University in China.

Manish Chakrabarti is the Head of Model Governance at Vanguard. In this role Manish is responsible is building out the model risk management function from the ground up and providing oversight of all models used across the enterprise as well as driving the governance and risk management of Gen AI solutions, ensuring alignment with the firm’s strategic vision and goals.

He brings extensive experience acquired during his 16+ years in the financial services industry and Tech and has held senior leadership roles in several major international and global banks, including Goldman Sachs, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Morgan Stanley, and Deutsche Bank, resulting in a unique perspective on challenges and opportunities in this industry. At BNP Paribas, he was the head of Model Governance for the US and before that he was the US Head of the Model Risk team at Goldman Sachs - IA and helped build out the team of PhD quants and mature the model risk audit program globally. In addition to senior roles in financial services he has been a trusted advisor to several early-stage startups and FinTech companies in the Model Risk, ML Ops, AI observability and Responsible AI space. Manish holds a Ph.D. degree in Mathematics and MS in Computer sciences.

Lee Medoff has over 20 years of professional experience in banking and finance. He began his career as a desk quant at JPMorgan Chase, where he developed models to optimize the return of the bank’s card portfolio. He moved to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, following the merger of JPMorganChase with BankOne, before joining Moody’s Analytics Risk Management Services, where he oversaw analytics teams in New York and India. His professional experience further includes consulting roles in the Quantitative Advisory Services Group of EY, followed by several years in leadership within the Fintech space, prior to his joining Fifth Third.

Danny West leads a team of attorneys at Two Sigma that advise the firm’s research and engineering teams on how to appropriately acquire and leverage big data in the financial markets. He is involved in every aspect of the firm’s data onboarding process, including diligencing novel alternative datasets and developing scalable data and privacy-related policies, procedures and controls. Prior to joining Two Sigma, Danny was assistant general counsel at American International Group, Inc. (AIG), working with the firm’s big data and science teams to develop cutting-edge healthcare / financial tools and technologies, often utilizing strategically de-identified and/or aggregated data.

Richard Apostolik has led the world’s premiere association for risk professionals for 16 years. Previously with Bankers Trust’s (Deutsche Bank) strategic ventures group, Apostolik developed financial risk management initiatives designed to provide credit risk mitigation and management services to financial service companies. He also served as JPMorgan & Co.’s global head of energy brokerage activities and chief operating officer of its global listed product businesses. Apostolik ran his own consulting firm and was responsible for the start-up of SG Warburg & Co.’s North American futures and options business. He was an attorney with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, practiced law with a private law firm in Chicago, and was the Chicago Mercantile Exchange’s house counsel. Apostolik holds a BSBA, MBA, and JD from the University of Dayton.

Katherine Wolicki is the Global Head of Engagement and Outreach for GARP Benchmarking Initiative (GBI). GBI plays a key role in supporting evidence-based policymaking through the provision of industry benchmarking studies. Prior to this she was with HSBC for 12 years where she led the Global Financial and Model Risk Regulatory Policy and Engagement team for Risk. The team was responsible for the external regulatory interface for the Traded Risk, Treasury Risk Management and Global Risk Analytics function. This included the provision of guidance on regulatory risk matters, regulatory policy interpretation and industry engagement.  Prior to this she was based in Brussels as a Public Affairs consultant specialising in financial services regulation. Katie has an MA in International Economic Relations from American University and a Maîtrise in European and International Law from the University of La Reunion. She is a fluent French speaker and an avid hiker and mountaineer.