CFTE Announces Five New Board Members to Join Edtech Project

June 6th 2017, London – The Centre for Finance, Technology and Entrepreneurship (CFTE) is building the future of online education in finance with an Edtech platform that aims to help finance professionals adapt to a rapidly changing industry.

Today, CFTE announces the nomination of five new board members, all with outstanding credentials who are world-renowned experts in their fields. Gillian Cribbs and Sylvain Kalache join the advisory board, while Prof Andrei Kirilenko, Prof Douglas Arner and Prof Karim Lakhani join the academic board. As a collective, the board will enhance CFTE’s capabilities to deliver on its mission to provide professionals with a lifelong education in finance.

On today’s board announcement’s, Tram Anh Nguyen, CFTE’s Co-founder, said “our new board members are exceptional people from diverse backgrounds, and they all share a common belief that people need to acquire the right skills for a rapidly changing world. We are very honoured and grateful that they’re joining CFTE.” Huy Nguyen Trieu, Co-founder of CFTE and CEO of The Disruptive Group added, “We are building a global platform to help finance professionals adapt to Finance 2.0. This has never been done before, and having the views of world-class experts from Hong Kong to London to Boston to the Silicon Valley will be extremely valuable to CFTE.”

Gillian Cribbs, executive coach at the London Business School and former Management Editor of the Financial Times, has an in-depth understanding of organizational dynamics and the central role people play in contributing to business success. Her involvement will ensure people remain the focus of CFTE’s mission to educate the next generation of finance professionals by emphasising employability and lifelong learning.

Prof Andrei Kirilenko, the Director of the Centre for Global Finance and Technology at Imperial College London, has developed an unparalleled understanding of how technology is impacting finance from his extensive experience as a scholar and regulator. Prof Douglas Arner, the Kerry Holding Professor in Law at the University of Hong Kong, has a unique knowledge of regulation and law in finance, both in Asia and at a global level. Andrei and Douglas will help CFTE with standards of academic excellence and provide insights into the impact of technology and regulation in finance.

Prof Karim Lakhani, Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, is at the forefront of crowd-sourced innovation and is a board member of Mozilla. Sylvain Kalache, Co-founder of Holberton School, is a school builder pioneering new models of education in Silicon Valley that aims to train and grow thousands of programmers. Together, Karim and Sylvain will be instrumental in building the CFTE platform and leveraging its technology and ecosystem to deliver new and innovative methods of teaching at scale.

Quotes and additional information on board members

Gillian Cribbs runs her own firm, Credo Consulting, and is an experienced coach of C-level leaders across a broad range of sectors and industries in Europe, the US, Asia, Middle East and Africa. She combines an outstanding ability to communicate complex messages about leadership and organisational development with a deep understanding of the challenges facing companies navigating technological disruption. In addition to LBS, she is an associate of Said Business School, Oxford and IMD, Lausanne. Gillian is also an organisational psychologist and contributor to Harvard Online. “CFTE is a bold initiative to bring the right finance and business skills to emerging global leaders at the right moment in their careers. I have no doubt that it will act as a powerful catalyst for many individuals, organisations and businesses and am delighted to be joining the centre as it launches its first programmes”, said Gillian.

Before joining Imperial College, Andrei Kirilenko was Professor of the Practice of Finance at MIT Sloan and Co-Director of the MIT Centre for Finance and Policy. Prior to this, he served as chief economist at the U.S Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) where he was awarded the Chairman’s Award for Excellence (highest honour). He is globally recognised for his scholarly work on finance, technology and regulation. He is also renown for his educational and public outreach efforts to disseminate scholarly knowledge to the broader public. “Past industrial revolutions relied on mathematical thinking, logical reasoning, and linguistic interpretation. The industrial revolution we are living through at present relies on computational thinking, algorithmic reasoning, and digital representation. CFTE aims to teach skills that are needed now, and do it on a global scale. I am honoured to be a part of this effort”, said Prof Kirilenko.

Douglas Arner is an internationally recognised expert on financial regulation. He has worked with regulators in countries across Europe, Africa and Asia Pacific on issues relating to developing appropriate policy and regulatory environments for financial innovation, financial stability and economic growth. He has worked with the World Bank, Asian Development and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development on financial sector reform. At HKU, he co-founded the Asian Institute of International Financial Law as well as masters programmes on financial law and regulation. “In looking to the future of finance, perhaps the greatest challenges will arise in respect of human capital. This is the core focus of CFTE, and I am very pleased to be part of this initiative”, said Prof Arner.

Karim Lakhani is also the Principal Investigator of the Crowd Innovation Lab and NASA Tournament Lab at the Harvard Institute for Quantitative Social Science and the Faculty co-founder of the Harvard Business School Digital Initiative. In addition to academic acclaim, Lakhani has worked in sales, marketing and product development roles, giving him a well-rounded perspective of the practical applications of cutting-edge research to real world settings. Lakhani received his Ph.D. in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his research has been published in leading academic and mainstream publications. “Digital innovation and transformation is impacting all sectors of the economy and finance is at the forefront of this generational change. This transformation is impacting value creation, value capture and operating models of incumbent organisations and arming entrepreneurs with new opportunities. CFTE will be at the forefront of understanding the new skills needed to survive and thrive in this changing economic landscape”, said Prof Lakhani on joining CFTE.

Sylvain Kalache has extensive experience working in the software industry. Prior to Holberton School, he worked as a Software Engineer in Silicon Valley for a decade. In his first role, as a Site Reliability Engineer at the start-up SlideShare, he supported the infrastructure that served 3 billion slides every month, leading the company to be acquired by LinkedIn. He took over a Senior Software Engineer position at LinkedIn where he notably co-created the automation framework, Skynet. Sylvain’s experience provides him with a 360 view of the needs of the technology and business community, and on joining CFTE, Sylvain added: “The next generation of successful companies will all be driven by Software innovation, the Finance industry is obviously part of this. In that context, it is critical to train the next generation of Finance professionals on Software skills, and most importantly to guide them into a lifelong learning experience. CFTE is aiming to this, and I am delighted to be part of it!”

-ENDS-

About CFTE
CFTE is a new EdTech platform for the finance industry. It utilises m-learning and adaptive learning technologies to deliver courses aimed at up-skilling finance professionals in a rapidly changing industry being transformed by emerging technologies. The curriculum is being designed with inputs from an exceptional advisory and academic board and through consultations with banking institutions, start-ups, Fintech experts, and technology leaders. The first modules go live in September and will incorporate online modules and in-class learning delivered by world-class experts.

The Centre for Finance, Technology & Entrepreneurship
32 London Bridge St, London, SE1 9SG
Aliasgar Makda on: aliasgar@cfte.education or +44 7516 114 733.

This release was published on openPR.