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The WPI Business School develops adaptive leaders who create sustainable solutions that deliver globally responsible impact and conduct impactful research at the intersection of business, technology, and people.
The WPI Business School is a STEM-focused school that bridges the words of business and technology to develop adaptive leaders who shape the world. We are the business school for engineers, scientists, and changemakers.
With a 150-year history of technological advancement, we live and breathe innovation. Guided by world-class faculty from industry, our students graduate with technical, leadership, and people skills and real-world experience to advance their careers, drive societal impacts, and enhance their organization’s goals and objectives.
Keynote 1: Michael Goldstein, Babson College
Keynote 2 - Sarah Biller Entrepreneur, Investor, and Fintech Leader
Keynote Speaker 1: Professor Michael Goldstein, Babson College ;
Michael A. Goldstein, Ph.D. is a Professor of Finance at Babson College. He currently also holds a three-year appointment as a Visiting Professorship Fellow at the Climate Change Research Center at the University of New South Wales. He currently serves on the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA)'s Economic Advisory Committee, and was Chair from 2011 to 2021. Dr. Goldstein previously served as a member of the Nasdaq Economic Advisory Board from 2003 to 2005, and served as Chair in 2005. Dr. Goldstein was chosen to be the Visiting Economist at the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) for 1997-1998 and was the eighth academic to hold that post. His research covers market microstructure, corporate bonds, climate change, dividend payments around the world, privatization of formerly communist countries, and real estate, and has consults Fortune 100 companies and financial firms on financial strategy, international strategy, and complex litigation. He is currently the Editor of The Financial Review, and an Editor at Weather, Climate and Society, a journal of the American Meteorological Society.
Dr. Goldstein has received four U.S. National Science Foundation grants related to Arctic Economics. Some of his work can be seen at www.arcticecon.com. He has multiple publications on climate science in science journals.
Keynote Speaker 2 : Ms. Sarah Biller, Entrepreneur, Investor, and Fintech Leader
Sarah Biller is an Entrepreneur, Investor, and Educator in the FinTech sector and adjacent industries. She is currently the Executive Director of Vantage Ventures, a collaboration of the John Chambers College of Business and Economics at West Virginia University (a Research 1 University), global Technology leaders, Fortune Class companies and Venture Capital firms, focused on providing entrepreneurs in the center of the country a systematic and efficient approach to build world-changing ideas into scalable, investable businesses and access venture capital.
West Virginia was the fourth state in the nation to pass legislation authorizing the creation of a Regulatory FinTech Sandbox, providing FinTech entrepreneurs a partnership-driven approach to building transformative products and services to serve Main Street.
Ms. Biller is also the co-Founder of FinTech Sandbox, a Boston-based not for profit that accelerates the product development cycle of FinTech start-ups globally by providing free access to high quality, diverse datasets, and on the founding team for the Mass Fintech Hub. She is also the co-Founder of Capital Market Exchange (CMX), a predictive analytics platform for institution bond investors that integrates natural language processing, Bayesian estimation techniques and machine learning to identify and quantify the impact of nonfinancial factors on near-term credit spreads.
Ms. Biller designed the first curriculum and taught a graduate level course on the evolution of Financial Technology at Brandeis University. She was most recently the Chief Operating Officer for Innovation at State Street Bank’s Global Exchange division and Head of Innovation Ventures. Prior to joining State Street, Ms. Biller held roles at Fidelity Investments; worked on MCI’s corporate venture team; and launched and led research divisions for Fortune 500 CFO’s and treasurers at the Corporate Executive Board. She has also been a Principal in the launch of several successful venture-backed start-ups in the FinTech and Life Sciences sectors.
She is an Investor and Board Director at Nashville, TN-based Thread Bank, Rialto Markets, a FINRA-regulated ATS digitizing the securities and automating the fundraising process compliance and regulatory requirements for private companies as well new asset classes such as carbon credits, and KAYLP, a London-based blockchain company digitizing assets for cross-border distribution. Ms. Biller was also an Investor and Board Director prior to their acquisitions for Finomial, a Boston-based technology firm automating the compliance and regulatory requirements for a global set of Hedge Funds, Durham, NC-based subscription economy platform WalletFi, and trading platform for Bitcoin Options, Alt-Options, LLC.
She was named by Innovate Finance one of the Top 150 global women leaders in FinTech, Lattice80’s list of Top 100 Women in FinTech in the UK and Hong Kong and NY FinTech Women as a Top 20 inspiration for her commitment to lift-up other women in an industry historically not known for doing so. Ms. Biller chaired EY’s National selection committee for its Financial Services Entrepreneur of the Year award. She is an active Advisor and mentor as well as the Founding Advisor for MassChallenge’s FinTech Lab initiative.
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), October 19-20, 2023
Inaugural Conference on Fintech for inclusivity, growth, and the future.
Future Finance and Economics Association and Worcester Polytechnic Institute
The Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) Business School and the Future Finance and Economics Association (FFEA) are proud to invite you to the staging of the inaugural conference on "Fintech for inclusivity, growth, and the future." This will mark the first time FFEA will offer a conference event in the United States. The conference will be from Thursday October 19th through Saturday October 21st, 2023, at WPI.
This follows the very enjoyable and successful first, in Napoli in June 2022 and the second in Ljubljana in 2023
Theme
This event will bring together an international group of academics and practitioners who are actively conducting research in the fields of finance, management and related disciplines, as well as practitioners and policy makers to generate debates on current issues of sustainability, fintech and digital finance. The conference provides a forum for presenting new ideas and discussing the future direction of fintech research.
We hope to make this the largest annual niche gathering in the intersection of sustainability and Fintech research in North America, and we look forward to welcoming you in our community of digital finance scholars.
This international conference will feature scholars sharing their research in all areas of Fintech, including but not limited to:
- Green / Sustainable / Climate Finance, ESG considerations, and risk management, and modelling challenges
- International Financial Regulation and Green/Sustainable/Climate finance challenges.
- The impact of Artificial Intelligence applications in the financial industry
- Contagion, spillovers and interlinkages among green/climate/sustainable financial instruments and other assets
- Machine learning applications in financial and economic analysis
- Central Bank Digital Currency and the underbanked/unbanked
- Green/Sustainable/Climate assets and portfolio allocation
- Fintech and financial inclusion
- Financial and Economic Uncertainty
The conference invites papers in all areas of fintech and sustainability studies. At this point a tentative but not exhaustive set of topics could include the following
- Financial and Economic Uncertainty
- The impact of Artificial Intelligence applications in the financial industry
- Machine learning applications in financial and economic analysis
- Climate, green and carbon finance modelling challenges
- Green Finance and ESG considerations
- Central Bank Digital Currency and the underbanked/unbanked
- Central Bank Digital Currency and Green/Climate/Sustainable Finance
- Financial Stability and Green/Climate/Sustainable Finance
- Blockchain and FinTech
- Blockchain’s role in data reliability for supply chains and sustainability
- Risk Management and Green/Sustainable/Climate finance challenges.
- International Financial Regulation and Green/Sustainable/Climate finance challenges.
- Spillovers and interlinkages among green/climate/sustainable financial instruments and other assets
- Green/Sustainable/Climate assets and portfolio allocation
- Applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence in financial decision making
- Fintech and the achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Fintech and financial inclusivity
- Ethics and Fintech
Timeline
Papers and extended abstracts, as well as proposals for workshops and panel discussions, should be submitted by end July 2023 with decisions end august.
Submissions and registration can be made here or https://conference-service.com/ffea-WPI-2023/welcome.html
About the Conference
Conference Logistics
- Conference sessions will take place at the WPI Campus
- The conference will be in person only.
- Sessions typically last for 90m, and contain one workshop/roundtable or three papers with discussants.
- Authors of accepted papers will be required to also act as discussants.
- We do not issue visa letters or letters of support.
- Conference fees are all inclusive of meals and supporting documentation
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Registration deadline is August 15th, 2023, and registration fees are as follows:
- Face-to-face presentation with attendance of the Gala Dinner:
- Academic $350
- Professional $500
- Face-to-face presentation with attendance of the Gala Dinner:
Indicative Schedule.
Thu October 19: 0830-1730 Conference, Keynote speaker, workshops
Thu October 19: 1900 Social Event
Fri Oct 20: 0830-1730 Conference, Keynote speaker, workshops
Fri Oct 20: : 1900 Gala Dinner, prize giving.
Special Issues of Journals - for more information click here
- Finance Research Letters - all conference topics ; Guest Editor Kwamie Dunbar WPI
- International Review of Financial Analysis - Fintech and Inclusivity in an International Context Guest Editor Kwamie Dunbar WPI
- One Earth (Cell Press) - Significant contributions to our understanding of financial markets that promote and maintain social and environmental sustainability; pre-submission enquiries
- Heliyon (Cell Press) – All conference topics; Editor Larisa Yarovaya; Information for authors
- iScience (Cell Press) – contributions that feature or could lead to interdisciplinary thinking; pre-submission inquiries
Papers for these special issues must be presented at the conference. Which journal, if any, will be requested at submission. It is NOT mandatory to select a SI to attend or present. Please refer to the journal websites for details on submissions. Note that submissions are NOT open yet.
Conference attendance fee is likely to be in the region of $400
Inquiries