Urooj has wide-ranging experience within consumer banking and capital markets in the area of technology consulting and process optimization. He has worked on consulting assignments at JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Deutsche Bank, RBS, Santander and Bank of America / Merrill Lynch, as a senior technology consultant in London.
Urooj specialises in conducting system and functional evaluation of technology systems and the IT organization as a whole, using structured methodologies such as the IT Capability Maturity Model (which evaluates the IT organization along seven different dimensions), the Application Portfolio Optimization methodology (for evaluating the functional and strategic fit of all technology systems) and the Architecture Assessment Model (which evaluates technology architecture within an organization).
Urooj has a Master’s degree from Imperial College, London, and lives and works in the UK, where he has been a keen IT specialist for the past 24 years.
Mazhar is a chartered accountant with over 25 years international banking experience in mergers and acquisitions and finance. He spent 18 years with Citigroup in various senior roles including Chief Financial Officer of Saudi American Bank (SAMBA) and senior EMEA M&A transactor. In the M&A role, he worked on all aspects of the M&A transaction from origination to completion (both acquisitions and divestitures) across Western and Eastern Europe, Middle East and Africa regions (Oman, Switzerland, Ireland, Belgium, Turkey, Poland, Egypt,South Africa, Hungary, UK, Germany, Pakistan, Ukraine, Russia and others).
Walter has over 30 years experience in corporate banking, corporate finance and investment banking having worked with organisations such as Bankers Trust and Security Pacific Hoare Govett. He is an active private and listed equity investor and financial and management consultant based in London. Walter has been a visiting lecturer at City University Graduate Business School, London and has lectured and trained extensively for the international financial services sector over more than a decade. He is the author of a workbook on venture capital investing. He was also an executive vice president for Instinet Corp. where he was responsible for IT Development oversight for the Fixed Income Electronic Brokerage Group, London and New York. He has an MBA in finance and international banking from New York University Graduate Business School. He has also attended the University of Chicago’s Advanced Management Program.
Jack brings to Workstream Automation 35 years of information technology management, consulting and entrepreneurial experience. At the executive level, he has been responsible for external client focused systems as well as internal corporate systems: for wholesale and retail banking, capital markets, electronic trading and straight through processing. Over the past several years he has served as CTO and board member of several web firms in the financial services space.
Until 2006, Jack served as Chief Technical Officer, Head of Product Development and member of the management team of FXall. He was a key architect of FXall’s successful growth from start-up to leading Internet Foreign Exchange system. Prior to that, Jack was Chief Technical Officer and Head of Product Development at Citigroup’s e-Citi Internet Banking Group. Before joining Citigroup, he held a variety of positions as an entrepreneur and executive in the information technology industry.
As founder and first chairman of the FIX Global FX Committee, Jack has spoken before the Federal Reserve Bank, served on SWIFT advisory committees and has written and spoken extensively on foreign exchange technology, STP, web commerce and business process automation.
Jack holds a B.A. from Columbia College, a Masters degree in Business from Columbia University and an M.S. in Biocomputing from the University of Washington.
Samra Shaikh has over 19 years of project management and business analysis experience managing full life cycle projects. She started her career with American Express as a Business Planning and Financial Analyst where achievements included coordinating the efforts of regional offices across the country to produce standardized management reports for the organization.
Samra joined ITT Sheraton for a year before joining American President Lines – Europe. She worked at APL for the next 9 years and led various projects ranging from management reporting to operational efficiency enhancements. Since early 2009 Samra has been practicing as a Business Process Consultant. She has been involved in Business Process Re-engineering assignments for clients in Egypt and the Middle East assessing processes, analyzing inefficiencies and recommending solutions.
Samra holds an MBA from the Institute of Business Administration (Pakistan) and a MSc. in Business Finance from Brunel University (UK). She is also a qualified PRINCE2 project manager and a trainer for Workstream BusinessAnalyst (WBA) at Workstream Automation.
Abdul Hafeez brings a wealth of technology management experience to Workstream. His career spanning 35 years of international banking experience includes assignments as Head of Technology at Bank of America, International Bank of Yemen, Union Bank and Standard Chartered Bank.
Hafeez has led many projects to implement core banking systems across banks and convert existing systems to newer platforms. He has also been a key player in moving branch banking from decentralized local systems to a centralized environment providing least interruption to operational efficiency and ensuring integrity of data. He has been instrumental in undertaking development, acquisition and deployment of a number of Consumer Banking products including Ready Cash (a mix of traditional bank overdraft account with credit card facilities), Credit Card Systems (for Visa / MC and Amex) and POS network deployment, connectivity to Visa, MC and Amex networks. From 1992 to 1995, Hafeez headed Card Ops and set up card acquiring and issuing facilities at Bank of America (Pakistan). This enabled the bank to issue credit cards and provide full back end services across the country.
Hafeez’s major strength is in successfully meeting challenges that involve a shift of paradigm in an organization and bringing about change to achieve higher productivity, better performance and effective controls.
WS EuropeWS Asia PacificWS North America