Introduction
Meet Damian, a member of the Advisory Board at CTFSI. Damian retired in 2017 after a successful 23-year career at Goldman Sachs, where he was as a partner, global head of Operations Technology, and European CIO. He recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge applying machine learning to medical research. His current focus at CTFSI is bringing together his extensive domain knowledge of banking operations and technology with machine learning to help identify and build successful product solutions.
Professional path
What was your professions experience prior to coming to work for/with CTFSI ?
I spent the very large majority of my 25-year career in Technology at Goldman Sachs, working in London, Tokyo, and New York. I played a variety of roles, but most relevant for CTFSI was the 8 years as Head of Global Operations Technology, where I focused on delivering large-scale digital and data transformation initiatives. Since retiring in 2017, I have recently completed a PhD at the University of Cambridge in Computational Biology, building machine learning models to help people with Cystic Fibrosis. Additionally, I am an active FinTech mentor, advisor, and investor.
Motivation and Interest
What got you interested in working with CTFSI?
I’m really excited about CTFSI’s AI Operationalized mission – to harness the huge opportunities that AI offers, applied to the back-office operational processes at Banks, in order to achieve transformational improvements in efficiency, risk reduction, and capabilities. AI offers the ability to automate even the most complex tasks involving judgement, expertise, and experience. From a personal perspective, the combination of my domain knowledge and machine learning experience will hopefully allow me to add value. Additionally, Sanjiv has built an exceptionally strong team who are great to work with.
Current Focus
What is your current focus at CTFSI?
My focus is primarily in two areas. First, to help the team identify the highest value opportunities for applying AI to operational processes. Second, to help the team design and build the product solutions to achieve optimal results.
“The focus on building targeted solutions that achieve tangible results”
Excitement and Engagement
What gets you most excited about CTFSI and the markets we are in?
It’s really that the opportunities are so numerous and significant. During my career at GS, I spent many years driving the automation of human process through technology. Procedural and rule-based logic was sufficient to automate the simpler, more repetitive tasks. Now AI and Machine Learning give the opportunity to automate even the most complex of tasks, those that involve judgement, expertise, and experience.
What is special about what we are doing or how we are doing it?
There’s an awful lot of hype around AI at the moment. What I think really differentiates CTFSI is;
i) the combination of deep domain expertise with very strong AI/Machine Learning technical capabilities
ii) the focus on building targeted solutions that achieve tangible results.
Fun Fact – Music Interests
What is your favorite music track from the last 6 months?
I’m more of a podcast person these days. I really enjoy ‘The Rest is Politics’ which covers international current affairs (for readers in the USA, you may prefer the sister-show ‘The Rest is Politics US’ – especially in the run-up to the election). I’m a keen rugby supporter, so also have a few of these that I listen to – ‘The Eggchasers’ is my favourite, but this maybe a little niche unless you are a die-hard rugby supporter !