Entry & Judging

Joanne Dewar – Chair

Vice Chair of Global Processing Services (GPS)

Joanne Dewar is Vice Chair of Global Processing Services (GPS), the UK based payments issuer processor that is powering the fintech revolution. In her 4 years as CEO, Joanne led the transition to global scale up and secured $400m investment from consortium including Advent International, Viking Global, Temasek Holdings, Mission OG, Visa and Mastercard.

Recent recognition includes UK Fintech Leader of the Year, Technology Leader of the Year, Great British Businesswoman Tech Leader of the Year, Payments Power 10 and Most Inspirational Woman in Fintech.

Mark Walker

The Fintech Power50

Mark is an experienced technologist, his early corporate successes led him to form his own enterprise software company, producing and selling to Universities and institutions. A hands-on role, he executed this idea from concept to maturity, while also leading the international development for an advanced engineering company before its M&A.

A former Senior Adviser at UK trade & investment, where he used his time to build contacts in technology, IoT and Smart cities sectors, as well as the investment and accelerator environment. Managing a team of seven, his role facilitated a good understanding of the London technology environment. He then continued his passion for supporting Start-up and Scale-up organisations by joining London & Partners as Head of Financial Services & Business Technology. He also led the Mayor’s international business programme for the technology & urban sector.

Having stepped back into the private sector, He has continued supporting ideas, Start-ups and Scale-ups with several of his own investments and ventures, including working with an amazing co-founder on an exclusive Fintech accelerator programme, The Fintech Power50, and running the Operations & Editorial functions at The Fintech Times, a global multimedia news outlet centred around the world’s first leading Fintech newspaper.

Stuart Harrison

Director, FinTech West

Stuart has 30+ years of working within the high-tech sector helping growth businesses with strategy, sales and investment. Having relocated from London when at Oracle to help set up the original Oracle Bristol office in the late 80s, Stuart is passionate about the region, the potential it is starting to deliver and the ethical and collaborative attitude of the people within the community.

He founded FinTech West in 2018 which is now the representative body for FinTech in the South West and part of the FinTech National Network. Outside of FinTech, Stuart is actively involved in a range of technology business advice, activities and mentoring in areas such as blockchain, AI/machine learning, LegalTech and quantum.

Gillian M. Lamela

Executive Director, Public Cloud Programme Manager/Domain Architect, JP Morgan

Gillian M. Lamela joined JP Morgan in November 2021 as the Product Owner in Markets Cloud Technology where she was responsible to drive acceleration across public cloud adoption, enabling Markets business to provide a simpler, faster access to storage and compute, reduce our data centre footprint and enable cost optimization.She is currently the Programme Manager / Domain Architect for Public Cloud Enablement & Adoption team and part of London Technology Center leadership team working with local schools, charities, sustainability efforts and supporting the FinTech UK ecosystem. 

Previously, Gillian was an Engineering Delivery Lead at Barclays Investment Bank responsible for accelerated cloud migration tools, Developer Productivity Strategy and during the pandemic led the banks first-ever virtual innovation challenge. She joined Barclays in 2008 where she held roles ranging from web development, systems design and analysis, testing automation and lead end-to-end delivery programme execution for CCAR and Lehman/Barclays systems integration of ~200 global systems resulting in over £1B cost savings to date. She started her career as an Engineer/UI Designer at Lehman Brothers.

Gillian has received various accolades for her lifetime contributions in STEM including Computer Weekly’s “Most Influential Women in UK Tech”, TechWomen100 Award and Forward Ladies Transformation Leader of the Year. She is featured at industry events and can be seen in several publications including New Scientist, London Tech Week, Business & Industry, and “125 People to follow on LinkedIn”