Forum 2026
Executive Leadership Series
Don’t miss this rare opportunity to hear top executives in the banking industry as they share insights on the future of banking and explore the strategic decisions driving success at banking’s highest levels.
Executive Leadership Series Moderator
Jim Marous
Co-Publisher, The Financial Brand
Jim Marous, host of the world’s #1 banking podcast, Banking Transformed, is one of the most influential voices in banking. Join Jim on the Forum 2026 main stage as he moderates these exclusive one-on-one discussions with C-level executives from top U.S. financial organizations. These candid conversations will give you an insider’s perspective on the critical leadership challenges facing the industry today.
Managing People in a Time of Relentless Change
Liz Wolverton
Chief Digital and Product Solutions Officer, Pinnacle Financial Partners
Every banker is managing disruption. AI is redefining roles and digital is reshaping customer expectations. At many institutions, mergers, restructuring and cost pressures are accelerating this change. All around you, employees are quietly asking the same question: Am I next?
In this live conversation, Liz Wolverton shares how leaders can guide teams through uncertainty without losing trust, talent or culture. Drawing on her experience leading large-scale transformation, she will discuss how to manage fear, communicate clarity, and build confidence when change feels constant.
This is a session about people, not platforms.
4 Key Takeaways for Attendees
- How to address employee anxiety around AI and automation without minimizing reality.
- Communication strategies that build trust during sustained disruption
- How to preserve culture while modernizing operating models and channels
- Practical leadership behaviors that reduce resistance and increase engagement
Competing With Giants: How Community Banks Win
Ryan Bailey
President and CEO, Cambridge Savings Bank
(Former executive at USAA, Bank of the West, TD Bank, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America)
Scale no longer guarantees dominance. In this live discussion, Ryan Bailey explains how a community bank can compete, innovate, and grow in a marketplace led by national players. Drawing on leadership experience from some of the largest financial institutions in the U.S., Ryan shares how to implement big-bank discipline, data, and digital tools within a community banking model.
This is about strategies that work at any size.
4 Key Takeaways for Attendees
- How community banks can leverage focus and speed to outperform larger competitors
- Which big-bank disciplines translate well to smaller institutions (and which do not)
- How to build digital and data capabilities without megabank budgets
- The leadership mindset required to balance local relationships with scalable growth
Building the Agentic Bank
Driss Temsamani
Managing Director, Head of Digital, Citi
Drawing on insights from his book, The Agentic Bank, Driss Temsamani will discuss how humans and intelligent agents will work side by side to create trust, speed, and intelligence at scale. He will also address the leadership challenge most executives are avoiding and the changes most employees are fearing.
This is a session about what banking looks like when intelligence stops being a tool and becomes part of the institution itself.
4 Key Takeaways for Attendees
- The difference between AI that recommends and AI that acts with human guidance
- How agentic AI creates continuous creation and deployment of intelligence, replacing episodic events
- How banks can build structural competitive advantages that AI agents deepen over time
- What AI strategies must go beyond pilots in 2026 to keep pace with digital-first organizations