Charlotte Philipps, a fully trained German lawyer, has been a banker, private equity professional and investor in emerging markets for over thirty years.

Starting her career at the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development she was responsible for heavy industries and natural resources financing primarily in Central Asia and the Caucasus. Following on from EBRD, she became President and CEO of AIG’s private equity platform for the Former Soviet Union, as well as being part of AIG’s emerging markets investment committees covering Africa, MENA and parts of South America.

Most recently Ms Philipps has held a variety of non-executive directorships and runs a small advisory boutique providing growth, turnaround and succession planning advice to companies in the creative industries such as Zaha Hadid Design and John Pawson Architects. Having worked in emerging markets for most of her life, Ms Philipps has a deep understanding of the challenges for clients posed by compliance teams that gather information from false or rudimentary public sources.

Ms Philipps lives and works in London.

Ellen Quirk is a Partner at Scarlet Capital Ltd, an affiliate of BTG Pactual, the global investment bank ($40B Market Cap), where she advises global corporations on M&A transactions. She is also the Founder and President of Kismet Impact LLC (founded in 2018) which invests in blockchain and datacenters, is a Partner at Aurion Capital, and the CEO of new payments technology start-up Hiba Inc. (in stealth). She is also a Partner at General Resilience, which she co-founded with the former Assistant Secretary General of NATO and the former Head of ISR and Innovation at NATO.

Ellen serves on the boards of anti-corruption group Ethic Alliance, the Edward R Murrow Center for a Digital World at the Fletcher School at Tufts University and Agreefy Technologies, of which she is a founding investor. She is a judge for the University of Chicago’s annual New Venture Challenge (since 2018) and has advised groups such as NATO on the launch of its Innovation Fund, the BBC (on Youth Programming and MyWorld, executive produced by Angelina Jolie), Global Thermostat and GovCoin, the world’s first blockchain-based government-backed welfare distribution protocol, backed by Barclays and the Bank of England – among others.

Ellen began her investment career at Guggenheim Partners in New York (2006-2014), where she was a macro analyst and managed hedge fund and impact investments for ultra-high net worth clients ($25M- $3B AUM), and later helped launch and as PM co-managed 5 hedge fund of fund portfolios seeded by Guggenheim, all with top-tier performance. From 2014-2018 Ellen managed partnerships and direct investments at two family offices out of Hong Kong and Rio, where she worked on multi-billion-dollar transactions across verticals and oversaw deal teams at Blackstone (HK) and BAML (NY) and oversaw sovereign partnerships across Asia and the GCC.

Passionate about conservation and humanitarian causes, Ellen has raised millions for and managed complex humanitarian missions, most recently rescuing hundreds of women and children from Afghanistan (post-US departure), in coordination with USAID. She is an advisor to various foundations and conservation efforts globally, including the White Lion Trust in South Africa. Ellen is a global speaker on various topics including blockchain and impact, and has been invited to speak at LG’s Innovation Festival, COP and various blockchain and family office conferences globally. She most recently spoke on stage to founders with former Apple CEO Gil Amelio at LG’s Innovation Festival. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Masters in International Strategy & Diplomacy from the London School of Economics & Political Science, and BS in Finance and BA in Business from the University of Colorado. She is a former 5-time Junior Olympian alpine ski racer, and has lived and worked in New York, Chicago, London, Hong Kong, Rio, Paris, Monaco and Singapore.

Michel Nassif is ACAMS’ Head of Middle East and Africa and Global Head of Strategic Alliances and Partnerships with a focus on helping client organizations leverage ACAMS’ resources to address their compliance obligations and align with similar international organizations who are keeping at the forefront of regulatory and industry developments.

Prior to joining ACAMS, Michel held a number of senior positions with Global Compliance and Risk Mitigation, AML and CFT Solutions, and KYC and Specialized Due Diligence firms over the past 20 years. In his most recent position as Chief Commercial Officer at The DataFlow Group in Dubai, the leader in Primary Source Verification, background screening and Immigration Compliance Solutions, he led a team to scale the company’s growth in both core GCC and International Markets.

Prior to DataFlow, Michel was part of the core teams of Wealth-X (now part of Euromoney) and World-Check (now part of LSEG, Refinitiv-Thomson Reuters) where he held positions from AFC strategic services marketing, data intelligence sales, to SaaS sales. Both these companies have become the established leaders in their specialized fields.

Prior to DataFlow, Michel was part of the core teams of Wealth-X (now part of Delinian, formerly Euromoney) and World-Check, the risk intelligence database which helps organisations across the world to meet their regulatory obligations (now part of LSEG, Refinitiv-Thomson Reuters) where he held positions from AFC strategic services marketing, data intelligence sales, to SaaS sales. Both these companies have become the established leaders in their specialized fields.

Michel was an Investment Officer at the Presidency of The Council of Ministers of Lebanon before joining World-Check, responsible for the due diligence around high net worth investors and initial selection of investment projects.

Michel earned an MBA in MIS from Concordia University – The John Molson School of Business, in Montreal and a BS in Computer Science Applied to Business from Saint-Joseph University – Université de Lyon.