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Steven Maijoor has been the Chair of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) since taking up office 1 April 2011. He is the first chair of the authority and is currently serving his second five-year term. He is responsible for representing the Authority as well as chairing ESMA’s Board of Supervisors and the Management Board. The role of the Board of Supervisors is to give strategic guidance to ESMA and make all main regulatory and supervisory decisions. The Management Board's purpose is to ensure that the Authority carries out its mission and performs its tasks.

Prior to taking up this role, Steven was Managing Director at the AFM, the Dutch financial markets regulator, where he was responsible for capital market supervision, including financial reporting and auditing, prospectuses, public offerings, and the supervision of the integrity of financial markets. During his term, the scope of activities of the AFM vastly expanded and he was responsible for building and implementing supervision in the capital market area. In his regulatory role at the AFM, Steven has held a number of international positions, including the Chairmanship of IFIAR (International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators).

Before joining the regulatory world, Steven was the Dean of the School of Business and Economics at Maastricht University, and had pursued a long career in academia which included a variety of positions at Maastricht University and the University of Southern California.

He holds a PhD in Business Economics from Maastricht University, was a research student at the London School of Economics, and has a master in Business Economics from the University of Groningen.

Steven is married and has two daughters and a son.

Alastair Campbell is a writer, communicator and strategist best known for his role as former British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spokesman, press secretary and director of communications and strategy. Still active in politics and campaigns in Britain and overseas, he now splits his time between writing, speaking, charities and consultancy.

He has written fourteen books in the past ten years, including eight volumes of diaries, four novels, a personal memoir on depression and the pursuit of happiness, and Winners and How They Succeed, a Number 1 best-selling analysis of what it takes to win in politics, business and sport.

Olga holds a Bachelor of Business and Legal Studies Degree from University College Dublin. Olga is a Senior Associate in the Asset Management and Investment Funds Group at A&L Goodbody. Olga's experience includes advising a range of leading global asset managers and service providers on all matters connected with the establishment and ongoing operation of UCITS and AIFs. Olga is a member of the Irish Funds Conference Working Group.

Derville Rowland was appointed Director General (Financial Conduct) in the Central Bank of Ireland on 1 September 2017 and is responsible for consumer protection, securities and markets supervision, enforcement and policy and risk. Derville is a member of the European Securities and Market Authority (ESMA).

Prior to this appointment, Derville was the Director of Enforcement in the Central Bank, where she established and developed the Enforcement Directorate. Previous to this, Derville gained extensive litigation and regulatory experience while practising law at the bar and working as in-house regulatory counsel.

Derville is a qualified barrister having being called to the bar in 1996 (Inns of Court School of Law; Inner Temple) and subsequently in 2003 (Kings Inns Dublin). 

Daragh Maher is HSBC's Head of Research for the Americas and FX Strategy US, based in New York. He originally joined HSBC as a currency strategist in London in 2012, reporting to David Bloom, the global head of FX research. 

Prior to joining HSBC, Daragh worked for an international investment bank for seven years, most recently as the deputy global head of FX strategy, where the team was frequently ranked first for 1M forecast accuracy in both Reuters and FX Week surveys. Prior to 2004, Daragh worked for 12 years for another investment bank. He was initially based in Hong Kong and Singapore as a regional economist before moving to London in 1998, where he concentrated on G10 market economics and strategy, increasingly focused on foreign exchange. He holds a B.Comm (Econ) from University College Dublin.

Lisa Kealy leads EY’s Wealth and Asset Management (WAM) Practice and is a member of EY’s European WAM Leadership Committee. Lisa is EY’s Exchange Traded Funds (ETF) leader for Europe and chairs our global ETF Committee. She has been an assurance partner with the firm for the past 12 years and has extensive experience in advising clients on various aspects of accounting, regulatory and operational change.

Lisa is the current Chair of Irish Funds and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences in Europe and contributor to leading financial services industry publications.

Lisa holds a first class honours degree in Pure Mathematics from Trinity College Dublin and is a fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in Ireland, from which she holds a practicing certificate.

After graduating from Worcester College, Oxford in 1974 in politics, economics and philosophy (PPE) David has worked for nearly 34 years in the European Commission from 1977- 2011. He held a variety of posts including at the beginning of his career responsibility for oil and gas data in the Statistical Office, Luxembourg (1977-1981) during the second oil crisis; energy policy coordination and modelling in the Directorate General for Energy, Brussels (1982-1987); and then industrial trade policy negotiations during the Uruguay multilateral trade round (1987-1989). From 1989-1992 he was a member of President Delors' "Think Tank" called the "Cellule de Prospectives" where he worked on industrial policy and wrote the first Commission document on sustainable development. In this period he co-authored a book with Professor Alexis Jacquemin on the post-1992 EU political and economic agenda called "Shaping factors, shaping actors". From 1993-1994 he was a member of Sir Leon Brittans' Cabinet and worked on various aspects of trade and industrial policy, including completion of the Uruguay Round in 1994. In 1995 he became an Adviser to President Jacques Santer in his Cabinet – covering competitiveness, industrial and telecom policies, political relations with the UK and Ireland, financial services, risk capital and various other trade and foreign policy briefs.

From March 2000 – October 2010 he was first Director, then Deputy Director-General for securities and financial markets, then for all financial services policy in DG Internal Market and Services. He helped design and drive forward the Financial Services Action Plans to integrate the EU's capital and financial services markets. He was the rapporteur for both the Lamfalussy (2000/1) and De LaRosière Committees (2008/9), chaired the Securities and Banking Committees and represented the Commission in the Financial Services Committee and in various FSB/G20 fora. He also played a leading role in the EU-US financial markets dialogue in this period. He was the EU Visiting Fellow at St Antony's College, Oxford until July 2011 and was a Member of the European Commission's Task force on Greece until the end of January 2012. David Wright’s appointment as Secretary General of the International Organization of Securities Commissions (IOSCO) commenced on 15 March 2012.David Wright left IOSCO in March 2016. He is a now a partner in the strategic business advisory firm Flint-Global, London and Chairman of EUROFI, Paris. 

Nick Miller is head of the Asset Management Department within the Investment, Wholesale & Specialist Supervision Division at the Financial Conduct Authority. In this role, Nick is responsible for the FCA’s oversight of over 3,000 firms across the asset management and custody bank sectors. Previously, Nick was head of the EU & Global Department, responsible for managing the FCA's strategic relationships with counterpart regulators and other stakeholders throughout Europe and globally. He was also responsible for the FCA’s strategy in relation to the UK’s withdrawal from the EU.

Prior to joining the regulator, Nick was Executive Director and Head of Public Policy, EMEA at Morgan Stanley, where he spent four and a half years. He previously worked in a government relations role at Thomson Reuters and as a trade policy expert at the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). He holds an MSc in Finance from the London Business School and an MA in European Politics from the College of Europe in Belgium. He holds a BA in Modern European Studies from University College London (UCL).

Umar Ahmed joined Irish Funds in May 2019 and is the Association’s Head of EU Affairs. Based in Brussels, Umar leads engagement with EU Institutions, regulatory authorities and stakeholders in the public policy universe. He is an experienced government and regulatory affairs professional with a strong background in financial services and experience across Europe and the US. Prior to joining the association, Umar was with BNY Mellon’s US Government Affairs & Public Policy team in New York and led US State and Local Government Affairs activity for the bank. He previously was with BNY Mellon’s EMEA External Affairs team in London and led advocacy and external engagement with EU officials, legislators and the diplomatic community in EMEA. He began his career in EU financial services consultancy in Brussels, working for Hume Brophy.

Eve is the LGIM’s Managing Director in Ireland, appointed in October 2017 and is responsible for the overall leadership and management of LGIM’s Irish office and European entities based in Dublin.

Eve was previously Head of Solutions based in London. In her Head of Solutions role, Eve has been responsible for the design and management of objective driven investment solutions which bring together the best of the LGIM Group’s investment capabilities to meet our clients’ needs.

Previously, Eve was Head of LDI Portfolio Construction and had overall responsibility for the structuring and portfolio management of the LGIM Group’s UK and European LDI portfolios. Eve joined LGIM in 2009 and is a Trustee of both the Legal and General Group Pension Scheme and the Pension Fund.

Prior to joining the LGIM Group, Eve worked in the Global Pensions Strategy Group at Deutsche Bank developing liability management solutions and multi-asset strategies for a variety of global pension schemes.

Eve began her career as an investment consultant at Watson Wyatt. Eve has a first class honours degree in financial and actuarial mathematics from Dublin City University and is a fellow of the Institute of Actuaries.

Professor Philip O’Reilly is Professor of Fintech and Information Systems at Cork University Business School, University College Cork (UCC). Philip is the Founding Director of the Statestreet EMEA Advanced Technology Centre at UCC.

Philip's research focuses on the transformative power of emerging information systems on Financial Services. His work has been published in leading journals in the information systems field including the European Journal of Information Systems (EJIS), Journal of Information Technology (JIT), Journal of Strategic Information Systems (JSIS) and Information Technology and People (IT&P). Furthermore, his work has been presented at the leading information systems conferences in the world.

In 2011, Philip received the Stafford Beer Medal in recognition of the most outstanding contribution to the philosophy, theory and practice of Information Systems (IS) from the Operational Research (OR) Society at an Awards Ceremony which took place at the Royal Society, London.

Philip has been invited to deliver keynotes and workshops by numerous multinational companies and at leading practitioner events worldwide. Philip is a Senior Cutter Consultant, being a member of an elite group of 100 international leading experts, and presents regularly to leading international bodies on Fintech. Among others, he has presented to the Board of the Federal Reserve, Washington and the board of the Federation of International Banks in Ireland on Fintech. The impact of Philip’s research on industry is illustrated in the fact that since 2017, Philip has secured direct industry cash commitments of €4m to support his research. 

Andrew Patrick White is the Founder & CEO of FundApps, a company which provides cloud-based regulation monitoring to investment managers. FundApps was voted onto the "FinTech50" - a list of 50 European businesses who are transforming financial services. Before FundApps, Andrew created the compliance monitoring software MIG21 at Aquin Components GmbH. He went on to become the Managing Director & Head of Business Development for Aquin International before exiting with a trade sale to State Street in 2008. Andrew holds a degree in Computer Science, Linguistics & German from Trinity College Dublin.

FundApps was founded in 2010 from a spare bedroom in south London but has since grown to ca. 70 people and currently monitors over 12 Trillion USD of assets every day, servicing 3 of the world's 10 largest hedge funds and 3 of North America’s 10 largest pension funds.

Martina Kelly is Director of Funds at the Institute of Banking having joined the IoB in January 2020. Prior to that she was Head of Markets Policy Division within the Central Bank of Ireland with responsibility for the formulation of policy in relation to investment funds, investment firms, markets and market infrastructure.

Martina has considerable experience in investment funds policy and regulation having led the Central Bank’s work in this area for many years at both a domestic and international level.

Pat Lardner joined Irish Funds as Chief Executive in April 2012. He has over twenty five years’ experience in the global asset management industry and has held executive/leadership positions in Ireland and overseas with firms managing a broad range of both traditional and alternative investment strategies. Pat is an active participant on all significant Government sponsored groups relating to funds in Ireland, is a member of the Board of the European Fund and Asset Management Association and is an Advisor to the Asset Management Association of China’s International Partners Committee. He is a past Council Member of the Irish Association of Pension Funds and a former Director of both the Irish Association of Investment Managers and the International Investment Funds Association. He attained honours undergraduate and postgraduate degrees from University College Dublin.

Tara is a Partner and co-head in the Arthur Cox Asset Management & Investment Funds Group.

Tara has extensive experience in advising leading asset managers and fund promoters both globally and domestically in the structuring, establishment, management and sale of a wide variety of investment funds in the UCITS and alternative space. Tara advises those funds, their management companies, servicing operations and directors of their regulation, compliance and corporate governance requirements. Tara has also advised on a number of large asset management group and platform amalgamations. Tara has a particular expertise in ETFs and is a leadership member of the Irish chapter of Women in ETFs and a former member of the EFAMA ETF working group. Tara is a regular speaker at international and domestic conferences and a contributor to international journals and publications.

Tara is a former member of the Council of Irish Funds and is recognised as a leading lawyer by Chambers & Partners and Legal 500.

Henning Swabey joined Calastone in 2017 and is responsible for defining and implementing the business development strategy for EMEA.

Prior to joining Calastone, Henning held a number of senior roles with RBC where he developed their Investor & Treasury Services businesses in the European Union and Asia-Pacific.

Henning speaks six languages. He began his career at Euroclear in Belgium, where he managed key clients across multiple geographies.

Nicholas is based in Walkers' Ireland office where he is a partner and head of the Investment Funds group in Ireland.

Nicholas has in excess of 17 years' experience in the area of asset management and investment funds and has worked in both legal and finance related positions during this time. Nicholas has extensive experience advising funds, promoters and service providers on a wide range of asset management and investment fund related matters, including on the establishment, authorisation and operation of all types of Irish investment funds including UCITS, QIAIFs, RIAIFs, fund of funds, ETF's, master-feeder structures and closed-ended funds. Nicholas has experience advising across a wide range of asset classes and investment strategies including hedge fund, private equity and real estate strategies as well as more traditional liquid investment strategies, with particular expertise in advising managers of fixed income and debt focused investment strategies.

Nicholas also has extensive experience advising on cross-border asset management and investment fund related matters and has previously advised on the establishment of investment fund platforms involving funds in jurisdictions outside of Ireland, including parallel investment fund structures.

Nicholas has participated in various industry association working groups and committees (including those at the Investment Association, ICI Global and EFAMA) and has attended meetings at ESMA in Paris in order to provide technical guidance on investment fund related matters. Nicholas has previously been a member of the UCITS Product and Brexit Steering Groups at Irish Funds and currently sits on the AIF Innovation and Regulatory Working Group. Nicholas has spoken at a wide range of investment fund conferences and currently lectures on the Certified Investment Fund Director Institute programme which is delivered in London, Zurich and New York.

Nicholas holds a degree in Business and Legal Studies (BBLS) from University College Dublin and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from London Business School.

Jackie O’Connor is chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs Asset Management Fund Services Ltd (GSAMFSL), GSAM's Irish Domiciled UCITS Management Company and Alternative Investment Fund Manager. Prior to her current role, she was international head of regulatory reform for GSAM, responsible for identifying and implementing requirements under new regulations within the EMEA and Asia Pacific regions. Ms. O’Connor joined GSAM in 2000 and has held a variety of roles, including global project manager for the Client Relationship Management teams, as well as manager of the European Client Implementation Management team. Before joining GSAM, she spent five years in Internal Audit. Earlier in her career, Ms. O’Connor worked for five years in a number of roles in the Operations, Technology and Finance divisions. She joined Goldman Sachs in 1990 as an analyst and was named managing director in 2019. Before joining Goldman Sachs, she worked for the London Stock Exchange. Ms. O’Connor earned a BSc, with honors, in Zoology from Sheffield University in 1982.

The Asset Management Exchange (AMX) is an independent institutional asset management marketplace designed to fundamentally transform institutional investment. It is creating a smarter, easier and cheaper way to connect asset owners to those who manage their money. Eoin leads the AMX Investment Operations team and is based in Ireland. His team are responsible for Delegate Oversight and the on-boarding of Investment Managers & Investors to the Digital Platform. His previous roles include Head of UK & Ireland Fund Accounting at BNY Mellon, EMEA Head of Private Equity at State Street and Senior Accounting Officer for Goldman Sachs International. He started his career with Deloitte. Eoin sits on the board of Cork Chamber of Commerce and is Chair of Cork Financial Services Forum. He is an independent director of Shine Ireland, a charity for autism. He is the EMEA Champion for Inclusion & Diversity for his firm.