Leadership in action
Our team is committed to leading the payments industry in developing solutions, innovating at-scale, and delivering value to our customers across the globe.
Patrick Gauthier
CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER
Patrick is a long-time Fintech specialist with senior leadership roles at Amazon, PayPal, and Visa, along with early and mid-stage payments and eCommerce startups. He has deep expertise developing high-performance teams and building high-growth businesses. Patrick holds several patents related to payment systems and is a recognised thought leader on the future of commerce and payments, with recurring appearances on CNBC and at industry conferences. He has held positions on the Board of Directors of multiple venture-backed startups across mobile, security, eCommerce, and identity domains. Patrick lives in Seattle, Washington, and holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from Telecom SudParis in France.
Dharmesh Syal
CHIEF TECHNOLOGY OFFICER
Dharmesh has over 30 years of experience heading up global product and engineering teams to build digital platform-based businesses. An experienced CTO, he has managed large technology platforms and ecosystem-based product portfolios that use continuous user research and product/market fit processes in highly regulated industries. He joins Convera from BCG Digital Ventures, where he was CTO and Managing Director. In addition, he has also held leadership roles with IBM, PwC, AT&T, and Mahindra & Mahindra group. Dharmesh lives in Seattle, Washington and holds a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering from NIT, India and has completed several management education courses.
Michael Bourque
CHIEF FINANCIAL OFFICER
Michael brings over 24 years of experience in successfully building and leading global teams across diverse private and public companies. His experiences include serving as a NYSE-listed CFO and managing complex situations such as navigating multiple mergers and acquisitions, raising capital, driving hyper growth, leading large restructuring efforts, and preparing a company for an IPO. Michael is a culture builder and passionate about combining his expertise in tech, manufacturing, services, and financial services to build high performing teams. Michael resides in Montana and holds an undergraduate degree from College of the Holy Cross, and an MBA from Wharton.
Jody Visser
CHIEF OPERATING OFFICER
In her role, Jody is responsible for supporting Convera’s business to become the world’s leading B2B payments company. She joins Convera from The Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where she was a Managing Director and Partner focused on advising global payments and financial services clients for the past 20 years. Her areas of specialisation include commercial payments, customer-centric business strategy, new product development, go-to-market transformation, brand, marketing effectiveness, big data and target operating model redesign. Jody lives in New York City and holds a Bachelor of Commerce with honours in Economics from the University of Auckland, New Zealand.
Tristan van der Vijver
CHIEF REGULATORY AND COMPLIANCE OFFICER
Tristan van der Vijver is a highly accomplished international compliance and risk management executive. He has a strong track record of leading and building out compliance and financial crime risk functions and teams in major global and international financial institutions. Tristan takes on this role having most recently been the Chief Compliance Officer at Western Union Business Solutions. Prior to that, he was Regional Compliance Head for Commerzbank in both Asia and the Americas. He is sought after as an industry thought leader and a regular speaker at UK and international compliance, banking, and fintech events. Tristan lives in London and holds degrees in Banking and Economics from the London Metropolitan University.
Jodi Krause
CHIEF PEOPLE OFFICER
Jodi leads all the people-related functions in Convera, as well as our community engagement programmes. Jodi is a seasoned expert at creating organisational transformation, and specialises in leading change management, succession planning, leadership development, employee engagement, and diversity and inclusion. She has over 20 years of experience working in human resources at global financial services and tech companies such as GE, Intuit, Cisco, and Amazon. Prior to joining Convera, she was global head of talent development at Amazon where she led the formation and delivery of talent management and executive development programmes for their worldwide online retail business. Jodi is passionate about using a data-and-technology-driven approach to our People strategy and programmes, and ensuring that our culture is a living embodiment of our values. Jodi lives in Kirkland, Washington. She graduated from the School of Industrial & Labor Relations at Cornell University and has a master’s degree in Organisation Development from Pepperdine University.
Brendan Clegg
CHIEF LEGAL OFFICER
Brendan has more than 22 years of commercial legal experience spanning global remittance, payments, derivatives, telecommunications, and information technology. Most recently, he was Head of Business Legal Affairs, Asia Pacific and Middle East for Western Union, where he was responsible for the provision of legal services to the company’s consumer money transfer, digital, and business solutions divisions in the region. Prior to this, he was Head of Legal for Western Union Business Solutions. Brendan has also held senior legal roles at MasterCard, Travelex, Euronet, and MoneyGram. Brendan lives in Sydney, holds degrees in Law and Commerce (majoring in Public Policy) from the University of Victoria Wellington, and is admitted to practice law in Australia and New Zealand.