Alexandra Villarreal O’Rourke 

Alexandra Villarreal O’Rourke is a partner in the Charlotte office of Womble Bond Dickinson where she leads the Fintech and Financial Regulatory groups.  She advises a wide range of companies on regulatory compliance, risk and change management, and technology integration.  She has deep experience on legal issues related to the use of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, and her clients include the creators and users of some of the most advanced applications of these technologies. Prior to joining Womble, Alexandra spent nearly a decade working in the federal government, where she advised senior agency leaders, ambassadors, innovation experts, and White House officials.  Most recently, she served as Senior Counsel with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.  In that role, she led the legal division’s efforts and interagency coordination on legal issues related to AI and other emerging technologies.  Alexandra graduated from Harvard Law School and the University of Texas.  She is originally from Mexico City

Cole Van Heel

For over the last decade, Cole has held various sales and business development roles, most recently in payments and financial services. Before joining Opus Consulting as Director, Business Development, he ran eCommerce partnerships at Vantiv (now Worldpay), where he helped establish relationships and integrations with large eCommerce platforms like Salesforce Commerce Cloud, Magento, Netsuite, Oracle, SAP, Shopify and many others, to offer their merchants best in breed processing solutions for today’s rapidly changing payment landscape. Presently at Opus, Cole is partnering with financial and payment driven companies to help them through their digital transformation journey, and drive payment innovation through a number of solutions, which include Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning.

Patrick Rivenbark

Patrick is the COO of the Carolina Fintech Hub. Patrick is an advisor to Fintech companies, works with the leading financial services data provider, Fedfis. Previously, Patrick was the Product & Operations Lead for FIS Global’s Innovation + Investment office where he helped build a new technology business and shaped new programs to spur innovation within FIS’s Enterprise Product Office.