Larysa Melnychuk

Larysa Melnychuk is a passionate Financial Planning & Analysis (FP&A) professional and influencer who has held senior FP&A roles at leading organisations before setting up the International FP&A Board in 2013. The Board is a global and well-recognised professional think-tank that aims to bring together the knowledge and experience of senior FP&A professionals and aid the development of best practice in the profession.

In the last three years, she successfully expanded the Board into 27 chapters in 16 countries across Europe, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and North America.

Larysa is also the founder and CEO at the FP&A Trends Group (fpa-trends.com), the leading online resource for FP&A professionals. She chairs the Global AI FP&A Committee and runs a number of high-profile initiatives in the area of modern financial analytics.

Larysa holds a Master of Science degree in physics of materials and is a qualified chartered management accountant (CIMA), chartered global management accountant (CGMA) and is a holder of an FP&A certification. She is also a member of the exam content writing team for the Association of Finance Professionals (AFP) FP&A certification.

Larysa is also a passionate conference speaker and writes articles on various FP&A-related subjects.

David Upton

David has more than 20 years of diverse business experience in IT and data management practice. His expertise in analytics and enterprise performance management led him to co-found and grow a business intelligence implementation firm, which was acquired by Jedox.

As the Director of Strategic Partnerships & Alliances for Asia Pacific, David is responsible for guiding strategic partner relationships including solution development, enablement and certification. Leveraging his expertise, he also drives further development of relationships with key alliance partners and deepens our industry vertical practices.

Since joining Jedox, David has served in multiple leadership positions including Vice President of Operations for the APAC region.

Weiwei Cao

Weiwei Cao- Director of Michael Page Shanghai Finance Team. Weiwei graduated from Loughborough University which ranks top 10 in the UK and she also gained a Master degree from Aston Business School. She joined Michael Page in 2010 and has been focusing on Finance recruitment. She has successfully recruited senior executive positions in the Finance area with both MNC and Domestic. Meanwhile, she is leading the Shanghai finance team which has a strong reputation among the market. Before joining in Page, she has worked in Xerox in UK.

Laurent Claes

Laurent Claes is the Global Controlling Director at Cartier, part of the Richemont group, which owns several of the world's leading Maisons in the field of luxury goods, with particular strengths in jewellery and luxury watches.

Laurent, 43, is responsible for the consolidated FP&A Reporting and Analysis, ICS and Accounting of the company, as well as competitive analysis and benchmarking, both internal and external.

He previously held the role of Richemont Group FP&A manager, partnering with strongly independent Maisons to identify opportunities to capture profitable growth. In this capacity, Laurent also coordinated the Forecast and Budget cycles. Prior to that, he was Finance Manager International for Carefusion, a medical device company which he joined after being on the management team for an ultimately doomed start-up and spent his formative FP&A years at Levi Strauss in Brussels and GE Capital in London.

Laurent received his Master’s degree from Antwerp University and has studied in the US (Middlebury College) and Japan (Jochi Daigaku).

He is married with two children and lives in Geneva, Switzerland.

Bhavesh Shah

Bhavesh is currently the head of NBD and Finance in ConvaTec for Global Emerging Markets. He is an veteran leader with 30 years of experience having worked in various geographies including North America and Asia Pacific. He has also worked across various segments such as FMCG, Pharmaceuticals, Petrochemicals and Medical Devices. Bhavesh is best known for his passion for developing finance leaders, at all levels. He was also the Transformational Lead for J&J Finance in the areas of FP&A, Commercial and Supply Chain and Global Lead for Data Analytics & AI for Finance.

Bhavesh is a Chartered Accountant, Chartered Financial Analyst and a Certified Cost and Management Accountant. He holds a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Mumbai and undertaken Executive Programs in Data Science and Advanced Analytics from the University of Berkley, and in Strategic Planning, from Wharton, University of Pennsylvania. He is also a Black Belt in Process Excellence.

Rainer Kern

Rainer Kern is the CFO of AT&S (China) LTD and CFO of the AT&S Division for Mobile applications, leading word-wide entities in revenues of around 800M EUR.

As a seasoned financial professional, Rainer has served on various boards ranging from large MNCs to family-owned businesses in a broad range of countries with a clear ASEAN focus. Deep experience in financial business partnering, transformations, aligning and implementing strategies has made him a recognized stabilizing and driving force within the organizations.

Rainer holds an MBA Degree from the Rotterdam School of Management as well as CPA (AUS) and ACMA (UK) credentials. He currently works and lives with his wife and son in Shanghai and his been in China for more than 8 years.

Igor Panivko

Igor Panivko is currently holding the position of Managing Director and CFO of Konica Minolta Ukraine responsible for such Eastern-European countries as Ukraine, Georgia, Azerbaijan and Armenia.

For twenty years, Igor has been holding top finance positions in logistics, manufacturing, agriculture, construction and financial institutions with the responsibility for strategic financial planning and development.

Besides Igor’s background in finance, he has developed his expertise in data science and data management. As a result, he mastered developing complex data-driven solutions in finance, built financial cubes and optimization models which helped him solve complex business tasks and better manage organizations.

Bryan Lapidus

Bryan is the FP&A staff subject matter expert at the Association for Financial Professionals, a global not-for-profit focused on the success of the finance professional. AFP produces leading content through its conferences, certification, research guides, training, and networking.

Bryan creates and curates content to keep members current on developing topics and keep an eye on the future of the profession. He also manages the FP&A Advisory Council that acts as a voice to align AFP with the needs of the profession.

Bryan has more than 20 years of experience in the corporate FP&A and treasury space working at organizations like American Express, Fannie Mae and private equity-owned companies. He is also on the Global Advisory Board for The CFO Alliance. Bryan lives in suburban Washington, DC with his wife and two daughters.