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.

Michael Tweedie

Michael Tweedie is currently a Senior Finance Director at The LEGO Group. He is a seasoned leader, who brings more than 25 years of experience & leadership across Consumer Goods, Retail, Energy & Agricultural industries after having started in a Big Four as a Chartered Accountant. Michael is a trusted partner with a strong Corporate Governance background, having previously served within KPMG’s Internal Audit & Risk Compliance Services.

He has led & supported a business start-up, AIM listing, Private equity acquisition as well as corporate turnaround strategies in addition to cross border expansion. Michael has a detailed knowledge of emerging and high growth markets and spent several years working closely with owner-managed businesses.

Ross McLelland

Ross is a specialist senior finance recruiter with over 9 years local experience hiring within the public, private and NFP sectors across Sydney. As Associate Director for Finance NSW he leads several teams of specialist recruiters hiring across Accounting & Finance, Commercial and Financial Services positions.

Ross has an extensive network of CFO, Finance Director and FP&A / Commercial Director contacts across Sydney and recruits regularly in this space.

After completing studies at two Top 5 Business Schools in the UK and France, Ross’ first taste of recruitment was with Michael Page Glasgow in 2008. After migrating to Australia in 2011 he joined the NSW business where he progressed from Consultant through to Associate Director in 2017. Since early 2019 Ross has lead the combined Sydney City, South and North-Shore based finance recruitment teams. Previous to joining Michael Page in Australia Ross has also worked with Roll-Royce Aerospace in the UK and The Franco-British Chamber of Commerce in Paris.

Michelle Clarke

Michelle has more than 20 years’ experience in finance in a number of sectors in commercial and government organisations such as manufacturing, capital markets, banking, tourism, and higher education.

Now, she is the Chief Financial Officer at Griffith University which has 35,000 students.

Vladlen Potapenkov

Vladlen is a seasoned finance leader with +15 years of international transformational experience in food ingredient and industrial product manufacturing sectors.

Vladlen is currently a Group Financial Controller at a Sydney based private equity-backed Legend Corporation. Prior to that Vladlen had a successful long-term career at Agrana Group – a stock listed global market leader in B2B food manufacturing, including as head of Controlling in Russia, Divisional Financial Controller at the global head office in Austria, CFO Australia, and as the APAC Region finance leader.

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.