Rising Star Award

Accenture: Sara Krantz

Sara Krantz, a Senior Manager in Accenture's System Integration Consulting organization, specializes in program and project management within Financial Services Capital Markets. Sara joined Accenture in 1998 after graduating from Princeton University and is known for her delivery excellence. She has a strong background in Retail Brokerage with skills in systems implementation, system analysis and design, testing, and work planning. Key accomplishments include managing a global team of 80 resources, establishing the core matching operations for a start-up firm, and providing project management for a firm-wide initiative that included over 130 build-outs across 60+ applications. Sara is a member of the WBC events committee, serves as a career counselor, and is active in recruiting. Sara lives in New Jersey with her husband and two sons.

Amex: Lisa Campagne

Lisa Campagñe, a Director of Account Development in the Global Merchant Services division of American Express. She leads a team that manages a portfolio of key strategic lodging partners and is responsible for the development and planning of joint partnership initiatives.

Prior to American Express, Lisa spent seven years at West Publishing, the foremost provider of integrated information solutions to the U.S. legal market. Lisa joined American Express in 2001, after graduating from New York University's Stern School of Business with an MBA in Marketing and Finance. Lisa earned her Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and English from Rutgers University.

AXA Equitable: Sarah Kokulus

Sarah Kokolus, Director, AXA Equitable, Office of the Chief Investment Officer, a group responsible for investing the General Account assets. Sarah directly manages the private equity investments for the company. Prior to managing the private equity investments, Sarah managed the fixed income assets within the portfolio. Sarah began her career at AXA Equitable as an internal wholesaler on the AXA Distributors Sales Desk.

Sarah joined AXA Equitable in 2004 after graduating from Villanova University with a Bachelor of Science in Mathematics. Sarah is currently pursuing her MBA in Quantitative Finance at New York University's Stern School of Business.

Bank of America: Melissa Ford

Melissa Ford is a Principal in High Yield Sales at Bank of America where she works with institutional clients and the trading desk to place high yield securities and provide liquidity. Since joining the firm in 2004, Melissa has played an active role in recruiting and mentoring incoming Analysts and Associates. She was a Summer Internship Program Manager in 2008 and currently serves as a member of the Junior Pipeline Steering Committee.

Prior to joining Bank of America, Melissa was an Associate in Investment Banking at Credit Suisse. She began her career in Corporate Bond Research at Salomon Smith Barney. Melissa graduated from Harvard College with a degree in Economics and received her M.B.A. from the Wharton School. She is a CFA and a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts.

Barclays: Helima Croft

Helima Croft is a senior geopolitical strategist with Barclay's Capital Commodities Research Group. Her areas of coverage include the economics and politics of the key commodity producing countries of Africa, the Middle East and Latin America. She was previously with the Business Intelligence Group at Lehman Brothers, which advised the Executive Committee on international political and economic issues. Prior to joining Lehman in 2005, Helima was the intelligence fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and spent four years as a senior Economic Analyst in the Asia Pacific, Latin America and Africa office of the Central Intelligence Agency. She has a PhD in Economic History from Princeton University, where she also was a lecturer.

Bearing Point: Deandra Cordani

Deandra Cordani is a Manager within the Wealth & Investment Management Practice at BearingPoint. Deandra has worked extensively in global markets, primarily focusing on operations within the banking and capital markets sector. Deandra has served the financial services industry for over 12 years; her experience has included investment banks, global financial institutions, and asset management firms. Her expertise includes project and program management, business systems assessment and strategy, business process redesign, vendor selection and implementation.

Deandra has provided leadership in campus recruiting, and product development for her practice. She also acts as a mentor and advisor for promising young women Professionals within BearingPoint. She also distinguishes herself within the BearingPoint WBC team through her display of leadership around WBC activities and continually working with BearingPoint senior leadership to keep the WBC as a central focus of BearingPoint's industry outreach.

Deandra is certified in Project Management - PMP, Six Sigma Process Methodology - Green Belt, and held several NASD licenses. She graduated from McDaniel College, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Business Administration and Political Science with a concentration in Economics.

Broadridge: Jency Jones

Jency Jones is a Manager at Broadridge Financial Solutions, heading the Electronic & Print Control department. In this role, she ensures the physical and electronic distribution of shareholder information is sent out with the highest quality. Jency is responsible for creating efficient procedures to audit jobs and implement new processes.

Jency began her career at ADP as a Management Trainee where she rotated among various departments and made recommendations to processes. Prior to this role, Jency served as a Production Analyst for the division's Chief Operating Officer at ADP working on capacity planning, forecasting, and developing a pricing model. She graduated from St. John's University with a Bachelor's in Business Management, and an MBA in International Business.

Credit Suisse: Sinead Burke

Sinead joined Credit Suisse London as a Summer Intern in July 2000 while obtaining her Masters in Electronic Business & Commerce at University College Cork, Ireland . Upon completion of the internship, she was asked to join the Firm's Technical Associate graduate program within the Information Technology division. She originally began as a software developer but within 12 months transitioned to a business analyst role. Sinead had a particular interest in user-centric design and after 4 years at Credit Suisse in London, was invited to move to the New York office to join the Firm's Information Architecture group where she was responsible for designing a number of key software applications across many organisations in the Firm.

Sinead joined the Banking & Client Information Technology team in 2006 as a business analyst on one of the Firm's 'platinum projects' and in July 2007, she was asked to assume the role of Technology Relationship Manager of the 'client relationship management' and research distribution platform for the Securities group.

Sinead is also committed to philanthropic activities at Credit Suisse and has been a long-serving participant of the CS Big Brother Big Sister mentoring program

Deloitte: Stacy-Ann Burke

Stacy is a Senior Manager in Deloitte's Banking & Securities practice working within the firm's Technology Integration service area. She serves major clients who provide asset and investment management, wealth management, custody and treasury services. Stacy's experience includes program management, operations (middle to back-office transformation) and technology (application assessments, systems integration/ implementation).

Stacy joined Deloitte after completing her MBA at New York University's Stern School of Business where she focused on Finance and Management. In addition to client service, Stacy is very committed to promoting diversity at Deloitte with a particular focus on recruiting. Prior to joining Deloitte, Stacy worked for then PriceWaterhouseCoopers focusing on IT consulting.

Deutsche: Cristina Chen-Oster

Cristina joined DB in 2006 and has grown our structured equity notes business significantly in volume, product breadth, and client coverage.

Cristina has identified market and technology trends and regulatory requirements in the structured equity business and is at the forefront of product development. Understanding that technology will transform the distribution landscape creating competitive advantage, Cristina and her team have created a system for generating ideas and distributing complex products on a large scale.

Prior to DB, Cristina developed the equity structured notes businesses at IXIS Capital Markets and Goldman Sachs. At Goldman, Cristina was a founding member of the Asian Professionals Network, active in the women's mentoring program and received her CFA designation. Cristina started her career as a financial analyst in Credit Suisse's Fixed Income Portfolio Strategies Group and was the only female analyst of nine.

Cristina has been active in mentoring women her whole career and currently mentors women involved in the DB Mentor Program.

Cristina obtained her B.S. in Economics from M.I.T. in three years. She is a founding sister of Kappa Alpha Theta sorority and continues to be active as an Educational Counselor and co-captain of DB's M.I.T. recruiting team.

Garban ICAP: Lisa Vasquez

Lisa began her career at a series of internet start-ups during the dot-com era before joining BrokerTec in 2002. The nascent company was a bank consortium owned platform providing electronic trading services to the Fixed Income community. In 2003, when BrokerTec was acquired by ICAP, the world's premier voice and electronic inter-dealer broker, her role was expanded to handle key development program management and vendor management in the Global Technology division. She led large international teams to deliver strategic technological and functional enhancements to a number of trading platforms. In 2007, Lisa was promoted to work in ICAP Electronic Broking which provides global electronic trading services to major institutional investment and commercial banks around the world for Fixed Income, Credit products and Foreign Exchange. She is now Vice President of Global Product Management where she is spearheading product development initiatives and implementation.

Lisa obtained her Bachelor of Arts Degree from Yale University. She serves as a mentor to junior staff, participates in the interview and selection process for ICAP's Graduate Recruitment & Development program, and is a current member of the Women's Bond Club of New York.

Goldman Sachs: Angela Librizzi

Angela Librizzi is a Vice President in the Investment Management Division at Goldman Sachs. She began her career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst, and was promoted to associate in nine months. Eighteen months later she was promoted to Vice President and became the primary relationship manager for the Midwest Region. She has expertise in portfolio risk management, asset allocation strategies, and retirement planning for individuals and corporations. In addition, Angela manages her professional career by taking on leadership responsibilities within her group. Her peers have consistently elected her to committees that provide strategic advising within the Investment Consulting Group.

Angela has a passion for financial education and regularly hosts Women's Investment seminars. In addition, she has worked with the Salvation Army empowering women by providing financial education and professional development guidance. She is a triathlete and volunteer for the Danskin Women's Triathlon Group.

Angela attended Indiana University and earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biology. She is a member of the Investment Management Consultants Association and received her Certified Investment Management Analyst designation in 2004.

IBM: Diane Lence

Diane Lence is a Project Manager at IBM in the Global Business Services providing technology consulting services. Diane is responsible for managing technology projects for customers in the Financial Services industry and has experience with both domestic and offshore teams.

Prior to joining IBM Diane held several positions in the Banking industry including Retail Branch Operations and system implementations.. She started her career in Banking in a management training program after graduating from Hofstra University with a Bachelors degree in Banking and Finance.

JP Morgan: Kirsten Rastrick

Kirsten Rastrick started at J.P. Morgan in 2000 as a member of the Sales & Trading Analyst Training Program and joined the Global Finance Desk as a junior trader. After a year on the overnight funding desk, Kirsten moved to the sales team where she has worked with Central Bank, Asset Management & Hedge Fund clients to help manage their liquidity and financing needs. Kirsten is now an Executive Director on the Global Finance Desk and runs North America Financing Sales while still covering hedge fund clients for their business the front end of the yield curve.

Kirsten is an active member of the Duke University recruiting team for J.P. Morgan. She is also involved in J.P. Morgan's Investment Bank Women's Network (IBWN) and currently co-chairs the Analyst/Associate Development Committee for Women in the Investment Bank.

Kirsten graduated in 2000 from Duke University with a Bachelor of Arts in Economics and a minor in German. She has lived in both England & Germany and is an avid traveler. She currently resides in Manhattan with her husband.

Merrill Lynch: Meghann Magovern

Meghann Magovern is a Director in Merrill Lynch's Global Wealth Management Compliance Group. Meghann is the compliance officer for domestic and offshore mutual funds and also supports the managed account platform. She serves as the co-head of the Mutual Fund Task Force and is a member of both the Mutual Funds and Exchange Traded Funds Product Management Investment Committees.

Prior to joining the compliance group, Meghann was a senior analyst within the Private Investors division of Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, where she was responsible for portfolio management analytics and segmentation. Meghann joined Merrill Lynch in 2000 after graduating from Bucknell University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in both Economics and Sociology.

Morgan Stanley: Tserenna Erdenebileg

Tserenna Erdenebileg is a Vice President at Morgan Stanley's Finance department. Tserenna has been at Morgan Stanley since 2002 where she has held various Finance positions supporting businesses ranging from Private Wealth Management to Equity Derivatives. She currently manages Equity Cash Product Control team. Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, she worked at AIG and was responsible for financial and statutory reporting for Japanese underwriting business units.

Tserenna graduated from Baruch College in 2000 with a B.B.A. degree in Accounting. She attended New York University Stern School of Business while working at Morgan Stanley where she earned her M.B.A. in Finance in 2006. She is a CFA Level II candidate.

Nomura Securities: Amy Ko-Tang

Amy Ko-Tang has been a credit derivatives structurer at Nomura Securities International since September 2006 where she and her team focus on a broad range of structured credit products.

Prior to Nomura, Amy earned her MBA at Tuck School of Business where she was elected as her class representative and co-chaired the Diversity Conference.

Prior to Tuck, Amy was responsible for Foreign Exchange Electronic Trading business development at Brown Brothers Harriman. Prior to this, she was with Salomon Smith Barney's Equity Capital Markets Group in New York and London, where she worked on equity and equity-linked securities underwriting for telecom, internet and technology companies.

Amy is actively involved in community services, focusing on education and community building. She serves as a member of the Finance Committee at the Church of Transfiguration in Chinatown, NYC.

Amy received her B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago.

NYSE: Adina Solomon

Adina Solomon is a Project Director at NYSE Euronext in the Trading Technology division. Since January she has assisted in managing the Post Trade suite of systems that cover all comparison of equity trades and after-hours reports for firms. In addition, she has taken on the responsibility of writing requirements for NYSE Surveillance to ensure that systems and customers are acting within compliance of the SEC Rules. She is also responsible for the operation of the Display Book Log Extract product, the primary logging system used for compliance at the NYSE. Until January, Adina worked in the Specialist Systems group, where she worked as the senior analyst in the system design of both the Hybrid Market Model and then the Next Generation New Market Model, and was also responsible for the operation of the Specialist API product.

Adina joined the NYSE in 2001 after receiving her bachelor of arts in religion from Bryn Mawr College. She is currently completing an MBA at NYU's Stern School of Business, specializing in Management of Technology and Operations, and Leadership and Change Management. Adina was named Stern's Reuben and Jane Leibowitz scholar for the 2008-2009 academic year.

RBS Greenwich Capital: Anusha Krishnakumar

Anusha is currently working with the ABS Syndicate group Her responsibilities include marketing and distributing newly originated Asset Backed Securities. Anusha has also been involved with work on the new "Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility" Anusha has been with RBS since November 2006. She started working for the Structured Credit group as a syndicate manager. Prior to RBS she worked at Citigroup Global Markets group for 3 years in the Structured Credit Products group. Her responsibilities included structuring, originating and syndicate.

Anusha holds a B.S from Carnegie Mellon University in Electrical and Computer Engineering and an additional major in Economics. She also holds a minor in Business Administration.

S&P: Charlene Butterfield Janey

Charlene Butterfield Janey is a Director in the Not-for-Profit Healthcare Ratings Group within Public Finance at Standard & Poor's, responsible for rating not-for-profit hospitals and senior living facilities. Since joining S&P in 2003 as an Associate, Charlene has served as primary analyst for healthcare credits and several Higher Education credits, including many major clients. In her role as a bond rating analyst, Charlene travels throughout the U.S. Eastern region in service to healthcare and higher education clients, performing detailed credit analysis and recommending bond ratings for use by municipal investors. Since 2004, Charlene's role as Healthcare coordinator for the Public Finance Debt Derivative Profile has placed her in an internal and external leadership position in explaining swap agreement criteria as Public Finance swap usage surged. Charlene also participates as a BA/MBA recruiter at campus presentations and as an Inroads summer intern mentor.

Before joining S&P, Charlene worked as an investment banking associate at Quick & Reilly, and held graduate internships at Time Inc. and DoubleClick. Before earning her MBA in Finance and Management from NYU's Stern School of Business, Charlene taught English Literature at Maret School, earned an MA in English from University of Pennsylvania, and a BA in English and French from Wellesley College. Charlene's family hails from Bermuda; she enjoys reading, cooking and international travel, and speaks French and Spanish.

The Bank of New York: Medita Vucic

Medita Vucic , a Vice President at The Bank of New York Mellon, acts as the primary marketing coordinator in the Corporate Client Management Group which has relationship responsibility for the Bank's highest profile Fortune 500 corporate relationships. Medita is responsible for the development, planning and coordination of the group's strategic initiatives.

Prior to joining Corporate Client Management, Medita was a Junior Client Executive in the Healthcare Division providing coverage for 45 clients and prospects. Medita began her career with the Bank in 1999 as a high school intern. While simultaneously completing her undergraduate degree, she continued to work at the Bank. Her previous assignments included Client Service Officer in Cash Management and Credit Analyst in the Corporate Risk Management division.

Medita is actively engaged in the Bank's Women's Initiatives Network and volunteers for Junior Achievement.

Medita earned a Bachelor's degree in Finance from Pace University and completed the Bank's credit training program.

Thomson Reuters: Melanie Childress

Melanie Childress is a Major Account Manager in the Global Sales and Services Division at Thomson Reuters, an industry leader in providing intelligent information to the global financial marketplace. Melanie supports a key customer base located in New York, maintaining critical relationships and further growing the Thomson Reuters business.

Prior to her current role at Thomson Reuters, Melanie served as a Senior Relationship Manager, Team Lead, at Thomson Financial. In this role, she was responsible for the development of junior sales representatives, helping them recognize opportunities and add value to their customers. Melanie began her career with ILX Systems, a provider of integrated, online financial information systems. During her tenure, she served in a variety of roles including Database Programmer, Client Trainer, and Relationship Manager.

Melanie earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Information Systems, with a minor in Business Administration, from Clemson University in South Carolina. She has been actively involved with many charitable organizations, including Catholic Big Sisters of America and the Junior Achievement program in New York. Melanie is also a member of Fred's Team, a running group that raises money for Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.

WBC Rising Star: Gabriella Taylor

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