“I will help position Duke’s Innovative FinTech program and its students to be a catalyst for innovation at scale”

Vas Kodali, former Executive Vice President and Head of Strategic Partnerships at Wells Fargo, joined the Duke FinTech Advisory Board. “Being a Board member will allow me to leverage my 30+ year career working in banking, management consulting, investing and technology to help position Duke’s Innovative FinTech program and its students to be a catalyst for innovation at scale within the rapidly evolving FinTech ecosystem of top banks, technology companies, incubators and investors,” said Vas Kodali.

The Advisory Board’s members are globally recognized leaders who will advise program leadership on curriculum and general strategy to ensure that Duke FinTech meets the needs of students and of the financial industry. Asked what skills the Duke FinTech Program needs to foster in its students, the former Wells Fargo executive made a distinction between the basic skills that any tech innovator needs and those that are required for FinTech innovators. While any tech innovator has to master networking, communications, market knowledge, team building and resilience, a FinTech innovator needs more than these, Vas Kodali emphasized. “They need to have the ability to distill the authentic demand (or need) to solve for it in the highly complex ecosystem of economics and finance. And they must have an intuitive understanding of the behaviors of the end user and how technology can enable and empower that user to navigate the same complex world of finance,” he added. Read his full bio on the Duke FinTech Advisory Board website.