Team

Kishore has over 40 years of Banking experience across diverse roles in Risk, Credit, Trade finance, Operations, Strategy and Branch leadership, spanning multiple geographies in Asia, Europe, North America and middle East. Kishore’s last role was as Group Chief Risk Officer with Abu Dhabi Commercial bank (ADCB) where he led the Risk Management function for one of the largest UAE Banks. Prior to ADCB, Kishore was Group Chief Credit and Risk Officer with Arab Banking Corporation. He has also worked with ABN AMRO Bank and State Bank of India earlier in his career. Kishore holds accredited memberships of the Institute of Company Secretaries of India as well as the Institute of Cost & management Accountants of India, besides being an Alumnus of the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University, USA.

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Trevor has been a Banker and Central Bank regulator for over 40 years. He started his career in Australia with National Australia Bank and worked in their offices in Melbourne, Singapore, London and New York. He subsequently joined Bank of America in London in their European treasury and trading room. He moved to Middle East around 20 years back and has been an integral part of the regulatory and financial stability effort for the Central Bank of the UAE in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi. Trevor was an active member of various CBUAE committees covering a range of topics from model validation to resolution and recovery. He played an integral role in the Central Bank’s response to the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and 2009 both from the systemic as well as the micro-prudential perspectives. He retired in late 2018 as Director Supervision and now acts as an Advisor to a select number of financial institutions UAE and elsewhere. Trevor holds a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Wollongong in Australia.

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Prasad is a senior Banker with over 40 years of Management and Audit experience across multiple geographies covering both conventional and Islamic Banking. Prasad’s most recent role was as Chief Operating Officer of Al Hilal Bank in Abu Dhabi. Prior to that, he was CEO responsible for establishing Al Hilal’s subsidiary in Kazakhstan, the first Islamic Bank in the CIS region. Prior to joining Al Hilal, Prasad spent 24 years at Arab Banking Corporation in Bahrain and was the Deputy CEO of ABC International Bank in London, overseeing the London office and subsidiaries in Frankfurt, Milan and Paris. Earlier, he served as Group Chief Auditor for ABC covering the Head office and subsidiaries in the Arab World, Europe, Asia North and South America. Prasad holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from the University of Calicut in India.

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Sudipta is a Senior Retail Banker with close to 30 years of experience in India & UAE. Has worked with large MNC Banks such as HSBC and ANZ and two of the largest Banks in MENA – ENBD and FAB. He has worked across the entire spectrum of Consumer Banking domain, leading different businesses/functions such as Cards and Payments, Retail Assets, Retail Credit, Branch Distribution and Marketing during his career. After over 20 years in Retail Banking, Sudipta moved into Learning and Talent management and has led this function for Retail Banking as well as Corporate Banking and Markets in FAB. Sudipta has been actively involved in implementation of two of the biggest Bank mergers in the MENA Region – ENBD (EBI & NBD) and FAB (NBAD & FGB) , building expertise in Change Management, Organizational Design, Capability Framework and Transformation. Sudipta is an MBA from Indian Institute of Management and a Certified Associate of Indian Institute of Bankers.

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Nikhil brings with him over 25 years of experience in the Investment business, spanning across research, trading, sales and portfolio management. He started his investment career in research at JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley in New York, and then graduated to managing institutional and retail portfolios. During his career, he has hands-on experience across multiple asset classes such as equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities on a global scale. Most recently he spent more than a decade with the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority in the UAE in a variety of roles with the Global Investment Strategy Group responsible for Asset Allocation for the main Sovereign Fund. Nikhil has an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School USA, a MA in Economics from Cambridge University, UK and a BA in Mathematics from St. Stephen’s College Delhi University.

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Dinesh is a senior Banker with over 40 years of experience in Corporate Banking and Risk Management, including a long stint of almost 30 years with National Bank of Abu Dhabi (NBAD) in UAE in a number of senior management positions. Dinesh’s last role with NBAD was SVP - Head of International Advances and Credit Risk, overseeing a portfolio of international/ domestic assets of over US$ 25bn, encompassing 14 overseas jurisdictions, the International and Financial Institutional Groups and overseas companies in the U.A.E. He was chairman of the Credit Risk Committee and Regional Credit Committees and a key member of Basel II, Country Risk and other committees. Currently he serves in a consultative capacity to institutions in the United Arab Emirates and Sri Lanka.

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Alok is founder of Aptivaa, Athena’s partner firm. He is a successful serial entrepreneur with a proven track record of building global analytics & tech-driven businesses focused on the financial services industry. Alok has been advising leading financial services firms globally on transformation initiatives for over 20 years. Alok has established Aptivaa as a highly successful risk analytics firm with over 200 clients across 30 plus countries. Under his leadership, before Aptivaa, he built the Enterprise Risk Services (ERS) practice at Deloitte in India, which established Deloitte, a market leader in the ERS domain. Alok has a Bachelor in Engineering and a Masters in Management with a specialization in finance.

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Rafi brings with him over four decades of experience in Corporate Banking, Financial Markets and Treasury, across multiple geographies in Europe and Middle East. Rafi started his professional career with Standard Chartered Bank in UAE before moving to the FX team in Abu Dhabi Investment Council. He subsequently headed Corporate Treasury sales in Riyadh Bank with accountability for rates and FX sales across KSA. Moving onto UK, he was Vice President with JP Morgan Chase, handling the derivatives and fixed income sales to all MENA clients. Rafi then joined HSBC and did several roles in Dubai and London before becoming the MD and co-head of Global Markets for the MENA region. Rafi's last Corporate role was with National Bank of Abu Dhabi, London where he was MD and Head of Global Markets for Europe and North America. He left NBAD in 2015 and currently does consultancy with focus on the Markets and the Treasury domain. Real Estate is one of the other areas where Rafi has a keen interest and he has created a property development entity to buy, develop and build property in and around London. Rafi holds a Diploma in Banking and Business Studies from Greenwich University, UK

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