Our People
The people that we use to design, develop and deliver our skills enhancement programs are carefully selected according to key criteria:
- Real-world experience within large financial institutions – in either the risk/compliance field or in the ‘soft skill’ areas
- Established reputation for delivering training and/or strategic consultancy at senior management team levels
- Flexibility to enhance training methods and materials in response to client’s needs
- Excellent communication and inter-personal skills.
The skills and experience of our team mean… we are not ‘just another risk training company’.
Principals –
Keith Waitt, President and CEO
Keith has a successful track record in the banking world, spanning 23 years at Citigroup in London and New York, in a variety of leadership roles managing businesses, people and risk. Since establishing Consultancy Matters, Keith has taught and advised corporate and investment bankers, regulators and academics in risk management practices and training curricula on a global basis.
12 years of Keith’s career were dedicated to developing risk management competencies, encompassing Senior Credit Risk Management positions, and designing and building Citigroup’s Global Risk and Compliance Training & Development Group. During this time, he led the career development initiatives of Citigroup’s Risk and Compliance organization, which included the management associate programs and mentoring and mobility programs for over 5,500 staff around the world.
Keith is a Business Honors Graduate from Edinburgh University (UK) and holds a Dean’s List award from The Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania (USA). He is a former governor of the New York chapter of the Risk Management Association (RMA) and is currently on the chapter’s Education and Standards Committee. Keith is a member of the Global Council for Thunderbird School of Global Management in Glendale, Arizona and also an Executive in Residence and Director of the Thunderbird Global Risk Management Center at the School.
Keith is passionate about the pursuit of excellence in the risk management profession. In recognition of this he was asked to chair a masterclass stream at the 2012 RiskMinds Geneva conference.
Charlene Simpson, Chief Operating Officer
Charlene has 20 years of marketing and business development experience in the global Financial Services Industry and is adept at building the operating infrastructure required for a range of disciplines. As Vice President of Marketing at BNY Mellon, she established the framework to support a comprehensive marketing function for the Bank’s Corporate Trust Group. She went on to manage a full-service marketing team supporting business development efforts for the Structured Finance Division.
At Citigroup, Charlene led cross business relationship development efforts – collaborating with premier clients shared by Investment and Transactions Banking – to develop new multi-product financial solutions. Previously, she built the foundation for robust marketing and training functions, including the development and European roll-out of strategic plans for each, following the launch of Citigroup’s new Financial Institutions business in the UK.
Charlene’s professional training certifications were acquired from Citigroup’s European Training Center where she was Director of Finance and instructor for supervisory and personal development skills training courses.
Charlene received a Masters in Management from Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts.
Maddy Robinshaw, Chief Administrative Officer
Maddy is a Business Honors Graduate from Edinburgh University, where she won a scholarship award to The Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania, gaining a place on the Dean’s List for academic achievement.
Her career spans product and project management within “blue chip” and brand-leading organisations, culminating in senior marketing and Director roles. Her projects have resulted in European awards for innovation.
Maddy has established a successful Marketing consultancy, providing strategic and tactical support to organisations across industry sectors; specialising in strategic workshop facilitation. She also lectures at Oxford Brookes University Business School in the UK on Marketing and business modules.
Maddy brings to the team a wealth of commercial, strategic and marketing expertise.
Senior Associates –
Arnold Ziegel
Arnold is a consultant specialising in corporate finance, communications and training for risk analysis and assessment. He spent 34 years at Citibank and Citigroup, culminating in his position as Managing Director and Senior Industry Analyst for Citigroup’s Global Corporate and Investment Bank, where he was responsible for global banking industry strategic marketing and risk analysis. He has extensive experience as a banker to multi-national corporations, financial institutions, non-investment grade corporations and entrepreneurs.
His consultancy was the facilitator and lead instructor for Citigroup’s Corporate and Investment Bank Advanced Risk Issues global training program. Other consultancy clients include the Federal Reserve Board, the Institute of International Finance, Fidelity Investments, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and Intuition Training.
Arnold has an MBA degree from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, and a B.Sc. (with distinction in economics) from The Ohio State University. He also pursued a Ph.D. in Finance at the New York University Graduate School of Business.
Margaret Agostino
Margaret “Mardy” has over 25 years experience in the financial services industry. She has held senior posts in large, international financial institutions, as well as a prominent US federal banking regulatory agency. She has latterly served as an Executive Director in Morgan Stanley’s Legal and Compliance Division and was the AML Head for Morgan Stanley’s U.S. Banks.
Mardy was a member of Citigroup’s (Citi) Global AML and Sanctions Compliance Group. As the Director of Training, Analysis and Communications, she was responsible for Citi’s global AML training program; led the development and implementation of Citi’s enterprise-wide AML risk assessment and assisted in the development of the global AML and sanctions risk management program.
As Vice President at the Bank of New York (BoNY), Mardy was responsible for developing and implementing BoNY’s first risk-based compliance monitoring and testing program as well as the first enterprise-wide AML risk assessment.
Mardy was a Commissioned National Bank Examiner and AML Compliance Specialist with the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC) for 16 years. She was a member of the OCC’s Large Bank Program in New York and covered national banks such as Citi, JP Morgan Chase and HSBC. Mardy was a member of the OCC’s core on site examination team at Citi.
Neil McKinlay
Neil has enjoyed a long and varied career in retail banking working predominantly with the Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBSG). Neil has fulfilled a number of senior roles within the RBSG, latterly specialising in retail credit risk management where he has gained a wealth of experience. Now running his own consultancy, he has undertaken work with Tescobank Ltd and RBSG.
Neil also has considerable experience of designing and delivering both technical retail credit risk management workshops and “soft” skills training, including personal development, people management and motivational/self awareness courses
David Costelloe
David has extensive experience in banking, training and relationship management across several continents. His career spans 27 years at Citigroup, and has included responsibilities at senior levels for Credit Risk Management, Compliance, Internal Audit, Business Management, and Human Resources Management.
David also has five years experience as an instructor on credit risk training programs for commercial and corporate organisations in Europe, Africa and Asia.
He has both a Bachelor of Commerce Degree and a Master of Business Studies from University College in Dublin.
Jeanmarie Alessi
Jeanmarie is an organizational training and development consultant with over 20 years experience in designing and facilitating adult learning programs. She has worked in various industries including financial services, communications, education, non-profit, and health care.
The majority of her career has been at Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank and Prudential Securities, where she has delivered training and development initiatives within the USA and internationally. She also has consulted to senior management on employee morale, teambuilding and the selection of employees during mergers and organizational change.
Jeanmarie’s areas of expertise include the design and delivery of Management Development, Communication, Change Management, Career Development and Team Building initiatives.
Barbara Sucoff
Barbara Sucoff is a Senior Associate specializing in communication consulting and training.
For the past 18 years, Barbara has been working with the “C” suite, Senior Executives, Managers and Individual Contributors and trained over 20,000 people. Her training background includes both developing and delivering leadership, management, sales, customer service, presentation skills, and interpersonal skills training. Barbara has been responsible for hiring and training global teams of trainers and has had significant experience training international clients for major financial institutions.
Barbara has provided training for many organizations including A&E Television Networks, American Express, American Red Cross, AXA Financial, Barclays, Biomet, Carnegie Corporation, Catalyst, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Cooper Union, Fidelity Investments, Fidessa, Goodwin Procter, HSBC, HBO, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Macquarie, McKinsey, Major League Baseball Network, NBA, Pitney Bowes, Symantec, The Cooper Union, Visiting Nurse Service of New York, WWE, and Wolters Kluwer.
Barbara earned her Bachelors degree at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, New York.
Karla Brom
Karla is an international banking and finance expert with over 20 years of experience and a specialization in risk management and corporate governance. She has been advising and training on the topic of microfinance and risk management since 2001, working with Citigroup’s business initiatives in microfinance, CGAP, the EBRD, EFSE, the IFC, the Grameen Foundation, Women’s World Banking, Mercy Corps, and EFSE. She was formerly a Senior VP at Citigroup, where she has seven years of experience as a risk manager, including oversight of Citi treasuries in Central and Latin America.
As an independent consultant, Karla has delivered training on financial risk management to over 125 MFIs around the world, including at the Boulder Microfinance training program in Turin. Most recently she has worked with the Grameen Foundation’s Microsavings Initiative, looking at two large MFIs in the Philippines and Ethiopia.
Karla has a BA from Wellesley College and an MA from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.
Alison Pangonis
Alison is a senior consultant and executive coach, working primarily in the financial services industry in human resources strategy, coaching and management development, and Leadership. She has extensive experience in competency based assessment, talent development, 360 degree feedback and coaching for the development, selection and placement of high potential people. Key clients have encompassed London Business School, UBS, Deutsche Bank, Thomson Reuters, Citigroup, JP Morgan, Actis, ABNAMRO, BNYMellon and Pfizer Pharmaceuticals.
Whilst at Citigroup, Alison held a number of senior positions in both strategic HR management and management development in the U.K. and the U.S, culminating in her appointment as Human Resources Director for Citibank’s Customer (relationship management) business with specific geographic responsibility for the U.K., Germany, Switzerland, New York and Japan.
Alison has an MA (Hons) in English Language and Literature from Oxford University.
Barry M Frohlinger
Barry has over 30 years of experience in the Banking and Financial Sector in instruction, training, credit and lending. Barry develops and conducts seminars in Financial Accounting, Financial Analysis, Corporate Finance, Cash Flow Modeling, Valuation and Credit and Risk Analysis for analysts, associates and officers at many financial institutions, law firms and corporates.
His seminars are designed to meet the specific needs of the institution and have been conducted for Citigroup, US Bancorp, The Bank Of New York Mellon, Barclays Capital, DnB NOR, West LB, Lazard, Sampo, SEB, Avon, UBS, BBVA, Goldman Sachs, Lombard Odier, Credit Suisse, Bank of America, Sovereign Bank, American Express, Sherman & Sterling, BMO, Scotia Bank, RBS, Lloyds, and many private equity and hedge funds.
Barry was a Vice President at Texas Commerce Bank, as a relationship banker for multinationals and prior to that, he was an Assistant Vice President at Bank of America. He has significant experience as a banker, lending to a variety of industries. He has an MBA and an Advanced Professional Certificate in Taxation from New York University Graduate School of Business. He taught briefly at Purdue University.
Barry has taught tens of thousands of employees at virtually every major bank in New York since 1981. In addition, he has delivered this curriculum in most major financial center in the world. In addition to training, Barry does consulting assignments in valuation and corporate finance and speaks at industry conferences.
Jodi Starbecker
Jodi became an Associate of Consultancy Matters in June 2010, after having spent 15 years with Fitch Training, the training affiliate of Fitch ratings.
At Fitch Training she was responsible for creating and instructing credit and corporate finance programs throughout the United States and Europe for major banks, asset managers and insurance companies.
Prior to this she spent 14 years at Chase Manhattan Bank, N.A, where she held a variety of senior positions in the bank’s Equipment Leasing and Finance Division and acted as a Client Executive in the Corporate Banking Group. In addition, she spent 3 years in Chase’s Credit Training Department where she was responsible for training bank professionals in financial and risk analysis, and managing all aspects of the analyst training program.
