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PANELISTS

Lisa Cadotte | Vice President, Treasury, Risk, Investment Operations, Analytics & Data at Northwestern Mutual
Lisa Cadotte joined Northwestern Mutual’s (NM) private investment arm in 1996 where she invested $5.0 billion in private debt and private equity investments. Lisa was a generalist putting capital to work in a variety of industries, across multiple continents. For nearly a decade, she oversaw the financial performance and capitalization of Russell, a former subsidiary, including the sale of its private equity fund of funds business in 2010.

Lisa joined NM’s Career Distribution function in 2011 overseeing Field System Financial Management. In this role, Cadotte facilitated the exit of the group health brokerage business line owned by network offices. She built a formal underwriting process for the Company’s $600 million network office lease portfolio and created a performance framework to assess financial health of offices across the country. 

In 2015, Lisa joined Investment Risk & Operations and became Department Head the following year, accountable for risk, operations, performance measurement, and data and analytics in the investment function.  At the beginning of 2021, she assumed responsibility for the treasury function for the enterprise, including liquidity management and capital market transactions.

Irena Brobston | Vice President, Risk Management at New York Life Insurance Company
Irena is the Head of Enterprise Risk Management and Corporate Insurance at New York Life Insurance Company. She is responsible for establishing and maintaining the risk framework and governance, and risk reporting to senior management, the Board of Directors and regulators.  She is the Committee Secretary for the executive risk committee that is chaired by the Chief Risk Officer and includes the CEO.  In overseeing the Corporate Insurance team, she is responsible for developing strategy for the management of insurance programs for the company and advising senior management on insurance coverage and risk transfer.
Prior to joining Risk Management, Irena was a litigation attorney in New York Life’s Office of the General Counsel for twelve years. She handled a variety of complex matters across business areas. She worked at a law firm prior to New York Life and graduated from St. John’s University School of Law.

Julia Senchak | Chief Risk Officer at Prudential’s U.S. Businesses
Julia is the Chief Risk Officer of Prudential’s U.S. Businesses. In her role, she and her team engage with the U.S. Insurance and Retirement businesses to oversee and manage their risk profile with a mindset towards advancing strategic objectives while protecting the long-term health of the enterprise. Julia is accountable for risk oversight decisions on behalf of Enterprise Risk Management with the support of the full breadth of subject matter expertise across the enterprise’s risk centers of excellence. Julia was previously the CRO for the Individual Life and Annuities businesses.

Prior to those roles, Julia led the Market Risk Reporting & Analytics group where she was responsible for the reporting and methodologies to measure the enterprise’s market risk exposures. In that role, she was instrumental in furthering global regulatory advocacy efforts around insurance capital standards and key industry issues related to market risks.

Julia joined Prudential in September 2004 and has held roles in the Chief Investment Office in both portfolio management and as the Chief of Staff to the Prudential’s Chief Investment Officer.  She also worked in PGIM Private Capital, the asset management arm of PGIM focused on private capital origination for institutional investors.

Carmela Wilson | Vice President, Corporate Chief Risk Officer-ERM at Nationwide

Carmela Wilson is the Vice President, and Corporate Chief Risk Officer for Enterprise Risk Management at Nationwide. In this role, Carmela leads the enterprise risk management frameworks; drives the development of consistent and robust policies, procedures and governance structure; and manages Nationwide’s Enterprise operational, third-party and model risk management programs.

Carmela has a multi-dimensional background of strategic leadership, operational excellence, and innovative expertise, along with a transformational mindset and continuous improvement capabilities that align well with Enterprise Risk strategic imperatives. She held several significant leadership roles with increasing responsibility, including: Associate Vice President (AVP) – Finance, AVP – Business Delivery Executive, and various other developmental roles within the P&C, Controllership, and Finance organizations at Nationwide.

She most recently served as Vice President of the Finance Shared Services Center, where she drove execution of finance and accounting-related reporting, oversaw transformational projects and mergers and acquisition activities, and integrated new products into the finance environment. She also had the opportunity to lead the deployment of Nationwide’s first Robotic Process Automation (RPA) project that helped to streamline processes and optimized resources.