JC Bahr-de Stefano

Senior Associate

2022 - Current

Better Tomorrow Ventures (btv.vc) is an early-stage fintech focused fund, backing incredible founders building the next generation of financial services. If you're an early stage fintech company, we'd love to chat! Feel free to email me at jc@btv.vc

Author and Editor

2018

The Fintech Update is managed by a small team of experienced financial services professionals based in Europe and the United States dedicated to providing weekly updates and analysis in the rapidly developing world of fintech. We have a weekly email distribution, which will deliver our latest updates and periodic original thought and analysis pieces, what we call Big Ideas, directly to your inbox — we’d love for you to sign up (https://thefintechupdate.substack.com/)! Otherwise, check us out every week for our latest updates and analysis. Also, feel free to drop us a line at fintechupdate@gmail.com — we’d love to hear from you!

Corporate Development and Strategy Lead

2021 - 2022

In this role, I conducted qualitative and quantitative analysis to inform strategic decisions for the company and diligence on M&A and venture investment opportunities.

Finance Partnerships Lead

2020 - 2021

I primarily focused on managing and sourcing new partnerships to power our consumer and merchant underwriting stack, spanning across several areas, including credit decisioning, fraud detection and prevention, identity verification and authentication, bank account authentication, and SMS communications. This role served as an amazing education of our business, specifically how Affirm makes intelligent, sophisticated, and risk-weighted decisions regarding consumers and merchants in real time, and offered me visibility all the way up to our c suite. Furthermore, in this role, I was afforded the opportunity to partner with some of the brightest minds in the industry across credit risk and analytics, merchant risk, fraud strategy, engineering, machine learning, product, and even our internal incubator on several strategic initiatives here at Affirm. Some highlights include: driving improvements to our underlying unit economics, supporting international expansion, identifying and executing M&A integration synergies, and expanding access to credit to better serve the credit invisible population.

Fintech Fellow

2021 - 2021

ODFintech Fellowship cohort #2 On Deck Fintech is an invite-only network of top experts, leaders, advisors, and investors across the fintech ecosystem with a focus on catalyzing global solutions in financial services. Founders get access once accepted to ODX, OD's community-backed accelerator.

Associate, Strategy and Optimization

2019 - 2020

Promontory Financial Group, an IBM Company, is a leading management consulting firm specializing in strategic, risk management, and compliance matters in the financial services industry. I was the third member of the firm's Strategy and Optimization Practice when we had no concrete service offering. I worked closely with ex McKinsey and Bain senior advisors to build the offering, which focuses on advising financial institutions as they undertake transformation, operational improvement, and cost saving initiatives. After leaving, the practice had 20 members, was projected for $20M in annual revenue, and was integral in the company's broader strategy. To deliver to our clients, our resources leveraged a number of levers including organizational design, process re-engineering, shared service utilities, automation, data management enhancement, and systems design thinking. I supported several business development initiatives and the end-to-end lifecycle of new engagements for the practice, including by drafting proposals in response to inbound RfPs, pricing engagements, developing and monitoring project plans, driving interviews, analysis, and deliverable drafting, and presenting findings to executive senior clients. Representative engagements include process optimization for a payments company, target operating model development and implementation for a foreign banking organization, and efficacy assessment for a financial market utility.

Analyst, Strategy and Optimization

2018 - 2019

Analyst, Risk

2017 - 2018

As a member of various engagement teams within Promontory’s Risk Practice, provided solutions to complex strategic, risk management, and operational issues for the world’s top tier banks, regulatory agencies, and other financial institutions. Representative engagements include enhancing enterprise risk management frameworks, designing compliance functions, and supporting responses to supervisory letters and regulatory matters requiring attention.

Business Development Intern

2016 - 2016

- Audited the company’s ~300 existing contracts to identify inconsistencies with the standard contract. - Presented audit results to CEO, CFO, legal counsel, and Head of marketing and developed a new standard contract - Researched competitors and the market to drive improvements to company’s product offerings, sales channels, customer acquisition strategy, and competitive pricing. - Streamlined collection and retention of client communications to allow account executives to better manage client relationships and generate additional organic and inorganic revenue opportunities. - Used Salesforce and ZenProspect to manage sales leads for prospective clients.

Litigation Paralegal, Summer Intern

2015 - 2015

- Assisted with ongoing litigation in various banking matters by performing document reviews and researching applicable case law. - Collaborated with other paralegal,s associates, and partners to compile and organize client documents by jurisdiction and subject matter, allowing for easy and accurate document retrieval. - Drafted and edited various legal documents, including memorandums of laws, briefs, complaints, and motions.

Information Technology, Summer Intern

2014 - 2014

- Performed floor support everyday and answered associates with any technological questions. - Performed computer maintenance and helped lead IT training courses, offered to associates and paralegals.