GENERAL SESSION: Tech Trends We’re Watching

Julian Hebron

Founder and Chief Executive Officer, The Basis Point

Julian Hebron is founder of The Basis Point, a sales and strategy consultancy to banks, lenders, and fintechs, and a consumer finance media brand. He advises top innovators in lending, banking, and housing on their most important and complex issues. With over 25 years in executive sales and marketing roles for companies like UBS, Wells Fargo, loanDepot, and LendUS -- as well as today's fintech disruptors -- Julian’s accessible analytical style distills the noisy consumer finance and real estate space into clear insights that banking, housing, and fintech leaders can relate to.

Ramesh Sarukkai

Chief Product and Technology Officer, Rate

Chief Product and Technology Officer at Rate, Ramesh Sarukkai is a veteran technologist who spent the past two decades in Silicon Valley leading the development and delivery of high-scale consumer and business products (hundreds of millions of users, multi-billion-dollar businesses). He has worked across a wide variety of sectors including financial systems, payments, commerce, advertising, media/video technologies, machine learning and applied intelligence. Prior to joining Rate, he headed up Engineering/Product groups at Braintree/PayPal, led Payments at Facebook and bootstrapped YouTube monetization teams at Google. Sarukkai holds a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Rochester. He is the author of Foundations of Web Technology, holds more than 50 patents (issued/pending) and is a faculty member at the University of California at Berkeley.

Sridhar Sharma

Executive Vice President & Chief Information Officer, Mr. Cooper

Sridhar Sharma serves as Executive Vice President and Chief Innovation and Digital Officer for Mr. Cooper Group leading the company’s digital-first strategy with a focus on developing and implementing AI and machine learning solutions to give customers and team members a more seamless experience. Sridhar joined the company in 2015 as Executive Vice President and Chief Information Officer. Under his leadership, Mr. Cooper developed Pyro AI, its patented artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning platform, and built an industry-leading digital platform, among other award-winning innovations. Sridhar has more than 20 years of experience leading technology and product engineering functions. He previously served as the Chief Technology Officer for Ugam Solutions in Dallas. Before that, he was the Chief Evangelist and Architect for the Products and Platforms group at Infosys. Sridhar earned a B.S. in Electronics and Communication Engineering from the University of Mysore, India, and a M.B.A. degree from Cornell University in New York.

Chad Smith

President and Chief Operating Officer, Better Mortgage

Chad Smith is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Better (NASDAQ: BETR), a leading digital mortgage company on a mission to make homeownership faster, cheaper, and just plain better for all Americans. Since its founding in 2015, Better has originated over $100 billion in home loans, more than $38 billion in insurance, and over $3 billion in real estate transactions, all entirely online. A seasoned veteran in the direct-to-consumer mortgage industry, Chad holds over 25 years of experience building lead routing strategies and partnerships for distributed retail, recapture, and MSR ownership. Prior to Better, Chad served as the Chief Executive Officer of Mission Loans, a customer and partner-centric mortgage company. He has held leadership roles at lenders including Executive Vice President of Consumer Direct and Portfolio Retention at Caliber Home Loans, a full service national mortgage originator, President of Direct Lending at loanDepot, one of the nation’s largest non-bank retail mortgage lenders, and Senior Vice President of Production at LendingTree Loans. LendingTree Loans was eventually acquired by Discover Home Loans, where Chad oversaw mortgage production for Discover's entrance into the mortgage business.