Susan Joseph appointed as Executive Director of FinTech at Cornell University

ITHACA, N.Y. – Fintech at Cornell, an initiative of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business, is pleased to announce the appointment of Susan Joseph as Executive Director. Joseph will represent the initiative at all levels, in collaboration with faculty director Will Cong, Associate Professor of Finance & Rudd Family Professor of Management at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management.

As executive director, Joseph will focus on operationalizing the initiative’s strategic vision while driving industry outreach, community building, and impactful programming. “Through research, education, and industry collaborations, this initiative seeks to influence the future of how fintech shapes business, and Susan has the unique expertise to help us achieve that goal,” said Professor Cong.

Susan Joseph holds JD and MBA degrees and is a former general counsel for several fintech companies. Her background includes emphasis in financial services, identity, data, digital assets and cryptocurrencies, insurance, regulation, and humanitarian (inclusion and climate/ESG) concerns.

She is CEO/Founder of Healthrends.ai, an NSF-grant-awardee (public health informatics using blockchain), Executive Director of Diversity in Blockchain, a 501(c)(3) entity which supports inclusion, and is an advisor to start-ups in identity and digital asset insurance. Joseph created and ran blockchain working groups for financial enterprises, insurers, and consortia, and managed digitization working groups for the mining industry to address climate and financial/trade issues. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Expert Network. A 1981 alumna of the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell, Joseph has also served as a board member of the CALS Alumni Association.

“Susan’s acumen and vision will be outstanding assets for the initiative, and it is wonderful she has chosen to deepen her relationship with Cornell through our fintech work,” said Andrew Karolyi, dean of the SC Johnson College and Harold Bierman Jr. Distinguished Professor of Management.

“I am thrilled to join the fintech initiative as its first Executive Director,” added Joseph. “I look forward to expanding Cornell’s broad network of fintech collaborators—within higher education and across the industry—as it generates knowledge that has direct benefits for business, as well as society. We are deeply appreciative of our first sponsors Moody’s, Fiserv, TCS, and Broadridge Financial Services, and are very excited to work with them as we grow the initiative.”

To learn more about Susan’s background, visit her LinkedIn profile here.

For further information please contact Sarah Magnus-Sharpe at [email protected]

About FinTech at Cornell – an Initiative of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business

Fintech at Cornell is a priority initiative launched in fall 2020 by the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business to create a global, open nexus of fintech insight by preparing tomorrow’s fintech leaders, creating and sharing ground-breaking research, and serving as the hub of engagement for industry practitioners, research scholars, and students. Building on a deep foundation of finance and data science scholarship, Fintech at Cornell held its first roundtable webinar discussion in January 2021, discussing the near and far future of fintech. Click here for details and to watch the event.