James Aramanda
President and Chief Executive Officer
The Clearing House – Association and Payments Company

As President and CEO of The Clearing House, Mr. Aramanda oversees the nation’s oldest bank association and largest private-sector payment system infrastructure for clearing and settling U.S. Dollar payments.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Aramanda served as Group President and Executive Vice President of Automatic Data Processing, Inc. where he was responsible for brokerage, claims and dealer service businesses in 50 countries.

He also served as Vice Chairman of Mellon Financial Corporation (now Bank of New York Mellon) and was a member of their Executive Committee. During his 25-year tenure at Mellon, Mr. Aramanda successfully led many of their businesses including, treasury services, pension administration, shareholder administration, benefits and HR consulting, cash management and brokerage services.

Paul Saltzman
President of the Association
EVP and General Counsel of the Payments Company

Paul Saltzman is President of The Clearing House Association and Executive Vice President, General Counsel of The Clearing House Payments Company, the oldest and largest private sector payments operator in the United States. Mr. Saltzman oversees the legal, compliance, and litigation functions for the organization’s payments business and leads the strategic agenda and operations of The Clearing House Association (“Association”), a not-for-profit, membership-based business league. The Association represents the interests of The Clearing House’s commercial bank ownership on a diverse range of legal, tax, finance, legislative and regulatory matters through position papers, comment letters, and amicus curiae briefs. Under Mr. Saltzman’s stewardship, the Association has emerged as the advocacy leader for the largest commercial banks in the United States and has been recognized for its development of a research and data-driven approach to legislative and regulatory advocacy. According to the American Banker, The Clearing House has “emerged as a major voice” on regulatory and policy issues affecting the banking sector and has provided a “new leadership model” for banking industry trade associations.

Mr. Saltzman has 25 years of experience in financial services, industry association management, and emerging technology development. For nearly a decade, Mr. Saltzman served as Executive Vice President and General Counsel for the Bond Market Association (now SIFMA), where he developed and steered the regulatory and legal agenda for the fixed-income industry. Under his direction, the Bond Market Association significantly increased its visibility and credibility with legislators and regulators. Among other notable achievements, Mr. Saltzman is credited with helping to lead the bond markets back to operation just 48 hours after the 9/11 attacks and establishing the organization’s European presence.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Saltzman was the Managing Director and General Counsel of Ellington Management Group, a leading alternative investment manager specializing in asset-backed securities and derivatives, where he was in charge of all aspect of the company’s legal, compliance, litigation and documentation functions, and Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer of Espeed, Inc., a publicly traded electronic marketplace with over 400 employees, where he successfully increased revenues, net income and market share. Mr. Saltzman was also formerly an in-house counsel for Greenwich Capital Markets and Kidder Peabody and Co., as well as an attorney specializing in structured finance at the international law firm of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.

Mr. Saltzman is a graduate of Clark University, received his Juris Doctor from Boston University School of Law and is admitted to the bar in the State of New York. He is a member of the New York City, New York State, and American Bar Associations and serves on the American Bar Association Banking Law Committee, the University of North Carolina Banking Law Institute Advisory Committee, the Board of Advisors of the Center for Finance, Law & Policy at Boston University, the Economic Club of New York, the Clark University Liberal Education and Effective Practice Advisory Committee and the Muhlenberg College Parents Advisory Council. Mr. Saltzman is also a member of the Washington D.C.-based Exchequer Club, which brings together leaders in the legal and financial services community and is a frequent lecturer and speaker at conferences and events including those sponsored by the Practicing Law Institute, the International Centre for Financial Regulation and the Conference of State Banking Supervisors.

Previously, Mr. Saltzman has served on the boards of the Duke University Global Capital Markets Center, the Institute for Financial Markets, the SEC Historical Society, SIFMA and Pro Bono Partnership, a leading provider of free legal services and resources to non-profit community-based organizations throughout the Tri-state area. Mr. Saltzman has also served as the Chairman of SIFMA’s Brokers Advisory Committee.

Russ Waterhouse
Executive Vice President
Product Development and Strategy

Mr. Waterhouse is responsible for overseeing the expansion and evolution of The Clearing House’s portfolio of payments products.

He brings a unique convergence of expertise in technology, product development, financial services and corporate management, garnered from more than 25 years of experience with diverse US and Canadian organizations.

Immediately before joining The Clearing House, Mr. Waterhouse served as Chairman of Solium Capital Inc., where he remains on the Board of Directors. Previously, he spent 10 years with Mellon Financial Corporation, holding several key roles including Group Vice President of ChaseMellon Shareholder Services, Chief Operating Officer of the R.M. Trust Company of Canada, Chief Financial Officer of Mellon Investor Services and Chief Financial Officer of The R.M. Trust Company of Canada. Additionally, he was the President of Computershare Ltd. North America, President and Chief Executive Officer of Computershare Trust Company of Canada.

Al Wood
Executive Vice President
Technology & Operations

As Executive Vice President of The Clearing House, Mr. Wood is responsible for Information Technology and Operations. He oversees information technology and operations for all Clearing House payments products.

Mr. Wood has been with The Clearing House for more than 30 years in a progression of technology-related positions. He was responsible for the development of, and movement into, The Clearing House’s North Carolina Operating Center. Prior to joining TCH, Mr. Wood was a systems engineer for Burroughs Corp (Unisys).

Hank Farrar
Senior Vice President
Sales & Relationship Management

Mr. Farrar oversees the Customer Relationship Management and Sales function for The Clearing House. In this capacity, he plays an instrumental role in driving new and organic growth across the product portfolio and helping The Clearing House identify emerging needs and opportunities.

Throughout his 20 year tenure with The Clearing House, Mr. Farrar has held key leadership positions across various aspects of payments processing, including Image and CHIPS, as well as responsibility for strategic planning, corporate development and board/investor relations.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, he held various sales and marketing positions for Unisys Corporation including Sales Manager and Product Manager.

Joe Alexander
Senior Vice President and Deputy General Counsel

Mr. Alexander’s principal responsibilities center on nonpartisan advocacy activities focused on a variety of systemically important banking issues through regulatory comment letters, amicus briefs, and white papers. During his tenure at TCH, Joe has also been responsible for managing all legal aspects of electronic-payment services, CHIPS and EPN. Before joining The Clearing House he was a Senior Attorney in the Legal Division of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Joe obtained his J.D. from the Catholic University of America and has an A.B. from Rutgers University. He is a member of the New York and District of Columbia Bars.

Sujit “Bob” Chakravorti  
Managing Director and Chief Economist

Dr. Chakravorti is responsible for coordinating The Clearing House’s quantitative and data driven research efforts and providing owner banks with insight and analysis on economic, regulatory and payment system issues.  He directly participates in the organization’s public policy efforts and works closely with chief economists and research directors at owner banks, academic institutions, and regulatory agencies.

Prior to joining the Clearing House, Dr. Chakravorti was a senior economist at the Federal Reserve Banks of Chicago and Dallas for 15 years. In this capacity, he advised senior policymakers about financial market and payment system policy at the Federal Reserve and other central banks.  Prior to joining the Fed, Dr. Chakravorti was a senior associate at KPMG where he advised foreign governments on economic policy issues and interacted with central banks, finance ministries and international organizations to understand and monitor local economic and political conditions.

Dr. Chakravorti has written more than 30 articles for industry, academic and Federal Reserve publications on public policy issues and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences on financial markets.  Dr. Chakravorti has been a visiting scholar at the International Monetary Fund, Nederlandsche Bank (the Dutch central bank), and several universities.  He received his Ph.D. and M.A. in Economics from Brown University and his B.A. in Economics & Genetics from the University of California-Berkeley.

John Court
Managing Director and Senior Associate General Counsel

Mr. Court focuses on developing and managing the Association’s advocacy efforts on a variety of legislative, legal and regulatory issues.  Prior to joining the Clearing House in June 2012, Mr. Court spent 10 years in private practice advising clients on various financial regulatory and enforcement matters, most recently as a member of the Financial Institutions Regulatory and Enforcement group at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP.  Mr. Court holds a B.A. from Cornell University and J.D. from George Washington University School of Law.

Alaina Gimbert
Senior Vice President and Associate General Counsel

Ms. Gimbert joined The Clearing House after spending nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. During her time with the Reserve Bank Ms. Gimbert provided legal support to the Retail Payments Office, which manages the Reserve Banks’ national ACH and check services. She now supports EPN, CHIPS, and SVPCO, and engages in payments law advocacy efforts for The Clearing House’s owner banks.  She received both her B.A. and J.D. degrees from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jill Hershey
Executive Managing Director and Head of Government Affairs

Ms. Hershey oversees all Federal and State affairs strategy and outreach. Prior to joining The Clearing House, she held several senior positions at financial services trade associations including the Bond Market Association, SIFMA, and most recently the Financial Services Roundtable where she focused on regulatory reform advocacy. Previously, Ms. Hershey spent nearly 10 years on Capitol Hill, working as a senior policy aide for two members of the House of Representatives, as well a Senator who served on the Senate Banking Committee and the Senate Finance Committee.

Rob Hunter
Executive Managing Director and Deputy General Counsel

Mr. Hunter serves as the senior payments lawyer supporting its ACH, wire transfer, and check image payment networks which clear and settle approximately $2 trillion daily. Mr. Hunter is also actively involved in counseling payments executives on numerous industry-wide product development initiatives in a variety of payments-related areas, including electronic bill payment, medical payments, and other initiatives. As principal staff advisor on payments law issues for The Clearing House Association, the nation’s oldest banking association, Mr. Hunter is frequently engaged in representing the interests of The Clearing House owner banks on a variety of payments law issues through the filing of comment letters, amicus briefs and white papers.

Mr. Hunter holds a B.A. degree from Northwestern University and a J.D. degree from the Duke University School of Law. He is a member of the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s Banking Law Committee, where he serves as Chair of the Subcommittee on Payments and Electronic Banking.

Sridhar Iyer
Senior Vice President and Director of Research

As Senior Vice President and the Director of Research, Dr. Iyer is responsible for supporting key advocacy initiatives with data analysis and the development of research products.

He brings a unique expertise to the research department in the areas of regulatory and economic capital, bank regulation, market and credit risk measurement and management, and financial research, having spent the last12 years dealing with regulatory capital and risk assessment at a variety of leading banking organizations.

Immediately before joining The Clearing House, Dr. Iyer served as Director of the Regulatory Policy and Advisory Group at Deutsche Bank where he specialized in regulatory capital issues with a focus on European and U.S. translations of the Basel guidelines and the Dodd-Frank Act. He has held similar positions at HSBC and Morgan Stanley and served as a financial economist for the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. Dr. Iyer holds a Ph.D. in Financial Economics from Washington University in St. Louis, with research interests in risk analysis and applied financial economics. His work has appeared in leading journals such as Journal of Forecasting, Journal of Financial Research, and Applied Financial Economics.

Daniel J. McCardell
Executive Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer

Mr. McCardell develops and shapes the financial policy and regulatory agenda for the Association and oversees its regulatory outreach.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. McCardell served as Deputy Director for the Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Systems, where he focused on research and programming with specialization on issues related to global capital markets, financial regulation and international finance.

Prior to his work at Harvard Law School, Mr. McCardell served as a Special Assistant to the President and Deputy Director for the White House Office of Public Liaison where he managed communications with the U.S. business community on behalf of the White House on a variety of issues including the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and the Troubled Asset Relief Plan. He has also served in similar roles at the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Commerce.

Mr. McCardell holds a Masters Degree in Foreign Affairs from The University of Virginia and a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Mary Washington College.

Peter McKillop
Senior Vice President
Director of Strategic Communications and Member Engagement

Mr. McKillop supervises the development of The Clearing House Association’s strategic external messaging and communication strategies necessary to support  numerous priority advocacy initiatives and to expand The Clearing House’s brand visibility as a leader in the payments industry.  He oversees all of the Association’s external and internal communications, association marketing and events, social media and branding.  Mr. McKillop brings nearly three decades of extensive financial services experience in the communications field to The Clearing House. Mr. McKillop joined The Clearing House from UBS, where he was Managing Director and Chief Communications Officer for the Americas.  Prior to that, he held senior communications positions at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., Bank of America, JPMorgan Chase and at Burson-Marsteller.  Earlier in his career, Mr. McKillop was the New York Bureau Chief and subsequently a foreign correspondent posted in Tokyo and Hong Kong for Newsweek magazine.

Alex Radetsky
Vice President and Assistant General Counsel

Mr. Radetsky specializes in the regulation of financial institutions and focuses on the development of the Association’s regulatory advocacy agenda.

Mr. Radetsky joined The Clearing House from the Financial Institutions Regulatory practice of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP, where he counseled a number of U.S. and non-U.S. financial institutions on a variety of transactional and non-transactional matters ranging from regulatory compliance to restructuring to mergers and acquisitions.   Mr. Radetsky’s prior law practice focused on the impact of domestic and international regulatory developments on banking organizations and other financial institutions. He holds a B.A. with High Distinction from the University of Michigan and a J.D. from Cornell Law School, where he specialized in Business Law and Regulation.

Jason Tornow
Vice  President, Forum and Advocacy

Mr. Tornow is responsible for addressing critical payments industry issues in his work with the Strategic Payments Forum.  The SPF facilitates discussion and action among U.S. payments industry participants on issues of shared long-term strategy and common payment-related issues.

He has over 13 years of experience in financial services, with a focus on new product development, strategic marketing, and banking.  Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Tornow was an Engagement Manager with the Revenue Enhancement Solutions professional services division of Fiserv, Inc., where he worked with retail banking clients to develop new product ideas.  He has also held various positions at American Express and U.S. Bank. 

Mr. Tornow holds an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and a BA from Boston University.

David Wagner
Executive Managing Director and Head of Finance Affairs

Mr. Wagner leads the financial regulatory advocacy efforts of The Clearing House on a broad range of capital, liquidity, counterparty exposure, stress testing, tax, accounting, reporting and risk management matters affecting the banking sector. He works closely with chief financial officers, treasurers, chief risk officers and tax directors at member banks in shaping and drafting advocacy positions in comment letters and white papers. He is responsible for representing member banks before federal regulatory agencies, accounting standard-setting boards (the FASB and IASB), federal and state tax authorities, US Treasury and Congressional staffs.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, he provided tax advisory, accounting and risk management support to Citigroup’s consumer, corporate and wealth management businesses in developed and emerging markets, including advising senior management on structuring and integrating numerous acquisitions, divestitures and strategic investment proposals. Mr. Wagner was in private practice before joining Citigroup. He received both his master’s degree in taxation and his law degree from New York University.

Brett Waxman
Vice President
Associate General Counsel

Mr. Waxman joined The Clearing House as Assistant General Counsel after serving as a corporate associate with the law firm of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP in New York City. He represented public and private companies as well as financial institutions on various strategic transactions, including mergers & acquisitions, corporate restructurings, credit facilities and joint ventures. Prior to that, Mr. Waxman served as an intern with the New York City Council. He is a graduate of Harvard Law School and Tufts University.