David Watson is the President and CEO of The Clearing House.

David has an international career spanning more than 20 years in the financial services industry. Prior TCH David was with Swift, the Global Financial Messaging provider, where he held roles as Chief Product Officer, responsible for the company’s product engineering, development, and innovation and prior to that as Chief Strategy Officer, where he had responsibility for market and competitive intelligence, strategic planning, thought leadership, and execution on key strategic initiatives for the company. Prior to Swift, David spent nearly 17 years with Deutsche Bank where he served in commercial, product and leadership roles, including Global Head of Product, Global Transaction Banking, and as Head of Cash Management Americas. While at Deutsche Bank, David served as a director on TCH’s Payments Company Board for several years and was on the board of Deutsche Bank Trust Company Delaware.

David holds a degree in Business from Edinburgh University in his native Scotland and has lived in Germany, the UK and US.

Mr. Cadman is the Chief Auditor for The Clearing House and is responsible for directing and coordinating audit assurance activities across the entire Company.

Mr. Cadman has over 25 years’ of global financial services experience. Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Cadman held several senior positions at Citigroup, most recently as the Managing Director and Chief Auditor for the Operations & Technology functions within the Institutional Clients Group which encompassed Capital Markets, Transaction Services, Investment Banking and Private Banking.

Prior to joining Citigroup, Mr. Cadman worked in various Risk & Technology roles for HSBC, Standard Chartered and Salomon Brothers based in London.

Elena Casal is Chief Client Officer at The Clearing House, responsible for creating and managing the holistic experience for its customers and partners. This role includes growing the RTP^® network across U.S. financial institutions, evolving the customer engagement model for all TCH payments networks and promoting the company’s work to its diverse target segments.

Elena has deep experience with product and customers in the payments industry.  Prior to joining The Clearing House, Elena held regional and global product management positions at FIS, Clear2Pay and Fiserv where she was focused on building products and services across the global enterprise payments landscape.  These roles included managing R&D across ACH, Wires, Swift, ISO 20022 and real-time payments. She also worked at the Federal Reserve Bank within the Retail Product Office and Monetary Policy Divisions with a focus on cross-border activities and economic policy in Latin America.

Elena holds a B.A. in Economics and International Affairs from Denison University and an M.S. in International Affairs from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Mr. Alexander is the Chief Information Officer for The Clearing House and is responsible for directing and coordinating all technology and operations across the Company.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Mr. Alexander was Executive Vice President, Chief Information Officer, and Head of the Technology Group at the New York Federal Reserve Bank, where he also served on the Bank’s Management Committee. Prior to being named Head of the Technology Group and CIO, Mr. Alexander led the Bank’s application development efforts, and was instrumental in the development of a Bank and System-wide architecture and for the development and completion of the Fedwire modernization.

Mr. Alexander has more than 25 years of international management and development experience with premier firms in the technology and financial services industry including Oracle and AXA Equitable. Mr. Alexander holds a B.Sc. in Computing Science and an M.B.A. from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.

Margaret Weichert is Chief Product Officer of The Clearing House where she is responsible for guiding product development for TCH’s payment products, the RTP^® network, CHIPS^®, ACH (EPN), and check clearing, and is a member of the Executive Leadership Team.

Margaret is a payments leader with over 20 years of experience in both the private and public sectors. Most recently, at Accenture Margaret was the North American Payments Practice Lead and worked with clients in banking, government, retail and travel, as well as fintechs and technology providers. Prior to Accenture, she served a variety of roles in the Federal Government, including Federal Chief Operating Officer and Deputy Director for Management, Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Earlier in her career, Margaret was Americas Payments Practice Lead at Ernst & Young, and also held executive positions at First Data, as SVP, Global Marketing Executive; and Bank of America, as SVP, Payments Strategy and Innovation Executive.

She received a BS, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University, a Postgraduate Diploma in Economics from University of Sussex, and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from University of California at Berkley.

Sal Karakaplan is Chief Strategy Officer at The Clearing House, responsible for working across the industry to enhance and execute TCH’s strategic vision to shape the payments landscape of the future. Sal’s responsibilities include market strategy and growth plans, strategic partnerships, and exploration, incubation and innovation.

Sal is a banking and payments executive with over 25 years of experience who joins The Clearing House from Truist Financial, where he was Executive Vice President for the Enterprise Payments Group, in charge of enterprise payments strategy. Prior to joining Truist, Sal was an Executive Director in Integrated Payments Strategy team and Corporate Development team at JP Morgan Chase. Earlier in his career he spent a decade at Mastercard holding various roles in corporate strategy, corporate development, M&A and digital payments product roles.

Sal holds a B.S. in Industrial Engineering from the University of Houston and an M.B.A. in Finance and Marketing from Penn State University.

Sheffali Welch is the Chief Operating Officer of The Clearing House where she is responsible for Human Resources, Finance and Board management.  As a member of the company’s leadership team, Sheffali supports critical strategic, operational, and administrative initiatives.  
She brings a wealth of experience to this role at The Clearing House, with a progression of assignments leading strategic and transformational initiatives, planning and analysis and financial functions for several major financial institutions.

Most recently, at BNY Mellon, Sheffali was the COO of Global Finance and led an enterprise-wide client strategy initiative.  In her eight years at Deutsche Bank, she was Managing Director and COO of Wealth Management Americas, COO and Head of Regional Strategy for the Global Transaction Bank in the Americas, and Head of Global Client Strategy and Analytics for Fixed Income Sales and Trading.  At Citi, she was Head of Global Strategy for the Citi Private Bank and Chief of Staff to the CFO of Citigroup during the financial crisis.  While at Citi, she was also Head of Business Planning and Analysis for Citi Alternative Investments, and Financial Execution in the Corporate Mergers & Acquisitions group.

She began her career at Booz Allen Hamilton and GE Capital in various financial, operational and analytics positions.

Sheffali received a B.A. from the University of Chicago and an MBA with honors from the University of Rochester, Simon School of Business.

Simeon Fishman is the Chief Risk Officer for The Clearing House.  In this role, Mr. Fishman is responsible for the oversight of the Company's identification, measurement, and management of its risks such that it operates prudently and within its risk appetite.

Mr. Fishman joined The Clearing House in 2020 as Senior Vice President, Head of Enterprise Risk Management, and was elevated to his current Chief Risk Officer position in March 2022. 

Mr. Fishman has more than 20 years of experience in risk management at top tier financial institutions, including sell-side, buy-side, and FinTech firms.  Prior to joining The Clearing House, he has held various senior risk management positions at JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Wells Fargo and AQR Capital Management, in which he was responsible for establishing risk management frameworks, and building out risk assessment, control, and risk analytics initiatives.

Mr. Fishman holds a B.Sc. in Physics and an M.Sc. in Information Technology both from the University of London in England, and holds certification as a Financial Risk Manager with the Global Association of Risk Professionals.

Stephanie Heller is General Counsel of The Clearing House providing legal advice to the senior management team with respect to the company’s operations and long-term strategy and overseeing its advocacy efforts.

Prior to joining The Clearing House, Ms. Heller was a senior vice president and deputy general counsel in the Legal Group of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. During her tenure at the New York Fed, which spanned nearly 27 years, she provided legal support to the operations areas of the Bank, including funds and securities transfer services, cash and currency distribution and fiscal agency services, as well as providing legal support to the Bank on technology and procurement matters. Ms. Heller is a member of the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section.  Ms. Heller chaired the Business Law Section’s Uniform Commercial Code Committee from August 2003 to August 2006 and then served on the Section council until 2010.  Ms. Heller is a member of the American Law Institute.  She currently is a member of the Permanent Editorial Board of the UCC.  She formerly served as a member of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, Uniform State Laws Committee.

Ms. Heller was for several years on the adjunct faculty of Brooklyn Law School where she taught commercial paper and payments systems. Ms. Heller served as the American Bar Association adviser to the 2002 UCC Articles 3/4/4A drafting committee which was established under the auspices of the Uniform Law Commission and the American Law Institute. She was one of the reporters to the American Bar Association Task Force on Stored Value Products. She co-authored "The ABC’s of the UCC: Article 4A Funds Transfers” (ABA 1997; revised 2006; third edition 2014). She has also published numerous articles concerning legal aspects of funds transfers, check collection and e-commerce and lectures on payment law topics.

Ms. Heller earned her law degree from New York University in 1991 after earning a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics from Stanford University.