Dr. Aituaz Kola-Oladejo is a Certified Management Consultant and Fintech Strategist skilled in helping organizations in the financial services industry and MSMEs actualize their latent potential and optimize limited resources. With 22+ years of experience across banking operations, business development, talent management, risk management, innovation management, product management, and research, she has been actively involved in several financial services industry committees charged with the responsibility of improving key aspects of the payment landscape in Nigeria. She is the Financial Services Innovators (FSI) Executive Director, a not-for-profit organization of over 7,000 innovators. At FSI, the first Fintech Industry Innovation Sandbox in Africa, an open banking open API platform was established to serve as a platform for innovators to experiment with their ideas, develop products and collaborate with incumbents to commercialize them thereby lowering the barriers to entry into the financial services industry. Hence, she was at the frontline advocating for Open Banking and the Regulatory Sandbox before the Central Bank of Nigeria developed the framework to guide these operations. Her role in FSIalso entails helping startups incubate their business ideas and set up and grow by providing them with the right information, technological resources, strategic partnerships, mentors, and access to capacity-building programs. She also launched a Tech Talent Hunt initiative to address the dearth of tech talents in the Fintech ecosystem by nurturing talents in tertiary institutions in Nigeria. To date, she has grown the student community to over 3,000 members across 120 tertiary institutions. Furthermore, she has commissioned over 900 of its alumni as fintech ambassadors in15 schools. Under the auspices of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), she is the chairperson for the CBN’s Community of Practice to expand digital financial services and fintech products to improve financial inclusion for over 2 million women in rural Nigeria. Her technology leadership has been in valuable in driving the organization‘s growth, which has made it Nigeria's leading fintech startup community, advancing Nigeria’s fintech ecosystem. Similarly, while at the Nigeria Inter-bank Settlement Systems Plc (NIBSS), Plc, is Africa’s most prominent national payment system. Aituaz played a pivotal role in the organization's success, first as the pioneer Head of Innovation and Strategy and then as the inaugural Head of Research and Development, which led to the launch of FSI. She conceived the idea for FSI to advance the CBN's strategy for technology innovation. This initiative was called “Enhance Financial Innovation and Empower Fintech startups”. She also pioneered the Payment Certification program at NIBSS in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (CIBN).She spent the first 12 years of her career as a banker and spent some time in operations, business development, and risk management. She is the founder of Tech Innovation Academy (TIA), a learning and development platform whose mission is to raise a community of skillful and innovative techup that will redefine business models in Nigeria and Africa. In recognition of her excellent work in the industry, she received an award from the Association of Nigeria Software Testers (ANST) for her invaluable contribution to the promotion of tech-based skills development among Nigerian Youths. FSI under her leadership bagged the National Honors Award under the "PUBLIC SERVICE LEADERSHIP award" Category from the Nigeria Association of Computing Students (NACOS) and the “Best community in the Nigerian Financial ecosystem” in 2022 from the Association of Nigeria Software Testers. She holds a Post Graduate Diploma in Education (Innovation in Learning and Teaching) from the University of South Wales, a Bachelor of Science degree in Applied Accounting from Oxford Brookes University, United Kingdom, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in French from Ambrose Alli University, Nigeria. She is also a fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants(FCCA) and the Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC). She is also an adjunct faculty member of the International School of Deposit Insurance Studies