Keynote Speaker: Nick Sellers

Chief Executive Officer, The World Games 2022

Featuring the Magic City on the World Stage: The World Games

The World Games is a unique opportunity to present Birmingham and the state of Alabama to the world. Birmingham will be the first U.S. city to host the World Games since the inaugural event in 1981 in Los Angeles. Nick Sellers will discuss the collaboration and leadership of the Birmingham Organizing Committee and the City of Birmingham that led to the selection in 2015 by the International World Games Association for Birmingham to host the games in 2022. He will talk about the financial planning and organization required to realize the projected economic impact of $256 million for the city. He will expound on the vision to be the best and most innovative competitor, spectator and sponsor experience in the history of The World Games.

Paul M. Perry, FHFMA, CISM, CITP, CPA, CDPSE

Member | Security, Risk & Controls Practice Leader, Warren Averett

Sarah Beth Clement Magette, CPA, CFE

Consulting Manager, Warren Averett

Unmasking Fraud by Using Internal Controls

According to the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners, occupational fraud —fraud committed by individuals against the organizations that employ them—is among the costliest forms of financial crime in existence.  During this session, Paul Perry and Sarah Beth Magette will discuss the following:

• Fraud statistics in the current environment
• Best practices to prevent, detect and deter fraud, including the benefits of understanding and utilizing data analytics
• Recent real-world examples of fraud

The goal of the presentation is to empower and educate all individuals to be proactive in preventing, detecting and deterring fraud in his/her organization.

Steve Bullock

Vice President, Insurance & Financial Services, Kyriba

Perfecting the Cash Forecast: How to Add Business Value to Your Organization

Cash forecasting is an art that is rarely perfected. Every organization talks about forecasting more effectively, but few allocate sufficient people, time, and technology to build an effective program. Understanding the importance of an accurate cash forecast that can be relied upon for key financial decisions is critical to making the right investments in forecasting. During this webinar, speakers discussed the challenges and misconceptions about cash forecasting, including the following topics:

• The cost of an ineffective cash forecast
• How treasury adds strategic value to the business through effective forecasting
• Three steps to perfecting the cash forecast

Kevin Olsen, AAP, APRP, NCP

Senior Vice President & Payments Professor, VSoft

Predicting Payments: Faster? Faster Fraud? Digital, Crypto, Where Will It Go?

Join the Payments Professor to hear what he believes are the top ten happenings in the world of electronic payments in the year and decade ahead. What should you be on the lookout for, what is already happening and what will happen. As with everything in payments and electronic banking, don’t be surprised to see mention of fraud and the need for security, but is it the same fraud and security we have seen in the past, or is it changing and evolving as we work to implement new payment offerings? How will you need to change and evolve?

Paul LaGaipa

Senior Vice President, StoneCastle Partners, LLC

Going Into and Coming out of a Low Interest Rate Environment

Many Treasury and finance professionals remember going into and coming out of the financial crisis of 2008-2015. While different from 2008, the pandemic brought about similar and familiar hurdles—zero interest rate environment, money market mutual fund reform discussions, and carefully balancing acceptable risks in search of any meaningful yield. This session will explore the similarities/differences in today’s market from a decade ago, point to meaningful leading indicators of opportunity, and compare solutions that help treasury professionals best insulate their cash portfolios while increasing the impact and value of their cash.

Drew Honeycutt

Chief Executive Officer, Innovation Depot

Innovation Depot’s Brand Transformation

Over the course of a challenging year during the pandemic, Birmingham’s Innovation Depot has completed a brand refresh, created two new programs, developed a mobile app for Depot members, launched a new website, and made several building enhancements. The Depot team has been hard at work cementing Birmingham’s status as one of the country’s rising startup ecosystems—one that has undergone many changes over the last five years. While The Depot once housed/trained a wide assortment of companies across industries, the organization has narrowed its focus to high-growth, tech-enabled or science-enabled businesses, whether in software or biomedical sciences.

CEO Drew Honeycutt will explain how Innovation Depot is at the tipping point of building a critical mass of startups led by entrepreneurs who've been provided with the playbook for success. In some ways, the changes The Depot is announcing were always on the horizon, he said. The pandemic may have just sped them up. “For us, nothing has really changed as far as the direction we were going,” Honeycutt said. “It’s about widening the funnel, giving more people access to what we’re doing, and being a catalyst for our community.”