Leadership team

Gary Mandelblatt

Gary is a Managing Partner at NextGen Strategic Advisors with over 35 years of experience working with financial institutions in managing market, credit and operational risks, managing regulatory relations, implementing regulatory requirements, defining strategies and building businesses.  Gary was the Chief Risk Officer for Nomura Americas and Chairman of Nomura’s Global Dodd-Frank Implementation program.  Prior to Nomura, Gary was a Managing Director at the Lehman Brothers Estate where he was responsible for building the valuation capabilities for 1.2 million derivatives contracts, and hedging open risk exposures.  Prior to that, Gary was the Global Head of Fixed Income Strategy at Lehman Brothers and helped build the commodities and emerging markets businesses.  Before joining Lehman, Gary was Managing Director at Smith Barney, Salomon Smith Barney and Citigroup and was a senior Market Risk Manager for Fixed Income and supported numerous regulatory efforts.  Prior to that, Gary was a consultant with Coopers & Lybrand and First Manhattan Consulting Group.

Willem van Rijn

Willem is a Managing Partner at NextGen Strategic Advisors. Willem leads the Climate and Sustainability Finance practice for the firm. He has over 40 years of management consulting and managerial experience working with financial institutions. Willem is a senior executive and advisor with broad strategy, general management, operating and technology management and consulting experience. Willem has a proven analytical, business building and leadership track record with an emphasis on strategy formulation, financial risk management and operations management in the capital markets sector. He was a Managing Partner at PwC in New York and Tokyo and a Member of the Management Committee and Partner of Corporate Strategy at Capco. Previously he was an SVP at Bank of America. He is an international executive, having held senior management positions in the United States, Europe and Asia.

Willem’s current practice focuses on climate change, how it impacts risk and provides opportunities for financial institutions. He was the Chief Operating Officer for Greenpeace International, the global environmental organization. He is a Board Member of Ecologic Institute, Berlin, a leading think-tank on environmental matters.

Donna Parks

Donna is a Principal Consultant with 30 years of comprehensive risk management and banking experience.  Donna’s global experience extends across the Americas and Asia in all aspects of risk management including enterprise, credit, market, and operational risks, managing regulatory relations, implementing regulatory requirements, defining strategy, building businesses and governance.   Donna was Chief Risk Officer for Standard Chartered Bank (SCB), Americas and the accountable executive for the implementation of Section 165 of the Dodd-Frank Act.   Prior to this role, Donna was Senior Regional Credit Officer for SCB, Asia based in Hong Kong.  She was responsible, with her team, for managing 70% of SCB’s credit portfolio and supported the build out of the global commodities and hedge fund businesses.  Before joining SCB, Donna was Managing Director at Citigroup and was a senior Credit Risk Manager for Banks and non-Bank Financial Institutions.  In addition, she managed a Governance team that was responsible for regulatory relations and implementation of various regulatory projects.

John Monaghan

John is a Principal Consultant with over 25 years of experience working in the Financial Services industry in North America, South America, Europe and Africa. John has been involved in and managed most of the significant regulatory compliance initiatives including Basel II; Dodd-Frank; EMIR; MIFID II; FRTB; LIBOR transition and CFTC Swap Dealer and SBSD Rules. John worked at Royal Bank of Canada where he managed strategic initiatives which required cross-functional and multi-region coordination. Prior to RBC, he was at Morgan Stanley where he was Head of Operational Risk for Trading and Sales in the Americas. Prior to that, he spent 11 years at Barclays in increasingly senior roles. He managed the build out of a Front Office Risk and Supervisory Control function, Program Managed a multi-year program of work tasked with building out a new OTC Client Clearing business to align with the market structure changes imposed by Dodd-Frank and EMIR. Prior to Barclays, he was employed by Accenture as a management consultant. John has a B. Com degree in Law and Economics, an MSc in Finance and an MBA.

Ola Opoosun

Ola is a Senior Consultant at NextGen Strategic Advisors with 20 years of experience building and implementing strategies that support operational processes and compliance goals.  Prior to joining NextGen Strategic Advisors, Ola worked as a Director of Compliance and Operational Risk at UBS Investment Bank for the Global Equities and Fixed Income Business. She also held various management positions at the bank’s New York and London offices within the operations, risk and project management functions during her twelve years with the bank.  Ola has worked with clients on various strategic initiatives to design, build and implement strategies to improve the operating effectiveness of their internal control environment and drive effective compliance with regulatory requirements.

Thomas Odenthal

Thomas has extensive experience designing and implementing business strategies at Investment Banks working as an external consultant and as an internal Head of Strategy.  He frequently works with clients on strategic transformations, RoE improvement initiatives and operating model changes.  Thomas was the COO, Head of APAC Markets Strategy at RBS in Hong Kong.  Before that he was at Barclays Capital and was the Head of Business Development Global Markets in Singapore and the COO of Special Projects for Fixed Income in NY.  Prior to that, Thomas was the Head of Fixed Income Business Strategy at Lehman Brothers and was a Principal in the Financial Services Practice at Booz Allen Hamilton in NY.  Thomas has an M.S. in Mathematics from Cologne University in Germany and an M.S. in Financial Engineering and a Ph.D. in Operations Research, both from Columbia University in New York City.