Country Ambassadors

WiD ambassador for Australia

Carolina Gallegos is the Sr. Director of Risk Services at Visa for Australia, New Zealand and the South Pacific. In this role she is a partner to financial institutions and payment industry stakeholders to manage key risks and foster the growth of their Visa portfolios. More recently, Carolina has taken on a more active role in defining Visa’s role in Digital Identity and Open Data in Australia and New Zealand.

Carolina is based in Sydney and has expertise across the North America, Latin America and the AP regions in payments. Carolina holds a Bachelor Degree in International Business from Washington University’s Olin School of Business, and a Master Degree in International Business from Nova Southeastern University’s Huizenga School of Business Entrepreneurship. She is fluent in Spanish and proficient in Brazilian Portuguese, French and Italian and holds her Project Management Professional (PMP) certification from the Project Management Institute.

WiD ambassador for Australia

Mallika is Vice President and Head of Cyber & Intelligence at Mastercard, Australasia and has been with the organization since May 2016.

Mallika is responsible for a portfolio of products at Mastercard including Digital Identity, Authentication, passive biometrics, Artificial Intelligence and fraud monitoring solutions, to help banks and merchants predict, detect and prevent fraud.

She has more than 20 years’ experience across corporate banking, management consulting, eCommerce and technology sectors and has held leadership roles in product management, strategy development and commercial partnerships.

WiD ambassador for Canada

Chanda Jackson, Sr. Manager – Identity and Access Management Planning, provides oversight of key activities across the Royal Bank of Canada’s IAM group to enable effective operations of the team. Her professional responsibilities include group management, operational risk oversight, governance and reporting.

WiD ambassador for Canada

Vice President, Enterprise and Customer Identity and Access Management
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)

Melissa Carvalho leads a team of over 200 security professionals providing cyber solutions and services for the bank’s 80,000 employees and 16 million clients worldwide. Over 15 years, her work has covered many aspects of information technology including business needs impact assessments, software development, and infrastructure implementations. An industry-recognized leader in IAM, Melissa has implemented Identity Programs at Canada’s five major banks and consulted on over 50 IAM programs across North America.

WiD ambassador for Canada

Director, Identity and Access Management Business Systems Analysis, IAM Program
Royal Bank of Canada (RBC)

Nicole leads a team that works with various lines of business and teams throughout the enterprise to complete business, data and gap analysis, identifying and documenting the current state and requirements package for all IAM projects and solution delivery while acting as a liaison between the business and technology teams. Her team also manages the enhancement process and reviews new initiatives, capabilities and service requests to ensure alignment with the IAM Strategic Direction. Nicole has over 10 years’ experience in the industry, working as a consultant on previous engagements and has helped with various Identity program implementations across other banks in Canada.

WiD ambassador for India

Saru Tumuluri is the CEO Khosla Labs and is currently focused on scaling Veri5Digital,  a leading Global Digital Identity and Customer On Boarding SaaS platform from India. With over two decades of experience pertaining to entrepreneurship in India and the United States, Saru is focused on bringing new technology-driven opportunities to entrepreneurs, with an aim to solve large-scale problems in India and across the globe. As a women entrepreneur she is very keen about women and their contribution in technology driven companies. In her role at Khosla Labs, she is primarily in charge of the sales and marketing functions, as well as partnerships and business-related scale up efforts of the company.

WiD ambassador for The Netherlands

Esther Hoeksema started in identity 3 years ago, as marketing manager at iWelcome. Coming from a marketing background, she is very interested in the consumer side of Identity Management, zooming in on the ideal customer journey, preference management and GDPR requirements. As such, she has been heavily involved in iWelcome’s GDPR research. Besides working at iWelcome she is active in the Women in Identity community as country ambassador for the Netherlands.

WiD ambassador for New Zealand

Bio coming soon

WiD ambassador for New Zealand

Tamara is a bold, social, and unconventional, Middle Eastern woman! She is a proud mother of two, and has lived in Auckland, New Zealand most of her adult life. Tamara completed a Bachelor of Science at the University of Auckland majoring in Computer Science and has been in the workforce since 2005. Tamara’s career has built up a background of customer service, business analysis and solution design.

Tamara joined as the Manager of Identity and Access Management (IAM) at the University of Auckland late 2012 and has remained in the IAM space since. Her main purpose was to manage the strategic direction and use of IAM across the University. Under her leadership over seven years, multiple large-magnitude IAM projects were delivered successfully. Beyond the technical work, the IAM function established a governance framework with policies, standards, and guidelines on the use of the service and its data. Tamara has also led work with other universities and government agencies to ensure the identity needs of the University and the wider sector are considered and accommodated as national initiatives take shape.

WiD ambassador for Scotland

Dia, is an entrepreneur with a deep passion for self-sovereign digital Identity and blockchain. She is currently a Strategic Advisor and Business Consultant to the Blockpass Identity Lab at Edinburgh Napier University where she helps identify industry applications for Blockchain & Privacy Preserving Machine Learning research generated out of the Lab.

Prior to embarking her career in the technology sector, she spent over fifteen years in the financial services industry and has worked for some of the top global banks in the world and also co-founded an Asset Management Business in Singapore. Dia, held positions of Vice President at JP Morgan Private Bank & Barclays Wealth and advised some of the most significant ultra-high net-worth families across the globe on their personal and corporate financial needs.

Dia, has an MBA from Cardiff Business School. However, she considers herself to be a student for life and enjoys learning continuously. She is passionate about the power of education & its potential in creating an egalitarian, diverse and more inclusive world.

WiD ambassador for Singapore

Helen Chua is Senior Sales Director with NEC Asia Pacific. She is an expert in the field of biometric technologies, specialising in the areas of fingerprint, face and iris. Since she joined the core NEC biometrics team in 1995, she has been involved in multiple projects, many of which are security-related and involving governments and nation-wide deployment. These projects include building systems for passport and national identity, border control and immigration, law enforcement, and finance.

Helen holds a double degree in Computer Science and accountancy from the Indiana University Bloomington.   Her interest in identity management using biometrics started when she pioneered the automated border control gates with Singapore immigration. Working closely with the Singapore government, the fingerprint system she helped to deploy at the checkpoints allows for automation, accuracy, consistency and speed, all for one goal, to correctly identify the person crossing the border at the shortest time.

Hi, I'm Mei-Lin and I support the Singapore chapter of Women in Identity. My background is in IT system implementation and risk management, although I started my career as a Chartered Accountant.
My interest in digital identity started from the compliance world but after a few years, I packed my bags and left Melbourne and ended up in London to get a more hands-on approach to technology projects. After many travels around the world, I am now in Singapore and working on projects across the South-east Asia region. I enjoy mentoring university students and encouraging more women to get involved in STEM careers.
You can reach out to me via mei-lin@womeninidentity.org

WiD ambassador for UK

Ana Lucia has been working in the identity space for over two years primarily focused within the financial services industry and other sectors that fall under the AML regulations. She is very passionate about helping businesses to enhance their digital experience and the operational efficiencies that can be gained by implementing leading technology with the use of biometrics and data. Ana Lucia has worked in sales and consultancy for over 6 years.

She holds a BEng Industrial Engineering and MSc. Investment and Finance.

WiD ambassador for UK

Natalija is an identity product analyst and a self-professed data geek. She is fairly new to the identity industry as she joined the Post Office identity services team in 2018 when she was looking for a new start in her career after years in customer service. She now works across the business unit to improve the efficiency of product operations through rigorous data analytics. By analysing existing data sets and performance, she is able to identify improvements needed to ensure the service works for everyone.

Being inspired by the outstanding work of WiD community she’d witnessed at various industry events, Natalija joined the WiD events team as one of the UK country ambassadors.

WiD ambassador for USA

Currently the president of Chopard Consulting based in Northern Virginia, Ms. Chopard has more than 35 years’ experience in executive leadership in business and nonprofit organizations in Washington, D.C.  She has a reputation as a transformative leader who has led organizations through launch, transition, and sustainability to deliver aggressive results.  She is committed to achieving success through courageous management practices by leveraging organizational strategy, structure, and culture to reach goals and optimize results.  Ms. Chopard excels at building networks and collaborations and is accustomed to getting a seat at the table where she is known to “lean in” with clarity of thought, vision, and enthusiasm. Ms. Chopard has recently accepted the position of U.S. Ambassador for the Women in Identity organization and brings her devotion and expertise to the leadership team to further encourage women in the identity field and the broader tech industry. Ms. Chopard is also an attorney and has practiced at the local, state, and national levels of government before leading several international nonprofit organizations as executive director.

WiD ambassador for Western Europe and Germany

Angelika Steinacker has extensive Security and Identity & Access Management experience, with 30 years in security, and 20 years with a focus on IAM.
In her current role as CTO for IAM with IBM Security Europe, she is working on strategic topics like IAM for IoT and IAM with and for Blockchain as well as a trusted advisor for clients.

Angelika is a regular speaker and writer sharing her expertise and experience on Security and IAM. She is a member of WiD, and a member and mentor of IBM Women in Security Excelling (WISE).

She earned a diploma in Mathematics with a minor in Physics and she holds a Ph.D. in Mathematics with a topic in Cryptography from J. Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany.

In her free time, she likes hiking in the Alps, cycling and cross-country skiing.