Speakers

Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Affirm, the payment network that empowers consumers and helps merchants drive growth. He is also the co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company. Both companies were created and launched from his San Francisco based innovation lab, HVF (Hard, Valuable, Fun). Max was one of the original co-founders of PayPal where he served as the Chief Technology Officer until its acquisition by eBay in 2002. In 2002, he was named to the Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world as well as Innovator of the Year. Prior to HVF, Max founded and was CEO of Slide, a personal media-sharing service, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Max also helped create Yelp Inc., a consumer internet company, where he served as Chairman of its Board of Directors from its founding in 2005 until July 2015. He served on the board for Yahoo! Inc., an internet company, from 2012 until 2015.

Max was born in Kyiv, Ukraine before moving to the United States and settling in Chicago in 1991. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he founded and led four other technology startups. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.

Libor Michalek is Affirm’s President and oversees engineering, risk, operations, product and design. He previously served as Affirm's President of Technology and Chief Technology Officer. Prior to joining Affirm, Libor was an Engineering Director at YouTube and Google where he was responsible for Application Infrastructure & Site Reliability Engineering across multiple sites. During this tenure, YouTube tripled in page views, hours of video watched and revenue. Earlier in his career, Libor was the Chief Technology Officer of Slide, a personal media-sharing service, which was acquired by Google in 2010. Libor also served in software architecture and management positions at Topspin (acquired by Cisco), Egroups.com (acquired by Yahoo!), Talarian (acquired by Tibco), Thinking Machines Corporation and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications. Libor earned his B.S. in Computer Science from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Wayne Pommen currently serves as Chief Revenue Officer where he oversees Affirm’s revenue-generating activities and teams. Previously, he was Affirm’s Head of International. Wayne joined Affirm in January 2021 through the Company’s acquisition of PayBright, Canada’s leading BNPL provider, where he was President and CEO from 2015. Under his leadership, PayBright grew from 5 to 250 employees and emerged as one of Canada’s leading fintech companies with retail clients including Apple, Hudson’s Bay, Wayfair, Samsung, and Sephora.

Prior to PayBright, Wayne was a Principal at TorQuest Partners and a Consultant at Bain & Company. He also previously served on the Stakeholder Advisory Council of Payments Canada. Wayne has held various public and private company directorships including serving as Director and Audit Committee Chair of the Hudson’s Bay Company from IPO in 2012 to reprivatization in 2020, and of IOU Financial, a fintech focused on small business lending.

Wayne holds an A.B. from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge.

Pat Suh serves as Affirm’s SVP, Revenue where she is responsible for sales and client success teams covering Affirm’s enterprise and SMB merchants. Previously, Pat was Affirm’s Senior Vice President of Client Success. Pat has extensive experience leading multidisciplinary, cross-functional teams across a wide range of industries. Earlier in her career, Pat led global customer success and technical teams at Microsoft and Skyhigh Networks (acquired by McAfee).

Pat received her B.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.

Brooke Major-Reid serves as the Chief Capital Officer at Affirm, where she is responsible for the Company’s Capital Markets, Treasury, Bank Partnerships, and Quantitative Markets teams. Prior to joining Affirm, Brooke was the Corporate Treasurer of Macy's, Inc., the omnichannel retailer. She is a seasoned finance and strategy professional who also successfully led short-term credit products businesses, among other senior roles, at Morgan Stanley where she worked for over 15 years. Before joining Macy's in 2019, Brooke was SVP, Head of Strategy at Cross River. She founded BEAMR Group Inc. in 2015, providing strategic and financial advice to startups, with a focus on women and minority-founded enterprises. She currently serves as a board member for Uncommon Schools, a nonprofit charter school management organization, and previously served as a corporate board member for Anaplan, Inc., which was acquired by Thoma Bravo in 2022. She holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BBA in International Business with a concentration in Finance from Howard University.

Michael Linford is the Chief Financial Officer at Affirm, where he oversees and manages the accounting, finance, capital markets, and strategic partnerships department at Affirm. Prior to joining Affirm, Michael held multiple leadership roles within investment, IT, and software companies. Previously, Michael was the Chief Financial Officer for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise Software where he led commercial work for all HPE separations and most recently served as the VP of M&A Integration at HP. Additionally, Michael dedicated seven years to global investment firm KKR & CO, working his way to Principal and offering strategic and tactical support to a wide portfolio of companies as a member of the operations group. He started his career in management consulting as a business analyst at McKinsey & Company focused on consumer and retail clients. Michael holds a B.S. from The University of Texas at Austin where he studied Mechanical Engineering.