Chris Kennedy

Regions Bank

Chris Kennedy is SVP, Strategy and Innovation at Regions Bank. Chris leads a team of talented professionals in the development and execution of technology strategic initiatives that drive growth and increase efficiency. With a decade of experience, Chris brings domain experience across Open Banking, cloud transformation and governance, core banking transformation, process improvement and automation, Artificial Intelligence transformation and risk management, and disruptive fintechs.  Chris is active in industry organizations focused on new technology and risk management. Chris is co-chair at the Financial Data Exchange (FDX) leading the Corporate Treasury API task force which is working to establish secure open banking data sharing standards for commercial use cases. He is lead co-author for the FDX industry whitepaper, Getting Started with Open Banking and is lead co-editor for the technical follow-on whitepaper. Chris is also a core working group member of the Data & Trust Alliance which has established algorithmic safeguards for AI used for human resources and workforce management.
Chris is passionate about education, learning, mentorship, and development. He is a consulting professor at Duke University, Fuqua School of Business for applied AI and also teaches business modeling and analytics at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School.  Chris received his BS and PhD in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University and an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. He is a CFA charterholder and is an AWS certified solutions architect.