Growth and Transformation Executive Leader and Board Advisor
MIT EngineeringMcGill UniversityInovia CapitalBlynk Capital3× Startup Exits
Key Highlights
25+ years in C-level transformation and revenue growth at major banks and technology firms
Executive in Residence at Inovia Capital ($3.3B VC); board advisory and IPO/M&A preparation
Advisor to banks, credit unions, fintechs; OCC-chartered bank director; teaches AI for Bankers (PCBS, LSU)
Built and exited startups via Zoom (Kites), Employer.com (Bench.co), Bumble (Official), and IPOs on TSX, Nasdaq, NYSE
$1.5B+ revenue at Microsoft; global Goldman Sachs relationship; 18% YoY growth Microsoft Canada Financial Services
M.Eng. MIT, Cert Finance, INSEAD, B.Com. McGill
Experience
Over the past 25 years, Adam has held numerous C-Level transformation and revenue growth leadership roles at multiple large and medium sized banks and technology firms. As Executive in Residence at Inovia Capital, a $3.3B Venture Capital Firm, he advises mid to late-stage startups, provides board advisory services, and prepares companies for IPO and M&A. He currently leads Blynk Capital, an FI consulting firm which advises community bank and credit union CEOs and their boards as well as Fintech startup CEOs and their investors in emerging fintech trends, Payments (specifically stablecoins), Crypto and AI spaces (via LeapFI), and serves as an independent board director for an OCC chartered U.S. Bank. He teaches AI for Bankers at Pacific Coast Banking School and LSU Graduate School of Business and works with Banks and Credit Unions across the United States to industrialize the use of AI.
Leadership & ventures
Throughout his entrepreneurial journey, Adam has successfully built, scaled and exited multiple startups through acquisition by Zoom (Kites), Employer.com (Bench.co) and Bumble (Official), as well as via IPOs on the TSX, Nasdaq, and NYSE. As Chief Transformation Officer at First Republic Bank, he developed client-focused offerings rooted in technology, implementing innovative solutions that challenged traditional banking paradigms. At National Bank of Canada, Adam served as Executive Leader MD, Breakout Ventures, where he innovated and built $1B+ game-changing revenue streams. During his earlier tenure, he transformed corporate data platforms, built digital marketing solutions that increased cross-sell rates by 32%, and led AI innovation initiatives-first as Vice President, Digital, Data and Emerging Payments and then as the Bank's inaugural Global Chief Data Officer.
Microsoft & consulting
During his 10-year tenure at Microsoft Corporation, Adam drove over $1.5B in revenue, leading the global relationship with Goldman Sachs, managing banking verticals in New York (including Bloomberg, NYSE, Barclays Capital, and Deutsche Bank), and overseeing the Financial Services P&L for Microsoft Canada with 18% year-over-year growth. His expertise encompasses investment banking, M&A, RIA, retail and commercial GTM, software sales, and enterprise consulting. Adam has a consistent track record as a transformational leader who connects business needs to technology solutions, with expertise in digitization, Cloud and AI, FinTech integration, and business model innovation. His strategic approaches focus on reducing efficiency ratios and improving topline revenue and net promotor score.
Thought leadership & education
His publication Mitigating Container Security Risk Using Real-Time Monitoring with Active RFID and Sensors has been widely cited, and he co-edited Six Sigma for IT Management (2009). Adam serves on numerous FinTech and AI startup advisory boards and manages his family office's private equity funds. He earned his Master of Engineering from MIT and Bachelor of Commerce from McGill University. Adam's leadership philosophy combines technical innovation with human-centered design to create sustainable business value. He currently splits his time between Miami, FL, Los Angeles, CA, and Montreal, Canada.
Strategy/Technology/People/one system, deep banking expertise
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The Challenges We Solve
Where financial institutions get stuck.
From the strategic questions in the boardroom, to mobilizing the people who execute, to the technical work of reaching production.
01Strategy
“Help me get clear and strategic about AI in our institution.”
Smaller institutions can’t chase everything. The challenge isn’t budget size, it’s focus. Most are using AI and stuck in experimentation.
02Leadership
“Help our leadership team align on the way forward.”
The bottleneck is people, not technology. When leaders disagree on AI’s role, the organization can’t commit and the investment stalls.
03Resources
“Help us do more with the resources we have.”
Used well, AI is the most direct lever on the efficiency ratio, letting a lean institution deliver what once required scale.
04ROI
“Help us turn our AI investment into real return.”
Spend is up; returns aren’t. Rarely the model’s fault, it’s AI bolted onto legacy process instead of designed into the operation.
05Execution
“Help us move our pilots into production.”
The capability gets demonstrated; the discipline to run it reliably never gets built. Only a fraction of pilots reach production.
06Governance
“Help us deploy AI with regulatory confidence.”
For a regulated institution, speed and careful governance pull against each other. Deploy with confidence, not caution alone.
07Operating Model
“Help us build a sustainable operating model around AI.”
Without clear ownership, decision rights, and a governance backbone, every use case becomes another orphan.
08Technology
“Help us make sense of the technology landscape.”
A wrong bet locks you in; a late bet leaves you behind. The challenge isn’t access to technology, it’s choices that compound.
Why It Matters Now
Adoption is easy. Impact is rare.
20%
Up to a 20% cut in banking-industry costs from AI, captured only by institutions that move decisively.
McKinsey, Global Banking Annual Review 2025
39%
88% of organizations use AI, yet only 39% report any earnings impact from it.
McKinsey, The State of AI 2025
12%
Only about 12% of AI pilots reach production, just 4 of every 33 an enterprise launches.
IDC / Lenovo, AI CIO Playbook 2025
42%
Organizations abandoning most of their AI initiatives jumped from 17% to 42% in a single year.
S&P Global Market Intelligence, 2025
70+
financial institutions engaged
450+
CEOs & directors advised
100%
FI-focused, banks & credit unions only
Engagements are selective. Client work is confidential and shared only with permission.
The AI Industrialization Operating Model™
AI is an operating-model redesign.
Ten pillars that must be in place, and activated, for AI to deliver your institution’s goals.
01
Strategy
Where AI creates value, what you’ll do about it, and what you deliberately won’t.
02
Governance
One accountable owner, clear decision rights, and the discipline to move pilots to production or kill them.
03
Value
Every initiative tied to a financial outcome, every dollar traceable to the goals it serves.
04
Risk & Compliance
The controls, validation, and exam-ready evidence that let you deploy AI a regulator can question.
05
Technology
Modern, modular infrastructure that runs AI safely alongside your core.
06
Data
One governed, trusted version of the truth, including the unstructured data where the signal hides.
07
Product
AI built into what you offer, embedded intelligence that opens revenue, not just cuts cost.
08
People
The skills, roles, incentives, and culture that decide whether AI gets adopted or quietly ignored.
09
Process
Internal work redesigned end to end around AI, not tools bolted onto yesterday’s workflows.
10
Clients
Deeper insight, better experience, and earned trust. AI that strengthens the relationship, not erodes it.
End-to-End Services
From baseline to scale.
Five disciplines, one operating model, 27 services in total. Select a discipline to see what sits inside it.
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Pure Engineering
Business problems. Working software.
The engineering practice of LeapFI. We take a concrete problem inside a bank or credit union, whether it is slow, expensive, manual, or stuck in pilot, and ship software your people actually use.
Representative builds, not generic AI labels. Each one has a user, a workflow, a technology footprint, and a business reason to exist.
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Business Impact
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How We Deliver
The problem picks the tools.
We are not selling a single platform. Sometimes the right answer is a vendor product. Sometimes it is custom software. Delivery is chosen on speed, control, and what your team can run after we leave, with security and auditability built in, and first releases narrow enough to use and honest enough to measure.
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Team
Built with deep strategic and technical authority.
Senior practitioners with direct operating experience inside the institutions we serve, backed by an extended advisory board across banking, enterprise technology, regulatory affairs, and defense-grade infrastructure.
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The Agent Roster
Eleven AI specialists, on staff full time.
Each agent owns one domain and carries a defined operating procedure. Seven are reviewers with read-only access. They return findings and change nothing. Four are implementers with write access, and their work is always verified by a reviewer, never by themselves.
11 Agents On Roster7 Reviewers · Read-Only4 Implementers · Verified
Reviewers
Read-Only · Return Findings · Make No Changes
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Implementers
Write Access · Every Change Verified By A Reviewer
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Adam Schlesinger · Keynote Speaker
The board-level voice on AI in banking.
Custom keynotes for bank and credit union CEOs, boards, and industry forums built around your audience, your timetable, and the strategic decisions in front of you.
Six keynotes built for the bank and credit union C-suite.
Each talk is rebuilt for the audience in the room: institution size, regulatory posture, board composition, and what the CEO needs the executive team thinking about on Monday morning.
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Speaking Formats
Where Adam speaks.
CEO Forums
State banking associations and credit union leagues.
Boards
Private board strategy days and director education.
Industry Stages
National banking, fintech, and payments conferences.
Speaking Engagements
Tell us about your event.
30 to 90-minute keynote, board briefing, or full-day strategy session, in-person or virtual, custom built per audience.
No email application on this device? Write to hello@leapfi.ai directly.
Send us a message
Tell us a bit about your institution and what’s on your mind. A member of our team will follow up personally.
Legal
Privacy Notice
Effective date: August 29, 2026Last updated: August 31, 2026
LeapFI (“LeapFI,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) provides AI governance, policy, procedure, AI development services to financial institutions (“Clients”). This Privacy Notice explains what information we collect, why we collect it, how we share it, how long we keep it, the rights available to you, and how information may be transferred internationally. It applies to visitors of leapfi.ai, individuals at our Client institutions who interact with our platform, and individuals whose personal information may appear within content Clients upload to our services.
Contents
Consent
By accessing or using leapfi.ai, by using the LeapFI platform as an authorized user of a Client, or by otherwise submitting information to us, you acknowledge this Privacy Notice and consent to the collection, use, and disclosure of your information as described below. If you do not agree with this Notice, please do not use leapfi.ai or submit personal information to us. Where LeapFI processes Client Content on behalf of a Client under a Master Services Agreement or other written agreement, that agreement, not this consent statement, governs our authority to process the data (see below).
1What We Collect
1.1 Content You or Your Institution Upload
When a Client uses our services, the Client and its authorized users may upload policies, procedures, model documentation, vendor-management records, incident-response plans, and related governance materials (“Client Content”). Client Content belongs to the Client and generally constitutes confidential and proprietary business information of the Client under the terms of our agreement with that Client. It may incidentally contain personal information about the Client’s employees, officers, or contractors (for example, names, titles, and business contact details referenced in a policy’s approval or ownership fields).
We process Client Content as a service provider / processor acting on the Client’s instructions. We do not treat it as our own for marketing or other unrelated purposes.
1.2 Account & Contact Information
Name, business email address, employer/institution name, job title, and phone number
Login credentials and authentication data
Billing and business contact information for Client administrators
1.3 Communications
Inquiries submitted through the contact form on our website, the name, business email address, institution name and type, and message you provide, which we collect and store solely to respond to and follow up on your inquiry
Support requests, feedback, and correspondence with our team
Records of privacy and data subject requests submitted to us
1.4 Usage, Technical & Cookie Data
General technical information, such as device and browser type, operating system, IP address, timestamps, pages viewed, and referring site, is collected automatically when you visit Leapfi.ai or use the platform. On its own, this information does not identify you personally.
2How We Use Information (Purposes)
Provide you with services, respond to your requests, and meet our obligations to you
Maintain, secure, and improve the platform, including troubleshooting and analytics
Meet legal, regulatory, contractual, and recordkeeping obligations
With consent or as permitted by law, send service updates or marketing communications, or offer of services (opt-out available at any time)
3How We Share Information
We do not disclose any nonpublic personal information about our clients or former clients to any third parties except as permitted by law. Permitted disclosures include, for example, providing information to our employees and in limited situations, to unrelated third parties that need to know the information to assist us in problem resolution or providing services to you.
We retain records relating to professional services that we provide to better assist you with your needs. To guard your nonpublic personal information, we maintain reasonable administrative, physical, and technical safeguards.
4Data Retention
We retain Client Content and account information for as long as needed to provide the services, as required by the applicable Client agreement, and thereafter for a defined period to meet legal, regulatory, and recordkeeping obligations common in financial services (generally up to 3 years following contract termination, unless a shorter period is agreed or a longer period is legally required).
If our written agreement with a Client requires the return or destruction of Confidential Information (including Client Content) upon termination, we will honor that obligation, subject to copies retained as required by law, regulation, backup processes, or our own recordkeeping practices.
We retain records of privacy and data subject requests (the DSR Log) for 3 years to demonstrate compliance. Data no longer needed is deleted or de-identified in accordance with our data retention schedule.
5Your Privacy Rights
Subject to applicable law, individuals may have the right to:
Access the personal information we hold about them
Correct inaccurate or incomplete personal information
Delete personal information, subject to legal, contractual, or legitimate business exceptions
Receive a copy of their personal information in a portable format
Not be discriminated against for exercising these rights
Because much of the personal information we process is submitted by our Clients as part of Client Content, requests concerning that content may need to be directed to (or coordinated with) the relevant Client institution, which typically acts as the controller for that data. We will direct you accordingly if that applies to your request.
5.1 California and Other State Privacy Law Rights
Residents of California and other states with comprehensive privacy laws may have additional or more specific rights (for example, under the California Consumer Privacy Act, as amended). LeapFI does not sell or share personal information as those terms are defined under applicable state law.
We will verify your identity before acting on a request and will respond within the timeline required by applicable law, generally within 45 calendar days for U.S. state privacy laws (extendable once by 45 additional days with notice) and within 30 calendar days for Canadian requests under PIPEDA (extendable with notice as permitted). Every request is logged, tracked to completion, and access to the log is restricted to authorized personnel.
6Security
We use administrative, technical, and physical safeguards designed to protect information against unauthorized access, disclosure, alteration, and destruction, including access controls, encryption, and monitoring appropriate to the sensitivity of Client Content. No system is completely secure, and we encourage prompt reporting of any suspected security issue to privacy@leapfi.ai.
7Children’s Privacy
Our services are intended for business use by financial institutions and their personnel. Our services are not directed to, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from, children under 13.
8International Data Transfers
LeapFI is based in the United States, and information we collect is generally processed and stored in the United States. If you access Leapfi.ai or our platform from outside the United States, your information may be transferred to, stored, and processed in the United States or other countries, which may not offer the same level of data protection as your home jurisdiction.
9Relationship to Client Agreements
This Notice describes LeapFI’s general privacy practices. Where LeapFI processes Client Content or other personal information on behalf of a Client under a Master Services Agreement, data processing addendum, or other written agreement, the terms of that agreement, including its confidentiality, data return, destruction, and security provisions, govern our handling of that data and control in the event of any conflict with this Notice.
10Changes to This Notice
This Privacy Notice is subject to change. If we make changes, we will change the “Last Updated” date when we post the revised Notice. Changes will become effective when posted on the Site, and use of the Site following such revisions shall constitute acceptance of the revised Notice.
11Contact Us
Questions about this notice or our privacy practices, or requests to exercise your rights, can be directed to:
