Ascend IAG

Shikha Goyal-Allain is a Managing Director and Market Executive for Northern California in JPM’s innovation Economy team. In her current role, she leads a team of bankers focused on providing holistic debt and banking solutions to some of the world’s most innovative and promising technology companies. Shikha has more than 17 years of commercial banking experience across Canada and the US. Shikha grew up in Mumbai, where she earned a Masters and Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from the University of Mumbai. She later relocated to Toronto, Canada where she earned an MBA from the University of Western Ontario and worked at the Royal Bank of Canada for ten years. Prior to JPM, Shikha led the Corporate Banking team at Silicon Valley Bank working with late-stage technology consumer internet companies. Shikha lives in San Francisco with her son and husband.

Trisha Bantigue is the CEO and Co-Founder of Queenly, the leading online marketplace for the formalwear industry. She was recently featured on the Forbes 30 Under 30 2022 list and she was the cover for the Art & Style category. She was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US at the age of 10. She then became an independent student and fought her way to survive in order to attain her degree from UC Berkeley. Prior to founding Queenly, she has worked at some of the biggest tech companies like Google, Facebook and Uber. Coming from a low-income, immigrant background, she found the opportunity to gain scholarship awards through competing in pageants. Then, she found her initial inspiration for starting Queenly from this unique experience and seeing so many women struggle to find and afford their dream dress for their special event.

Gautum Chandiok is a Vice President / Relationship Manager in JPMorgan Chase’s Syndicated Finance Group. Based in San Francisco, Mr. Chandiok leads syndicated debt financings for clients located in California, Oregon, Washington and Western Canada. Since joining JPMC in 2013, Mr. Chandiok has worked with clients in various industries including business services, food and beverage, consumer goods, heavy equipment, contract manufacturing, hospitality/restaurants, life sciences and technology. Mr. Chandiok has structured and raised multi-bank financings for mergers and acquisitions, as well as several forms of recapitalizations, supporting public, private and financial sponsor backed borrowers. Prior to joining the Syndicated Finance Group, Mr. Chandiok worked in Credit Risk in JPMorgan Chase’s Commercial & Investment Bank. Mr. Chandiok graduated from University of San Francisco with Bachelors of Science in Business Administration, speciazing in Finance, Accounting and Economics.

Tiffany is a founding member of Crowe’s Process Optimization and Robotics team. She has helped multi-million-dollar companies in the technology, media, and telecommunications (TMT) industry streamline, automate, and improve their business processes. Currently, she leads automation projects for the TMT consulting practice. In this role, she helps the team reduce manual work by automating tasks such as invoice processing, reports generation, and tax filing. As Learning Department Chair at Crowe, Tiffany is passionate about teaching, education, and sharing ideas. She brings this passion to work every day to empower her team to succeed in a long-term, sustainable manner.

Samantha Ku is the COO of Square Financial Services, Block's bank. Ms. Ku has built and led several teams foundational to the program product suite. Her role and responsibilities include all aspects of Square's lending operations functions, including but not limited to: Credit, Loan Servicing/Collections, Risk Assessment & Portfolio Monitoring, and Customer Success. Ms. Ku has experienced zero to scale and personally recruited, developed, and managed a team of over one hundred employees across both domestic and international offices. Prior to Square, Ms. Ku spent 5 years in traditional finance in Miami, New York, and San Francisco. Outside of Square, Ms. Ku provides advisory services across various industries including FinTech, Consumer, and Crypto. Noteworthy publications include San Francisco Business Times 40 Under 40 (2021) and FinTech Magazine's Top 10 Women in FinTech (2022, 2023, 2024).

Dion Lim is an Emmy Award-winning TV news anchor and reporter at ABC7/KGO-TV in San Francisco and author of the upcoming book AMPLIFY! My Fight For Asian America (Third State Books) to be published in the fall of 2024. Dion's work has resonated across the country on ABC News Live, Nightline, World News Now, Good Morning America and 20/20. Her reporting gained the attention of the White House and the Biden Administration invited Dion to attend the very first AAPI Heritage Month Celebration at the Rose Garden in 2022. Dion was also named, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and other prominent AAPI leaders, a 2021 Goldhouse 100 A1 most impactful Asians for storytelling in the midst of the #StopAsianHate movement. Dion lives in San Francisco with her husband and newborn son, Tedy.

Stephanie Lim is Co-Founder & CEO of Third State Books. Stephanie brings an abiding love of literary classics, guilty-pleasure genre fiction, fanfic, and children’s books to her work at Third State Books. She spent many years in digital marketing and operations, first as a strategist for advertising clients at Google, then leading e-commerce teams and managing multi-million-dollar advertising budgets for retail brands such as ModCloth, Bebe, and Serena Williams’s eponymous fashion label. Early in her career, she sifted through slush piles as an intern at Penguin Putnam and edited a mathematical children’s book for Charlesbridge Publishing, so working on TSB feels truly like coming full circle for her. Stephanie will always be a SoCal girl at heart, but she’s making the best of the perpetually foggy weather in San Francisco with her husband, Garry, and their two sons.

Priscilla Lim is currently an Executive Director for JP Morgan Chase. She has over 17 years of experience in commercial banking and law. Her previous experiences include working in 7 different cities for HSBC Bank and Webb Farry Law Firm. Priscilla sits on the board of Ascend Northern California and LA Metro. She is also the Site Leader for JP Morgan Chase San Francisco Chapter of ‘Women on the Move’. In her spare time, Priscilla enjoys cooking and hosting friends and family for dinner parties. She also enjoys traveling and hiking with her husband.

Robecta Ma is a global marketing communication executive with over 15 years of experience in leading and executing innovative campaigns for some of the world's most disruptive brands, such as Airbnb, Apple, and Cathay Pacific. She is currently an Advisor at Complex Chinese, a platform that connects street culture, music, fashion communities together across US and Asia. She is also a Co-Founder at Creating Space Community, a national mental health initiative that supports and amplifies voices of theAsian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Additionally, she is an Executive Course Facilitator at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, where she coaches and guides executives enrolled in the LEAD program. She is a mom, a marathoner, a mental health advocate, and a regular contributor for AdWeek.

Clayton Hoi-Yun McClintock, PhD, MTS, is a neuroscience researcher and clinical psychologist who currently focuses on embodied and relational dimensions of mindfulness for strengthening resilience and restoring chronic and post-traumatic stress. He recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship in the San Francisco VA Health Care System and at University of California, San Francisco. Clayton graduated with honors from Dartmouth College with an A.B. in English, received an M.T.S. from Harvard University in religion and the social sciences, and completed a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at Columbia University, with a focus on the neural circuitry of spiritual and stressful experiences. His research has been published in high impact peer-reviewed journals including Cerebral Cortex, Journal of Behavioral Addictions, and Psychological Medicine.

Spark Nakamura, Executive Director, is the Careers & Skills lead within JPMorgan Chase’s Office of Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Affairs, driving a firmwide strategy to support the career development and culture of inclusion globally for the firm’s API employees, while also supporting career growth and access to opportunity for API students. Spark convenes leaders across the AsPIRE Business Resource Group, Asian Executive Forum and Line of Business Asian Leadership Forums to execute the strategy globally. Spark was previously an equity trader at JPMorgan Asset Management for 9 years, responsible for equities trading for the Emerging Market and Asia Pacific and International Equity investment groups, helping to lead the buildout of regional trading capabilities in Asia and the US. Prior to relocating to New York in 2018, Spark spent 7 years in Hong Kong and 5 years in Tokyo, holding equity trading positions at both hedge fund and global asset managers. In 2022, Spark became a member of the U.S.- Japan Council, a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. whose mission is to develop and connect diverse leaders to forge stronger U.S.-Japan bilateral relations. Spark is also a passionate mentor to colleagues and students outside of the firm and is also a volunteer EMT. Spark is bilingual in English and Japanese and speaks elementary Mandarin. He obtained a Bachelor of Science in Applied Economics and Management from Cornell University in 2006 and is a CFA charter holder.

Alice Shikina is a 2nd generation Okinawan-American. Her parents immigrated to the States and she grew up in Louisiana, where she studied acting until she graduated from college. Alice then went to live in the Czech Republic for three years. She taught English and directed theatre there while she studied the Czech language. Currently, Alice runs her own practice, Shikina Negotiation Academy. She coaches business professionals on negotiation, conflict resolution and communication coaching. She also mediates divorces, workplace conflict and family conflicts. Alice lives in Oakland with her two teenage boys. In her free time, she enjoys hiking, traveling and Netflix.

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