Trainer Profiles
Andrzej Pitek
Chief Executive Officer, St. Stanislaus - St. Casimir’s Polish Parishes Credit Union Limited
Andrzej Pitek is the CEO of St. Stanislaus - St. Casimir’s Polish Parishes Credit Union Limited since February 2011. Andrzej has over 25 years of experience across multiple functional areas, including strategy assessment and development, change management, business and risk analysis, and partnership building. His focus is on implementing strategic change initiatives to improve organizational performance, within and across credit unions. He has proven experience in the business advisory domain and extensive industry skills.
Andrzej has engaged and coached many stakeholders in the development of change projects. He has fostered a strong and cooperative working relationship among his colleagues across the industry. Andrzej has been identifying and assessing organizational issues and developing appropriate resolutions with critical actions. He has developed and managed innovative strategic plans for the company’s transformation which generated profits within a year of implementation. Andrzej is very well known in the community he has consulted with other credit union to streamline services, leverage resources, and implement change initiatives.
Randy Tanaka
President, Level Five Strategic Partners Inc.
Randy Tanaka is the President of Level Five Strategic Partners Inc. He has been working with the co-operative movement for over 30 years. He has been directly involved in over 20 mergers, conducted over 100 strategic board and management planning sessions and is assisting over 50 credit unions in the management of treasury and interest rate risk. He also supports the Governance Program and various Training and Education consulting practices offered through Level Five.
He is the former Vice President, Treasury and Vice President of Financial Consulting at Credit Union Central of Ontario. As Vice President, Treasury at Credit Union Central of Ontario he managed an investment portfolio of over $1.2 billion and was responsible for asset and liability management, commercial lending, liquidity and the banking area. He then moved into the position of Vice President, Financial Consulting, where his team provided credit unions with consulting on asset and liability management, lending consulting, structured product design and support, various training and education programs (including PCG School), and strategic board and management planning.
He has his major degree in Economics and a minor in Commerce from McMaster University and is a graduate of the Canadian Securities Course.
Vineet Bapat, B.Comm (Honours), MBA, FCUIC
Consultant and Coach – Credit Union System
Vineet has extensive experience in the financial services sector providing advisory, training and coaching services to boards and management teams. For much of his career, Vineet has focused on the credit union system, working for more than a decade within the Credit Union Central of Ontario and subsequently as an external consultant to credit union member boards of directors in the areas of board governance, board education, strategic planning, and mergers and acquisitions. He has advised clients through over thirty credit union mergers, resulting in effective transitions at both governance and operational levels. Vineet’s efforts leading consulting engagements with client boards, management teams and steering committees, as well as regulatory agencies, has ensured effective communication, issue resolution and process management. His experience in strategic planning encompasses development and facilitation of board planning sessions and retreats for credit unions and other organizations in the cooperative sector, including the Ontario Credit Union Charitable Foundation and the Canadian Cooperative Association. He has also conducted international assignments in Africa and South America for the Canadian Cooperative Association.
Vineet has developed and facilitated credit union training courses in Ontario and Manitoba for directors and staff in governance, operations and operational risks, strategic planning and board and CEO evaluation. Many of these courses have been adapted to an on-line format through collaboration with CU Training in BC and are being delivered to several credit unions in BC, Alberta, Manitoba and Ontario. More recently, Vineet worked with the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Ontario, to help in the development and execution of new regulations on director competencies. This work is designed to raise the bar for governance standards in Ontario credit unions. He is actively involved in creating and delivering customized training programs for numerous credit union boards. These programs include competency assessments and coaching in the governance practices and regulatory compliance regarding governance expectations. He currently works with several credit unions in Ontario consulting in Board governance, strategic planning and mergers and acquisitions.
Vineet holds a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Windsor and a Master’s in Business Administration from the University of Maine, and is a Fellow of the Credit Union Institute of Canada. He also has a Masters Certificate in Project Management from the Schulich School of Business at York University.
John R. Howard, CPA, CA, CFE
Howard Associates
John is a Chartered Professional Accountant, (Chartered Accountant) Certified Fraud Examiner and has specialized in services to the financial community for 30 years.
A former partner in a “Big 4” accounting firm, he has provided services as the external auditor and the internal auditor to banks and credit unions. He has also provided consulting, fraud investigation and risk management services to several of those institutions.
He has developed and provided training sessions for domestic and international partners and staff at Ernst & Young LLP in areas of accounting and auditing principles and procedures as well as fraud detection and investigation in Canada, the United States and Europe. He has led training sessions for the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Ontario on Fraud prevention and detection as well as the Association of small business practitioners.
Recently he has presented training sessions to credit union directors on topics including "Roles & Responsibilities of Directors," "Audit & Compliance," "Issues in Due Diligence before Merging," and "Corporate Governance."
Amber D. Scott, M BA, CI PPC, CBP, CAMS
Outlier Solutions Inc.
Amber has broad-based financial compliance experience that includes insurance, mutual funds and banking. In addition to being a Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) Amber is also a Certified Privacy Professional (CIPP). She also holds a mutual fund sales designation from the Investment Funds Institute of Canada (IFIC) and a first level Fellow, Life Management Institute (FLMI).
Amber completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Waterloo where she majored in Psychology. Her academic interests have always included law and criminology. As a teaching assistant she assisted in the development of the university’s first applied psychology course on criminal profiling. She has also received an MBA from the University of Aspen.
Amber is passionate about ethical and legal compliance. Her obsession with understanding the risks and devising actionable solutions has lead her to work in the financial services industry as well as with Canadian accounting and consulting firms. In 2013, she founded Outlier Solutions Inc. to provide anti-money laundering (AML) solutions to Canadian reporting entities.
Amber is a firm believer in the idea that good compliance can enable good business.
Jonathan Krumins, BA (Hons), CAMS
Vice-President AML Risk & Compliance, vCAMLO Solutions Inc.
After graduation from the University of Toronto, Jonathan worked in the mutual fund and investment industry for 13 years. Towards the end of this period, he became more and more interested in anti-money laundering and compliance. He completed the Certified Anti-Money Laundering Specialist (CAMS) and Canadian Institute of Financial Crime Analysis (CIFCA) designations, and then joined vCAMLO Solutions in 2011.
vCAMLO Solutions is an anti-money laundering (AML) and anti-terrorist financing (ATF) support company that works primarily with credit unions in Ontario and Atlantic Canada. vCAMLO provides AML program documentation, transaction monitoring, FINTRAC reporting, training and assistance during regulatory examinations. Our goal is to work with our clients to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, and to avoid negative regulatory outcomes.
Linda Moroz
Chief Executive Officer, Resurrection Credit Union Limited
Linda Moroz is the CEO of Resurrection Credit Union Limited (RCU) since March 2010. The Credit Union began in 1962 and was founded to service Lithuanians who had immigrated to Canada and were parishioners of the Resurrection Parish. Today RCU is a community-based Credit Union and as of December 31, 2017 assets were $121.2 million with just over 2,500 members.
Linda completed her undergrad studies at the University of Toronto in Bachelor of Arts. Linda has also attended the Canadian Association of Accredited Mortgage professional and has achieved her license as a Mortgage professional. Throughout the years, Linda has worked at various financial institutions.
Linda Moroz is a high-energy individual with a strategic and bottom-line oriented professional with significant front-line and back office experience specializing in the Financial Services sector. Mrs. Moroz specializes in project management, forecasting and planning, training and development, strategic planning, sales management and relationship management.
Andrew (Andy) Poprawa
CPA, CA, C. Dir., CGFM
Andy Poprawa is currently a senior strategic advisor to a number of financial services regulatory agencies, credit unions and private corporations and in Canada and internationally as well as an independent director serving on a number of corporate and not-for-profit boards. From 1993 to 2016 he was the President and CEO of the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Ontario - the agency responsible for regulating and providing deposit insurance to Ontario credit unions and caisses populaires.
He is currently Chair of the Board of Directors of Educators Financial Group (a mutual fund company), Chair of the Board of Copernicus Lodge (a long-term care and supportive housing facility), Chair of the Learning Matters Charity, Chair of the Governance Committee of the Canadian Scholarship Trust Foundation as well as an advisory board member of several private companies.
Andy also serves on the Ontario Chapter Executive of the Canadian Institute of Corporate Directors and has served as the Chair of the Governance Advisory Committee at the Conference Board of Canada. He is a faculty member of the Directors College at McMaster University – Canada’s gold standard institution in corporate governance. In 2009, he earned his Chartered Director designation and was awarded the Gil Bennett Gold Standard Award by the Directors College.
Andy is a Chartered Professional Accountant (Canada), Chartered Accountant (Canada), Chartered Director (Canada and the Caribbean) and a Certified Government Financial Manager (US).