Everything an organizer, producer, or journalist needs to book and introduce me.
Name, title, and links
Chris B. Kennedy (PhD, MBA, CFA)
Managing Director, Strategic Technology and AI, Regions Bank
PhD, MBA, and CFA are optional and can be dropped for brevity.
Speaker one-sheet Photo, short bio, signature topics, formats, and booking on a single page to print or forward. Download PDF ↓ Signature topics
Board governance · AI
AI risk now moves at software speed, and accountability for AI-generated work cannot sit with the technology team alone. What boards and executive teams should own: bounded agent authority, human-equivalent controls, clear accountability, and value metrics that go beyond adoption counts.
For: Boards, C-suite, risk and audit committees
Strategy · Payments
Banks may preserve the deposit and still lose the customer relationship. Where stablecoins, tokenized deposits, instant rails, and agent-initiated payments shift the economics, and the strategic choices for community, regional, and large banks.
For: Bank executives, payments and treasury leaders
Execution · AI
Why most AI programs stall at adoption metrics, and an operating model that moves from pilots to production value: portfolio selection, value measurement, reallocating freed capacity, and controls built in from the start.
For: Executives, transformation, technology, and operations leaders
Recent talks, panels, and podcasts are on Speaking & Media →
Speaking · Advisory · Teaching · Thought Leadership
Bios
Chris B. Kennedy is an enterprise strategy and operating executive at Regions Bank, where he has led payments transformation, AI strategy, and technology at scale. He brings more than 15 years of experience across finance, risk, operations, and business growth, along with more than a decade of executive education teaching at Duke Fuqua and UNC Kenan-Flagler. Outside of work, he is a father of four boys, coaches youth soccer, and enjoys fitness, chess, science fiction, and building with AI.
Chris B. Kennedy is an enterprise strategy, growth, and transformation executive at Regions Bank. He defines the strategy on consequential problems with no established playbook, aligns leadership and capital, builds the capability, and owns the outcome. Over more than 15 years in financial services, he has integrated business, technology, AI, and risk to turn strategy into measurable enterprise value.
Chris holds a PhD, an MBA, and the CFA designation, along with AWS credentials. He has designed and taught courses on AI and analytics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School, with more than a decade of executive education experience.
Outside of work, he is a father of four boys, coaches youth soccer, and enjoys fitness, chess, science fiction, and building with AI.
Chris B. Kennedy is Managing Director, Strategic Technology and AI, at Regions Bank, where he is responsible for AI strategy and value creation, emerging technology including digital assets, business enablement, and strategic technology investments across Enterprise Payments, Corporate Banking and Treasury Management, Wealth Management, and Technology.
Chris began his career as a nuclear engineer, trained to model and safely operate some of the world's most complex systems, and brings that systems thinking to banking, payments, risk, and AI. He moved into quantitative finance and risk, building enterprise credit, capital, and stress-testing models and one of his bank's first AI/ML governance frameworks. He later led enterprise payments, supporting nearly $4 trillion in annual transaction volume across consumer, corporate, wealth management, and treasury business lines, and repositioned payments from a cost center into a product-led growth business. His banking career spans Regions Bank, BB&T (now Truist), and BankUnited.
He has helped shape industry standards as former Chair of the FDX Commercial API Task Force and as a Data & Trusted AI Alliance working-group member, and he is a member of the Private Directors Association's National AI Governance Special Interest Group. For more than a decade he has designed and taught executive and graduate courses in AI and analytics at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business and UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. His commentary has appeared in Fortune, and he speaks regularly on AI governance, AI value, and the future of payments.
Chris holds a PhD and BS in Nuclear Engineering from North Carolina State University, an MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler, and the CFA designation, along with AWS credentials. Outside of work, he is a father of four boys, coaches youth soccer, and enjoys fitness, chess, science fiction, and building with AI.
Headshots
Click to download the full-size JPEG. Free to use with an event, article, or episode about me.
Formats
Typical length: 15 to 120 minutes.
Booking
Email [email protected] or use the contact form. Please allow:
| 30 days | Virtual events |
|---|---|
| 45 days | In-person events |
| 60 days | When the event uses my employer's logo or trademarks (approvals), or needs signed legal agreements |
Board service, advisory, speaking, or executive AI education — start a conversation.
