Top 12 Recommended AFP 2026 Sessions for Finance and Treasury Teams

1. Decision Engines: How Connected Data Flows Drive Better Business Decisions at General Mills

Sunday, November 8 | 1:00–2:00 p.m.
Speakers: Collin Schmidt and Holly Wahr, General Mills
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How do transactions become insights that leadership can trust? The General Mills team share their experience connecting transaction processing and planning with consolidation, reporting, and analytics. The session explores the systems, governance, and processes needed to move data from its source into business decisions and establish a foundation for AI decision support.

Why we chose it: Every forecast and agent recommendation sits on top of the data underneath it. The General Mills team will walk through the less visible work of earning leadership’s trust in the numbers before anyone acts on them. Trust precedes intelligence, and this session shows what that takes at scale.

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2. Finance as Accelerator: Building the Agile Organization

Sunday, November 8 | 2:30–3:30 p.m.
Speakers: Mitch Max, BetterVu; Collin Schmidt, General Mills; Prince Oppong, PayPal
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This panel explores how finance can help an organization detect change, allocate resources, and execute faster. Using a Sense-Decide-Act framework, speakers discuss practices such as embedding analysts in operations, replacing variance reviews with scenario planning, and building partnerships that speed up decisions.

Why we chose it: Better visibility creates value when teams can act on it. We like this session’s focus on translating financial insight into earlier alerts, faster decisions, and more proactive resource allocation.

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3. Where Tax and Treasury Meet

Sunday, November 8 | 2:30–3:30 p.m.
Speakers: Sean King, Align Global Consulting; Shawn Casey, McCormick & Company; Sonia Hollies, Perrigo Company; Tony Krabill, Wabtec Corporation
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Treasury and tax approach cash from different perspectives, but their decisions are closely connected. This panel examines how the two functions can coordinate to improve liquidity, reduce trapped cash, and manage tax and FX risk. Speakers share experiences that illustrate why cash deployment requires both financial visibility and an understanding of regulatory and structural constraints.

Why we chose it: Knowing where cash sits is one part of the picture. Understanding how it can be used and optimized is another. This session adds valuable context for teams managing liquidity across entities and regions.

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4. AI in Action: Real-World Treasury Automation

Monday, November 9 | 8:30–9:30 a.m.
Speakers: David Tao, Citi; Kenny Tse, Google / Alphabet; Elmer Dispo, Workday
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Corporate treasury practitioners discuss how they are applying AI to cash management, payments, liquidity forecasting, and in-house bank operations. The conversation covers both desktop workflows and backend integrations, with attention to measurable efficiency gains, disappointing outcomes, and implementation lessons.

Why we chose it: Teams evaluating AI need concrete examples and candid lessons. This session offers a practical starting point for identifying useful applications, prioritizing an initial project, and understanding what adoption takes.

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5. Macro Market Impacts for Liquidity Investors

Monday, November 9 | 8:30–9:30 a.m.
Speakers: Allison Rossi, Anthropic; Patrick O’Callaghan and John Olivo, Goldman Sachs; Kyle McNealy, Meta
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Changes in central bank policy, reserve levels, and funding conditions can affect yields and liquidity availability. This panel examines how to translate those macro developments into signals for cash management and short-duration portfolio construction. It also covers separately managed accounts and an operational perspective on digital assets within liquidity frameworks.

Why we chose it: Cash decisions depend on both internal needs and external conditions. This session helps treasury teams understand the connection between the market environment to their day-to-day liquidity and investment decisions.

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6. Cash Segmentation: It’s Not a Gamble, It’s a Framework

Monday, November 9 | 10:30–11:30 a.m.
Speakers: Jeff Weaver, Allspring Global Investments; Brandon Hillstead, Autodesk; Tyler Cone, Palo Alto Networks; Vanessa McMichael, Wells Fargo Securities
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How much cash should remain immediately available, and how should the rest be allocated? This session explores structured cash segmentation as a way to balance liquidity, capital preservation, and yield. Practical scenarios address cyclical cash flows, shifting liquidity requirements, and investment timing.

Why we chose it: Segmentation turns “how much do we keep on hand” into a repeatable decision. With treasury practitioners from Autodesk and Palo Alto Networks on the panel, expect a framework grounded in real allocation tradeoffs, and a good reminder of how much it depends on a reliable view of future cash needs.

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7. From Automation to Autonomy: How AI Will Redefine the Treasury Function

Monday, November 9 | 10:30–11:30 a.m.
Speakers: Tony Masone, Amazon; Zack Anderson, JP Morgan; Naman Kuwadia, PwC; Mike Richards, The Treasury Recruitment Company
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AI is changing treasury workflows and the operating models around them. This panel examines applications across forecasting, liquidity, risk, and controls, alongside the implications for governance, talent, and accountability. Speakers also discuss how banks and technology providers are incorporating AI into treasury operations.

Why we chose it: As agents take on more manual treasury tasks, the defining question is accountability: who reviews, who approves, and where responsibility sits. We build Panax as human in the loop by design, so this conversation is close to home.

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8. Bank Accounts, Signers, and Controls: The Risk Nobody Owns

Monday, November 9 | 1:45–2:45 p.m.
Speakers: Holly Olson, America Fujikura Ltd.; Emil Ashford, Walker & Dunlop
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Bank account governance can become fragmented across Treasury, Accounting, Legal, and HR. Through a case study, this session examines how unclear ownership, outdated signers, and account sprawl create exposure. It offers an approach to assigning responsibility, standardizing account lifecycle processes, and strengthening signer controls.

Why we chose it: Visibility and accountability belong together. This session tackles the governance practices that help teams manage a complex bank account landscape and address gaps before an audit or incident exposes them.

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9. How AI is Changing the Investment Landscape for Corporate Treasurers

Monday, November 9 | 1:45–2:45 p.m.
Speakers: Donald Norris, HSBC AM; Alexander Custodio-Garcia, Okta; Linda Kalocsay, WME Group
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This panel explores AI applications across forecasting, short-term investments, portfolio optimization, and risk monitoring. It considers how predictive analytics, large language models, and generative AI can support liquidity decisions, while addressing implementation challenges, data governance, and regulatory considerations.

Why we chose it: Efficiency gains matter, and so does how better information influences cash deployment. This session connects AI adoption to capital decisions while examining the foundations and controls  needed to use it effectively.

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10. Building Change-Ready Cultures in the Age of AI

Monday, November 9 | 1:45–2:45 p.m.
Speaker: Natasha Todorovic, Spiral Dynamics
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Technology initiatives can stall when teams are unprepared for changes to their daily work. This workshop explores how leaders can assess cultural readiness, address resistance, and sustain adoption while maintaining governance and compliance. A case study illustrates how cultural diagnosis and service realignment can support transformation through disruption.

Why we chose it: The people using a new tool help determine its impact. This session gives finance leaders a way to prepare their teams for AI adoption and turn an implementation into a lasting improvement.

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11. Make Every Dollar Count: Increasing your Return on Strategic Initiatives

Tuesday, November 10 | 8:30–9:30 a.m.
Speakers: Marcus Gadson, Ascension; Angella Jiang, Oliver Wyman; Mykol Fero, TruStage
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When capital is constrained, organizations need a disciplined way to prioritize initiatives and track their results. This moderated interview explores how finance leaders align investments with strategic goals, balance enterprise and business unit priorities, and reallocate capital as performance changes.

Why we chose it: Making cash available is closely connected to deciding where it can create value. This session broadens the discussion to how finance teams evaluate competing priorities and follow through on expected returns.

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12. Done Deal… Now to Rebuild Treasury Post M&As

Tuesday, November 10 | 2:00–3:00 p.m.
Speakers: Amanda Nick, Capri Holdings; Peter Claus-Landi, GE HealthCare; Kris Filipkowski, Marsh; Wacef Chowdhury, Standard Chartered Bank
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After an acquisition or spin-off, treasury teams need to maintain operations while rebuilding systems, structures, and banking relationships. This panel uses a case study to explore how leaders prioritize the transition, combine legacy practices with new approaches, and establish an effective treasury function after close.

Why we chose it: Post-deal, treasury inherits new banks, new entities and legacy processes on day one. This panel offers a practical playbook for sequencing that transition, useful for teams with M&A on the roadmap.

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Meet Panax at AFP 2026: Booth 1270, look for the tree

These sessions explore questions that are central to modern treasury: How do you build trust in financial data? Where can AI improve daily operations? And how can better cash visibility support stronger business decisions?

At Panax, we’re helping finance and treasury teams address those questions exactly with AI-native treasury and cash operations. Panax connects bank and ERP data and deploys AI agents across forecasting, reconciliation, reporting, and payments, helping teams improve operational and capital efficiency.

Stop by booth 1270 to meet the team, see Panax in action, and talk through your cash management priorities. Whether you’re exploring your first AI use case or looking to simplify complex treasury workflows, we’d love to hear what you’re working on.

See you in Las Vegas!