Evan Stefatos
Executive Director

• Evan has over 20 years of experience growing international business, entering new markets and running market development, strategy consulting and marketing for F500 multi-national corporations operating in the USA, Europe, Eurasia, Middle East and Africa regions. He has deep expertise in payments, financial services, digital transformation and FinTech.
• As a Managing Director at Innervant Strategic Advisers, in Dubai, UAE, he works with banks and financial technology startups on strategy, financing and business optimization. Among others he has advised a Middle East based digital authentication provider on entering the payments business increasing their addressable market by 200% attracting top Wall Street investors, created the strategy and implementation plans for a Gulf government sponsored mobile payments platform advancing innovative technology adoption, advised a new Europe-based payments processor on business development and consulted multiple gulf government entities on the digitization of payments to promote economic growth.
• As a senior leader at Visa over many years, in multiple countries, he worked on international markets development. He created the Dubai UAE based product hub team and operations for the 96-country geography of Visa CEMEA and launched, managed and grew the CEMEA client consulting team, advising more than 75 clients in MENA, Russia/CIS, and Africa. During his time in Moscow, Russia he devised and implemented entrance and growth strategies for multiple Visa key EMEA markets. Starting with Visa International in their Foster City, CA HQs he helped define, launch in the US, and grow globally, the EMV chip payment authorization platform.
• In San Francisco, CA, USA and within US banking and financial services, among others, he launched and managed a disruptive e-commerce student lending platform at Chela Financial in early 2000s and used innovative risk models, acquisition and balance usage techniques to grow profitable card balances and empower the unbanked at Providian Financial in the late 1990s.
• He moved to California, USA in 1996 to pursue a full-time MBA in Strategy and Management of Technology at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley. He got his startup and technology “bug” from living in Silicon Valley during the startup and dot-com boom (and bust) of the 1990s. Fortunately he also acquired a balancing wine “bug” which he carries till today from his multiple getaways and tasting ventures in Napa, another valley.
• Just prior to completing his Bachelor’s degree in Business Economics at the American College of Greece, he started his career as a consultant with Praxis S.A in Athens Greece, and continued with them after graduating to develop strategies and implementation plans for multiple international clients wishing to enter SEE markets.

Evan Stefatos
Senior Advisor - Middle East
The Collins Group Inc.
Email: evan.stefatos@thecollinsgroup.com