Philippa Girling has more than 25 years' experience in the global financial services industry, working in the fields of risk management, training, project management, and organizational change.

Philippa has held several operational risk leadership roles, including heading the global corporate operational risk functions at Morgan Stanley and Nomura. She was business chief risk officer for Capital One's commercial bank, chief risk officer for Investors Bank, and is currently chief risk officer and a founder of Varo Bank, NA, the first fintech to receive a national bank charter in the United States.

She has delivered operational risk courses at Columbia University, London Business School, Rutgers University, NYU Stern, Baruch University, the University of Connecticut, Claremont University, Wharton, and Carnegie Mellon.

Philippa first authored Operational Risk Management, a textbook for the risk and regulation examination of the Global Association of Risk Professionals, in 2009 and authored the first edition of Operational Risk Management: A Complete Guide to a Successful Operational Risk Framework in 2013.

She is a regular speaker at global conferences on the topics of systemic risk and regulation, the evolution of the operational risk discipline, and the challenges of risk management in the new digital banking paradigm. She was selected as one of the Top Fifty Faces of Operational Risk by Operational Risk and Compliance magazine when the discipline was in its early days and since then has become a recognized leader in the field.

Philippa holds an English law degree from the University of East Anglia, England, is qualified as a New York attorney, is a holder of the GARP Financial Risk Manager accreditation, and received her PhD from Rutgers University. Her area of doctoral study focused on the development of an industry-standard operational risk framework that meets global regulatory expectations and financial services industry business requirements.

Philippa moved from her British homeland to the United States in 1996, and she and her husband share their time between Florida and California.