Manuel Roggero

Director, Design and Partnership Innovation, Solution Acceleration & Innovation RBC

Manuel Roggero is the Director of Design and Partnership Innovation for the Solution Acceleration and Innovation (SA&I) team, also known as "The Orlando Lab" at the Royal Bank of Canada. With labs in Toronto, San Francisco and Orlando, RBC is partnering with a diverse set of players, including startups and academia, to access and drive emerging trends. The SA&I team is responsible for delivering solutions that bring technological innovation in banking to life, from the initial idea all the way to client-facing implementation. RBC can credit innovations such as: e-transfers through Siri and a customer rewards system on Blockchain to the team's strategy and execution.

Manuel loves to work at the intersection between business, technology and design which has fueled a career of diverse work experiences within different industries such as Financial Services, Telecom, and Consumer Goods. For the past 8 years he has held roles in innovation units at corporations helping them in their digital transformation journeys. He has also mentored several start-ups in the FinTech space. As a former Chairman of Peru’s Banking Association he partnered with Ericsson to develop project BiM, an interoperable payments network between 24 financial institutions, adopted by Facebook as the main P2P payment rail through its Messenger App. The project was recognized and supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  Additionally, he has worked side-by-side with key professors at Cornell University and Harvard School of Engineering supporting mobile ocean observing networks and new light sensor hardware designs to help solve world sustainability issues.

Born in Peru, Manuel has lived in Brazil, New York, The Netherlands and Toronto and now has a home base in Orlando. He has a Master of Science in Management of Technology from NYU Tandon School of Engineering and has also completed the Design Thinking Bootcamp at IDEO. He is happily married, and has 2 sons.