Sharon O’Sullivan is currently the Head of Technology Research & Innovation for BMO Financial Group. Founded in Montreal and headquartered in Toronto, with over CAD$1 trillion in assets, BMO is one of the ten largest banks in North America.

As an industry-leading digital executive for global financial institutions for the past 20 years, Sharon knows well that technology alone cannot improve bottom lines and build organizational agility. As part of her current mandate, Sharon leads the bank’s digital innovation strategy and establishes collaborative, internal, and external ecosystems that drive research, experimentation, and adoption of disruptive technologies for growth (open banking, blockchain, web3, digital assets, 5G and more). Sharon joined BMO in 2019 after leading digital transformation at CIBC for over 19 years.

A well-regarded industry thought leader on Digital Transformation, Innovation, Data & Analytics, Sharon is a sought-after speaker on strategy & governance topics in the financial sector and serves on the advisory board of serval technology innovation-focused organizations, including the Waterloo Artificial Intelligence Institute and the University of Toronto – The Entrepreneurship Hatchery. Currently, Sharon also serves as a mentor at the Toronto’s Creative Destruction Lab (CDL), where she collaborates with industry domain experts and equity fund managers to assess new venture potentials and mentor start-up entrepreneurs.

Beyond finance and technology, Sharon is also active in the healthcare sector, lending her expertise to public-private healthcare partnerships providing direct mental health supports to some of the most vulnerable in our community. Sharon holds an MBA from the Rotman School of Business from the University of Toronto, a Global Executive MBA from SDA Bocconi School of Business in Milan with a concentration in Corporate Finance, Mergers and Acquisitions, and an MBA in Marketing from the American University for Leaders in London.