Jessi Szurek
Senior Executive
Tech, AI, PI
New York, New York, USA
Listen to Jessi’s Podcast!
The gap between AI ambition and AI reality in financial services is where Jessi Szurek works – building the data foundations, governance frameworks, and enterprise capabilities that make transformation durable, not just deployable. As Associate Partner at Synthesis, Jessi works with global banks, insurers, and capital markets firms navigating the intersection of AI adoption, regulatory complexity, and operating model redesign. Jessi’s focus is on the hard problem: not what AI can do, but how regulated institutions can deploy it at scale without increasing risk, creating audit exposure, or stalling under compliance pressure.
What separates transformation that sticks from transformation that stalls is strategy and design – understanding the people, workflows, and decision points that technology has to serve before a single line of code is written. Jessi brings a design thinking lens to every engagement: mapping user journeys, pressure-testing operating models against real human behavior, and ensuring that the solutions we build are ones people actually adopt. In financial services, that means aligning the boardroom vision with the front-line reality, and closing the gap between the two.
Before Synthesis, Jessi spent 17+ years at Ernst & Young (EY) leading technology and transformation programs across 40+ countries — directing multi-million-dollar initiatives in regulatory compliance, data strategy, and enterprise process redesign for some of the world’s most complex financial institutions. Jessi Szurek built Centers of Excellence, stood up managed services programs, and delivered solutions that collectively enabled hundreds of millions in operational savings and compliance improvements.
Synthesis is a different kind of firm. Founded on the belief that real transformation only happens through execution — not just strategy decks, they bring together top-tier talent with deep industry knowledge and genuine technology capability. Their roots are Japanese, their North American practice is growing, and their edge is rare: the ability to operate at the intersection of global financial services rigor and the kind of builder mentality that actually ships. Jessi works at the C-suite level — with CROs, CDOs, COOs, and CIOs who need a trusted partner, not a vendor. If you’re building something that matters in financial services AI, data, or enterprise transformation, Jessi would like to be part of that conversation.
Jessi Szurek is also featured on our premiere Features Page, and you can read the Podcast Interview Transcript.
