Atenea is Roeland Wuytens, a customer and detail oriented manager with a hybrid skill set, who can operate at both a strategy as well as operational level, bridging the gap between business, Operations and IT. An “interlocuteur de reference”, where the business is the goal, the technique/architecture the mean. Bridging business and technology, it rocks!

Atenea, or Athena, is the Godness of sagacity, intelligence directed toward practical, concrete goals. She keeps us grounded in “real projects”, she’s muscular and action oriented, giving “wise counsel” to those who reflect on strategies for actions.

And that is what I stand for :  bursting of experience, expertise and skills, yet tackling problems / opportunities with a hands-on, no-nonsense, can-do mentality. Combining maturity, common sense with a healthy dose of pragmatism. An action oriented strategic thinker.

Atenea can assists you in leading / steering roles, be it in projects, be it in certain change/transformation journeys, coaching business analysts. Action oriented steering and strategic advice, in organisations active in financial services in general, and in the payments industry in particular.

Thanks to the several positions and experiences (within IT, the business and Operations, mainly in the payments domain), but also in the specific roles and responsibilities, I managed to develop and deeply grow in both vertical and horizontal skills : 

• Analysis and design : Excellent analytical and problem solving skills
• Conceptual and strategic thinking, combining the big picture with eye for detail
• Transformation management : implementing changes (functional, systems, new products) but also operational/ process and organizational changes.
• Result oriented project management and leadership. Never loosing sight of the business objectives.
• People & Relationship Management : building and maintaining efficient working relationships and communicating extensively with a large perimeter of internal (including C level) and external stakeholders.

Do you want to build (/have built) and deliver to the point solutions that satisfy the actual customer needs, in line with your strategy? Then Atenea can help!

As no other, I do understand and speak the often quite different languages of IT people, operational people, business people and customers.

I can add value, in particular in understanding the business and her challenges, assessing the actual business needs (problem and/or opportunities), analyzing and managing requirements, assessing the AS IS/ processes, Change management.

I studied at the KUL as Commercial Engineer, major management informatics, and obtained an additional master in Artificial Intelligence (@ KUL). Multilingual, fluent in Dutch, French, Spanish and English, good knowledge of Portuguese and German.
Over 25 years of hands on experience in Financial Services projects and programs, most of them related to the payments business and the regulatory evolution in the payments domain. I worked in the 3 pillars IT, Operations and the business, in different roles and responsibilities, most often balancing on the intersections of those 3 pillars (functional teamlead, hierarchical teamlead, business project leader, strategy and product manager, change manager).
It are these ‘deeply involved’, hands-on in the field experiences that gave me the unique capability to easily combine the big picture view with a deep domain expertise. I have an outstanding payments expertise covering a wide range of topics, from business strategy to technology, operational, regulatory and go-to-market challenges.

During 15y I have been working with ING (formerly BBL) in several functions and roles, going from functional analyst later teamleader within IT, over Product Manager International Payments, STP manager – a functional teamlead role within the payments Operations department, till Strategy and business change manager : kind of a “pioneer”-role defining and setting up a requirements management structure and team.

Later on, as management consultant, I assisted organisations like Fluxys, Alpha Card, B Logistics specifically in addressing the Business – IT gap : introducing structure and professionalism in the way to assess and model business requirements and business processes (BPM), structuring the change/project request process, coaching Business Analysts, Change Management.

Several diverse experiences in complex international environments: BBL, ING Group, ABN Amro, BNPPF and Alpha Card. Always related to important change and transformation projects in the payments business, as instigated by EU regulatory or technology changes. My focus was on delivering evidence based solutions, in roles balancing between the customer, the business and IT.

Leveraging on these on the field, individual bank experiences, I further broadened my perspective in the inter/cross/multi bank B2B and Fintech world, deepening also my outstanding strategy and product management skills:

I assisted Isabel Group in developing and and commercially deploying a new business strategy and (API based ) products in the PSD2/ Open Banking context, including setting up a specific Business Unit

At SWIFT I shaped and instigated the deployment of the payment validation strategy and 2 year roadmap, mainly focusing on the beneficiary account validation and verification of payee (which is a burning topic these days – SCT Inst and PSD3 PSR alike).