John Fimbel is a business leader with more than 25 years of experience driving innovation, growth, and industry collaboration across the private sector and higher education. He currently serves as Executive in Residence and Program Lead of FinTech Online in Duke University's Master of Engineering in FinTech program, where he leads industry-sponsored capstone projects and created the program's Incubate curriculum, guiding students from idea to MVP in a single semester.

John is also the founder of accel|sales, a boutique consultancy that helps organizations accelerate growth through scalable go-to-market strategies. Previously, he was Senior Vice President of Business Development at Mastercard, leading North American business development for the Test & Learn platform. Before joining Mastercard, he served as Head of Global Sales at Applied Predictive Technologies (APT), helping grow the company from startup to more than $100 million in revenue before its $600 million acquisition by Mastercard.