Melissa Nippins

Product Owner with 10+ years of experience leading complex platform products from concept through scale within high-reliability environments. Proven track record defining product vision, setting success metrics, and driving large-scale migrations that improve adoption, operational performance, and user experience. Skilled at aligning cross-functional teams and translating ambiguity into clear product strategy and measurable outcomes.

Morgan Stanley — Product Owner, VP

• Product Owner for multiple Agile squads responsible for building and enhancing core banking and money movement features across client-facing platforms.
• Drive strategic product vision and define roadmap for digital payments and money movement capabilities, translating business goals and customer needs into market-ready product features aligned to enterprise product vision.
• Partner with business, technology, design and data teams to design and improve money movement and digital banking experiences, including payments, authorizations, and secure transaction workflows.
• Own and continuously groom the product backlog, ensuring a healthy delivery pipeline with well-defined and prioritized epics, user stories, and acceptance criteria.
• Define and write detailed product requirements and user stories in close collaboration with stakeholders, engineering, UX/UI, QA, and operations teams.
• Participate in sprint planning, backlog refinement, and release readiness activities within an Agile Scrum framework.
• Delivering measurable product outcomes using data to guide prioritization and decision-making.
• Support testing strategy by defining acceptance criteria, participating in user acceptance testing, and partnering with QA teams to ensure high-quality releases.
• Coordinate cross-functional delivery of complex initiatives, including enhanced authorization controls and digital payment fraud warning features.
• Present product updates, delivery status, adoption trends, and key risks to senior leadership and executive stakeholders.
• Drive adoption of new digital banking capabilities by partnering with training and communications teams to support rollout, education, and change management.
• Maintain a strong focus on usability, risk management, and operational resilience while delivering secure, scalable banking solutions in a fast-paced environment.

Morgan Stanley — Scrum Master, VP

• Partnered with Compliance leadership to translate regulatory objectives into clear actionable user stories and prioritized backlogs.
• Performed Agile execution and delivery focused on business outcomes - led and facilitated sprint planning, daily scrums, sprint reviews and retrospectives.
• Coached and mentored Scrum team on Agile best practices, focusing on delivery excellence and continuous improvement helping the Squad to achieve high-performing squad metrics (velocity, cycle time, lead time).
• Tracked and reported sprint progress using Agile tools (i.e. Jira)
• Led end-to-end delivery and production support for Actimize L2 Compliance Surveillance Models, including Insider Trading, Low-Priced Securities, KYC Suitability, Marking the Close, and Oversight Sampling.
• Managed the implementations of the Compliance Batch Monitoring Dashboards in Tableau. 
• Worked with the Data Analytics Team to help train and test our predictive analytics alert models. 
• Managed bi-weekly production releases, issue resolutions, enhancements, model tuning, threshold change management.
• Coordinated across Squad, Chapter, and Fleet levels to resolve dependencies and delivery risks.

Deutsche Bank — Consultant, Project Manager

• Led data sourcing and onboarding initiatives from planning through execution.
• Managed data project plans, timelines, dependencies, risks, and issues.
• Oversaw defect tracking in Jira and delivered executive-level status reporting.

Citibank — Business Analyst / Project Manager, VP

• Led end-to-end implementation of Actimize trade surveillance models across products (i.e. Equities, Fixed Income, and Derivatives).
• Managed strategy, requirements and design discussions. 
• Managed full model life-cycle delivery: requirements, data analysis/mapping, development, testing, deployment, and post-implementation support.
• Partnered with Compliance and Technology to enhance detection logic for market abuse scenarios including Insider Trading, Spoofing, Layering, Front Running.
• Configured detection scenarios, thresholds, and machine learning models to optimize alert generation and reduce false positives.
• Led platform migration initiatives from legacy systems to Actimize / SMARTS, improving scalability and alert accuracy.
• Oversaw global cross-functional teams (20+) across EMEA and APAC.
• Delivered Compliance’s first global real-time trade surveillance alert with a universal workflow.

Morgan Stanley — Business Analyst, Associate

• Led strategy and requirement discussions; created precise requirement documents for Actimize trade surveillance models, alert workflows and alert dashboards.
• Delivered end-to-end trade surveillance initiatives across multiple asset classes.
• Authored functional and technical requirements and data mappings.
• Led UAT and QA testing and managed defects in Jira.

Morgan Stanley — Fraud Analyst, ANALYST

• Investigated wire/ACH/check fraud alerts in Actimize.
• Defined and implemented rule-based fraud alerts using Actimize.
• Investigated mobile banking alerts using RSA Mobile Fraud Detection Platform. 

First Atlantic Federal Credit Union - Fraud Analyst 

• Investigated wire/ACH/check fraud alerts in Actimize. 
• Defined and implemented rule-based fraud alerts using Actimize.

Education

Master of Business Administration (MBA) Utica College – Utica, NY | 2009

Concentration in EConomic Crime & Fraud Management 

Bachelor of Science in Business Administration Berkeley College – West Paterson, NJ | 2006

CERTIFICATIONS

FinTech Industry Professional (FTIP®) – Corporate Finance Institute, 2025

Certified Compliance Professional in Cryptocurrency Financial Crimes (CCPC™) - Chartered Institute of Professional Certifications, 2025

AI for Product Owners (Micro-Credential) – Scrum Alliance | 2025

Certified Product Owner (CPO) – Scrum Alliance, 2024

Advanced Certified Scrum Master (ACSM) – Scrum Alliance, 2024

Certified Scrum Master (CSM) – Scrum Alliance, 2021