Dr. Jean Voigt is the Executive Director at Soteria Initiative, a nonprofit organization dedicated to transforming how the financial industry fights financial crime through collaboration, shared intelligence, and advanced technology. After years leading critical anti-financial crime functions at major global banks, Jean launched Soteria in early 2025 to drive industry-wide change that individual institutions struggle to implement on their own.
Background
Jean began his career in computer science, bringing a systems thinking approach to complex organizational challenges. This technical foundation would later prove essential as he moved into financial services control functions, working in risk management and investment performance before discovering his calling in the fight against financial crime. In early 2018, he took on his first anti-money laundering role at Credit Suisse, a position that would fundamentally shape his career trajectory. Leading a global team of approximately 30 professionals, Jean confronted the stark reality that stopping money laundering from within a single institution was next to impossible. Criminals rarely use just one bank, creating information asymmetries that make detection extraordinarily difficult. This realization drove him to explore machine learning technologies and collaborative approaches that could bridge these gaps.
The Credit Suisse role crystallized Jean’s leadership philosophy around servant leadership, a style he describes as putting himself in service to his team leads and managers to create resilient, independent, and empowered units. Operating under intense pressure with daily stand-ups and constant external oversight, Jean learned that effective delegation and trust were not optional luxuries but survival necessities. He also discovered that crisis moments, rather than being obstacles to strategic work, actually present the best opportunities for transformational change when leaders marry urgent fixes with long-term strategic objectives.
In 2022, Jean joined Deutsche Bank as Managing Director during what the bank’s own annual report described as the most fundamental transformation in decades. The institution was navigating billions in restructuring costs, regulatory fines, and intense scrutiny while rebuilding its reputation. Jean led large teams within the anti-financial crime infrastructure, responsible for outcomes, strategic direction, and operational execution in an environment where every decision faced examination. His weeks involved not just traditional management but hands-on technical work, sometimes responding to regulator queries in the middle of the night by diving directly into databases. He spent nights in the office preparing budget presentations while simultaneously managing urgent compliance deadlines, exemplifying the reality that crisis management does not pause for normal business cycles. Across nearly seven years in anti-money laundering roles at Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank, Jean built expertise in collaborative technologies, AI applications for financial crime detection, and leading through regulatory pressure while never losing sight of his conviction that true progress required cross-institution cooperation.
Core Expertise
Jean specializes in anti-financial crime strategy, collaborative intelligence frameworks, and the application of artificial intelligence and machine learning to money laundering detection. He is known for his systems thinking approach to organizational design, treating teams and processes as interconnected networks that require resilience engineering principles to function under pressure. His expertise combines deep technical knowledge in computer science with hands-on leadership experience managing global teams through regulatory transformations and crisis situations.
Jean’s professional approach centers on servant leadership, transparent communication, and strategic prioritization under pressure. He advocates for marrying crisis response with strategic objectives rather than treating them as sequential activities, arguing that urgency creates the focus necessary for meaningful change. His work spans technical domains including AI model development, data standardization for collaborative detection, and stress testing methodologies borrowed from cybersecurity. He holds the Chartered Financial Analyst designation, demonstrating his commitment to professional rigor in financial markets.
Academia
Jean holds a doctorate and earned his foundational education in computer science, which gave him the technical and analytical framework he applies to organizational challenges. His engineering background shapes how he views institutions as complex social systems where system design principles, redundancy, and failure analysis apply just as they do in technology architecture.
Jean pursued the Chartered Financial Analyst credential to deepen his understanding of financial markets and to enhance his credibility in working with financial institutions, regulators, and market participants. This combination of computer science rigor and financial expertise positions him uniquely to bridge the gap between technology innovation and regulatory compliance in the fight against financial crime. He remains committed to continuous learning, currently exploring sales methodologies and relationship building as he expands Soteria’s partnerships across the public and private sectors.
Key Perspectives that Jean Shares on the Podcast
Jean brings a compelling philosophy that crisis situations should never be wasted as opportunities for strategic transformation. He argues forcefully against the common practice of fixing immediate problems first and addressing strategic objectives later, insisting instead that organizations use the urgency and focus of crisis moments to implement lasting change. He offers candid insights into the hidden challenges of leadership under extreme pressure, such as managing high performers without creating toxic dynamics, knowing when to remove someone from a role that has grown too large for them, and recognizing when stress degrades communication effectiveness. Jean also challenges the financial industry to move beyond isolated institutional efforts toward true collaboration, advocating for data standards, shared AI frameworks, and even stress testing of anti-money laundering controls modeled on cybersecurity penetration testing.
A Quote from this Conversation with Jean
“Never neglect a crisis situation for an opportunity to change because that’s where it focuses minds and people the most.”
