Harsh Prasad

What is your experience in financial services?

I'm a financial services product builder with nearly three decades of experience delivering impactful, sustainable change across payments, channels, core banking, and digital assets in highly regulated environments. I started on the technology side and in my last tech role I ran Citi's core banking ecosystem across 53 countries in EMEA. Since 2017, I have focused on product development and global payments modernisation: cross-border payments, domestic payments, digital assets, and now leading product engineering for OnePay, Citi's ISO 20022 native global payments platform. I build to three anchors: commercial & regulatory impact, operational simplicity & sustainability, and modular, scalable, reusable technical design. I have strong views on where payments is going: on cross-border payments, the future of correspondent banking, digital money, AI in operational workflows, and on a different way of thinking about payment architecture altogether.

What is your mentorship experience?

I have primarily mentored in 3 settings so far: a) Intra-Citi and external mentorship for colleagues from various contexts including ethnic / cultural, sexual orientation & identity, gender. b) Short term mentoring for start-ups aiming to participate in competitions and gain sponsorship / funding from Citi c) Mentoring internal Citi teams through a variety of regional and global innovation challenges.

Why do you want to be a mentor?

I have been lucky to have experienced diversity in many forms through my career so far. I understand the positive potential of workplaces and environments that recognise, welcome and celebrate diversity in their workforce. To me, promoting and improving diversity in the workplace is a deeply personal mission, very rewarding in ways my day job cannot be. I believe I'd bring to this programme a combination of personal lived perspective on exclusion, the positive change possible through active inclusion, professional listening skills through my counselling experience, and a genuine commitment to making the spaces I am part of, fairer for everyone in them.

What is your approach to mentoring?

My natural style as a mentor is to provide a safe space, be present, and listen first. I try to be there without judgement, to let emotions flow without shame, and to help people take stock of where they are, where they want to go, and what they're working through. Sometimes we have talked about the things they genuinely hold dear versus the things they've been told to hold dear. I do offer advice and guidance, but only when I feel it is appropriate, and very rarely as the starting point. Usually the value comes from helping people think things through for themselves and at their own pace. I've loved hearing from people I've worked with, on the spot or years later, that this approach has genuinely helped them. For someone who identifies as LGBTQIA+ and is navigating early-to-mid career in financial services, I think a great mentoring relationship starts the same way…through creating a space where they don't have to perform or apply filters. I don't have hard data, but over many years in this industry, I've noticed that the number of people openly expressing an LGBTQIA+ identity feels lower than I'd expect. Some of that may be representation, but I suspect a lot of it is people feeling they need to keep that part of themselves separate from work. I believe people should feel safe about bringing their authentic self to work.