Samantha Pause

Chief Innovation and Brand Officer Mascoma Bank

Samantha Pause is the Chief Innovation and Brand Officer at Mascoma Bank located in Northern New England. A lifelong banker, Samantha started her career on the front line as a teller. She has worked in several different departments throughout the bank, giving her important insight into the overall functioning of the bank from top to bottom. She has a deep understanding of customer behavior and expectations and is consistently seeking ways to improve the customer experience through technology, personalization, and New England common sense. In 2017, Samantha played a leadership role in facilitating the Bank's becoming a Certified B Corporation®, allowing Mascoma and its employees to "use business as a force for good." She is passionate about company values and culture and spends considerable time establishing personal connections with the 400 employees of the bank to learn and help them understand where their personal values line up with company values.

Equipping Teams and Branches to be Human-First, Tech-Assisted Relationship Builders

2:10 PM Track B: Panel: Innovating Around the Core: How Banks Modernize Without Disruption

Community banks and credit unions face growing pressure to modernize while maintaining live operations, customer trust, and regulatory confidence. Core replacement is often positioned as the only path forward, but it doesn’t have to be. In this panel discussion, Raphael Reznek, Chief Technology Officer at Mascoma Bank and President of Mascoma Technologies, shares how Mascoma Bank modernized by innovating around its existing core.

Drawing from real bank experience, the panel explores how running legacy and modern systems in parallel enables banks to integrate new platforms, explore fintech partnerships, and evolve frontline and customer-facing systems without halting service. Joined by Carly Cowan, Director of GTM & Client Engagement at Mascoma Technologies, this session provides a practical look at incremental modernization that preserves continuity, security, and compliance.

Attendees will leave ready to:

Modernize around an existing core without a disruptive replacement
Run legacy and modern systems in parallel to reduce risk
Integrate fintech and adjacent platforms safely and incrementally
Maintain operational continuity while evolving customer-facing systems

Check out the incredible speaker line-up to see who will be joining Samantha.

Download The Latest Agenda