About Michele Poole

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Founder, DeepPoole Advisory | Strategic Advisor on Payments, Growth & AI 

Michele Poole has spent more than 20 years working across payments, fintech and financial services, helping organizations navigate change, solve complex problems and turn strategy into practical action.

Through DeepPoole Advisory, Michele works with fintechs, PSPs, financial institutions and other organizations facing an important question, opportunity or challenge where the path forward isn't always obvious.

That might mean navigating Canada's evolving payments ecosystem, preparing for real-time payments, evaluating a market opportunity, figuring out where AI can create meaningful value, or bringing the right people together to work through a complex priority.

Her experience spans senior roles at Interac, CIBC, National Bank of Canada and AOL, along with advisory work across Canada's payments ecosystem, including fintechs, payment service providers and major payments modernization initiatives.

What Michele brings is not simply subject-matter expertise. She understands how strategy, regulation, technology, operations and people come together in the real world, and how to move an organization from discussion to action

 DeepPoole Advisory was built around a simple idea: complexity shouldn't prevent progress.

Organizations rarely struggle because they lack information. More often, there are competing priorities, different perspectives, unanswered questions or simply too much noise around what matters most.

Michele helps clients cut through that complexity and determine what to do next.

 Her work commonly includes: 

◆  Navigating Canada's payments ecosystem, modernization and real-time payments
◆  Helping fintechs and payments companies understand the Canadian market and what it takes to enter and grow
◆   Identifying where AI can create practical business value and where to start
◆  Working through complex strategic questions and opportunities
◆   Bringing stakeholders together around priorities, choices and next steps
◆  Turning important initiatives into practical plans that can actually move forward 

Michele's Approach

Michele is a connector, translator and builder.

She is equally comfortable working with executives, founders, product and operations teams, industry stakeholders and boards, particularly when a challenge crosses traditional organizational boundaries.

Her approach is practical and collaborative. She asks questions, challenges assumptions, connects perspectives and helps organizations get clear on both the problem they are trying to solve and what needs to happen next.

That approach is reflected in the DeepPoole Method:

Clarity — understand the challenge, opportunity and what matters most

Alignment — bring the right people, perspectives and priorities together

Momentum — turn clarity into practical action and measurable progress

Sometimes that means a focused workshop around one important challenge. Sometimes it means a defined advisory engagement or longer-term support.

The starting point is the same:

Bring me the challenge. Let's figure out the right way to move it forward.