September 2018: Waters—Twenty-Five Years in the Making

Twenty-five years. A quarter of a century. Half my lifetime. However you express it, it’s a long time. That is how long Waters has been in existence. Founded in the summer of 1993 by publisher Dennis Waters—hence the name—this publication has been around the block a few times. Just two issues were published in that first year—a summer and a winter edition—and paging through those two magazines, it’s fair to conclude that 1993 wasn’t a vintage year from a design perspective.

There have been highs and lows along the way, but none has come close to matching the events of the morning of September 11 in New York, the day when Risk Waters launched the inaugural Waters USA conference and fatefully chose to host it on the 106^th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center. It was a day that would have started out with a mix of optimism and excitement for the 16 Risk Waters staff members—not to mention the 65 delegates—at Windows on the World that clear, bright morning, and ended in tragedy in what will surely come to be recognized as one of the most seminal days in human history, a line in the sand, a watershed when the world changed forever.

Waters weathered that storm and under the direction of Ben Ray, now at Bloomberg, the brand grew significantly. Lee Hartt, one of InfoPro Digital’s current MDs, took over where Ben left off, which loosely coincided with my appointment of editor. Now the title is under the steady hand of Katie Palisoul. Anthony Malakian in the New York office was a huge help to me as an advisor and sounding board during the early days of my editorship and continues to push the boundaries of fintech journalism, while other outstanding journalists I have had the pleasure of working alongside (and who Waters readers will no doubt remember), include Jake Thomases, Tim Bourgaize Murray and Dan DeFrancesco. More recently, James Rundle continues to drive and shape this magazine’s editorial, while in Hong Kong, Wei-Shen Wong regularly pulls rabbits out of hats.

But there is another person who has helped me put more than 100 issues of this magazine to bed; someone who has been instrumental in our ability to consistently hit deadlines over the years; and someone who I consult regularly about this and that, who sprinkles what I refer to as her “fairy dust” all over our editorial: Elina Patler, subeditor of this great book. If ever there was someone worthy of the unsung hero epithet, it is she.

And so from all of us to all of you—our contributors, advisers, sources, clients, supporters, readers and even our critics—thank you helping to make Waters what it is.