In honor of Women’s History Month 2024, FTA is spotlighting females in fintech at our member companies.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. I am Group CEO and Managing Director of Zip Co Limited (ASX: ZIP), a digital financial services company, offering innovative, people-centred products that bring customers and merchants together. Operating in two markets – the US and Australia/New Zealand, Zip offers point-of-sale credit and digital payment services, connecting millions of customers with its global network of tens of thousands of merchants. My role is to ensure we deliver on our strategic pillars of profitable growth, product innovation and operational excellence – to maximise our opportunity and drive long-term value for our stakeholders. I am also passionate about creating an inclusive and values-rich environment for our team to excel.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? Professionally, I’m proud to have taken a non-linear approach to my career and been prepared to try something new. I trained as a ballerina, was an investment banker for 20 years, moved into more innovation-focused roles across a number of industries that were new to me and am now leading a fantastic company that supports customers with flexible and inclusive credit. It’s very rewarding to lead such a passionate team and to see the value we provide our customers and merchants.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Find your champions – people and organisations that support you and give you the best possible foundations to flourish. Be curious and embrace ‘the new’, as quite often this is where the greatest opportunities lie. Always be yourself and stay true to your core values. As early as you can, build a diverse network of great people you can learn from, and lean on, throughout your career.
💫Tell us about yourself and your current role. I was born in England, raised in the US, with many childhood summers spent in Pakistan. My parents were products of the Indian Diaspora, born in Zanzibar and Pakistan, respectively, far from their ancestral villages in Central India. This history of multigenerational diaspora informs my identity, and my work at Remitly—where I focus on blending innovation and protection in a way that serves customers. Prior to Remitly, I served as SVP, Deputy General Counsel for Fifth Third Bancorp and Fifth Third Bank, N.A., and held other corporate counsel roles at Warren Resources and PepsiCo.
At Remitly, I oversee legal, compliance, enterprise risk management, policy and regulatory affairs, and global impact. Day to day, I set the overall strategy and priorities for my teams with a focus on customer centricity and maintaining trust with stakeholders, starting with our customers but also including policymakers, regulators and investors. Some key accomplishments over the past year include making our first Pledge 1% grants, publishing our first Social Impact report, standing up our Policy and Regulatory Affairs function, supporting licensing and expansion of our business into the UAE and growing our customer centricity and Consumer Protection programs across all three lines of defense.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of?
I’ve been grateful for the opportunity to work on a wide variety of projects that mean a lot to me. The Remitly IPO certainly ranks high on that list because it has enabled the business to continue scaling through economic headwinds and have an immense impact on the lives of customers and employees. The work we do at Remitly is more than financial transactions. It’s about transforming lives by leveraging technology and innovation to spread prosperity more efficiently around the world. That opportunity motivates me every day, and I’m very proud to be a part of Remitly.
💫What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry?
When you conform too much to succeed, winning will feel like losing. So, learn and grow, but bring your authentic self. By opening the door to some vulnerability, you will expand the world of opportunity and increase the odds that success, when it comes, is actually fun.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Yvonne Chao is Director of Public Policy at EarnIn, a leading Fintech in the Earned Wage Access space, where she navigates the complex intersection of business and government to shape regulatory environments conducive to responsible innovation and better outcomes for consumers. Yvonne’s background spans over a decade in political campaigns, legislative offices, and corporate government affairs, driving impactful change in both public and private sectors.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? My favorite achievement was passing the nation’s first Earned Wage Access legislation in Nevada on behalf of EarnIn and our customers. As new entrants in the financial services space, it is essential to gain regulatory clarity, yet incredibly challenging. It took years of learning from what didn’t work, careful planning, stakeholder engagement, industry collaboration, and consensus-building to address diverse interests to pass the bipartisan legislation. We facilitated intense relationship-building and guided strategic conversations to make Nevada’s EWA legislation the country’s leading model for responsible regulations that still promote innovation. Much work is still required to modernize laws more comprehensively across the country and eliminate dated mentalities that don’t serve all of the needs of consumers today. I’m proud that this effort helped create a path forward for a new type of financial product that meaningfully improves people’s lives.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Refrain from being boxed into what your title says or be intimidated by those with more significant titles. Be authentic, know your strengths, and build a strong network. Find the art of the possible in areas where it feels like a never-ending uphill battle. Play the long game over short-term wins by taking the time to build trust and doing what’s right. Balance confidence with humility – you can be both strong and soft at the same time.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Donna is an agile leader and collaborative business partner with extensive in-house legal experience focused on a wide range of matters, including global financial technology services, strategic initiatives, product legal and regulatory analyses, risk management, and complex commercial transactions. Donna is Deputy General Counsel at Intuit Inc. and the Legal Business Partner for Intuit’s Money Organization, which powers prosperity for customers through its payments, banking, lending, and platform offerings.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? I am most proud of my role as a primary driver of Intuit’s participation in the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the US federal government established the PPP, an SBA-backed forgivable business loan program designed to prevent small businesses from shuttering by keeping their workforce paid and covering certain of their operational expenses. Nothing in my career has been more challenging and complex and, all the while, more rewarding and meaningful. Through our team’s tireless efforts, we helped our customers – the smallest of small businesses – in their time of greatest need. Nearly 40,000 eligible Intuit QuickBooks customers accessed $1.32B in PPP loans to maintain more than 250,000 employees on payroll and keep their businesses open during the pandemic. The average loan size for Intuit QuickBooks customers was less than $35,000, compared to roughly $100,000, the average PPP loan size distributed by the SBA. Making this kind of an impact in the lives of our customers during an unprecedented world crisis was truly an honor and an experience of a lifetime.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Increasing the number of women in fintech should be an industry priority because we offer fresh perspectives across all facets of financial services. A good start to bridging the fintech gender gap is building strong communities and attending industry events and conferences that provide dynamic opportunities to network, learn, and discuss the latest trends and innovations. Understand your space, become a thought leader in fintech, and then participate in speaking events and panels. Don’t underestimate your abilities or be afraid to take on new or challenging work; change keeps you sharp. Be vocal about your expectations and what you want from your employer, whether that’s a clear career path, more stretch assignments, or better support. Find mentors and grow with guidance.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Amanda Anderson is the Global Head of Public Policy & Government Relations for Block (formerly known as Square), where she leads the team responsible for engaging with policymakers and community groups, developing policy strategy, and partnering with internal and external stakeholders on policy priorities.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? I’m incredibly proud of my long focus on building and maintaining healthy teams. Working in government, tech, and now fintech has led me to some of the most intense work experiences imaginable – and frankly, it can all break down if there’s not trust and stability baked into the team from the ground up. This doesn’t just happen on its own, it takes deliberate focus, and sometimes means time away from other seemingly critical work. But when done right, building a team of leaders who feel confident and supported means stability during chaos – which is a key factor for successful outcomes in these ever changing environments we all operate in.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? While sometimes you may feel frustrated – like you are hitting a wall or just not breaking through in the work – just remember, this is an ever-evolving industry where talent and deep subject matter expertise will always rise. This turmoil of ever-evolving issues can lead to both challenges and great opportunity – be the expert. It always shines through in the end.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. I’m the Chief Product Officer at Betterment, where I’ve worked for nearly five years. I’m responsible for the product management and product design teams across our three lines of business. Like any good product nerd, I love thinking about how to keep pushing Betterment forward and what more we can do to best serve and delight our customers. Outside of work, you can find me hanging out with my nine-year-old daughter in and around Philadelphia.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? I’m indescribably proud of the team that I’ve built at Betterment. It is an absolute joy to work alongside some of the smartest and kindest people in the industry. We show up for each other and our customers every day by coming together to ship products that make people’s lives better.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? I always tell women in product, no matter where they are in their careers, that it’s critical to (a) ask for help when you need it and (b) to get comfortable knowing that you can’t know everything. Clearly, these two things are related. So often, I observe women in my profession drowning under the weight of feeling that they need to be experts in everything they touch–it’s impossible when what we do is so inherently cross-functional in nature. Build relationships with your peers and lean on them to move things forward. No woman is an island!
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. I started my career as a lawyer but quickly realized that I was more interested in the business side of deal-making. My first foray into financial services was right after business school when I joined Citibank’s consumer banking business. I was in a risk management position when the economic downturn of 2008-2009 unfolded, and I saw firsthand how many consumers spiraled into unmanageable debt due to the high unemployment rate and a plummeting real estate market. These early days shaped my passion for creating better financial products and improving consumer experiences. At Klarna, I oversee the commercial relationships with the payments and banking ecosystem, and my role spans card issuing, card acquiring, commercial banking, and lending partnerships. What I love most about Klarna is leveraging my experience in traditional financial services to enable Klarna’s Product teams to build best-in-class products and experiences. That positive impact on our customers’ quality of life gets me out of bed every morning and energizes me.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? Balancing a demanding career with being a mother to two young girls and setting an example for them is what I’m most proud of. I truly believe that anything you set your heart and mind to is possible. Being able to demonstrate it to my daughters rather than just saying it makes me super proud. Besides that, looking back at my career, I’m very proud to have played a pivotal role in Klarna’s success. I had the privilege to sign deals that landed Klarna in the top spot of the Shopping category in the App Store and improved our unit economics drastically at a time when profitable growth was topping every single investor’s mind. You don’t get to have this kind of impact at larger companies, and that makes me proud and grateful at the same time.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? The fintech industry is predicated on partnerships and collaboration between incumbents and disruptors. Hence, relationships are key. Invest time and effort in building relationships whether you see potential for working together or not. People move around, and companies’ objectives change over time. I guarantee you that there will come a day in which that relationship that you’ve built will help you unlock a deal, answer a question that you’ve been grappling with, teach you something you didn’t know, or at the very least, help you pass dead time on your way to an industry conference. The relationships you build are as important as the experiences you have under your belt.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Brittanie Williams is the CMO of EarnIn, where she prioritizes telling the stories of the millions of people EarnIn impacts each and every day. A veteran marketer, Britt has centered her career around launching and advocating for new and groundbreaking innovations, most notably building the driver strategy at Uber prior to EarnIn.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? Launching new technology can be exceptionally hard, but when you’re able to directly impact someone’s personal life and their ability to move forward – that inspires me. We see that every day at EarnIn, people are able to own their financial momentum, and that is tremendously rewarding.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Know your customer. Understand what they really need and serve them with integrity.
We’re spotlighting the powerhouse women leaders who serve on FTA’s Board of Directors. We’re honored to benefit from the wisdom, leadership, and creativity of these women who guide our work representing the fintech industry.
Meet our female Board members:
⭐ Sarah Paul serves as Director of US Corporate Affairs and Public Policy for Intuit, where she leads the small business policy and advocacy team. Before joining the private sector, she spent 15 years in the United States Senate, among other roles.
⭐ Meredith Fuchs is Plaid’s General Counsel, where she leads the legal, policy, risk, compliance, and privacy teams. She previously served as General Counsel at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, among other roles in government and private practice.
⭐ Sigal Mandelker is at Ribbit Capital, a global investment firm focused on #fintech and #crypto. She has held numerous high-ranking positions in the U.S. Department of Treasury, the U.S. Department of Justice, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, and in private practice.
⭐ Brigit Carroll is a senior policy and campaigns manager at Wise, where she advocates for the company’s mission of money without borders. She is an international policy and communications professional with experience engaging with policymakers and regulators in Europe, the U.S., Canada, and beyond.
⭐ Michelle Staton is the Director of U.S. Government Affairs at Zip Co, a leading #BuyNowPayLater firm. In this role, Michelle develops smart fintech policy and executes a forward-moving regulatory strategy for the industry.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. Mercury works with partner banks to provide our core services. This allows us to invest deeply in our product, user experience, and in helping more startups succeed. As Head of Financial Partnerships and Operations at Mercury, my focus is on managing and enriching our relationships with partner banks and financial institutions, ensuring seamless onboarding and smooth financial transactions for our startup customers. This role demands a blend of fintech acumen and relationship-building skills, areas where I draw heavily from my background in education policy and edtech to make strides.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? One achievement that stands out distinctly in my career at Mercury is the successful launch of our corporate credit card, IO, in 2022. Joining Mercury as the 20th employee, I’ve had the unique opportunity to witness and contribute to the company’s growth and innovation firsthand. The IO card project, in particular, represents a significant milestone in our journey to offer financial solutions tailored for startups. The process of bringing the IO card to life was a testament to the power of collaboration and partnership. Working closely with our financial partners, we navigated the complexities of the fintech landscape to design a product that not only meets the dynamic needs of startups but also sets a new standard for banking services in our industry. The IO card’s launch required a harmonious blend of technical innovation, strategic planning, and relentless dedication to our vision of empowering startups with the tools they need to succeed.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Invite more women to join your events, whether it is a partner dinner or a quarterly business review. Bring other women with you to observe, learn, and back you up in these spaces. Any time I meet with partners, and I can bring a member of my team with me, I do. There is a ton of power in telling younger women that they belong in all spaces and in rooms where decisions are made. Lean into your strengths – build relationships and run partnerships the way that feels right to you rather than trying to fit the mold of how your peers are doing the work. The banking industry tends to be heavily male-dominated. When you make space for yourself and your way of doing things, you make space for other women as well. Reflect on your unique strengths and point of view – remind yourself of what you are adding to the space and the value your perspective brings. Your diversity of thought is important in these spaces and can help drive innovation.
💫 Tell us about yourself and your current role. My name is Kasey Matthews, and I am a Senior Data Scientist at Zest AI, where I focus on helping innovative lenders and financial regulators adopt technologies that will reduce algorithmic bias in consumer lending. I previously worked in data analytics in the legal and environmental fields. I earned my MS in Applied Statistics from West Chester University and a BS in Applied Mathematics from the University of Tulsa.
💫 What’s an achievement you’re most proud of? Through my work with great mentors and colleagues, I am proud to have the opportunity to work on social impact projects advocating for fairness. One case, in particular, is when I released the Zest Race Predictor, a more equitable race-proxying tool. The Zest Race Predictor’s accuracy enables us to conduct fair audits, whether in the fintech space or any other industry. Giving people who were never properly identified the opportunity to be counted which brings them into the picture to help us create more inclusive technology.
💫 What’s your advice for women in the fintech industry? Do not be afraid to ask questions, share your opinions, and push for what you are passionate about. When imposter syndrome creeps in, remember you are a propitious contributor to the fintech industry; your voice and your skills are valued.