Peter Vander Auwera on FemTechLeaders

Way back in November 2014, I got this DM tweet from @sammaule: “Been asked to put together a list of top 100 women in FinTech globally for conference in March. Looking for your input.”

I reached out to Sam and suggested we could make it a major design theme for Innotribe at Sibos 2015, SWIFT’s premier event for the financial industry, and produce a joint whitepaper on Power Women in FinTech. It was the start of a fantastic collaboration with Sam and Christine Duhaime @cduhaime from Digital Finance Institute, culminating with the release of the paper on June 3, 2015 at Digital Finance 2015, the first Canadian FinTech conference, held in Vancouver.

We did not want it to be yet-another-list. We did not want it to be another girl-geek-power list. What we wanted was a list of women making a difference in the financial services industry, whether they were having C-level roles in their organisations or were change agents deep in the fabric of their institutions. We were looking at big and small financial institutions, startups, investors, and VCs, and our ambition was to span the globe.

We compiled all existing lists we found and also did a crowdsourcing via twitter and other social media. We had a strong list, but we believed we could better represent regions such as South America, Africa, and Asia and reached out to our contacts to get additional suggestions.

We ended up with a list of 437 Power Women in FinTech, and the paper we released (downloadable here) was one of the most downloaded papers published by Innotribe in 2015.

But Sam kept on going. He conducted an impressive number of interviews highlighting key success stories of Power Women coming from various FinTech companies and banks, growing the list to more than 800 women across the world. End-August marked the launch of his website (https://www.femtechleaders.com/). Dedicated to these women, it started with the publication of some 25 in-depth interviews from the original list. Sam kept on populating and perfecting the list, adding interviews month after month. The website is now leading into a movement of Power Women with regular meet-ups in different continents.

As promised, we also involved a number of the Power Women in our flagship event “Innotribe at Sibos 2015” (Singapore, from 12-15 Oct 2015) to stimulate discussion and debate along the week.

We are extremely honoured to have enabled this initiative in collaboration with Carlisle & Gallagher Consulting Group and the Digital Finance Institute. It has been an incredible experience and we express our gratitude to Sam, Christine and all the Power Women for their hard work and dedication in authoring an important and timely white paper, its associated website, and movement.

@petervan

Co-Founder Innotribe

 

About Innotribe

Launched in 2009, SWIFT Innotribe is about innovation and connecting people, networks and ideas. We bring together global innovators and investors, strategists, and influential decision-makers from leading financial institutions across the globe, providing them early insights into innovations that could disrupt current business models and create new opportunities for new ones. Through the Startup Challenge competition, we bridge the gap between the startup ecosystem and the financial service community. For more information, please visit www.innotribe.com or follow us on Twitter: @innotribe and Linkedin: Innotribe.

About SWIFT

SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect more than 10,500 banking organisations, securities institutions and corporate customers in more than 200 countries and territories. SWIFT enables its users to exchange automated, standardised financial information securely and reliably, thereby lowering costs, reducing operational risk and eliminating operational inefficiencies. SWIFT also brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest. For more information, visit www.swift.com or follow us on Twitter: @swiftcommunity and LinkedIn: SWIFT