Jihan has more than a decade of experience in communications, with a keen specialism in employer brand and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion. Having built Wise’s original employer brand and DEI teams, she now is consulting startups and fintechs on their Employer Brand approach, supporting them to win and retain diverse talent in tech.
She is currently supporting the Personio Employer Brand and Experience team as they look to evolve their Employer Brand, Recruitment Marketing and Culture initiatives.
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Lindsey leads the product, engineering, and content team for 11:FS Pulse, developing new ways to inspire customers with an industry-leading library of digital product journeys and designs. She has 8 years of direct product experience as part of a career of more than 15 years developing innovative products in cutting-edge fields and delivering from concept through launch and beyond.
Her expertise covers the full product life cycle, including research and analysis, product definition, stakeholder management and sign off, through to design, development, testing, and launch.
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Virginia is a VC investor at Eight Roads, a global venture capital firm with offices in London, US, and Asia, and $11bn in AUM, focusing on venture and growth equity investments of ~$10-30m. In her role, Virginia mainly covers Fintech and B2B SaaS opportunities, as well as companies in the Southern European space and in the UK.
Prior to her experience at Eight Roads, Virginia worked for 3 years at Citigroup in the Investment Banking team covering the Fintech sector.
In 2018 she co-founded Dailyinternship, an HR-tech startup that developed a matching algorithm to combine the preference of the students with the requirements of companies for internship/entry level positions, reaching over 100,000 registered students and 300 clients.
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Claire has worked in the City for over 30 years in senior roles across a broad range of sectors, including a brief stint on Fleet Street. As Group Head of Communications for wealth manager Brooks Macdonald, she leads a team responsible for developing communication strategies that advance the Group’s purpose of realising ambitions and securing futures through the sharing of effective ideas and practices.
Claire is also co-founder of Female Folio – an award-winning initiative to encourage women to own their own investment story.
Female Folio focuses on delivering innovative and actionable education to spotlight women’s voices both in investing and in the financial services sector. Claire’s commitment to gender equality includes a focus on raising awareness of the gaps – gender, investing, pay, pensions, mortgage and so many more that women will exclusively face.
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Victoria Newton is Chief Product Officer of Engine, Starling Bank’s Software-as-a-Service arm. Engine delivers Starling’s market leading cloud native banking platform to financial institutions around the world. She leads on the development of the Engine proposition, understanding the needs of new clients and how the platform can best work for them.
Before working on Engine, Victoria was Head of Starling’s Marketplace, where she helped build on the selection of third-party financial services available for customers to connect to in-app. Prior to this, she was Head of Propositions and Commercial Strategy for the business banking division, where she designed and delivered new products and services to improve Starling’s SME accounts.
She started working with Starling in 2018 as a consultant with PwC, and was part of the team that was instrumental in the bank being awarded £100m from the Capability and Innovation Fund (CIF).
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Sophie is a Principal at Anthemis’ investment team, where she helps discover, evaluate and execute early stage FinTech and InsurTech investments as well as supporting current portfolio companies. Sophie has been recognised on the Innovate Finance Women in FinTech Powerlist in 2020 & 2021 and is a regular on the 11:FS’s FinTech and InsurTech Insider podcast.
Sophie is also the co-founder of WVC:E, an organisation promoting inclusion, empowerment and integration of VC in Europe. In 2022, WVC:E launched its inaugural one-day Women in Venture Capital Europe Summit at Station F in Paris, bringing together 350+ attendee’s and 55+ speakers from across Europe.
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Mariam Ogunbambi is Chief Client Officer of Engine, Starling Bank’s Software-as-a-Service arm. Engine provides financial institutions around the world with access to Starling’s market leading cloud native banking platform. She leads the management of Engine’s existing clients; responsible for onboarding, implementation through to relationship and success management.
Her aim is to proactively work in partnership with clients by anticipating their challenges and providing solutions that enable them to succeed and grow using the Engine platform. Drawing on her consultancy background in Financial Services and experience in programme management and operations at Starling Bank, she seeks to work collaboratively with clients and help them reach and exceed their desired outcomes.
Before working on Engine, Mariam was Head of Card Payments at Starling. Prior to this, she joined in 2016 and delivered integrations between Starling’s own systems and the wider banking, payments and finance landscape. She is the winner of two FinTech Awards; TechWomen50 and Future Stars of Tech – Fintech Category.
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Araminta is the Strategic Programme Director for Engine, Starling Bank’s Software-as-a-Service arm. She helps to shape the organisation’s approach to core banking transformation projects. Previously Araminta ran a number of Technology teams for Starling Bank including project management and product delivery.
Araminta has a background in operational transformation and Management Consultancy, having previously worked for Accenture. For Starling Bank, some of her key achievements include managing the programme to deliver Engine’s in-house Mastercard processor, as well as running the technical integration with Standard Chartered to launch their sustainable savings product ‘Shoal’.
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Jeya is the founder of Perpus, a sales consultancy for purpose-driven tech companies. Following an extensive career in sales, she has evolved her role into being an entrepreneur having launched two different businesses in the UK and Canada.
On a personal level, Jeya has lived in three countries and loves everything about different cultures. She is a huge champion of the value of human connections.
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Freya is part of the ‘Stand out 45’ women in FinTech (Innovate Finance) and has been nominated for the Fintech Woman of the Year 3 years running.
She is an Associate Director at Willis Towers Watson and the founder of FemTech, an educational platform designed to upskill the next generation of women into Fintech, through tailored 20 minute learning sessions.
Freya has an extensive background in Product within financial services, with experience from start-ups to FTSE 100’s, creating cutting edge mobile first Wealth Tech.
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Ellie Austin-Williams is a writer, speaker and founder of This Girl Talks Money, a financial education platform and community of over 30,000 people.
As the author of the upcoming financial wellbeing book, Money Talks (Jan 2024), Ellie delivers relatable insights & practical knowledge to help people gain confidence and ownership of their finances.
Alongside building the community of financially empowered women, Ellie has worked with brands from Glamour to American Express, as well as providing financial expertise for Refinery29, Stylist, BBC News & more. Ellie is also the co-host of the podcast Money Unfiltered.
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Smita is a global marketing advisor, influential thought leader, keynote speaker and pioneering advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry.
She has delivered high-impact global marketing transformations for some of the world’s best-known SaaS, fintech, telco and cloud technology companies. She now founder and CEO of the Smita Gupta Advisory, where she advises early- to late-stage scale ups and PE-backed tech firms in fintech, crypto and SaaS spaces.
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