Cristina Junqueira Co-Founder at Nubank
Cristina Junqueira is one of the most successful female fintech leaders in Latin America. She quit the job to pursue her dream of starting digital financial services through a user-friendly app called “Nubank”. It serves over 53 million customers and is one of the largest digital banking platforms. She has led the company’s policy on inclusivity programs and fought to make inclusion of women in both tech and finance.
Nubank was born after that realization that while working for “Itaú Unibanco”, Junqueira was contributing to helping the wealthy clientele. It is important to emphasize that during that period, 5 big banks cumulatively held 80% market share in the Brazilian banking industry. The monopoly that the banks established created a basis for highly charged fees and higher interest rates to the customers while the banks raked in high revenues.
In 2013 after accumulating substantial experience in the Brazilian banking system she resigned from her job at Itaú. In this period, she had a company with David Vélez, a venture capitalist who was also dissatisfied with the banking system in the country. The management’s objective in the creation of Vélez was to bring a new model of banking that is more efficient and less expensive than the conventional one. Noting that they were on essentially the same wavelength, Junqueira and Vélez partnered to create an online banking division at the bank.
As for the name of their start-up, they decided to call it Nubank, which they meant to be transparent. Nu was also intended to sound like the English word ‘new’, indicating the innovation of the organization along with the word ‘nude’ in Portuguese which meant that they wished to be a completely open financial company.
In early December 2021 Nubank, previously known as Nu Holdings, floated on the New York Stock Exchange and almost reached a market capitalization of $50 billion – briefly making Junqueira a billionaire.
Emilie Choi President & CEO at Coinbase Global, INC.
Board-Emilie Choi has been serving as the Board member since August 2022. In June 2019, she took up the position of Coinbase COO while becoming the President of Coinbase Global from November 2020. Prior to that, she worked at Coinbase as the Vice President of Business, Data, and International from March 2018 to June 2019. Furthermore, from November 2018 to August 2022, Emilie was independently on the board of ZipRecruiter, Inc.
At the same time, between April 2017 and August 2021, Emilie sat on the board of Naspers Ltd. And its subsidiary, Prosus N. Before joining UiPath, Emilie worked as the Vice President and Head of Corporate Development at LinkedIn; she also remained with the company after Microsoft acquired it in December of 2016. Prior to joining LinkedIn, she served in different capacities in corporate development, strategy and operations at Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc between August 2007 and December, 2009.
Emilie also had her corporate development and strategy in Yahoo! Inc. between 2003 and 2005, and started her career as Senior Analyst in Investment Banking at Legg
Mason Wood Walker, Inc from the year 2000-2003. Emilie completed her Bachelor of Arts in economics at Johns Hopkins University and holds an MBA from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
Sarah Biller CoFounder at Vantage Ventures
She is at present serving as the Executive Director of Vantage Ventures and FinTech Sandbox that is a Boston-based nonprofit that offers free resources, quality data sets
to entrepreneurs. She is also an investor and director in emerging growth companies that specialize in enhancing private and public equities, credit; community banking; and middle and back-office software firms. Before that, she was the Chief Operating Officer for Innovation at State Street Bank Global Exchange division and looked after Innovation Ventures at the bank. She co-founded Capital Market Exchange which is a company that deals in the provision of predictive analytics for institutional bond investors and is interested in fintech and the ability of capital markets to deal with major problems.
Moreover, she is an entrepreneur; she is also teaching ‘History of Financial Technology’ at the Graduate level at Brandeis University and Boston FinTech Meetup organizer.
She also currently serves as a director, on a venture capital firm and several startup companies all related to capital markets, trading, and the blockchain. She was with Fidelity Investments, worked at MCI’s corporate venture team as well as headed the research at both the Corporate Executive Board for Fortune 500 CFOs and treasurers.
She pursued her education in Finance from West Virginia University and George Washington University.
Some of her funding areas are the digitalization of private and public markets, distributed ledger technology (DLT), and increasing access to community banking. She likes to work with people who have an unrelenting drive to solve problems that bring about change leveraging on the new age technologies. Listed by American Banker, Innovate
Finance, Lattice80 and NY FinTech Women among the most influential and inspiring women in fintech, she is eager to use the potential of the capital markets to make a difference and empower more women.
Alisa DiCaprio Chief Economist at R3
Alisa DiCaprio serves in the capacity of Chief Economist at R3, one of the most central blockchain technology companies located in New York City. She has over twenty
years of experience in economic development and financial stability; her academic qualification includes; Doctor of Philosophy in International Development from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In the year 2024, she appears in American Banker’s list of the top 20 influencers in fintech, and she is arguably the most sought- after expert in trade digital assets CBDCs, monetary and payment policy.
At R3, Dr. DiCaprio oversees the research and market intelligence departments; she provides economic advice and assessment for various governmental and private
organizations. She has served as the chairperson of committees in BAFT, ICC, the US department of commerce as well as the world trade board. Her work is based on the desire to promote the development of innovation and digitalization in world economy Though writing peer reviewed papers on technology, trade, economic growth, and sound money. Alisa is quoted in such newspapers and magazines as the Financial Times, Euromoney and so on. She has worked in Cambodia, Chile, Finland, Japan,
Philippines, Thailand, and USA, thus she knows the language of Khmer, Spanish and French.
Sherrie Rogers Head of Global Sales Development
Sherrie Rogers plays a critical role at Kushki Mundial as the head of global sales development where the company aims to provide standardized payment solutions to the Latin American region. Kushki, an online payment platform, helps to make online payments cheaper and less susceptible to fraud but at the same time increasing the
approval rate. Currently having its operations in five different countries and therefore catering for the different markets, the company offers solutions that suit the countries.
It is important to add that Rogers came to Emissions Reductions with more than 25 years of experience in finance, sales and consultancy, and that he occupied top managerial positions. She first worked as the Head of SME Sales at Royal Bank of Scotland Business Sales before joining WorldPay where she worked in a similar capacity before working as the Managing Director at Unity Resourcing before working as Senior Global Payments Consultant at Worldline Global. She specializes in payment processing, international payments, and merchant services. Rogers is an alumnus of the University of Leeds where she studied Business and Finance at the undergraduate level and she also has a specialist payment certification awarded by Visa International.
Stacy Greiner Top Executive Officer at DailyPay
Stacy Greiner serves as the top executive officer at DailyPay overseeing the company’s operations and growth including operations, customer experiences, service and people operations teams. Launched with the objective of rewriting ‘The New World of Work’, DailyPay, through its cutting-edge technology, is a top-tier on-demand pay solution that can assist employers in improving engagement, productivity, and turnover.
Before DailyPay, Greiner was the General Manager of Sales and Marketing Solutions for Dun & Bradstreet where he had direct responsibility for the division’s P&L. She has
also been a Senior Executive at Cisco, IBM, and Accenture at which she was leading globally dispersed teams in Product, Marketing, Engineering, and Data & Analytics. Greiner has an Aerospace Engineering degree from Iowa State University and an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management. She is also a director of Proto Labs and on its Audit Committee as well.
Vrinda Gupta CEO and Founder at Sequin Financial
Vrinda Gupta is the creative mind behind Sequin Financial and its CEO; this is a fintech company with a niche focus on the credit ratings of women. She started the company after coming up with a card for Visa only to be rejected for the product.
She was listed among the 55 Most Inspiring Women in Fintech in NYC a list that was unveiled at the New York Stock Exchange. Of the moment, she said: This is quite a
special achievement since it has taken the New York Stock Exchange 175 years to have its first woman representative, Muriel Siebert. It energizes me that women are blossoming and achieving success in their careers and other endeavors, in an industry that was built to exclude them from the story.
Grace Caputo Chief Growth Officer at Payment Source
Grace Caputo has over 20 years of experience in prepaid and telecommunications; she is the current Chief Growth Officer at Payment Source. Well recognized for her capacity to sense the industry’s currents and achieve market outcomes she targets new product introduction as well as channel opportunities. Payment Sources are behind
many payment types that enable entirely new streams of value for organizations, for the government, and for citizens. Some of the organizations they work with include; Amazon, PayPal, Paytm, Canada Revenue Agency, Canada Post, Intuit, MasterCard, and Visa to ensure every Canadian gets more ways to pay or get paid by business and government.
Caputo has been associated with Payment Source since 2014 initially coming on board as the GM of the organization before being promoted to VP of Prepaid Products &
Partnerships before being promoted to her present position. Before her position at Avail A/S, she worked in such positions as the Manager of Business Development for Go
Prepaid and Channel Manager for Roadpost. Caputo has an undergraduate education from the University of Ottawa.
Ghinwa Baradhi CIO of HSBC
Ghinwa Baradhi is ranked among the world’s best banking CIOs. Highly entrepreneurial, proactive, and commercially astute, an experienced manager of multi-disciplinary
cross-border resource teams for business and IT, and HSBC’s nominated representative on the UAE Banks Federation (UBF) IT Committee.
The company is also a Diversity & Inclusion for Technology Sponsor for HSBC globally with Baradhi as their nominated official. She holds a position on the Technical Advisory
Board of Nodes Agency, a digital product development organization and is an Advisory Board Member to the Money 20/20 Asia RiseUp Program, a global accelerator that supports women in the financial sector.
Anne Boden Co-Founder at Starling Bank
She is the Co-Founder and the Chief Executive Officer of Starling Bank. Anne Boden MBE is a successful Welsh entrepreneur with long experience in the world of finance.
Before Starling Bank was founded in 2014, Boden had 30 years of experience as a director in Allied Irish Banks, the Royal Bank of Scotland, and ABN Amro.
A graduate computer scientist, she was instrumental in the incorporation of technology in the financial sector and founded Starling Bank in 2014. Her plan right from her time
in the organization was to establish the bank as a global entity.
She leads the Executive Leadership Team at Starling and is also on the company’s Board of Directors as its CEO. Boden was honored with an MBE for services to the financial and technology sector.
