speakers

Vivi Friedgut is a tech innovator and founder/CEO of Blackbullion, the financial wellbeing solution equipping young people with money skills for life.

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Blackbullion’s award-winning platform can be accessed by over 1.2 million students at partner institutions worldwide. The Blackbullion ecosystem empowers students to develop financial knowledge and confidence, be guided by their goals towards better money management and habits using the app as well as access university funding and corporate scholarships through the nation’s largest funding hub.

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Vivi is a former wealth manager, a regular public speaker and author, and was recently named FinTech Magazine’s Top100 Women.

Ola is the Founder of All Things Money, an online platform designed to provide young adults with some of the financial tools needed to help navigate the adulting world.

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All Things Money offers a wide range of personal finance tips and information from topics such as budgeting and saving to investing and mortgages both online and on the All Things Money Podcast.

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Since All Things Money was founded in 2020, Ola has hosted over 100 personal finance talks and workshops to the All Things Money community, Universities, and to corporate organisations such as Accenture, NatWest and Estée Lauder.

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She has also featured in a number of newspaper articles including The Financial Times, The Guardian, Elle Magazine and more.

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.

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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.

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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.

Smita is a global marketing advisor, influential thought leader, keynote speaker and pioneering advocate for diversity and inclusion in the technology industry.

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She has delivered high-impact global marketing transformations for some of the world’s best-known SaaS, fintech, telco and cloud technology companies.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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’.

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.

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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.

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.

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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.

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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).

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.

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.

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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.

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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.

Sophie is the co-founder of unlock VC (formerly WVC:E), the award-winning global platform and community for women in Venture Capital. In 2022, unlock VC 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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Prior to this, Sophie was aPrincipal at Anthemis' investment team, where she helped discover, evaluate and execute early stage FinTech and InsurTech investments as well as supporting current portfolio companies.

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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.

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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.

With extensive experience across the full marketing mix, Mariette has worked in B2B as well as B2C roles at a startup incubator, education, and manufacturing before moving into fintech.

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Mariette specialises in brand positioning, product launches and lifecycle management, online marketing, direct marketing, content marketing, public relations, integrated cross-platform campaigns, project management, website development, managing budgets, and event management.

Laura is an experienced content creator specialising in the financial space. She has built the 11:FS media brand from the humble early beginnings of the Fintech Insider podcast to a global media brand and audience across podcasts, videos, live events, social media and more.

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Her particular focus is making financial services accessible to all, breaking down taboos and barriers on the subject matter and giving coverage to diverse voices and geographies across the entire ecosystem to educate and inspire at all levels.

Kate is a highly experienced mixed methodology researcher and Jobs To Be Done expert, applying qualitative and quantitative techniques to identify underserved customer needs that inform new propositions and services. Prior to 11:FS, she worked with clients across multiple sectors, including insurance, telecoms, health and fitness and the gig economy.

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Kate has worked globally across markets including the UK, the US, Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Collaborating with some of the best designers, product managers and technologists out there to help get customers the products and services they need and deserve, faster.

Selma is the Founder of financial communications consultancy FinTech Fiends. Previously at financial services firms such as Schroders and Societe Generale, she has also managed public relations and marketing across Asia Pacific for global news service Reuters.

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Her experience includes moderating Mandarin-English press conferences while working at an investor relations firm.Since returning to the UK, Selma has completed a software engineering bootcamp to learn about the “tech” in “fintech”, and volunteered at a non-profit coding school.