NYC FinTech Women Co-Founders, Michelle Tran & Sasha Pilch -- Promoting gender equality in FinTech

[Music] Hi everyone, welcome to the Warton Fintech Podcast. I'm your host, Gabriela Arianna Campo-Erdre today, but you can call me Gabby. Today I have a pleasure of speaking with the two founders of Mirror City Fintech Women, Michelle Tran and Sasha Pilch. Founded in 2017, this organization connects, promotes and empowers women in their professional advancement in the Fintech industry. Today they have more than 5,000 members, including women and allies across investing, technology and policy roles. I had the pleasure of meeting Michelle and Sasha when I first became interested in Fintech and it's been wonderful to see this organization and their partnerships grow. New York City Fintech Women proudly hosts events across the city and works with companies who are early or late stage to bring together women and allies. In this episode, you'll hear about what motivated Michelle and Sasha to grow this network. More about their careers in Fintech and what they have planned for the future of New York City Fintech Women. I am excited to let you hear more about them, so let's get started. Thanks so much for joining us. It's wonderful to see your faces again. Where are you guys doing in from? It's great to see you as well and thanks so much for having us. I'm Colleen from Williamsburg, New York City. I'm Colleen from clear across the country in the Bay Area, so in Oakland, California, even though my background says I really want to be New York. I think we all want to be in New York at some point during the day. I'm curious if you can start off by telling us a bit more about your organization, how you guys work primarily if you're Fintech Women. Yeah, absolutely. So our mission as an organization is to connect, promote and empower women to advance their careers in Fintech. We've been around for four years now and we started, well actually Michelle was the genius behind the idea. She posted an event on Meetup and we had 16 women attend. I was one of them and I agreed with Michelle that there was such a huge opportunity for this. So we then worked together and we've had tremendous growth, which has been awesome. So we now have 7,000 members with held hundreds of events with top Fintech companies, including the likes of Plads, Stars, Payneer, pretty much all of the top ones and enterprise level clients as well like Google and Nasdaq, and we do a lot of content and help women land promotions on new jobs. Sasha mentioned our mission really is, you know, those three key words, the connect and power and promote. I think one of the more important words there is really the promote piece because historically women have not promoted themselves and so part of what we do to, besides the events, is providing a lot of different platforms to promote really amazing women in Fintech and that's everything from our Fintech and Mel Fridays where we showcase a woman every single week who is doing something really transformative and amazing in Fintech. We have our Fintech fireside minute, which allows women to really be subject matter experts and share their content with our members and our audience on everything from crypto to financial inclusion to payments and we also have our inspiring Fintech email bliss and so for us it's really important to say okay, you know I'm a female in Fintech and I want to get ahead or I want to be able to relate impact its industry. How do I do that by building my own brand and how do I do that by being more visible in the marketplace? Awesome and what inspired you to start this? Yes, so for me it was really, I mean I've been in financial services for many many years. I was at BlackRock for a number of years globally and I joined a smaller Fintech firm that I would say the tiny but they're smaller than BlackRock. For me was being part of financial services, the crossroads of financial services in tech and seeing that there weren't a lot of females and it's just the age old story, you know right and financial services in tech, there you know I was typically the only female and a 10 person meeting where it was primarily male and I personally struggled with finding women in Fintech to connect with to build my network with because we all know in order to really have success it's really primarily your network that helps you with that and so we're big components of building your network and building your own personal board and so for me I couldn't find the right home. I went to a number of women in tech events and I had to search to the crowd for that one female in Fintech or I went to a number of Fintech events and I had to search to a crowd of men to find the female, you know the five females who would be attending and obviously that story has really changed in the past four years and not just because of our org but just generally how the market's doing but I found that there was really an opportunity for us to organically create a community where we could really help each other with our careers and help each other when we think about how do we impact this industry too. I don't want to be the only female in a room, I want to be in a room with at least half females or all females. I want us all to have an equal say and so when Sasha mentioned that we were out of bar for 16 women that's really how it started was you know one day I got really frustrated with the fact that I couldn't find a community so I made one up, decided to start a meet-up, paid my meet-up dues, found a bar that would take us, you know we hope we have a lot of people and on our rainy Tuesday in New York and the flat iron we had 16 amazing women come to our very first meet-up and that's where I would thankfully met Sasha and you know the story where we've grown from the 16 women to now 7000 and I'm really helping to transform a lot of lives which was what's really important to us at the end of the day. Yeah and I want to personally thank you guys. I still remember my first meet-up we were at Morty and Soho and the counter of women there it was incredible. Clearly you guys were there but there were so many folks who were willing to be welcoming and ever someone had just started their own startup in the retirement space. You had the CEO of Alloy of course it was an incredible opportunity and people were so well organized with every event and the ability to walk into a room and feel comfortable not necessarily if you like you have to be in a t-shirt and get someone to pay attention to you that that was an awesome feeling. Yeah I remember that event well it was definitely one of our earlier ones and it was in the Morty office down in Soho and the female founder that we had speak was Rihanna Hogan who's the CEO of Kinder and I remember back then it was also a female founder that is a co-founder of Morty Nora Appsel. Yeah Nora Appsel and looking at that compared to like the event we did for International Women's Day at Nasdaq where we had a thousand attendees like granted that was virtual but still like it it's really like amazing to see how quickly this quote on and that's like pretty awesome. I think part of that too is the spirit that we go into all of our events. I think some events you go into and then it's a little bit more competitive environment for us it's all about how can you help use the person that's right next to you right there's so many ways that we can help each other and so for us a big part of what we went into the very very beginning was hey we're here to network we want to provide you with content but we also want you to spend a both of your time meeting a lot of people and so we always said you have to meet five people and the reason why we said five was because in that probably ended up you probably ended up meeting like three or four and it was a really great way for people to build their network and as you know you probably came to more than just one event and you started seeing the same people and you really started building these really deep strong relationships and that's where starting to see now in the fintech industry is that these relationships are really paying dividends for a lot of people which is so cool. Yeah I think it was such a good rule that Michelle made of okay you need to meet at least five people and you can blame it on me and then I'd always be the audience going Michelle said that I have to meet five and you're my third and like it was just such an open like relaxed fun environment so I'm so happy that we're going back to physical events hopefully soon now that things are starting to open up again. Yeah I think most networking sessions and we don't feel so but they tend to be a bit transactional whereas with that rule I remember one of my now close friends she had moved from asset to New York and was there for a week and was like I'm interested in fintech can we just chat and that's how it all got started we were friends initially and you know she was able to find a job and actually povo afterwards so it worked a lot of wonders so thank you for that again. Sure so can you guys talk about how you developed your network like building out this organization because you both had wonderful careers and you're curious how this really empowered your next name. Me it was the crucial thing like I'm Australian you can probably tell from my accent I lived in London for a little bit working for large banks like City over there I moved to New York City I didn't know anyone at all and so going to Michelle's first meetup really made me so excited as this could be like a way for me to meet other people in the industry and now I know 7000 so it's definitely paid off. I think New York is a really magical place too and I have a lot of New York Momo I'm just saying that as I sit in the Bay Area but New York itself is magical when it comes to being able to meet people and networking and not you know not just personally but professionally and I think that was one of the really cool things about New York too is that you can go to three networking events in one night. Thankfully a lot of the networking events for centralized and flat iron under certain time but you could hop down 23rd and second and then you can hop over to 23rd and fifth and be able to go to these various different networking events and that's really how we started this was through you know kind of one not just putting ourselves out there as an organization but also attend the others and inviting that conversation in. Part of what we want to do too and what we were doing was with other organizations how can we get more females visible within their you know their panels or whatnot so we would go to these other events and be like hey we're women and I see a protect women can we help you get more women on your panel because you know your last one wasn't quite there and so we know really put ourselves out there and partnered with a lot of different conferences to help them with that. That's amazing it's right that you bring up New York so much it out and now sitting here in Philadelphia I just went into a little daydream of what life used to be like and you know but how has it been moving this to a virtual setting. You've clearly been able to amplify your message and also come up with great content and I've seen what your posts say on your blogs and through LinkedIn and but how has that transitioned then and what are some highlights? Well we actually I made move over to the West Coast right before the pandemic for personal reasons and so we were thinking about how do we expand our footprint because we were getting a lot of demand from the Bay Area from London Austin you know a number of different places and so for us we come up on thinking about it really you know honestly I remember we were sitting in a leadership team meeting and we're like this is gonna be done in two weeks we don't have to change anything let's stay the course we have events all through the summer in person hundreds of people and then quickly realize okay those are not gonna happen so how do we continue to give our members the opportunity to be part of the community to hear content and that switch to virtual just happened so fast and we just had to make sure it happened because we didn't want to lose that connectivity and we didn't want to remember so that connectivity because also at that time a lot of people are losing jobs and that was hard for people that they were going through a lot of personal issues and then professional and so we're really adamant about keeping our current programming and just shifting it to a different platform so instead of in person you know let's just go virtual I think the the best thing is that we've actually been able to really expand our footprint because of it so we did a recent look at where are our members and while the majority of them are still sit in New York City we have about 30% who don't sit in New York City anymore they're anchored in places like the Bay Area or Austin but along them are you know kind of everywhere else because now that they can tap into you know these virtual different conferences and panels it's really kind of opened up our ability to impact more people which I think is really cool yeah we're definitely seeing a lot more members in like other FinTech clubs like Boston Atlanta when we were physical event only we did have the limitation of location and venue size so we would post an event in the morning and by 12 p.m. it was full capacity of 300 attendees and 300 people were on the waitlist so moving to virtual like remove those limitations and it has been good for us from an expansion perspective for sure the other thing that Michelle mentioned was like during the pandemic there were so many people that were losing their jobs which was so hard at the same time being in my role where I'm selling to venture-backed companies I had so many usually male CEOs asking me hey can you help me hire more females or can you help me hire more diverse teams and so we saw that as such a perfect opportunity to connect our members that were coming to us saying hey I've just lost my job with these well-funded companies that had a focus on supporting diversity and that's really how the higher her initiative was born during the pandemic so that's where we're able to have companies advertising roles we can make direct introductions to talented women that are looking to fill those spots it's awesome so it's next for your organization I know Michelle had answered that stuff but I was curious if you could talk a bit more about it well we this year we launched a podcast so we're super excited about that as we're talking on a podcast but you know part of our podcast and that's headed up by Nicole Nulin her whole goal with air is really to shine a longer light and a brighter light on women and fintech so we do our fintech you know Fridays but that's just like one article and we want to really dig into a lot of their journey and then what they're doing this space instead of podcast you have the ability to do that I think what we want to do going forward one is continuing to have a bigger impact outside of location right and that's where being able to go virtual has allowed us to do that so we're gonna keep this hybrid model of virtual and in person most likely we're definitely going to expand out physically to other locations in terms of physical events so look out you know San Francisco we'll be doing something probably soon ish but that's our goal is really you know how can we have the biggest impact possible because in order for all of us to succeed we need to do it together and you need to build that network together and that's where you know we want to be a big part of that story for a lot of people we can and we're so fortunate to be part of that story for a lot of people clearly you guys have such amazing experiences in BlackRock, AXP clearing and now you're at art as well and Sasha you have a wonderful international background having worked at Sony Banks and you know CROBO art and now Enville what are some friends that keep you excited or what interests you the most about working in this space? I can go first so what I've seen that's been really exciting and like I think I was very lucky and fortunate that when I first got into Fintech I did choose CROBO which was then acquired by Vlad it allowed me to see what's happening across all of the Fintech industry because it's a service provider to payments and lending and wealth tech and crypto and like every type of vertical within Fintech so that's really what's led me to where I am now at Pinwheel you know that was such a hot space of bank account aggregation and like the visa acquisition or even though it fell through it is definitely evidence of that so where I'm at with Pinwheel right now is where a payroll API and it is definitely an exciting space because we're kind of like seeing it as aggregation 2.0 and again I get to service all the different verticals within Fintech so it's really exciting yeah for me I think there's there's very two specific areas I think are exciting from a trend perspective one is digital currency and so I know there's crypto Bitcoin has been up and down you know I think it swings of ten to thousands of dollars but what that's really done is it's opened the rest of the world to what can digital currencies really be and play a part of and so I come at it really from like more of them I guess an institutional enterprise corporate lens given my years at black rock in my years at apex and how is it transforming what JP Morgan is doing how is it transforming what black rock is doing it's pretty amazing the fact that we're they're now accepting this new asset class and there's so many different variations this asset class and so I think there's definitely much more to see when it comes to the digital currency space the other piece too and what we've really seen during the pandemic is the use of Fintech and use of digital payments specifically when it comes to the underserved market and so for me I do have outside of my my career you know before that I interned at UNHCR I had a kind of a deep passion on how do you help underserved markets globally and that's something I should really want to get back to is really having kind of a broader impact there but what you're seeing is a lot of Fintech kind of come up and really building out platforms to help underserved so either it's those that you know don't have big accounts and need big accounts even specifically as those who have who need say food stamps or vouchers right so part of the pandemic I think capway was one firm that was really interesting where they really helped a lot of single mothers in that space when it came to the services that they got from the government and that as you probably know it was a very archaic low moving body and so how do you build a platform to really help people in different markets outside of the kind of the standard mainstream and help their lives be better you know even see that with blue a corn with PPP you know they were able to facilitate all these different loans when the big institutions can't so it's really interesting to see even in the short say 16 18 months and while we've been in this pandemic kind of the opportunities that have come up and people really be innovative in that sense and it's very so much of what we saw when there was a you know 2008 great financial crash you saw out of that all these really cool innovative ideas and great companies and so I think we're starting to see that in this space and while Michelle is talking about that I was realizing that our next NYC Fintech women event is actually purely focused on exactly that topic so we're doing it with square cash up and time so definitely two amazing Fintech companies that helping that underserved market just get a much fairer chance at becoming banked and are there any other companies that you admire or you're like smaller short of that you're really interested in like seeing whether you're going to go in the next three to three years so many so many I think like the neo-bank space is really interesting and baked me as a service because before you have these huge banks and now you have a lot of really specific banks who are doing cool stuff for different segments of the population who have very niche needs, right? So like daylight is serving the LGBTQ community and when you think about it and you kind of peel back the onion, it's so beneficial that they're doing that because there's different challenges that this community faces when it comes to money that they need to think about when it comes to community property or it comes to funding adoption, right? And so it's really cool to see how these neo-bank sub popped up. So like daylight, first boulevard, first boulevard, it's serving black Americans and there's a number of other ones that are I love the fact that they're segmenting. It's kind of like what happened with road road visors about five, six years ago is that they're providing really specified services and customite services which I think is the next direction when it comes to banking. I'm curious, like what's one thing that you know as you're looking at your careers, you're thinking you're clearly so Michelle you kind of talked about this a bit more but what do you see next or what fasts it a fintech do you see yourself working? And I you know I think the problem I have is I want to do a little bit of everything because there's so many cool interesting things in fintech is you know I want to run with wealth tech because that's my background but then digital occurrences is really cool and payment space and now there's a couple companies are popping up that's fintech as a service it's so how you help you know kind of tie the bigger corporations and bigger enterprises with all these really cool fintechs in the space because they need the help so you know the partnership days I think for me right now so I found my own consultancy called storm king advisors and part of that really was also to expand my industry knowledge of fintechs in general and getting kind of a first-hand experience with them and so I work with a lot of fintechs when it comes to their infrastructure what they're doing on the bd sales partnerships space and then how they actually build partnerships with bigger entities so I think that's what I'm going to focus on at least for the next you know foreseeable future but I think there's just so much opportunity it's hard to say exactly where I'm going to be and I yeah I talked with so many interesting companies every day and I want to be a part of them all because they're all doing such cool stuff for me I'm staying where I am I see this opportunity as like such a huge one you know right now I have lots of neo bank clients like a lot of the ones that Michelle mentioned they're using payroll aggregation to quickly capture direct deposits so like instead of having to send a form to HR which is a full of friction they can just do it in seconds now and then on the landing side of things rather than having to upload paystabs and like do all that annoying stuff to get alone or a mortgage it can all happen in seconds by connecting your payroll account the use cases are pretty endless like I just applied for a new apartment had to do all of those verification things all of that becomes easily done in a click rather than wasting all this time and I love the fact as well that it ties into what Michelle was talking about earlier with it's like a really mission driven thing in terms of now we can potentially give loans to people that had no alternative but to go to a loan shark or a payday lender that was giving them insane interest rates you know now we can do much fairer landing and you know I just feel like this is something that I want to stay invested in for many years to come yeah okay as someone who's really interested in what small business lending in particular it's fascinating to think about how one this type of data and like marrying a lot more it's going to change what the outcome is as far as a loan decision but also just a user experience you know I think we all grew up thinking that you don't have to provide like what felt like hundreds of pages and signatures and now with all of these integrations your wildlife it can be so much easier and it could also be safe for the user is there anything that our listeners could do to like help your mission and help NYC protect women so you definitely follow us on Instagram LinkedIn Twitter we're on all of those definitely sign up to be a member it's completely free and we're very open in who you know we accept everyone and definitely the male allies that are listening we would love your support because we believe that if we're going to make real change we need to be working together so we would love any involvement from our male counterparts. Kedal Adjil is to be very intentional and how you think about diversity in your day-to-day professional career and lives you know we tend to fall back on who we know in our networks but you know kind of taking a step back and saying okay am I reaching out beyond my network can I be more inclusive seeing you know what they we call the manels right so panels with all men you know calling that out if you see it we do that all the time and so just being very kind of conscious and cognizant of the diversity that we can have in the industry and being part of that voice of change I think is important and continue to build your network right like and that's the big thing for us is you know by helping our mission grow is by building your own network and building a very diverse network which we think is important. So thank you and it wouldn't be our podcast unless you get to answer one fun question so if you could send a note to yourself in 2030 what would it say? 2030 okay so that's in nine years. By that vacation house no it's gonna um I think it one is how can you think about the impact that you have not just in the broader industry but with companies too so part of what I'm trying to do this year is to do more investing through angel investing and through other different means not just public market but because there's just been a little bit of a step back when it comes to DC money going to female founders and so for me I love to say in 2030 hey Michelle you invested in so many great female funded companies and that's really changing kind of the landscape like I love Harlan Hamilton from backstage capital like her story and her focus she's my hero you know would love to be a mini harland if I could ever be and that's probably never not gonna happen to her accept but to say hey you know how are you impacting the community but how are you also investing more specifically in this community either with money or with time? I would probably say like hey I don't know what it's like for you right now but this has been pretty awesome like what we've been able to achieve in four years like Michelle myself Nicole Nulon, our whole amazing FinTech women team, Medina Fischer, LC like all of the amazing women I'm hoping that it's like at even the next level but like it's just been incredible and I think like we should all be like really proud of the progress with made you know what we should say Sasha is intent in nine years be like hey great we made it to 50% female yeah exactly I don't know how to quantify that we're to gather the data for that but it's gonna have it that's that is actually our goal when we talk about like what's our mission or goal it's always at least 50% and so how do we get to that 50% but I say that to a couple of people they're like how do you measure that or that's pretty a big job like oh yeah someone you need to start from somewhere thank you from starting from scratch it really means a lot for all of us in the industry and like I mentioned before it was so amazing to be part of this like wonderful supportive network in New York and you know now trying to build that up in other cities I'm really excited for you guys and I really appreciate your time again well thanks for having us we would really fund a chat thanks for much for having us thank you for listening to today's episode of the war and fintech podcast if you love our show please write us a review or engage with us on social media be greatly appreciate your support and helps us spread the word to more listeners if you want more content from our fintech community please subscribe to our podcast channel and find us on LinkedIn Twitter and Medium at war and fintech here you'll access interviews articles and much more analyzing all aspects of the industry as always a very special thank you to our wonderful editor defiel austria until next time your host gaby