5 Rising Women Leaders To Watch in Tech

Women hold less than 35% of leadership roles in America’s largest tech companies. According to the same Statista report, women hold 26.5 percent of roles at the executive, senior, and management levels in S&P 500 companies. In the fintech industry, women are represented in only 7% of leadership roles.

A 2020 report from AnitaB, an organization that supports women in tech, said that it could take 12 years to see equal representation of women and men in the industry. While those numbers may seem daunting, they’ve steadily increased as more women have joined the workforce over the last decades. 

There’s a longstanding belief that if you can see yourself represented in a position, role, or story, you can accomplish the same things. In a nutshell, “If you can see it, you can be it.”

In the tech world, these five women are leading the way and making it possible for other women to follow in their footsteps. They are part of the 7% of women in fintech leadership roles, and the growing percentage of women represented in the industry as a whole. 

These women offer others the ability to see themselves represented in emerging markets, and they are paving the way for a more equal tech industry.

Rasha Katabi, CEO & Founder of Brim Financial, has achieved leadership success with expertise spanning more than 20 years working in the fintech sphere. Her company just launched a ground-breaking technology suite for banks, credit unions, and large commercial partners to seamlessly roll out fully white labeled credit cards, an end-to-end digital banking and ECommerce platform, and the world’s largest embedded loyalty and rewards ecosystem. Katabi broke records in March when she raised $25 million in Series B funding, the largest equity round of funding led by a female CEO in Canada.

In a recent interview, Katabi said that, while perhaps she encountered more challenges as a woman in fintech, it made her stronger, more agile, and more innovative. 

Brim’s success was largely driven by their ability to study market trends, anticipate consumer desires, develop an unprecedented state-of-the-art infrastructure and technology for flexible, and secure and rewarding consumer experiences. 

Another female leader in the fintech sphere is Sue McGill, Head of Innovation/ATB Ventures for ATB Financial. She has worked on projects related to artificial intelligence (AI) and spearheaded research into the ethical responsibilities of its emergence.

McGill works with a team of researchers, data specialists, business development leaders, and tech experts to pave the way for innovation. In a world skeptical and hesitant to accept AI, the team is working to increase trust in the industry and manage innovation in the sector with responsibility.

Recently appointed as the President of Adroll, which belongs to parent company NextRoll, Roli Saxena has years of experience with the SaaS model. Saxena is helping the company move from a single product to a multi-product company.

Along with Saxena’s years of experience in the tech sphere, she has also spearheaded initiatives geared towards women’s representation in the workforce. She is part of several organizations and initiatives geared to furthering diversity and representation in the workforce.

As Founder and Chief Strategist of ExpertusONE, Mohana Radhakrishnan has led the company for more than 23 years. The digital learning management system company provides customers with integrated systems that help them solve unique and complex problems.

The company was initially founded to make corporate learning more accessible and easy to manage. Radhakrishnan also leads the company’s initiative to help Global 2000 corporations with next-generation learning that drives business value.

Michelle Curless has more than 20 years of experience in business development and leadership and has brought her expertise to marketing solutions company Cheetah Digital, where she now works as the Chief Customer Officer. The company offers data-based solutions to help big-name brands — like Williams Sonoma, Neiman Marcus, Walgreens, and Hilton — gather and optimize data to increase revenue and solidify the customer experience.

This company is leading initiatives in zero-party data innovation and changing the way companies consider data collection. With emerging trends on the horizon, like learning how to manage customer trust around privacy while simultaneously optimizing data, Cheetah Digital is creating a new basis for marketing initiatives.

Women are rising in the tech sector, bringing their leadership skills and diversifying the industry. These five women have innovated in their fields and pushed the needle forward, not only with their work but also in how they pave the way for other women in the industry. Whether you work in tech or not, they can be an example of superior leadership and breaking the glass ceiling.