Sara Benjamin
Fintech entrepreneur and consultant
Please introduce yourself and your background. What’s your experience as a woman in the fintech industry?
I’m a fintech entrepreneur and consultant with a background in investment banking and property development . Comparing fintech with the more traditional finance world, I’d say the former has a stronger and more collaborative community of women.
My entire experience in finance has been as the only woman in a room. I’ve been accused of dressing like a nun in the past for a reason. I wanted to be taken seriously. However, that is changing today. Women can more freely embrace their femininity and be themselves in this industry. I think that’s because women are allowing themselves to be that and facilitating the change.
That’s inspiring to hear! And what’s your stance on diversity? What can be done to empower women in fintech?
I’ve given a lot of thought to what inclusion means versus diversity. In my opinion, inclusion is really about how you act from moment to moment. It goes back to Simon Sinek saying, “You don’t fall in love with your future partner in one moment. It’s a series of events.” Inclusion is a series of events.
Because the women in tech are comfortable disrupting the status quo, they could help each other even more by enabling that ability to speak up and be more visible.
Also,enabling teams to harness what empathy means is vital. You can’t be disrupting somebody else’s world and then not have empathy about the effect of that. If that could be a message or a slogan, that would be great because we all need more empathy.
What can the fintech industry do better for female empowerment?
I’m definitely a believer that the industry cannot yet be where we want it to be. The things that particularly stand out for me are the gender financing gap and debt issues for women. You see it every day —women trying and failing to get equity or debt funding. So, improving access to funding for women and debt financing via fintech solutions remains important.
