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Hey, fintech fam 💜

There’s been a lot of conversation lately about what strong leadership actually looks like in practice.

In most real business environments, leadership shows up in how decisions get made.

How people are aligned across teams, how tradeoffs are actually agreed on, and how execution holds together once things start moving fast.

And the more you look at it, the more it becomes clear that the way leadership is exercised has a direct impact on everything downstream.

From product quality to team performance to how organizations navigate growth, regulation, and change at the same time. Good leadership is the crux of success.

That’s what today’s story is about: how leadership actually functions when you’re inside the complexity, not observing it from the outside.

It’s why I’m hosting an entire Summit dedicated to leadership in fintech on April 29th!

72% of attendees are leaders from companies like Binance, Capital One, Affirm, and more. I hope you’ll join us! Get your 1-Day pass here.

Let’s get into today’s story 🤑

​Join RevTech Labs for an exclusive Fintech Showcase during New York Fintech Week, bringing together founders, investors, and ecosystem leaders for an evening of high-impact networking and rapid-fire pitches from top fintech and insurtech innovators!

​Hosted at The Town Hall @ Penn 2, this curated session highlights emerging companies from leading accelerator programs and offers attendees a front-row look at the next wave of financial services innovation.

In partnership with the Fintech is Femme Leadership Summit, the showcase creates a dynamic environment designed to foster meaningful connections between startups, capital providers, and industry decision-makers.

​Expect a fast-paced hour of founder presentations, ecosystem insights, and intentional networking with leaders shaping the future of fintech and insurtech.

One thing I’ve learned in my decade of fintech experience and surrounding myself with incredible leaders:

You can almost always tell who’s leading a room as soon as you walk in. And it’s not because they take control of it.

The conversation opens up because of their questions, people engage more thoughtfully with everyone participating, and the dialogue starts to build on itself rather than just move forward.

It goes from one person pushing toward an answer to a group actually working through the problem together because of questions, usually at the quiet helm of just one person.

And that same dynamic often shows up naturally in the way most women lead.

Research from the American Psychological Association found that women leaders tend to score higher on behaviors associated with effectiveness, including mentoring, collaboration, and developing others.

The workplace calls these “soft” skills.

But I call them the skills that make things happen.

These skills influence who feels comfortable speaking up at work. They’re the difference between useful and performative feedback.

They decide how fast problems get solved. Or how often things have to be redone if effective and collaborative communication isn’t prioritized the first time.

Employees of companies with more women in their workplace (regardless of gender) have more job satisfaction. More organizational dedication. More meaningful work. And decreased burnout.

This is according to a report by The Center for Creative Leadership, which also shared:

I can show you stats and studies all day, but let’s look at it in practice.

Take Ida Liu, CEO of HSBC, for example.

A big part of the work in wealth management right now is the transfer of not just assets, but decision-making itself, which she dedicates much of her career to sharing.

In practice, that means ensuring clients aren’t just inheriting capital, but also the judgment frameworks, communication styles, and trust structures that determine how that capital is actually managed across generations.

Or Janelle Sallenave, COO at Chime.

A huge part of her work has been building systems where customer experience and operational scale don’t compete with each other.

That means translating member needs into product and service decisions across engineering, support, and operations.

That’s the kind of work that sits directly at the intersection of empathy and execution.

And then there’s Delisha Grant, who has spoken about breaking through structural barriers while still operating at a high level across both legal rigor and interpersonal dynamics.

She also spoke on the importance of building a diverse network of people who don’t look like you.

"Oftentimes, people assume a network might just include people who look like you, and that's not necessarily the case," Grant said. "There are allies. There are executive sponsors who will be invested in your growth."

Delisha is right, and curating a network that actually moves the needle is exactly what The Leadership Summit on April 29th is designed to do.

👉 72% of current attendees are decision makers: including C-Suite, VPs, and Directors.

👉 Attendees represent companies like Binance, Mastercard, Capital One, Affirm, and more.

👉 On average, 3 employees per company are attending New York Fintech Week - allowing you to connect and follow up with more than just one contact.

This year’s speaker roster includes leaders like Ida, Janelle, and Delisha - plus:

What all of this really points to is a shift in what “good leadership” actually requires right now.

The systems companies are operating in are more interconnected than they used to be.

A product decision isn’t just a product decision anymore. It touches compliance, risk, customer experience, data, and brand… sometimes all at once. The surface area of every choice has expanded.

In that kind of environment, execution doesn’t fail because people aren’t smart enough.

It fails because context gets lost between functions, or because decisions don’t hold once they move from discussion to implementation.

And that’s why the way leadership shows up matters more now than it used to.

The real takeaway isn’t about who leads differently or better. It’s that the definition of leadership is already changing in response to the complexity of modern business.

And the companies that recognize that early will build faster, break less often, and spend less time correcting what wasn’t aligned the first time.

Forget 2016. I’m throwing it back to 2005.

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📚 Increase your expertise by ordering your copy of my book, Fintech Feminists: Increasing Inclusion, Redefining Innovation, and Changing the Future for Women Around the World.

Thanks for spending time with me today. See you in New York on April 29th?

Love,

Nicole 💜