What Fintech’s Women Want

There are many ways to get from point A to point B—the shortest is a straight line, but obviously geometry and real life are two very different things. Among the various interesting details offered by this month’s cover subject, BTG Pactual’s Dayna Corlito, there was one I had a little more trouble fitting in than usual, which had to do with being a female executive in an industry that doesn’t have very many.

Corlito summed up the situation succinctly: “I don’t like to draw attention to the fact that I’m a minority.”

We all know about the demographic disparities that plague finance, and the ones that plague technology companies too, even giants like Google. To combine the two in a single space is, of course, to create a perfect storm that’s hard to fix. Both for the industry and for a journalist alike, the question is how to address the issue with the prudence and subtlety it deserves—and as often as it deserves.

Getting There
On the latter point, we’re probably still doing too little. But on the former, I think we’re getting there. That feeling, though, has less to do with the increasing number of female sources and profile subjects in Waters’ pages—which is great, obviously—and actually more to do with something else: a difference of opinion.

My colleague Anthony Malakian profiled AIG’s Mary Kotch earlier this year. Kotch, a mother as well as a chief technologist, was keen to explain how she finds strength in her work–life balance. As it happened, her daughter was even in her office during the photo shoot that accompanied the profile.

While more recruitment of and awareness for women are there than in the past, no cookie-cutter yet exists to make a successful chief technologist, of either gender. Context, in other words, really matters.

Following the article’s publication, we received a comment—well, one among many that otherwise loved the piece—wondering whether the profile had focused too much on the CTO’s gender. We respectfully disagreed.

After all, there are myriad industry groups, such as Women in Listed Derivatives (Wild), specifically for women in finance. And of course gender is relevant as an added challenge, especially when first breaking into finance, with 15-hour days, and adrenaline and egos that, by themselves, are enough to make most people—men or women—think twice.

And it doesn’t go away. The starkest illustration I can remember of this was earlier in the spring at a major industry event, when, right before a morning panel on this very subject, a sponsor—with evidently very poor timing—distributed fliers to hotel rooms about that evening’s paid-for entertainment at a gentleman’s club nearby. “I guess we’re not supposed to be interested,” the panel’s moderator, a female fintech executive, put it.

From A to B to C-Suite
All of this brings me back to Corlito, and getting from point A to B. She simply wanted to prove herself able to do the work she knew she could do—and, at a Brazilian firm where close to three out of four staff are still men, she’s done just that.

Making it to the C-suite, she says, is just plain hard. It implies choices—sacrifices, in fact, and she is candid about how those may well be greater for women. Some might call her opinion harsh or battle hardened, while others might describe it as realistic. While more recruitment of and awareness for women are there than in the past—and should be—no cookie-cutter yet exists to make a successful chief technologist, of either gender. Context, in other words, really matters.

The fact that Kotch and Corlito’s thoughts have formed so differently, despite their mutual success, is testament to the different ways of seeing the issue. And that’s why, even though Anthony focused Kotch’s profile on her work-life balance and family, and Corlito’s piece hardly touches on either subject, we both did justice to one of the biggest issues in financial technology that nobody much talks about, in the best way we know how—by staying true to the subjects.