Fintech Focus — Dec 2019

Every month we share a curated selection of people moves in fintech. If your colleagues or friends would like to subscribe to our newsletter, we’ve included a subscribe link here, or they can visit our website.

Fintech companies aim to rethink traditional financial services and replace outdated products with newer, more relevant and accessible tools. At the helm of these cutting-edge challenger companies are leaders striving to build teams as diverse as the people they seek to serve. In contrast, leadership teams at traditional financial services firms have remained relatively homogenous.

Every month the Intersection team tracks leadership moves and board appointments across fintech. This year we measured 284 hires/board appointments across 165 fintechs: women made up 37% of the moves, while underrepresented minorities comprised 20% of the total. Combined, diversity hires accounted for 47% of the leadership moves made in fintech this year. Although not a direct comparison, in contrast, “women and minorities combined comprise less than 25% of all senior leadership positions at the big banks” according to a recent article in Fortune.

Select Leadership Moves

December 2019

• Affirm: Sharda Caro del Castillo joined Affirm as Chief Legal Officer. Sharda was previously Interim Head of Global Payments and Deputy General Counsel at Airbnb.
• Bakkt: Mike Blandina was promoted from Chief Product Officer to Chief Executive Officer at Bakkt. Link
• Blend: Marcella Butler joined Blend as Head of People Operations. Marcella was previously Chief People Officer at Impossible Foods.
• Canaan: Brendan Dickinson was promoted to General Partner at Canaan. Link
• CircleUp: Nick Rockwell joined CircleUp as Managing Director of Credit. Nick was previously Head of Sales and Partnerships at Funding Circle.
• Earnin: Sean Delehanty and Richard Liu joined Earnin as Chief Financial Officer and Head of Engineering, respectively. Sean was previously Senior Vice President of Finance at Symantec. Richard was previously a Director of Engineering at Facebook. Link Link
• Edison Partners: Jennifer Lee was promoted to Principal of the Fintech investment team at Edison Partners. Link
• Extend: Rob Pfeifer joined Extend as Chief Revenue Officer. Rob was previously Chief Revenue Officer at Affirm. Link
• Figure: Anthony Pompliano, joined Figure as a board member. Anthony is the co-founder of Morgan Creek Digital Assets. Also, C.D. Davies, Tina McNulty and Tony Morosini joined as Head of Lending, Chief Communications Officer and Vice President of Banking and Payments, respectively. C.D. was previously Head of Global Mortgage and Chief Executive Officer of Citi Mortgage at Citibank. Tina was previously Vice President of Marketing and Communications at Expa. Tony was previously co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Quin. Link
• Gemini: Julian Sawyer joined Gemini as Managing Director of the UK and Europe. Julian was previously co-founder and Chief Operating Officer at Starling Bank. Link
• General Atlantic: Raph Osnoss and Roger Gao were both promoted to Principal at General Atlantic. Link
• Google: Bill Ready will join Google in January as President of Commerce. Bill was previously Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at PayPal. Link
• HouseCanary: Kim Broadbeck and Amir Friedman joined HouseCanary as Senior Vice President of People Operations and Vice President of Strategic Sales, respectively. Kim was previously Vice President of People and Places at PAX Labs. Amir was previously FI Partnership Lead at Plaid.
• Lively: Amy Kelman, Cory Gaines and Jeffrey Lui joined Lively as Vice President of Customer Experience, Chief Product Officer and Vice President of Engineering, respectively. Amy was previously Chief Customer Officer at Traackr. Cory was previously Senior Vice President and Head of Product for Network Solutions at Change Healthcare. Jeffrey was previously Vice President of Engineering at eHealth. Link
• Marlette Funding: Andrew Deringer joined Marlette Funding as Chief Capital Officer. Andrew was previously Senior Vice President and Head of the Institutional Sales Group at LendingClub. Link
• Monzo: TS Anil joined Monzo as Chief Executive Officer, United States. TS was previously Global Head of Payment Products and Platforms at Visa. Link
• Oak HC/FT: Oivind Lorentzen was promoted to Vice President of early and growth stage fintech investments at Oak HC/FT. Link
• UiPath: Mandy Sebel was promoted from Senior Vice President of People to Chief People Officer at UiPath. Link
• Varo Money: Halle Hutchinson joined Varo as Chief Brand Officer. Halle was previously Vice President of Marketing at Rover. Link
• Xero: David Thodey will join Xero in January as chair of the board of directors. David was previously Chief Executive Officer of Telstra Corporation. Link

What We’re Following

• First Round report: State of Startups 2019 — the industry’s largest dataset on what it’s like to run a startup with 3,600+ submissions and 190,000+ data points.
• Fortune long-form article: A roundtable of investors, including Rob Sharps of T. Rowe Price and Angela Strange of a16z, share their best investment advice for 2020.
• WSJ article: In the Airbnb Era, Apartment Landlords Are the New Hoteliers.
• Fortune article: Olaf Carlson-Wee, crypto’s crown prince survived ‘The Craziest Bubble Ever.’ Now he’s ready for a second act.
• Bloomberg article: U.S. Tech CEO Departures Rise to Record High.

Wishing you happy holidays from the Intersection team!

Catherine, Elizabeth, Hugh, Marissa and Scott

Intersection Growth Partners is a retained executive search firm that builds the leadership teams transforming financial services. Our clients include challenger fintechs, global financial institutions and leading investors in the space.