All female-led fintech AngeLink’s CEO talks women in finance

Tell us about your journey into fintech – is there a story there?

After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a concentration from the Wharton School of Business, I began a career in finance that has now spanned three decades.

I have held leadership roles at Credit Suisse, Lazard Freres and Equity Growth Partners, where I learned to be mission and data driven, customer focused and a champion of financial equity. But so often I was the only woman in the room. At board meetings, pitches and events throughout my career, it has been a male-led industry.

I began to realize the extent of the gender gap in finance. I wondered, ‘What will it take to close that gap?’

While serving as Vice President of the Serious Game Institute, I realized that gender parity and financial equality could come through peer-to-peer fundraising using gamified financial technology, as long as there was a platform that specifically targeted and encouraged women.

So I started building AngeLink.

What is AngeLink – describe your startup.

AngeLink is the world’s first social crowdfunding platform built and run by women. Our mission is to connect the world, empower women and amplify generosity.

Over the past two years, we’ve grown from just an idea to a $5.5 million seed-funded company with 31,000+ platform users, and have processed $1.5 million in donations.

We’ve helped students raise their tuition, breast cancer survivors cover the cost of chemotherapy, and local entrepreneurs start small businesses through fundraisers created on AngeLink.

Our diverse international team works tirelessly together to provide a safer, more trusted crowdfunding community powered by women to close the gap on gender-based financial inequality.

What differentiates it in the market?

AngeLink stands out from other crowdfunding platforms in three main ways: increased security, women-centricity and gamification.

Increased security: We review every fundraiser before it is published on our platform through our 7-point Risk Score Flagging System developed by our CTO, Sheila Nasehi (PhD in Artificial Intelligence). Our AI algorithm uses state-of-the-art image and text recognition to review and ensure compliance with our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy.

Female-Centricity: AngeLink is building a female-centric community. Over 70% of all existing crowdfunding participants (donors and fundraisers) are women, but until now there was no place specifically for us.

Gamification: AngeLink creates an iconic, lovable brand with thoughtfully designed gamification. From our digital mascot angel (similar to Duolingo’s owl) to our virtual rewards and achievement badges, we make fundraising fun and engaging.

It’s female-founded – and the team is predominantly female – is that something you purposefully planned?

AngeLink was built to empower women, and I believe that empowerment has to start with our own team. So yes, my hiring choices were on purpose!

Our CEO (me), CFO (Laura Ariza), CTO (Sheila Nasehi) and Head of SEO and Growth (Paige Kutilek) are all women. And our technical team, marketing team and customer support team are all 90% female.

We believe this enables us to speak authentically to our predominantly female community – or as we like to call it, our Army of Angels.

What are the best ways to attract more women to the fintech space?

I believe that companies like AngeLink will inspire more women to join the fintech industry. When women see female founders and fintech environments built specifically for them, it usually makes the industry feel more accessible and welcoming.

I personally feel very inspired by other powerful female founders like Sara Blakely (Spanx), Whitney Wolfe Herd (Bumble) and Melanie Perkins (Canva). I would consider them visionary thought leaders and change agents who have probably attracted many other women into the entrepreneurial space.