IWD FinTech Friday 1:1 Mentoring Sessions

A monthly mentoring series for FinTech startups and scaleups. We match make founders with industry experts from across the sector

Our program welcomes FinTech start-ups to receive feedback from our guest mentors. Our mentors include individuals from around the FinTech community and have expertise in marketing, legal, business development and other fields to accelerate start-ups’ growth.

In order for your startup to be considered you must submit an application via Google Form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScjb86JhCia_uz2A9FQuvDKY-Gu_sUm_m63IZHLZr7riF6L-A/viewform

International Women's Day - March Mentors

Cat McDonald - Cat joined AlbionVC team in 2018 having previously worked for Goldman Sachs in New York and London. At Goldman Sachs, Cat executed several high profile transactions across the product space including leveraged buyouts, IPOs and M&A. Prior to Goldman Sachs, Cat studied economics at Harvard University. Today Cat focuses on B2B software investing in leading fintech, data and cyber security companies.

Elina Sokolovska - Elina has closely collaborated with start-up founders for the past 10+ years across companies of 5 to 300 people, initially in customer success and for most of it in product. She’s currently a Senior Growth Product Manager at Wise, previously having been at other fintechs like Bud and Flux. Elina has experience with a range of B2C/B2B products like analytics, data science, APIs, open banking, digital receipts and payments. She has shipped greenfield products, extensively worked on products at product/market fit stage and currently is focusing purely on growth strategies at Wise.

Lana Tahirly Abdullayeva - Three decades in Tech & Fin internationally, across a number of developed and fast-growing economies, creating new portfolios of digital ventures to deliver impact.
Scientist by education, strategist by experience and visionary by heart, Lana offers deep industry expertise from her years with blue-chip global brands. She has been instrumental in working with the market leaders and regulators driving transformational changes across the industry.
A seasoned executive and NED, Lana brings a strong vantage point on how FS evolves in the digital age. She advocates reshaping economics and governance over the traditional FS to drive digital economy.

Piyali Mitra - Piyali Mitra has c. 22yrs of experience in Strategy, Financial planning and M&A/ Capital Markets execution. A qualified Chartered Accountant, Piyali has worked across Investment Banking advisory and in-house strategy / M&A and leadership roles in organisations such as Citigroup, RBS, UBS and currently at Barclays. Piyali is enabling the foundations to support our digital first strategy by championing a “growth mind-set”, simplifying process and polices, breaking silo’s, bringing together multi-disciplinary teams and aligning them to common customer outcomes. Piyali has a constant need to improve the status quo and thrives at the intersection of Business and Technology, helping teams understand the commercial imperative through the e2e lifecycle.

Swarnali Mitra - Swarnali Mitra is an Investor at the Female Innovators Lab by Barclays and Anthemis. An engineer by training, she has worked globally in the public, private, and non-profit finance sectors and has a keen passion for payments and financial infrastructure.
Her most recent work has been in Investment Banking, where she executed capital markets transactions including SPACs and M&A for FinTechs, Banks and Consumer Finance companies.Swarnali is passionate about building a more financially inclusive world. She has previously championed the Financial Inclusion Initiative at Credit Suisse, contributed to the launch of the Inclusive FinTech 50 series (supported by Accion and IFC), and helped develop industry research on digital ID-based solutions to improve access to finance.

Veroniki Zerva - Veroniki’s diverse experience covers strategy building & thought leadership in public affairs, business growth and global expansion initiatives. Social resilience and environmental sustainability accompanied with tech innovation inspire her in delivering business programmes that bring together players from the private and public sectors. She is currently running the EMEA Institutional Outreach for Moody's ESG Solutions, while before that she worked in the public affairs space for EU bodies and Corporates. Veroniki spent also three rewarding years scouting and educating startups across the EMEA region for a charitable organisation.