Women worldwide are driving innovation in fintech, funding disruptive technologies to expand access, reduce wealth disparities, and transform digital asset investing. Many are featured in 100WFinTech’s Public Directory as changemakers in the field.
In this ‘100WFinTech Changemakers’ series, we highlight Jenny Lee and Sylvia Kwan, two senior fintech leaders who have created opportunities through writing, speaking, entrepreneurship, or investing. Their work empowers women investors and diverse founders, broadening financial access. We hope their stories inspire future finance professionals. If their mission resonates with you, share, connect with us, or join the Public Directory.
Jenny Lee
Chief Commercial Officer, ZING by HSBC
Former Chief Product Officer, WeLab
Forbes 30 under 30
Location: Hong Kong
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jenny-lee-39136016/
Jenny has been in the world of fintech startup/scaleups since before “fintech” was even a term. Over the past 15 years, she has built new businesses and propositions, leading 0-to-1 product launches and scaled businesses across Asia and in the UK. Her journey has been all about creating customer-centric solutions that balance innovation with scalability while delivering measurable impact.
At WeLab, as Chief Product Officer and Head of Growth, Jenny led transformative growth through fundraising, international expansion, strategic partnerships and innovation that earned WeLab its fintech unicorn status. For the past 3 years at Zing (an HSBC-backed international payment app venture), as the Chief Commercial Officer she spearheaded the launch of an award-winning app that has redefined international payments and earned industry acclaim for its outstanding customer service. This was a result of successfully operationalizing customer-centricity into the company’s DNA, driving exceptional user experiences and business outcomes. In just under 12 months, Zing has gained significant customer traction and won numerous industry awards for customer experience, user experience and its payment capabilities. While that journey is coming to a close due to strategic changes at HSBC, she remains incredibly proud of what the team has accomplished under her leadership and is excited for what’s next.
Jenny’s journey is one of embracing discomfort as a catalyst for growth, empowering teams to innovate, and delivering products that create meaningful value for customers. Today, she’ll share her insights on customer-centricity, leadership, and building high-performing teams, drawing from her wealth of experience in fintech.
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What are the core beliefs over your career in the fintech space?
Customer centricity has always been my cornerstone, but it’s often reduced to a buzzword in organizations. Many say “customer first” because it sounds like the right thing to say, but few truly live it or know how to execute it. It’s not just a mantra or line in a company’s culture book – it’s a mindset shift that requires robust frameworks, tools, and deliberate action to embed it into an organization’s DNA.
To operationalize customer-centricity, you need discipline and alignment. There’s planning and effort involved to build systems and processes: automating regular customer surveys, setting goals for user research, and creating channels where customer feedback is accessible to everyone. Most importantly, it’s not the job of one person or team to make it happen – when the entire organization adopts this mindset, the magic happens. When done well, it becomes a self-sustaining cycle where customer insights guide actions and actions reinforce the core value of your product to your customers, ultimately driving more engaged and loyal customers.
Another core belief I hold is to get comfortable with being uncomfortable. I introduced this principle as a cultural behavior during a company culture revamp initiative at WeLab, and it has since proven universally valuable in every organisation I’ve been part of. Growth happens in that zone of discomfort – it’s uneasy, but transformative.
Early in my career, discomfort meant shifting from being a strong individual contributor to managing people for the first time, including those with more work experience than me. Later, it meant trusting and empowering others as my responsibilities expanded. Letting go of control wasn’t easy since I thrive on being hands-on, but it was essential for scaling impact. Discomfort, in this sense, becomes a powerful catalyst—not just for personal growth, but for empowering teams and driving innovation across the organization.
What is the most important successful element in your personal development when you progress to a Chief Product Officer / Commercial Officer?
The key element has been finding the right balance between knowing enough detail to lead and manage effectively while keeping a clear focus on the bigger picture. Early in my career, I developed deep expertise by being highly hands-on, but as my scope grew, I realized success wasn’t about doing everything myself. It became about building clarity and alignment—ensuring my team had the direction, autonomy, and support to excel in their own areas.
Achieving this balance required two things. systems and processes in place to stay in tune with what’s happening on the ground whether it’s the progress or performance of a product feature or what customers are saying. These help provide actionable insights and allow me to proactively identify issues in the context of our overall objectives and strategy. Second, cultivating strong relationships with my team, underpinned by trust. A culture of trust encourages early escalation of problems, open idea-sharing, and collaboration. This trust allows me to stay informed without micromanaging and to intervene only when necessary.
At the same time, I’ve continuously evolved my leadership style, reflecting on how I want to show up for my team. My role isn’t just to solve problems—it’s to craft a vision that provides clarity and focus. I’ve learned that leadership requires flexibility—adjusting my approach based on the situation—while staying grounded in core principles like transparency, empathy, and empowerment. This is something I continue to think and care deeply about since I became a people manager quite early in my career and really had to experience some painful lessons as a young manager. So painful I even launched a podcast called “You’ll Manage” (https://youllmanage.com) to discuss and uncover these topics to help others be better people managers themselves.
Ultimately, my success as a leader stems from this ongoing evolution: balancing operational awareness with strategic foresight and creating an environment where both my team and I can thrive.
Over your career, would you be able to share with our audience about your philosophy of leadership and people management to build a high performing team to achieve success?
A high-performing team is built on trust, accountability, and alignment toward shared goals, underpinned by a sense of psychological safety. There’s so much literature around this and I’ve experienced firsthand that if even one of these elements is missing, the team simply doesn’t function effectively. My priority is to create an environment where team members feel safe and empowered to take ownership. Psychological safety fosters open communication—people share successes and challenges, learn faster by embracing mistakes, and collaborate without fear of judgment.
Equally important is setting clear expectations and aligning the team around measurable goals. High performance isn’t just about individual effort; it’s about building a culture where each person’s success reinforces the success of the group. I focus on implementing systems that promote transparency, such as open forums for discussing progress, shared metrics, and regular feedback cycles.
Leadership isn’t one-size-fits-all, so I adapt my style based on the team’s needs. Sometimes I coach directly; other times, I step back to let them find their own solutions. My role is to clear roadblocks, provide clarity, and ensure they have the tools to succeed.
Finally, I firmly believe in hiring people who are smarter than me. Just because I’m the most senior doesn’t mean I’m the smartest or have all the answers. Surrounding myself with talented individuals who challenge my thinking creates a dynamic where the team can innovate, grow, and push boundaries.
Ultimately, a great team is one where trust and accountability coexist with innovation and ambition. It’s about creating a culture that challenges people to grow, take appropriate risks, and deliver results—all while feeling supported every step of the way.
Sylvia S. Kwan
CEO and Chief Investment Officer
Ellevest
Location: US
Website: www.ellevest.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/sylviakwan/
Sylvia is the CEO and Chief Investment Officer at Ellevest, an investment firm focused on helping women build and manage wealth with intention. Previously, she held portfolio management positions at Financial Engines, L.L.C., Charles Schwab Investment Management, and The Boston Company. Sylvia is a Director of Exit 182 Group, LLC where she shares responsibility for the fiduciary oversight of Grinnell College’s $2.5B endowment. She also serves on the Board of Lotus Campaign, a startup non-profit focused on housing-driven solutions to homelessness, the Board of The Alternative & Direct Investment Securities Association (ADISA), and the advisory council for UniFi by CAIA™, a credential and certificate educational program in alternatives designed for advisors and private wealth managers. Sylvia holds both Chartered Financial Analyst® and Chartered Alternative Investment Analyst® designations. She earned a B.S. in applied mathematics and computer science from Brown University and a Ph.D. in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University.
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Can you share some of your biggest insights as Chief Investment Officer of Ellevest and most recently co-CEO, a FinTech company?
Ellevest is the only financial services firm founded by, funded by, built by and built for investing in women. We are on a mission to close the gender wealth gap by helping women recognize, understand, and employ the power of their capital to build wealth. We spent thousands of hours of research and interviews with women to discover how they think about investing and what keeps them from engaging fully with their finances. We found that women don’t feel served or welcomed by the industry. Women view money and investing differently from men, and prefer an intentional, goals-based approach. Women are more risk aware (not necessarily risk averse) and seek to more holistically understand the different facets of risk – not just investment risk – when investing. In order to serve and engage women, we need to understand these differences and create services and experiences that serve women’s needs and preferences to help them achieve financial success at every age and life stage.
What are the important trends in wealth management and wealth technology?
I’m excited to see two important trends in wealth management. This first is the rise of private market investing (e.g. alternatives) for retail investors. Historically, private markets have been accessible only to institutions and the very wealthy. Today, individual investors, from non-accredited retail to ultra high net worth, are seeking investment opportunities outside of traditional stocks and bonds. At the same time, financial firms are meeting that demand with solutions and products that offer features and liquidity provisions that are more retail investor friendly. And what used to be a highly manual process to invest is being replaced by smarter technology that makes investing in alternatives seamless and efficient. Technology innovation and tech platforms solely dedicated to private market investing has democratized access to private markets.
Second, the new generations of investors are investing more intentionally than previous generations. These investors are seeking investment opportunities that align with their personal values, with returns on impact becoming just as important as financial returns. The opportunity set of investments that offer both, especially in private markets, is growing at an accelerated pace, allowing investors to invest for impact without sacrificing the potential for competitive returns.
What are your biggest personal learnings having worked for multiple large asset management companies? Where do you seek inspiration and support?
With every work experience, I have learned more and more about myself – what motivates and inspires me, the strengths and personalities of colleagues and teams that best complement mine, the type of work that energizes me and doesn’t feel like work, and the kind of environment where I do my best work.
I’m most energized as an entrepreneur, innovating and challenging the boundaries of what has traditionally been practiced in our industry. I love hard problems and working with like-minded colleagues to create solutions. I don’t have a lot of patience and waiting to get full clarity to take action wastes precious time. I’m driven by the uncertainty of which new idea or approach will succeed and I’m comfortable with the ambiguity of not always knowing which potential path will turn out to be the winning one. For me, there is nothing like the feeling of building something from nothing, and from starting with only a vision and a blank piece of paper. At Ellevest, we started with no products, services or clients and built the firm to over $2B of AUM. The first billion (or two!) are always the sweetest and most inspiring.
What would you do if you were not doing what you are doing?
I would love to be a baby panda caretaker, but I think those jobs are far and few between! My second choice would be data science. The sheer amounts of data being collected and the technologies we have access to today make data science an extremely rich field with the potential for so much learning and insights that can lead to better outcomes for all.
What are you most excited about in the future? Share an amazing fact people don’t know.
I’m excited about how the investment industry in the US will be shaped by the Great Wealth Transfer. This transfer is already underway and wealth is being inherited first by women, and then by the next generation. American women are set to inherit $34T by 2030, a wealth transfer that approaches the annual GDP of the United States. Both women and younger generations invest differently from investors today and investment firms need to be prepared to meet their needs and preferences. The approaches and solutions employed today need to be modernized for the next generation.
What advice would you give younger women in finance or your younger self?
I have two thoughts for younger women in finance.
First, take the time to discover and refine your own playbook. Don’t feel like you need to duplicate someone else’s or conform to what you see. There are an infinite number of paths to succeed in finance, so find one intersection between what you’re good at and what you enjoy (and no, it doesn’t have to be your passion), and then iterate. Don’t give up if the first path doesn’t turn out to be your vibe – take what you learned from that path to pivot to your next one. I pivoted a number of times in my career, and each time, I learned more about what I enjoy and what I don’t.
Second, take every opportunity you can to practice and hone your verbal communication skills. Raise your hand for presentations and any kind of public speaking, whether it’s presenting to two colleagues, a podcast, or an audience of hundreds. There are many brilliant minds in finance – but few who can articulate their thoughts clearly to resonate with different audiences. Conquer this and the sky’s the limit.
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Thank you to Jenny and Sylvia for sharing your valuable insights and journey with us!
This month and upcoming events organized or co-hosted by 100WFinTech are as follows:
March 4, 2025, in-person event, Hong Kong – Wealth HER Way 2025 – Empowering Financial Independence produced by 100WFinTech and sponsored by Deloitte and Endowus
March 18, 2025, in-person event, London – Female Fintech Founders discussion produced by 100WFinTech
Q2 2025, in-person roundtable event, San Francisco, “Digital Payments 101, Cybersecurity, and Defining Trends”, produced by 100WFinTech
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This is the eleventh article of our Changemakers in FinTech series. In the future, we will continue to feature FinTech book authors, TED Talks speakers, lecturers, and influencers from around the world.
If you are interested in collaborating with 100WFinTech, please visit our website and contact us here.