Daniela Binatti, Co-Founder and CTO at Pismo, was a panellist at Fintopic | Women in Fintech, an event held by ABFintechs (the Brazilian Fintech Association) in São Paulo, Brazil. The event occurred at Banco BV, the seventh largest bank in Brazil, and gathered women entrepreneurs to discuss their career journeys.
Marilyn Hahn, Co-Founder and COO at the financial services company Bankly—and Pismo’s client, and Tassiana Rugoni de Campos, MBA Coordinator at FIAP university, also joined the conversation. Mariane Takahashi, Business Executive at ABFintechs, mediated the panel.
A new scenario
Regarding women’s leadership in technology, Daniela says that although there’s still a deficit in the number of women who work directly with technology, several projects promote women’s inclusion in this industry.
“Companies like AWS and universities have programs for this purpose. You can find, for example, free online computer science courses at Harvard University – even in Portuguese. The amount of information and the ease of access is far greater than years ago,” she says.
Daniela believes this new scenario is positive to encourage young people to enter the technology market and, especially, to increase the presence of women in this industry.
Flexibility for women
Daniela says one of her primary efforts at Pismo is to offer a safe and flexible environment for women to feel comfortable. “Women like me, who are leaders and executives, must think about things that allow women to balance their professional and personal journeys. We must help them grow their careers.”
She remembered how many female employees at Pismo showed up in online meetings with their children during the pandemic.
“Allowing a mother to do that kind of thing during a meeting means part of my mission is accomplished because that was something I didn’t have at the beginning of my career,” Daniela says.
Breaking the bias
Daniela also highlighted that people still have to break some structural biases to encourage women to pursue a career without fearing they might fail. “Girls are raised to be perfect, while boys are taught to be ambitious and bold. We believe we are never good enough as women, and this is something we must change,” she says.
Another thing Daniela has observed and believes might help other companies encourage female leadership is following the example of big companies worldwide.
“When you see the CEO of Citibank saying she’ll invest in companies with women on the board, you believe this scenario can change. This direction, coming from larger companies, will make the smaller ones follow these decisions one way or another.”
