What 20 years of building brands in this industry taught me about the women molding it
By Jennifer Tramontana, President and Founder, The Fletcher Group
I didn’t set out to build an agency. I set out to tell stories.
When I launched my business, fintech wasn’t even a word most people used. Payments were a back-office function, prepaid was a niche product, and the idea that financial technology would one day reshape global commerce was still a long way off. But I saw something early: this industry was full of brilliant, driven people trying to solve real problems, and most of them had no idea how to talk about what they did.
That’s where I came in. Over the last 20 years helping companies in payments, prepaid, loyalty, and financial services build their brands and earn their credibility, I’ve watched something remarkable unfold alongside the industry’s growth: women have been rising. Quietly at first, then unmistakably louder.
The Women Behind the Booming Industry
The fintech founders and executives I’ve worked with don’t fit a single mold. Some launched companies from scratch. Some climbed through the ranks of global institutions or built departments that didn’t exist before them. Others are leading engineering teams, risk functions, and product innovations. I’ve seen female founders bootstrap payment companies, secure partnerships with tier-one banks, and build category-defining brands on tight budgets and a lot of determination.
I’ve also seen leaders emerge from previously underestimated disciplines.
McKinsey’s most recent Women in the Workplace report found women in 29% of C-suite roles across corporate America, up from 17% a decade ago. Fintech data mirrors that picture. This is real progress, but by no means parity. However, marketing is one area where women aren’t waiting to be invited to the table and are taking a seat in a much higher percentage of leadership positions. In those roles, they’re quietly building the brands we use and rely on every day—and the work they’re doing is far more strategic than the industry has historically given them credit for.
What the CMOs Are Telling Us
For the past four years, The Fletcher Group has published our Women CMOs in Fintech Report as an annual look at the senior marketing leaders shaping this industry. Our most recent findings confirmed what I’ve experienced in real time with the clients and leaders I work alongside every day: that marketing is no longer a support function. It’s powering growth, with women playing a pivotal role.
Ninety-one percent of the CMOs we interviewed said their role has expanded in recent years in scope and in strategic weight. These leaders are now influencing business strategy, sales, product offerings, finance, and talent. Every single one of them reports direct involvement in revenue and growth conversations, crafting strategies and being held accountable for pipeline, deal velocity, and long-term customer success. This would have been unthinkable for marketing leaders a decade ago—especially women.
All of the CMOs we spoke with agreed that proving marketing’s impact on revenue is both essential and genuinely difficult. This is especially true in a complex, multi-touch B2B environment like fintech where brand influence and trust resist easy quantification despite being core to pipeline contributions. Yet women have responded with even more rigor: sharper attribution methods, tighter alignment with sales and finance, and ROMI models that connect marketing investment directly to business outcomes.
There has also been a striking shift in the value and role of AI. In 2024, the CMOs we spoke with were experimenting with generative AI for content brainstorming and testing capabilities without any formal processes. By 2025, every single leader we interviewed was using it for data analysis, lead tracking, building personas, and generative engine optimization. One leader shared that she saw her company’s LLM-driven search volume grow by more than 300% in six months by focusing on LLM search visibility and strengthening her brand’s presence across trusted earned media channels. That result points to something our industry already knows but is now seeing in the data: 89% of links cited by AI models come from earned media.
The case for long-term investment in what used to be considered soft sciences—marketing, PR, and thought leadership—has never been better supported by numbers. This is a major advancement in a tech-focused industry like fintech.
The Bigger Picture
What I’ve witnessed during my two decades of working in this space is that women in fintech are not simply keeping pace with the industry’s evolution. They’re fueling that ingenuity and progress as CMOs, executives, and founders—making the compelling argument in the boardroom and the broader industry that they are leaders. And that they should be considered for more leadership roles in the future.
In many cases like the CMO role, women are showing that their skillsets directly translate and are increasingly converging with what CEOs need: revenue accountability, cross-functional influence, and the ability to build trust at scale.
The path ahead isn’t without friction and the barriers are legitimate. But the narrative is shifting. Women are demonstrating their value by building influence beyond their own function, and proving that the right story, told with consistency and credibility, can work wonders.
About Author:
Jennifer Tramontana is President and Founder of The Fletcher Group, a PR and content marketing agency for fintech, payments, and financial services, and Executive Director of the Canadian Prepaid Providers Organization.
