‘How can we do this?’: A day in the life of Women of Fintech founder Gemma Young
- As a fintech marketer and founder of Women of Fintech, Gemma Young juggles a lot.
- From getting her kids to school, to brainstorming fintech growth strategies, here's a day in her life.
Fintech companies that want to establish themselves as disruptors in their industry and bring in venture capital constantly focus on growing their customer base. And without the right marketing and PR, there’s no way to do that.
Some fintechs looking for growth turn to Gemma Young, a marketing consultant with 17 years experience in the fintech industry. She’s helped organize, promote, and execute several successful fintech events, including the first ever speed-networking event hosted by law firm Ashurst, and “How to Build a Bank” where she had a fireside chat with Anne Boden, founder and CEO of Starling Bank.
On top of that, Gemma is the founder of Women of Fintech, a movement with 3000+ members that aims to get rid of gender inequality and promote diversity all across the financial sector. Here, she oversees STEM programs and manages conferences and events.
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She started the movement four years ago, while she was pregnant with her fourth child.
“When I was pregnant, I realized that in the banking industry, the way that you could bank had gone up exponentially," said Young. "But the way in which you could come back as a working mother had kind of stayed stagnant at the same time. And so I set up Women of FinTech as a community to just see if there were other women out there feeling the same that I could support. And it grew throughout my maternity leave to 2000 women.”
Young spends her days juggling these two roles.
Here’s a lightly-edited look at what a typical day in Young’s life looks like:
Morning: Coffee, Chaos and Catch-Up
Morning is chaotic, because I have four children. So it's packing bags, and getting everyone ready for the day. And for breakfast-- very strong coffee to see me through that.
Once they’re at school -- that's when I catch up on all my phone calls. It’s also when I interview my clients to discuss marketing strategy. This way there are no distractions.
Afternoon: Admin, Writing, and Brainstorming
In the afternoon, it's more admin and anything that I can do writing-wise, including clients’ requests and press releases. I try to limit my work to the things I can do while my kids are around.
Afternoon is also when I do my brainstorming sessions (the fun bit, I would say): coming up with the bigger plans for marketing and business development ideas for how the company I’m working with can scale and grow. I work as a contractor. So at the moment, I'm working for a company called Realization Group, a marketing agency that focuses only on fintech.
My brainstorming session is very much about trying to think outside the box. Particularly now, when life is completely different because of the pandemic, we can't go down the usual routes of 'let's do an event around that'. So it's more about how we can get companies to still promote what they do to audiences that are not necessarily based in London anymore, but rather at home.
Evenings: Women in Fintech
Evenings, I shouldn't be working. But I can't help myself. That's when I kind of go back to Women of FinTech and answering to those kinds of tasks as well.
Because Women of Fintech is a community, a lot of the work there comes through in the evening, when people aren't at their day jobs. So they might have thought of something during the day, but then they might contact after hours and just say “how can we do this?” And whereas we used to meet up monthly, we can't do that now. So sometimes it's like, “Can you put me in contact with someone who does this?”
We have a WhatsApp group now as well for contacting each other. So it's just making sure that people have read those and getting back to the ones that have requests and making sure that the community is still working.