Small businesses do not always know that they need financing until payroll, repairs or expansion put pressure on their cash flow. By that point, applying for a traditional loan may already take too long. Claurelle Rakipovic has spent much of her career working on this problem. She went from building international payments products at Amazon to leading Pipe, an embedded capital platform for small businesses.

For this Women Leading the Way podcast episode, host Maria Tunikova sits down with Claurelle to discuss how AI, alternative data and embedded capital are changing small business finance. She explains how financial providers can use both financial records and operating signals to understand how a company is performing. Then they determine if it needs additional capital or not.

This wider view can make funding more relevant to a business’s actual situation. Metrics such as order fulfilment, operating hours and changes in daily activity may reveal growth or financial pressure. Traditional credit data alone can easily miss it.

Claurelle also explains why AI should sit at the core of financial infrastructure rather than appear as another visible feature. At Pipe, it supports underwriting, fraud prevention, compliance and operations. This helps the company assess businesses continuously and deliver capital through the platforms they already use.

Drawing on her experience at Amazon and Capital Group, Claurelle discusses what it takes to build financial products in highly regulated environments. Just as candidly, she reflects on making decisions without controlling every detail and building fast teams without sacrificing accountability.

Her advice to women entering fintech and AI is to define readiness for themselves, keep learning and avoid treating a career as a fixed ladder.

Connect with Claurelle Rakipovic:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/claurelle 

More about Pipe:

https://pipe.com/

Fintech's hiring boom is over, as teams are shrinking, roles are merging, and fewer people are doing more. As AI spreads, will entry-level jobs disappear, and where will the next generation of experienced professionals come from?

Nadia Edwards-Dashti has watched these changes from inside recruitment since the mid-2000s. She co-founded Harrington Starr to move the industry away from quick placements and towards trust, long-term relationships and advocacy. Today, as its Co-Founder and Chief Customer Officer, she sees fintech caught between the pressure to automate and the need to keep developing people.

For this episode of Women Leading the Way by Drofa Comms, Nadia joins host Maria Tunikova to discuss how AI is changing fintech jobs, hiring and career growth. She explains why automation still depends on experienced people who can test and challenge its output, and why companies should help employees work with AI.

They also examine the consequences of lean hiring. Fintech companies have reduced headcount, combined several roles into one and left experienced candidates competing for fewer openings. Nadia warns that removing junior opportunities today could create a shortage of mid-level talent tomorrow.

But the problem is not only how many people fintech hires. It is also who gets seen. CV-led screening, adversarial interviews and all-male shortlists can hide qualified candidates. Amid this, it allows companies to claim that diverse talent is unavailable.

Through more than 600 episodes of FinTech's DEI Discussions, and the first 100 conversations that became FinTech Women Walk the Talk, Nadia has seen how visibility can change an industry. When people can see who is already building, leading and progressing in fintech, inclusion becomes harder to dismiss as a distant goal.

Connect with Nadia Edwards-Dashti: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nadiaedwardsdashti/

More about Harrington Starr: https://www.harringtonstarr.com/ 

Annabelle Huang has spent the better part of a decade watching the institutional case for crypto build, and watching the technology fail to keep pace with it. She went from Deutsche Bank in New York to AirSwap, one of Ethereum's earliest DEXs, through the years building Amber Group's trading operations. Now she is a co-founder and CEO of Altius Labs, a blockchain infrastructure company working to close the gap she kept running into.

Her thesis: liquidity is largely a solved problem. Infrastructure is not.

In this episode of Women Leading the Way by Drofa Comms, Annabelle sits down with host Maria Tunikova to trace what crypto actually needs before institutional adoption moves beyond early positioning. She walks through why general-purpose chains are giving way to purpose-built, application-specific infrastructure.

She also makes the case that regulation, not technology, is the real unlock for the next phase. The GENIUS Act has already demonstrated what a single piece of legislation can do for stablecoin adoption. The CLARITY Act could do the same for tokenised assets. Ideas that people tried to build in 2017, Annabelle argues, were just waiting for the regulatory framework to arrive.

Then the conversation turns to what founding and leading in one of the most technical corners of Web3 actually looks like for a woman. Annabelle candidly says that the challenges are consistent. They manifest themselves in how leadership style gets read by others, in who survives on your team, and in the quiet cost of over-correcting yourself to fit a room.

She mentors early-stage founders, and when asked what women need most at the beginning, her answer is confidence and the deliberate, conscious practice of it.

Connect with Annabelle Huang via LinkedIn.

What happens when crypto regulation in Web3 develops faster than the law can follow? Ania Szpak knows firsthand.

As Chief Legal Officer at Nexus Mutual, Ania handles legal strategy in investments, compliance, and data privacy. Since she is frequently the only lawyer in the room, she is often the first to face questions without legal precedent.

In the third Women Leading the Way podcast episode, Ania and host Maria Tunikova address one of the biggest misconceptions in Web3: decentralisation means no regulation. It is a belief that leads founders to delay legal thinking. So, when compliance infrastructure finally catches up with them, the fixes are painful and expensive.

Ania breaks down how she stays ahead of crypto regulation in Web3 — including why X has become one of her most valuable sources — and explains why a network of in-house counsels is non-negotiable. She also shares what pragmatic lawyering looks like when there is no rulebook, and your members depend on your expertise.

Beyond regulation, Ania turns to confidence, self-doubt, and female leadership in Web3. She shares how women can build their voice in technical, fast-moving industries: by learning continuously, asking for feedback, relying on trusted networks, and taking part in the conversation before they feel fully ready.

Connect with Ania Szpak via LinkedIn.

In the second episode of Women Leading the Way, host Maria Tunikova sits down with Alina Sysoeva, Head of PR at Drofa Comms, to talk about one of the most demanding challenges in financial PR: crisis communications in fintech and crypto. When markets are unstable and trust is fragile, how fast you respond can shape a company's reputation for years.

Alina breaks down the red flags she watches in real time, from a sudden spike in media mentions and negative tone to the risk no one talks about enough: founders posting without approval. She takes us through her very first crisis with 30 minutes to build a response strategy from nothing and prevent a media fallout.

The conversation gets honest about why companies go silent during crises, and why that silence is, in most cases, the biggest mistake. From syncing PR and legal teams before anything happens to getting ahead of the story when Bloomberg publishes first, Alina shares a playbook built on preparation, speed, and transparency.

And then there's the human side. How does real pressure reveal who leads and who doesn't? Alina reflects on a moment early in her career when she was doubted simply for being a woman, and what happened when she acted anyway.

Drofa Comms is glad to announce the launch of a limited series of special PR consultations for finance, fintech, and digital asset companies. You can request one via the link.

In the premiere episode of Women Leading the Way, host Maria Tunikova speaks with Danielle Marie, founder of All Things Blockchain and creator of EvolveH3r, about why community — not hype — has become the real infrastructure of crypto.

Danielle shares how building Web3 communities across regions has revealed a stark divide: in some countries, blockchain is still a curiosity; in others, it’s a practical response to broken financial systems. She explains why education around fundamentals — ownership, private keys, and core blockchain concepts — matters more than chasing trends, and how events and mentorship create long-term trust in an industry shaped by volatility and misinformation.

The conversation also looks at what it means to grow as a woman in a male-dominated ecosystem and why support systems often matter more than titles. From global meetups to education hubs and mentorship programs, this episode sets the tone for the series — focusing on people, not narratives.

Women Leading the Way is a proud community partner of EthCC Cannes 2026. EthCC runs March 30 – April 2, 2026 at the Palais des Festivals, Cannes. 

🎟️ Get your EthCC pass: https://ethcc.io/tickets