Only men took the stage on first day of T3 conference

The ongoing gender imbalance at fintech companies was on display at the 2022 Technology Tools for Today conference.

Of the 19 speakers scheduled to speak on Monday, the first day of fintech-for-advisers event, which returned this week for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic began, only one was a woman. The lone exception, Rose Palazzo, group head of Envestnet MoneyGuide, joined via video call rather than appear on stage.

While the rest of T3 featured diverse panels, several presentations from women in fintech, a keynote from Charles Schwab chief digital officer Neesha Hathi and a fireside chat with Franklin Templeton CEO Jennifer Johnson, the lack of representation Monday was nonetheless noticed by attendees. The issue was even addressed during a panel on diversity and inclusion Tuesday.

“We need to continue to vocalize that this is just not OK,” said Suzanne Siracuse, CEO of Suzanne Siracuse Consulting and former InvestmentNews publisher, who hosted the panel.

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The first day of the T3 conference consists mostly of sponsored sessions where the companies decide who will represent them on stage rather than the event’s organizer. Between this and the diversity present in the rest of the conference, Day One’s agenda is less an indictment of T3 than it is a reminder of the gender gap still present at many fintech companies, said Gavin Spitzner, president of Wealth Consulting Partners.

“In a four-day event like T3, you need to look at the conference in totality, and Day Two had some wonderful female representation in keynotes and panels,” Spitzner said. Day One “wasn’t a good look, but it made me think more about what it says about the lack of female representation in wealthtech leadership and development positions than the conference itself.”

As event host, T3 perhaps could have done more to encourage sponsors to increase the visibility of women in fintech, but it ultimately comes down to the companies, said Marwa Zakharia, CEO of AssetBook, a portfolio management technology.

“Ownership is on the organizations to elevate women into leadership roles rather than simply voicing their support of diversity,” Zakharia said in an email.

Although women make up half of the world’s population, a survey of 1,032 fintech companies by the Fintech Diversity Radar found that only 5.6% of their chief executives are women. Even fewer have a woman in chief innovation officer or technology officer roles.

Fintech companies founded by women attract only 1% of venture funding, according to a study by findexable. Addressing this issue is key to solving the overall gender gap in fintech, Franklin Templeton’s Johnson said during the D&I panel.

“Unless we can make some of the people making the investment decisions more diverse, we’re not going to get more diversity in the fintech space,” Johnson said.

T3 President Joel Bruckenstein said he and his team encourage fintech companies to keep diversity in mind when selecting speakers for sponsored sessions but he doesn’t think companies should force someone on stage just to check a diversity box.

“If I’m a technology firm and I don’t have a female that’s that senior or that skilled at presenting, it would be a mistake to put them on stage just because they’re a woman,” Bruckenstein said.

T3 has a diversity team that worked to ensure representation across gender, race and LGBTQ+ communities, but the tight schedules of high-profile speakers like Hathi, Johnson and Fidelity Investments head of integration solutions Tricia Haskins prevented them from speaking on Monday, Bruckenstein said.

“We had more women on the main stage than we’ve ever had,” he said. “Talking about the timing is almost being picayune about it.”  

Including women and other underrepresented groups in conferences isn’t difficult if planners are being intentional about it — and not just for panels discussing diversity and inclusion, said Tricia Rothschild, a member of the board at several fintech companies, including Riskalyze and TIFIN Group.

“I don’t like the dichotomy that ‘I need a woman for a D&I panel’ or ‘a woman as a moderator because my panel is all men,’” Rothschild said. “That’s not sufficient.”

Having planned many conferences in her career, Kate Healy, former TD Ameritrade Institutional managing director who's now a chief marketing officer for business-to-business companies, said it's always a challenge to determine when speakers should appear, especially when sponsors are involved.

“We can all do better about balancing where they show and who we highlight as keynotes,” Healy said in an email. “That said, other than a women's conference, I'm not sure this number [at T3] is that different than other conferences.”

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Editor's note: This is article has been updated to clarify comments from an attendee at the event.